5, from 5 to 2, from 2 to 4, from 4 to 1. Repeat several times in succession. Choose the size of the Pentagon to suit the size of the hand. After some practice, the Pentagram should be drawn by freehand. The exercise may be varied by tracing the Heptagram, i.e. passing from one point to another of a regular Heptagon in this order—1, 4, 7, 3, 6, 2, 5, 1. Childish as the foregoing description may seem, the tracing of these figures gives a curious feeling of arriving at completeness, by a series of tentative Pulsations backwards and forwards; and in old days the idea of magic attached itself to the exercise. At a time when the ability to investigate the angles of the Pentagram represented a high degree of mathematical skill, we may imagine that some enthusiast, in a fit of that tender fun which is characteristic of scientific genius, conceived the idea of tracing the figure on his threshold, saying to his pupils, "No lying spirit can enter, nor can science degenerate into sorcery, if study is put under the safe guardianship of accurate mathematics. Very slight inaccuracies," he would add, "leave room for the entrance of any kind of treachery and deception."
Later on it came to be believed that drawing a Pentagram on the threshold of a study prevented Satan from entering, provided it were drawn with sufficient accuracy. If at any point the junction were imperfect, the devil entered through the gap! The process by which the Pentagram degenerated from being the symbol of a scientific accuracy which shields from temptation to duplicity, into being a magic weapon of defence against a personal devil, is typical of all such degradations.
We now pass from the Science which teaches Natural Law by training the muscles, to that which addresses
