Now let me tell you a few of the things against which the new race in America will have to guard itself. As always where the forces of progress are strong, the opposition is strong. I have written enough about the good influences of this new birth; but I want to give a few warnings, to analyze a few influences which are of a destructive character. There is developing in America a great group of people who seek to gain control of the desire-nature and the will of others, that they may use them for their own purposes. These people are not all in one place, they are not organized into one body but into many bodies, and some of them are working quite independently. But in the astral world, and in the language of us who work in that world, they are known as a “group.” They teach to those who will pay them, either in money or in service, certain rules for controlling the mind of self and of others. They teach the rudiments of astral knowledge to the many, and they teach more advanced principles to the few. Some of their teachings are true, some of their teachings are false; but there are few among them who undertake any real discipline of character with their students. As one profound teacher has said, for every step in psychic development, three steps should be taken in the development of character. I need not name those who are most criminally active in teaching the formulas of black magic to men and women who are utterly unfit to be trusted with that knowledge. The question will naturally arise in the mind of the reader, What _is_ black magic? I think I have given a similar definition before, but you may restate it thus: Black magic is an attempt to gain control over the will or the astral or the mind of one’s fellows, through means other than the normal physical or the legitimate mental influence by word or pen; be it through the use of the elementals of nature, artificial elementals, or one’s own mental or elemental nature. Black magic may be deliberately used to influence, or black magic may be deliberately used to injure; and its votaries often employ _the substances of the body of the victim_, through which to gain sympathetic control of his astral and etheric nature. I want to say to those who think it smart or amusing to fool with these things: Beware of any man or of any woman who by _normal or abnormal means_ seeks to get possession of the fluids of your body, especially the blood and the other vital fluids. I shall not go into detail here. Those who accept my warning owe me no thanks; those who disregard my warning do so at their own peril. It gives me no amusement thus to thrust myself between the evil forces and their victims. By so doing I draw down upon myself the rage of those forces that I thwart so far as I can.