One word more and we have completed our subject. Magic swords, rings, pentacles, and wands, may, and often are powerful magical agents in the hands of the magician, by virtue of the power, or charm, that is invested within them when properly prepared; but apart from such preparation, by those who know, they are as powerless as unintelligible incantations. All the foregoing are aids, but if physical manifestations of magical forces be required, there must always be present the necessary vital, magnetic pabulum, by means of which such phenomena are made to transpire; and in every case, to be successful, the assistance of a good natural magician, or seer, is necessary; for without this essential element the whole art, in its higher aspects, becomes abortive. CHAPTER XI. THE MAGIC WAND This is the last lesson of our present course that requires a clear definition of the terms employed in the title thereof, for the twelfth, and final study is, perhaps, fortunate in having for its title a word that has not, so far, been misused and distorted from its original sense. The Magic Wand. The words savor of everything that the young tyro in Occult art can picture to his mind; of the midnight magician and his mysterious, if not diabolical, arts, muttering his incantations, working his gruesome spells, and raising the restless ghosts of the dead. Strange fancies, these, and yet, so corrupt and ignorant have become the conceptions of the popular mind regarding the once sacred Science of the Temple and the psychological powers of Nature, that we very much question, if the ideas above stated were not very similar to the originals of each modern student, before he had become acquainted with the deeper truths--the realities of Occult philosophy.