I reviewed these diverse considerations before preparing for my contact with the Cathedral of the Soul. It was very important to form the basis of my visualization as clearly as possible, and my question is thus limited to black magic as it is generally understood, that is, to individual or collective practices for the purpose of doing someone some harm or other. My investigation has led me to define sorcery, myself, as the sum total of these practices. Therefore my point of view is that black magic is the theory, and sorcery the practice of this theory, but the Master will doubtless implicitly clarify this point quite soon.

I have been in my private sanctuary for some minutes. In my cathedral, the cathedral which I visualize, and which is my way of contact with the Cathedral of the Soul, I hear the Cosmic choir in the distance, accompanied by the great organ vibrating in the rhythm of the Music of the Spheres in a soothing song of indescribable sweetness, and I gather from this that a special period is taking place, but I have come here for a definite purpose and the Master approves of my solitude and my desire for knowledge, because 'his' OM has rung out and he has entered, bathed in 'his' light, and having taken his place near my altar he immediately addresses me in this way:

"I understand that you want, as quickly as possible, the promised enlightenment on black magic and sorcery. It complements the explanations on psychic powers which I gave you at our recent meeting, and it is actually better that this subject should be completed before another Master gives you instructions on contacts with the departed, a question which will be of great interest to you and to a great many others, I know. But let us not anticipate what is not my mission with you, and let us come to the problem which should engage us now.

"Black magic is a deviation of sacred and true magic, as you know. It is even radically its opposite. It is obscurity, night, and evil by comparison with white magic which is clearness, day, and good. Black magic is death, just as white magic is life; however, black magicians lack only a little light to transmute their reprehensible and sordid operations into constructive and beneficent results, but it is very clear that they do not want this light, since their goals are egoistic and their intention impure....

"These preliminaries may surprise you perhaps, since they imply that black magic exists, although you may suppose the contrary. However, be reassured, because I shall talk to you also of the results, and you will find that your previous conceptions are perfectly well-grounded. In any case, one cannot deny black magic, since it is practiced by certain people, and not just in Africa or on any particular continent. It exists everywhere, and the practice of black magic is indeed sorcery under its different forms and procedures.

"Actually the black magician or sorcerer makes appeal to the same secondary laws as the white magician or adept, but by transmuting them, by using them for a destructive and evil purpose. Of course the sorcerer has no true knowledge of the secondary law which he uses. He is in the situation of a child who has learned that in connecting the cord of a bedside lamp with a wall outlet, light will appear, and who does not know that in plugging in the cord to an outlet of more powerful voltage, he risks accident to himself. The 'wall outlet' is the same for the white and the black magician, but the white magician knows all the secondary laws because he knows the one true law and he uses it for good, from a purely altruistic viewpoint, whereas the sorcerer sees only the egoistic and evil outcome which he pursues, and knowledge does not interest him, since fundamentally it induces altruism and good. The essential difference between the white magician and the sorcerer is, then, also in the intention, and, in this regard, the one and the other are at opposite poles. Evil, egoistic, destructive, jealous and wicked intention, etc., is the point common to all sorcerers in the world, whatever form their practices take. Moreover, all these practices are similar; the 'props' used, the language employed, the gestures made, vary, but everywhere the sorcerer acts to create inner vibratory conditions permitting the transmutation, for destructive results, of an energy good in itself. It acts also if he (for whom the operation is performed) is present, to put him in the condition of receptivity, of acceptance, in order that the work may take effect, and hence we come to the important question of results.