Ceremonial Magick E-Book

Francis Barrett

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 204

Beschreibung

This Book forms a complete treatise on the mysteries of the Cabala and Ceremonial Magic; by the study of which, a man (who can separate himself from material objects, by the mortification of the sensual appetite, abstinence from drunkenness, gluttony, and other bestial passions, and who lives pure and temperate, free from those actions which degenerate a man to a brute) may become a recipient of Divine light and knowledge; by which they may foresee things to come, whether to private families or states; and likewise be capable of doing much good to their fellow-creatures: such as the healing of all disorders, and assisting with the comforts of life the unfortunate and distressed.

Leseprobe

Ceremonial Magick

Ceremonial MagickThe Magnetism.12345678910CABALISTICAL MAGIC.12345678910111213141516171819THE PERFECTION AND KEY OF THE CABALA,123456789101112OF THE PARTICULAR COMPOSITION OF THE MAGICAL CIRCLE; OF EXORCISMS, BENEDICTIONS, AND THE CONJURATIONS OF EVERY DAY IN THE WEEK;1THE MAGIC AND PHILOSOPHY OF TRITHEMIUS OF SPANHEIM.12Copyright

Ceremonial Magick

Francis Barrett

The Magnetism.

IN our following Treatise of Magnetism we have collected and arranged in order some valuable and secret things out of the writings of that most learned chemist and philosopher Paracelsus, who was the ornament of Germany and the age he lived in. Likewise we have extracted the very marrow of the science of Magnetism out of the copious and elaborate works of that most celebrated philosopher (by fire) Van Helmont, who, together with Paracelsus, industriously promulgated all kinds of magnetic and sympathetic cures, which, through the drowsiness, ignorance, unbelief, and obstinacy of the present age, have been so much and so totally neglected and condemned; yet, however impudent in their assertions, and bigotted to their own false opinions, some of our modern philosophers may be, yet we have seen two or three individuals, who, by dint of perseverance, have proved the truth and possibility of Magnetism, by repeated and public experiments. Indeed the ingenious invention of the Magnetic Tractors prove at once that science should never be impeded by public slander or misrepresentation of facts that have proved to be of general utility. And we do not doubt but that we shall be able to shew, by the theory and practice delivered in the sequel, that many excellent cures may be performed by a due consideration and attentive observance of the principles upon which sympathy, antipathy, magnetic attraction, &c. are founded; and which will be fully illustrated in the following compendium: We shall hasten to explain the first principles of Magnetism, by examining the magnetic or attractive power.

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1 THE MAGNETIC, OR ATTRACTIVE POWER OR FACULTY.

