“As a commentary on this, the modern historian remarks: “This may be taken as a sort of exemplification of the class of exhibitions which were probably the result of a superior knowledge of natural sciences.”
No one ever doubted that it was the result of precisely such a knowledge, and the hermetists, magicians, astrologers and alchemists never claimed anything else. It certainly was not their fault that the ignorant masses, under the influence of an unscrupulous and fanatical clergy, should have attributed all such works to the agency of the devil.
In view of the atrocious tortures provided by the Inquisition for all suspected of either black or white magic, it is not strange that these philosophers neither boasted nor even acknowledged the fact of such an intercourse.
On the contrary, their own writings prove that they held that magic is “no more than the application of natural active causes to passive things or subjects; by means thereof, many tremendously surprising but yet natural effects are produced.””
H. P. Blavatsky
