Page:The Great Book of Magical Art, Hindu Magic and East Indian Occultism.djvu/502

 484 THE GREAT BOOK OF MAGICAL AET

Christ did not say to the sick: "I cured thee," but He said, "Thy faith made thee whole."

It is not the physician who heals the sick, but it is Nature who heals him through faith, and the true physician is merely the instru- ment through which nature acts upon the disease of the patient. The patient should therefore have faith and confidence in his physician. True Faith acts according to universal law and makes no exceptions in special cases, but all power comes from the soul, and may be guided properly or its action impeded by the patient. God kills no one; it is doubt and fear which causes people to die. Nature is Life, and the physician in whom the power of nature is manifest will be a fountain of life and health to the sick. To nature belongs the praise and to man the blame. Those who attempt to cure diseases by their own power without recognizing the eternal source of all power will never know the deeper mysteries of Nature. They deal with speculation and do not perform the will of Nature, and if they injure their patients it is they themselves who are responsible for it.

Those who attempt to cure the sick by means of what they learn in books, and without using their own judgment are like the foolish virgins mentioned in the Bible who wasted the oil from their lamps and tried to borrow light from others. Those whose minds are open for the reception of truth, who are charitable to all, who love their art for its own sake and seek to do the will of the spirit and soul, they belong to my school and are my disciples. They will be taught by the light of wisdom, and Nature will perform her miracles through their instrumentality.

Why is the practice of medicine and treatment of disease by me almost incomprehensible to the modern practitioner? It is because the latter seeks to treat the diseased organs themselves, which are as such merely the external effects of internal causes, and he knows of no other way to act upon them except by mechanical or chemical means (mate- rialism) ; while the method of treatment by the writer, by means of which he has made the most wonderful cures, is to change the interior causes from which the outward effects grow; to treat the very essences out of which corporeal organs become crystallized and to supply them with the power of vitality of the quality which they require.

To accomplish this deep insight into the causes of diseases, spiritual perception, spiritual knowledge and spiritual power are needed, and these qualities belong not to that which is human in man, but to the light of the spirit which shines into him.

For this reason the Arcana of the writer has been universally mis- understood, and it is believed by many that his "secret remedies" are certain compounds which he concocted and which might be prepared by any apothecary if he were put in possession of the prescriptions for them. This is, however, not the case. A prescription that might be learned