32
Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com
MAGIC WITHOUT TEARS
178
cal explanations. But I can form no theory as to how the
practice could
counteract the force of gravitation, and I am unregenerate
enough to allow
this to make me sceptical about the occurrence of
levitation. Yet, after
all, the stars are suspended in space. There is no & priori
reason why
the forces which prevent them rushing together should not
come into
operation in respect of the earth and the body."
The Allan part of this is the best evidence at my disposal.
He couldn't
have got where he did by hopping, and he couldn't have got
into that
position intentionally; he must have been levitated, lost
balance, and
dropped upside down. In any case, there is no trace of
fascination about
it, as there may have been in Soror Virakam's observation.
About invisibility, now? Of this I have so much experience
that the
merest outline could take us far beyond the limits of a
letter. In Mexico
D.F., I worked at acquiring the power by means of ritual. I
worked desper-
ately hard. I got to the point where my image in a pier-
glass flickered,
rather like the very earliest films did. Possibly more
work, after more
skill had come to me, might have done the whole trick. But
I did not
persist when I found out how to do it by fascination. (Here
we are at
last!)
Roughly, this is how to do it. If one is concentrated to the
point when
what you are thinking of is the only reality in the
Universe, when you
lose all awareness of who and where you are and what you are
doing, it
seems as though that unconsciousness were in some way
contagious. The
people around you just can't see anybody.
At one time, in Sicily, this happened nearly every day. Our
party, strolling
down to our bathing bay --- the loveliest spot of its kind
that I have ever
seen --- over a hillside where there wasn't cover for a
rabbit, would lose
sight of me, look, and fail to find me, though I was walking
in their midst.
Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com
MAGIC WITHOUT TEARS
179
At first, astonishment, bewilderment; at last, so normal had
it become:
"He's invisible again."
One incident I remember very vividly indeed; an old friend
and I were
sitting opposite each other in armchairs in front of a large
fire, smoking
our pipes. Suddenly he lost sight of me, and actually cried
out in alarm.
I said: "What's wrong?" That broke the spell; there I was,
all present
and correct.
Did I hear you mutter "Transmutations? Werwolves? Golden
Hawks?" Likely
enough; it's time we touched on that.
In certain types of animal there appears, if tradition have
any weight, to
be a curious quality of --- sympathy? I doubt if that be
the word, but can
think of none better --- which enables them to assume at
times the human
form. No. 1 --- and the rest are also rans --- is the seal.
There is a whole
body of literature about this. Then come wolves, hyaenas,
large dogs of
the hunting type; occasionally leopards. Tales of cats and
serpents are
usually the other way round; it is the human (nearly always
female) that
assumes these shapes by witchcraft. But in ancient Egypt
they literally
doted on this sort of thing. The papyri are full of
formulas for operating
such transmutations. But I think that this was mostly to
afford some relaxa-
tion for the spirit of the dead man; he nipped out of his
sarcophagus,
and painted the town all the colours of the rainbow in one
animal shape or
another.
33
The only experience I have of anything of this sort was when
I was in Pacific
waters, mostly at Honolulu or in Nippon. I was practising
Astral projection.
Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com
MAGIC WITHOUT TEARS
180
A sister of the Order who lived in Hong Kong helped me. I
was to visit her,
and the token of perfect success was to be that I should
knock a vase off
the mantel-piece. We appointed certain days and hours ---
with some awkward-
ness, as my time-distance from her was constantly growing
shorter --- for me
to pay my visit. We got some remarkable results; our
records of the inter-
view used to tally with surprising accuracy; but the vase
remained intact!
This is not one of my notorious digressions; and this is how
transmu-
tation comes into it. I found that by first taking the
shape of a golden
hawk, and resuming my own form after landing in her "temple"
--- a room
she had fitted ad hoc --- the whole operation became
incomparably easier.
I shall not indulge in hypotheses of why this should have
been the case.
A little over four years later --- in the meantime we had
met and worked
at Magick together --- we resumed these experiments in a
somewhat different
form. The success was much greater; but though I could move
her, and
even any objects which she was touching, I could make no
impression on
inanimate objects at a distance from her. The behaviour of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]