232 , THE OCCULT SCIENCES. 



higher powers to act upon the lower world, and so to produce supernatural 

 effects. The main point, therefore, was to discover the names of these 

 superior powers, and reduce them by evocations to a state of passive obedience. 

 This magic Cabal consisted in evocations destined to place man in communica- 

 tion with the invisible intelligences of heaven and earth. According to the 

 belief of the cabalists of the Middle Ages, Ariel, the genius of the sublunary 

 world, had beneath his orders the Princes Damalech, Taynor, and Sayanon ; 

 the latter commanded the secondary spirits, the most powerful of whom were 

 Guabarel, Torquaret, and Rabianica. Nanael was the genius of the divine, 

 Jerathel of the terrestrial, and Mikael of the political sciences, while Jeliel 

 presided over the animal kingdom. The other genii, each one of whom had 

 its attributions in the mysterious government of earthly things, formed an 

 innumerable hierarchy of invisible beings, whom the cabalists of the sixteenth 

 century did not scruple to pass in review, designating each by its name as 

 well as by its distinctive quality. Cornelius Agrippa, for instance, boasted 

 that he had registered in his catalogue the names of six thousand intelligences, 

 genii, or spirits, belonging to a great number of categories, and all of which 

 might be evoked by the adepts of the divine art. 



The occult sciences had in this way brought within their domain most of 

 the fantastic beings who had been known to popular superstition from the 

 earliest periods under so many names, and as possessing so many different 

 attributions. The fairies were long supreme in the country districts, where 

 they were said often to appear to men without being compelled by magic to 

 emerge from their normal and invisible existence. They were called facas 

 in the South of France, korrigans in Brittany, filaniUercs and bonnes dames in 

 the Saintonge and Picardy, banshees in Ireland and Scotland, nor/ion in the 

 Northern countries. They were a mixture of human and of divine nature ; 

 they were enchantresses or magicians, presiding over the destiny of mortals, 

 sometimes old, sometimes young, beautiful 'or ugly ; they inhabited solitary 

 caves or the snowy peaks of the mountains, or limpid sources or aerial 

 spheres. They were not in much request amongst magicians, who left them 

 to the fancies of poets and novelists. The mysterious beings whom magicians 

 more readily called to their aid were the intermediary spirits who belonged 

 rather to the great family of demons. Amongst these may be mentioned the 

 estries, or demons of darkness, who hugged to suffocation the people whom 

 they met at night ; the goblins, who made their presence felt by harmless 



