The Astral Light is the living soul of the earth, a material and fatal soul, controlled in its productions and movements by the eternal laws of equilibrium. This light, which environs and permeates all bodies, can also suspend their weight and make them revolve about a powerfully absorbent centre. Phenomena which have been so far insufficiently examined, though they are being reproduced in our own days, prove the truth of this theory. To the same natural law must be ascribed those magical whirlpools in the centre of which enchanters located themselves. It explains the fascination exercised on birds by certain reptiles and on sensitive natures by others which are negative and absorbent. Mediums are generally diseased creatures in whom the void opens and who thus attract the light, as abysses draw the water of whirlpools. The heaviest bodies can then be lifted like straws and are carried away by the current. Such negative and unbalanced natures, whose fluidic bodies are formless, can project their force of attraction, delineating by this means supplementary and fantastic members in the air. When the celebrated medium Home makes hands without bodies appear in his vicinity, his own hands are dead and frozen. It may be said that mediums are phenomenal beings in whom death struggles visibly against life. As much may be concluded in the case of enchanters, fortune-tellers, those with the evil eye and casters of spells. Consciously or unconsciously, they are vampires, who draw the life which they lack and thus disturb the balance of the light. When this is done consciously, they are criminals who should be punished, and when otherwise they are still exceedingly dangerous subjects, from whom delicate and nervous people should be carefully isolated. Porphyry tells the following story in his life of Plotinus. “Among those who professed philosophy, there was a certain Olympius, who was of Alexandria and for a time disciple of Ammonius. He treated Plotinus with disdain, being ambitious to surpass him in repute. He sought also to injure him by magical ceremonies, but having found that the attempt re-acted on himself he admitted to his friends that the soul of Plotinus must be one of great power, since it could turn back on his enemies their own evil designs. Plotinus was conscious of the hostile attempts of Olympius, and there were times when he said suddenly: ‘Now he is having convulsions.’ This kind of thing being repeated, and finding that he was afflicted himself with the evils which he would have wrought on Plotinus, Olympius ceased to persecute.” Equilibrium is the great law of the vital light; projected with force and repelled by a nature more balanced than our own, it comes back upon ourselves with equal violence. Woe therefore to those who would employ natural powers in the service of injustice, since Nature is just and her reactions are terrible. CHAPTER VII MAGICAL MONUMENTS