AS concerning an action locally at a distance, wines do suggest a demonstration unto us: for, every kind of wine, although it be bred out of co-bordering provinces, and likewise more timely blossoming elsewhere, yet it is troubled while our country vine flowereth; neither doth such a disturbance cease as long as the flower shall not fall off from our vine; which thing surely happens, either from a common motive-cause of the vine and wine, or from a particular disposition of the vine, the which indeed troubles the wine, and doth shake it up and down with a confused tempest: or likewise, because the wine itself doth thus trouble itself of its own free accord, by reason of the flowers of the vine: of both the which latter, if there be a fore-touched conformity, consent, co-grieving, or congratulation; at least, that cannot but be done by an action at a distance: to wit, if the wine be troubled in a cellar under ground, whereunto no vine perhaps is near for some miles, neither is there any discourse of the air under the earth, with the flower of the absent vine; but, if they will accuse a common cause for such an effect, they must either run back to the stars, which cannot be controuled by our pleasures and liberties of boldness; or, I say, we return to a confession of an action at a distance: to wit, that some one and the same, and as yet unknown spirit, the mover, doth govern the absent wine, and the vine which is at a far distance, and makes them to talk and suffer together. But, as to what concerns the power of the stars, I am unwilling, as neither dare I, according to my own liberty, to extend the forces, powers, or bounds of the stars beyond or besides the authority of the sacred text, which faith (it being pronounced from a divine testimony) that the stars shall be unto us for signs, seasons, days, and years: by which rule, a power is never attributed to the stars, that wine bred in a foreign soil, and brought unto us from far, doth disturb, move, or render itself confused: for, the vine had at some time received a power of encreasing and multiplying itself before the stars were born: and vegetables were before the stars, and the imagined influx of these: wherefore also, they cannot be things conjoined in essence, one whereof could consist without the other. Yea, the vine in some places flowereth more timely; and, in rainy, or the more cold years, our vine flowereth more slowly, whose flower and stages of flourishing the wine doth, notwithstanding, imitate; and so neither doth it respect the stars, that it should disturb itself at their beck. In the next place, neither doth the wine hearken unto the flourishing or blossoming of any kind of capers, but of the wine alone: and therefore we must not flee unto an universal cause, the general or universal ruling air of worldly successive change; to wit, we may rather run back unto impossibilities and absurdities, than unto the most near commerces of resemblance and unity, although hitherto unpassable by the schools. p. 6 Moreover, that thing doth as yet far more manifestly appear in ale or beer: when, in times past, our ancestors had seen that of barley, after whatsoever manner it was boiled, nothing but an empty ptisana or barley-broth, or also a pulp, was cooked; they meditated, that the barley first ought to bud (which then they called malt) and next, they nakedly boiled their ales, imitating wines: wherein, first of all, some remarkable things do meet in one; to wit, there is stirred up in barley, a vegetable bud, the which when the barley is dried, doth afterwards die, and loseth the hope of growing, and so much the more by its changing into meal, and afterwards by an after-boiling, it despairs of a growing virtue; yet these things nothing hindering, it retains the winey and intoxicating spirit of aqua vitæ, the which notwithstanding it doth not yet actually possess: but at length, in number of days, it attaineth it by virtue of a ferment: to wit, in the one only bosom of one grain one only spirit is made famous with diverse powers, and one power is gelded, another being left: which thing indeed, doth as yet more wonderfully shine forth; when as the ale or beer of malt disturbs itself while the barley flowereth, no otherwise than as wine is elsewhere wont to do: and so a power at a far absent distance is from hence plain to be seen: for truly there are cities from whom pleasant meadows do expel the growing of barley for many miles, and by so much the more powerfully do ales prove their agreement with the absent flowering barley; in as much as the gelding of their power hath withdrawn the hopes of budding and increasing: and at length the aqua vitae being detained and shut up within the ale, hogshead, and prison of the cellar, cannot with the safety of the ale or beer wandering for some leagues unto the flowering ear of barley, that thereby, as a stormy retainer, it may trouble the remaining ale with much confusion. Certainly there is a far more quiet passage for a magnetical or attractive agreement among some agents at a far distance from each other, than there is to dream an aqua vitæ wandering out of the ale of a cellar, unto the flowering barley, and from thence to return unto the former receptacles of its pen-case, and ale: But the sign imprinted by the appetite of a woman great with child, on her young, doth fitly, and alike clearly confirm a magnetism or attractive faculty and its operation at a distance: to wit, let there be a woman great with child, p. 213 which desires another cherry, let her but touch her forehead or any other place with her finger; without doubt, the young is signed in its forehead with the image of the cherry, which afterwards doth every year wax green, white, yellow, and at length looks red, according to the tenor of the trees: and it much more wonderfully expresses the same successive alteration of maturities in Spain than in Germany: and so hereby an action at a distance is not only confirmed, but also a conformity or agreement of the essences of the cherry tree, in its wooden and fleshly trunk; a consanguinity or near affinity of a being impressed upon the part by on instantaneous imagination, and by a successive course of the years of its kernel: surely the more learned ought not to impute those things unto evil spirits, which, through their own weakness, they are ignorant of; for these things do on all sides occur in nature, the which, through our slenderness, we are not able to unfold; for to refer whatsoever gifts of God are in nature (because our dull capacity does not comprehend the same rightly) to the devil, shews both ignorance and rashness, especially when, as all demonstration of causes from a former thing or cause is banished from us, and especially from Aristotle, who was ignorant of all nature, and deprived of the good gifts which descends from the Father of Lights; unto whom be all honour and glory. Note. We may, by the aforesaid chapter, see the wonderful working power of the attractive or universal spirit, which can by no other means be so clearly demonstrated as by the sympathies in natural things, which are inherent throughout all nature; and, upon this principle of sympathy and antipathy, we say is founded that spiritual power which tends to things and objects remote one from the other, i. e. a magnetic attraction, which does actually exist, as we shall clearly prove by experiment, where we fully shew the action and passion that is between natural spirits, by which means wonderful effects are produced which have ignorantly been attributed to divers superstitions, as Sorcery, Inchantment, Nigromancy, or the Black Art, &c.

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OF SYMPATHETIC MEDICINES.

