The history of magic

“Nothing has happened to me since, and such was my experience simply. It has been told in many ways, but I have never related it otherwise than as I do now. The late Chevalier de Gotot stated that Desfontaines also appeared to M. de Menil-Jean, but I do not know him. He is fifty miles from here, near Argentan, and I can tell you no more.”

We should notice the characteristics of dream which prevail throughout in this vision of a man who is awake, but in a state of semi-asphyxiation produced by the emanations of the hay. The astral intoxication following congestion of the brain will be recognised. The somnambulistic condition which followed showed M. Bézuel the last living reflection left by his friend in the Astral Light. He was naked and was visible down to the waist only, because the rest of his body was immersed in the water of the river. The supposed paper in his hair was probably a handkerchief used to confine his hair when bathing. Bézuel had further a somnambulistic intuition of all that took place, and it seemed to him that he was learning it from the lips of his friend. The friend appeared neither sad nor gay, an indication of the impression made upon him by an image which was lifeless and consisting only of reminiscence and reflection. On the occasion of the first vision, M. Bézuel, intoxicated by the scent of the hay, fell off the ladder and injured his arm; it seemed, with the logic of dreams that his friend was grasping the arm, and when he came to himself, he still felt the pain, which is explained quite naturally by the hurt that he had received. For the rest, the conversation of the deceased person was simply retrospective; there was nothing about death or the other life, proving once more how impossible is the barrier which separates this world from the next.

In the prophecy of Ezekiel life is represented by wheels which turn within one another; the elementary forms are symbolised by four beasts, which ascend and descend with the wheel and pursue one another without ever overtaking, like the signs of the Zodiac. The wheels of perpetual movement never return on themselves; forms never go back to the stations which they have quitted; to return whence one has come, the entire circle must have been traversed in a progress always the same and yet always new. The conclusion is that whatsoever manifests to us in this life is a phenomenon which belongs to this life and it is not given here below to our thought, to our imagination, or even to our hallucinations and our dreams, to overstep even for an instant the formidable barriers of death.