Page:Devil-Worship in France 1896.djvu/29

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SATANISM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
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de St Germain, is in frequent terror of the possibilities of the life to come. An interviewer has represented M. Huysman as stating that his information was derived from a person who was himself a Satanist, but the revelations disturbed the sect, and the communication ceased, though the author had originally been welcomed "as one of their own." But it is clear to my own mind that for his descriptions of the orgies which take place at the assemblies of modern black magicians, M. Huysman is mainly indebted to documents which have been placed in his hands by existing disciples of the illuminé Eugene Vintras, and the "Dr Johannes" of La Bas. Vintras was the founder of a singular thaumaturgic sect, incorporating the aspirations of the Saviours of Louis XVII.; he obtained some notoriety about the year 1860, and an account of his claims and miracles will be found in Éliphas Lévi's Histoire de la Magie, in the same writer's Clef des Grands Mystères, and in Jules Bois' Petites Religions de Paris. He left a number of manuscripts behind him, recounting his life-long combats with the priests of black

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