IN the year 1639, a little book came forth, whose title was, 'The Sympathetical Powder of Edricius Mohynus, of Eburo,' whereby wounds are cured without application of the medicine unto the part afflicted, and without superstition; it being sifted by the sieve of the reasons of Galen and Aristotle; wherein it is Aristotetically, sufficiently, proved, whatsoever the title of it promises; but it hath neglected thedirective faculty, or virtue, which may bring the virtues of the sympathetical powder, received in the bloody towel or napkin, unto the distant wound. Truly, from a wound, the venal blood, or corrupt pus, or sanies, from an ulcer, being received in the towel, do receive, indeed, a balsam from a sanative or healing being; I say, from the power of the vitriol, a medicinal power connected and limited in the aforesaid mean; but the virtues of the balsam received are directed unto the wounded object, not indeed by an influential virtue of the stars, and much less do they fly forth of their own accord unto the object at a distance: therefore the ideas of him that applieth the sympathetical remedy are connected in the mean, and are made directresses of the balsam unto the object of his desire: even as we have above also minded by injections concerning ideas of the desire. Mohyns supposed that the power of sympathy depends upon the stars, because it is an imitator of influences: but I draw it out of a much nearer subject: to wit, out of directing ideas, begotten by their mother Charity, or a desire of goodwill: for, from hence does that sympathetic powder operate more successfully, being applied by the hand of one than another: therefore I have always observed the best process where the remedy is instituted by a desire of charity; but, that it doth succeed, with small success, if the operator be a careless or drunken person; and, from hence, I have more esteemed the stars of the mind, in sympathetical remedies, than the stars of heaven: but that images, being conceived, are brought unto an object at a distance, a pregnant woman is an example of, because she is she who presently transfers all the ideas of her conception on her young, which dependeth no otherwise on the mother than from a communion of universal nourishment. Truly, seeing such a direction of desire is plainly natural, it is no wonder that the evil spirit doth require the ideas of the desires of his imps to be annexed unto a mean offered by him. Indeed, the ideas of the desire are after the manner of the influences of heaven cast into a proper object how locally remote soever; that is, they are directed by the desire, especially pointing out an object for itself, even as the sight of the basilisk, or touch of the torpedo, is reflected on their willed object; for I have already shewn in its place, that the devil doth not attribute so much as any thing in the directions of things injected; but that he hath need of a free, directing, and operative power or faculty. But I will not disgrace sympathetical remedies because the devil operates something about things injected into the body: for what have sympathetical remedies in common? Although Satan doth co-operate in injections by wicked natural means required from his bond slaves; for every thing shall be judged guilty, or good, from its ends and intents: and it is sufficient that sympathetical remedies do agree with things injected in natural means, or medicines.

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OF THE MAGNETIC OR SYMPATHETIC UNGUENT, THE POWDER OF SYMPATHY, ARMARY UNGUENT, CURING OF WOUNDS, ECSTASIES, WITCHCRAFT, MUMMIES, &C.

WE shall now show some remarkable operations that are effected by magnetism, and founded upon natural sympathy and antipathy, likewise how by these means some extraordinary cures may be performed. The goodness of the Creator every where extended, created every thing for the use of ungrateful man; neither did he admit any of the theologists, or divines, as assistants in council, how many or how great virtues he should infuse into things natural. But there are those who venture to measure the wonderful works of God by their own sharpened and refined wit, whereby they deny God to have given such virtue to things; as though man (a worm) was able, by his narrow and limited capacity, to comprehend Omniscience; he therefore measures the minds of all men by his own, who think that cannot be done, which they cannot understand. They therefore can only develope the mysteries of nature, who being versed in the art of Cabala, Fire, and Magic, examined the properties of things, and draw, from darkness into light, the lurking powers of Man, Animals, Vegetables, Minerals, and Stones, and, separating the crudities, dregs, poisons, heterogenities, that are the thorns implanted in virgin nature from the curse. For an observer of nature sees daily she doth distil, sublime, calcine, ferment, dissolve, coagulate, fix, &c. therefore we who are the ministers of nature do separate, &c. finding out the causes and effects of every phenomena she produces. Now, as magnetism is ordained for the use of man, and for the curing of the various disorders incident to human nature, we shall first touch upon the grand subject of magnetism, known to possess wonderful properties, and which are not only evident to every eye, but shew us sufficient grounds for our admitting the possibility and reality of magnetism in general. The loadstone possesses an eminent medicinal faculty, against many violent and implacable disorders. Helmont says, that the back of the loadstone, as it repulses iron, so also it removes gout, swellings, rheum, &c. that is of the nature or quality of iron. The iron attracting faculty, if it be joined to the mummy of a woman, and the back of the loadstone be put within her thigh, and the belly of the loadstone on her loins, it safely prevents a miscarriage, already threatened; but the belly of the loadstone applied within the thigh and the back to her loins, it doth wonderfully facilitate her delivery. Likewise the wearing the loadstone cases and prevents the cramp, and such like disorders and pains.

