Page:Devil-Worship in France 1896.djvu/305

Rh it has not been alleged in so many words that the radix of Modern Diabolism and the Masonic cultus of Lucifer is to be found in Éliphas Lévi, but that is the substance of the charge. Most, or all, of the witnesses agree in representing him as an atrocious Satanist, an invoker of Lucifer, a celebrater of black masses, and an adept in the practical blasphemies of Eucharistic sacrilege; all of them father either upon the Palladium or upon Pike a variety of documents containing gross thefts from Lévi; some of them, directly and upon their own responsibility, cite passages from his works, always with conspicuous bad faith. Finally, they agree in connecting him with the foundation of the New and Reformed Palladium through his alleged disciple Phileas Walder; and one of them goes so far as to say that Palladism was a further development or restoration of a Satanic society directed by Éliphas Lévi and operating his theurgic system, which he in turn, if I rightly understand the mixed hypothesis of M. de la Rive, may have derived from the Palladic rite of 1730. If we accept for the