ultus 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 _bona-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
concern