Devil-Worship in France | Page 3

regard it, in fact, as a suitable
complement of the fetish. It seems hypothetically quite impossible that
there can be any person, much less any society or class of persons, who,
at this day, and in London, Paris, or New York, adore the evil principle.
Hence, to say that there is Black Magic actively in function at the
present moment; that there is a living cultus of Lucifer; that Black
Masses are celebrated, and involve revolting profanations of the
Catholic Eucharist; that the devil appears personally; that he possesses
his church, his ritual, his sacraments; that men, women, and children
dedicate themselves to his service, or are so devoted by their sponsors;
that there are people, assumed to be sane, who would die in the peace
of Lucifer; that there are those also who regard his region of eternal
fire--a variety unknown to the late Mr Charles Marvin--as the true
abode of beatitude--to say all this will not enhance the credibility or
establish the intelligence of the speaker.
But this improbable development of Satanism is just what is being
earnestly asserted, and the affirmations made are being taken in some
quarters au grand sérieux. They are not a growth of to-day or precisely
of yesterday; they have been more or less heard for some years, but
their prominence at the moment is due to increasing insistence,
pretension to scrupulous exactitude, abundant detail, and demonstrative
evidence. Reports, furthermore, have quite recently come to hand from
two exceedingly circumstantial and exhaustive witnesses, and these
have created distinctly a fresh departure. Books have multiplied,
periodicals have been founded, the Church is taking action, even a legal
process has been instituted. The centre of this literature is at Paris, but
the report of it has crossed the Channel, and has passed into the English
press. As it is affirmed, therefore, that a cultus of Lucifer exists, and

that the men and women who are engaged in it are neither ignorant nor
especially mad, nor yet belonging to the lowest strata of society, it is
worth while to investigate the matter, and some profit is possible,
whatever the issue.
If the devil be actually among us, then for the sake of much which has
seemed crass in orthodox religion, thus completely exonerated; for the
sake of the fantastic in fiction and the lurid in legend, thus
unexpectedly actualised; and, further, as it may be, for the sake of our
own souls, we shall do well to know of it. If Abaddon, Apollyon, and
the Lord of Flies are to be understood literally; above all, if they are
liable to confront us in propria persona between Free Mason's Hall and
Duke Street, or between Duke Street and Avenue Road, then the sooner
we can arrange our reconciliation with the one Church which has
consistently and invariably taught the one full-grown, virile doctrine of
devils, and has the bonâ-fide recipes for knowing, avoiding, and at need
of exorcising them, why the better will it be, more especially if we have
had previously any leanings towards the conception of an universal
order not pivoting on perdition.
If, on the other hand, what is said be of the category of Ananias, as
distinguished from what alchemists call the Code of Truth, it will be
well also to know that some portions of the old orthodoxies still wait
for their deliverance from the bonds of scepticism, that the actual is to
be discriminated from the fantastic by the old test, namely, its
comparative stupidity, and that we may still create our universe about
any pivot that may please us.
I am writing ostensibly for transcendentalists, of whom I am one; it is
as a student of transcendentalism that I have been led to examine this
modern mystery, equipped as it is with such portentous phenomena.
Diabolism is, of course, a transcendental question, and black magic is
connected with white by the same antinomy that connects light and
darkness. Moreover, we mystics are all to some extent accused by the
accusations which are preferred in the matter of modern diabolism, and
this is another reason for investigating and making known the result. At
the same time, the general question has many aspects of interest for that

large class which would demur to be termed transcendental, but
confesses to being curious.
The earliest rumour which I have been able to recall in England
concerning existing occult practices to which a questionable purpose
might be attributed, appeared in a well-known psychological journal
some few years since, and was derived from a continental source, being
an account of a certain society then existing in Paris, which was
devoted to magical practices and in possession of a secret ritual for the
evocation of planetary angels; it was an association of well-placed
persons, denying any connection with spiritualism,