Uldericus Balk, a dominican friar, published a book at Frankfort in the year 1611, concerning the lamp of life; in which we shall find (taken from Paracelsus) the true magnetical cure of many diseases, viz. the dropsy, gout, jaundice, &c. For if thou shalt enclose the warm blood of the sick in the shell and white of an egg, which is exposed to a nourishing warmth, and this blood, being mixed with a piece of flesh, thou shalt give to a hungry dog, the disorder departs from thee into the dog; no otherwise than the leprosy of Naaman passed over into Gehazi through the execration of the prophet. If women, weaning their infants, shall milk out their milk upon hot burning coals, the breast soon dries. If any one happens to commit nuisance at thy door, and thou wilt prevent that beastly trick in future, take the poker red-hot, and put it into the excrement, and, by magnetism, his posteriors shall become much scorched and inflamed. Make a small table of the lightest, whitest, and basest kind of lead; and at one end put a piece of amber, and, three spans from it, lay a piece of green vitriol; this vitriol will soon lose its colour and acid: both which effects are found in the preparation of amber. The root of the Caroline thistle being plucked up when full of juice and virtue, and tempered with the mummy of a man, will exhaust the powers and natural strength out of a man, on whose shadow thou shalt stand, into thyself.

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OF THE ARMARY UNGUENT, OR WEAPON SALVE, &c.

THE principal ingredient in this confection, is the moss of a dead man's skull, which Van Helmont calls the excrescencies or superfluities of the stars. Now the moss growing on the skull of a dead man, seeing it has received its seed from the heavens, but its increase from the mummial marrow of the skull of man, or tower of the microcosm, has obtained excellent astral and magnetic powers beyond the common condition of vegetables, although herbs, as they are herbs, want not their own magnetism. Now, the magnetism of this unguent draws out that strange disposition from the wound (which otherwise, by a disunion of the parts that held together, and by which, I say, strange disposition and foreign quality is produced) from whence it slips, not being overburdened or oppressed by any accident, suddenly grow together; and this is effected by the armary unguent, or weapon salve. From this it appears that the unguent, or weapon salve, its property is to heal suddenly and perfectly without pain, costs, peril, or loss of strength; hence it is manifest that the magnetical virtue is from God. It is now seasonable to discover the immediate cause of magnetism in the unguent. First of all, by the consent of mystical divines, we divide man into the external and internal man, assigning to both the powers of a certain mind, or intelligence: for so there doth a will belong to flesh and blood, which may not be either the will of man or the will of God; and the heavenly Father also reveals some things unto the more inward man, and some things flesh and blood reveals, that is, the outward and sensitive, or animal man. For, how could the service of idols, envy, &c. be rightly numbered among the works of the flesh, seeing they consist only in the imagination, if the flesh had not also its own imagination and elective will? Furthermore, that there are miraculous ecstasies belonging to the more inward man, is beyond dispute. That there are also ecstasies in the animal man, by reason of an intense, or heightend imagination, is, without doubt. Martin del Ris, an elder of the society of Jesus, in his Magical Disquisitions or Enquiries, makes mention of a certain young man in the city Insulis that was transported with so violent a desire of seeing his mother, that through the same intense desire, as if being rapt up by an ecstasy, he saw her perfectly, although many miles absent from thence; and, returning again to himself, being mindful of all that he had seen, gave many true signs of his true presence with his mother. Now that desire arose from the more outward man, viz. from blood and sense, or flesh, is certain; for, otherwise, the soul being once dislodged, or loosened from the bonds of the body, cannot, except by miracle, be reunited to it; there is therefore in the blood a certain ecstatical or transporting power, which, if at any time shall be excited or stirred up by an ardent desire and most strong imagination, it is able to conduct the spirit of the more outward man even to some absent and far distant object, but then that power lies hid in the more outward man, as it were, in potentia, or by way of possibility; neither is it brought into act, unless it be roused up by the imagination, inflamed and agitated by a most fervent and violent desire.

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OF THE IMAGINATIVE POWER AND THE MAGNETISM OF THE NATURAL SPIRITS, MUMMIAL ATTRACTION, SYMPATHIES OF ASTRAL SPIRITS, WITH THEIR BODIES, UPON WHICH THE WHOLE ART OF NECROMANCY IS FOUNDED.