Page:Devil-Worship in France 1896.djvu/259

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THE PASSING OF DR BATAILLE
247

an industry in idols worked by criminals intercommunicating by means of Volapuk may be left to them.

Nor is it needful to do more than touch lightly upon a pleasant process in piracy by which Dr Bataille lightens the toils of authorship. He has done better than any other among the witnesses of Lucifer in his gleanings from Éliphas Lévi. On p. 32 of his first volume there is a brazen theft concerning the chemistry of black magic, and there is another, little less daring, on p. 67, being a description of a Baphometic idol. It goes without saying that the Conjuration of the Four is imported, as others have imported it, from the Rituel de la Haute Magie. The vesture of the master of ceremonies who officiated in the Sanctuary of the Phœnix, one of the mythical temples of Dhappa, is a property derived from the same quarter. So in like manner is part of a magical adjuration in the account of a Sabbath in Sheol. Finally, a method of divination described in a later place (vol. i., pp. 343, 344) will be found in Christian's Histoire de la Magie.