A period of fasting prior to the experiment was also frequently prescribed as necessary, which, by weakening the body, must have been conducive to hallucination.  Furthermore, abstention from the gratification of the sexual appetite was stipulated in certain cases, and this, no doubt, had a similar effect, especially as concerns magical evocations directed to the satisfaction of the sexual impulse.  Add to these factors the details of the ritual itself, the nocturnal conditions under which it was carried out, and particularly the suffumigations employed, which, most frequently, were of a narcotic nature, and it is not difficult to believe that almost any type of hallucination may have occurred.  Such, as we have seen, was ELIPHAS LEVI’S view of ceremonial magic; and whatever may be said as concerns his own experiment therein (for one would have thought that the essential element of faith was lacking in this case), it is undoubtedly the true view as concerns the ceremonial magic of the past.  As this author well says:  “Witchcraft, properly so-called, that is ceremonial operation with intent to bewitch, acts only on the operator, and serves to fix and confirm his will, by formulating it with persistence and labour, the two conditions which make volition efficacious."[1b]

[2] “MAGICAL AXIOM.  In the circle of its action, every word creates that which it affirms.

DIRECT CONSEQUENCE.  He who affirms the devil, creates or makes the devil.

“Conditions of Success in Infernal Evocations. 1, Invincible obstinacy; 2, a conscience at once hardened to crime and most subject to remorse and fear; 3, affected or natural ignorance; 4, blind faith in all that is incredible, 5, a completely false idea of God. (ELIPHAS LEVI:  Op. cit., pp. 297 and 298.)

[1b] ELIPHAS LEVI:  Op. cit., pp. 130 and 131.

EMANUEL SWEDENBORG in one place writes:  “Magic is nothing but the perversion of order; it is especially the abuse of correspondences."[2] A study of the ceremonial magic of the Middle Ages and the following century or two certainly justifies SWEDENBORG in writing of magic as something evil.  The distinction, rigid enough in theory, between white and black, legitimate and illegitimate, magic, was, as I have indicated, extremely indefinite in practice.  As Mr A. E. WAITE justly remarks:  “Much that passed current in the west as White (i.e. permissible) Magic was only a disguised goeticism, and many of the resplendent angels invoked with divine rites reveal their cloven hoofs.  It is not too much to say that a large majority of past psychological experiments were conducted to establish communication with demons, and that for unlawful purposes.  The popular conceptions concerning the diabolical spheres, which have been all accredited by magic, may have been gross exaggerations of fact concerning rudimentary and perverse intelligences, but the wilful viciousness of the communicants is substantially untouched thereby."[1b]