The Astral Light preserves and reflects images of every thought and action.

Book excerpt: The body of the world is a huge storehouse of corruption and degeneracy. In the great magical agent, which is the Astral light, are preserved all the impressions of things, all the images formed, either by their rays or by their reflections; it is in this light that our dreams appear to us, it is this light which intoxicates the insane and sweeps away their enfeebled judgment into the pursuit of the most fantastic phantoms. To see without illusions in this light it is necessary to push aside the reflections by a powerful effort of the will, and draw to oneself only the rays. Who are the dead whom we take for the living, and the vampires whom we mistake for friends? They are the poisonous mushrooms of the human species, absorbing the vitality of the living; that is why their approach paralyzes the soul, and sends a chill to the heart. These corpse-like beings prove all that has ever been said of the vampires, those dreadful creatures who rise at night and suck the blood from the healthy bodies of sleeping persons. In the hands of the true adept of the East, a simple wand of bamboo with seven joints, supplemented by their ineffable wisdom and indomitable will-power, suffices to evoke spirits and produce the miracles authenticated by the testimony of a cloud of unprejudiced witnesses.