Course XLII - Teaching 2: Gray Magic

Gray magic wants to control Nature, and particularly plants.
Plants contain great and still unknown qualities.
Etruscan Initiates progressed a lot by discovering vegetal qualities. As the time went by, these psycho-chemical secrets passed to their disciples, who established a whole science and schools of Roman medicine and medieval Alchemy, both derived from it.
These Initiates wore a gray habit, perhaps because gray clouds hide secrets of the sun and sky, and those Initiates would hide secrets of nature.
Patiently, men have discovered by themselves secrets of nature zealously hidden. A modern botanist or chemist is actually a skillful gray magician.
A plant is like a big store. It receives emanations from subtle planes, and also from gross planes. Its contact with sunbeams produces not only chlorophyll but also another colorless element, which could be called “etherophyll”: transformation of cosmic ether.
A quality of nature is the absorption of sunrays –chlorophyll– and cosmic rays –etherophyll– and the reception of a lot of vibrations different from those of man. As certain quite subtle and ultra-ethereal wave, corresponding to atoms “X2 a”, it contacts another thicker vibration –sub-infrared rays– and particularly vitalizes plants.
These waves, all together, essentially produce in Nature the survival or preservation of living. They are living molecules or varied preservation elements, which today are called vitamins.
On the other hand, if these waves are not in tune, then they produce over-irritability and toxic elements, which eventually destroy life.
All medicines and poisons derive from vegetal lymph, and gray magic consists in knowing how to extract it properly.
Gray magic responds to whole chemical elements transmuted but preserving as much as possible in his natural state the element obtained.
Four elements activate these transformations, and as always, are as follows:
1st, Air: corresponds to subtilization.
2nd, Water: corresponds to putrefaction.
3rd, Fire: corresponds to cooling.
4th, Earth: corresponds to hardening.
Nature’s vibration is completely different from man’s (man in his rational aspect); that is why Nature withdraws constantly when it contacts man.
There are four vibrations in plants:
1st: The subtlest, ethereal vibration as it were corresponding to air.
2nd: The humid vibration, corresponding to water.
3rd: The caloric vibration, or that of fire, corresponding to heat.
4th: The cold vibration, corresponding to earth.
As man does not have these spontaneous vibrations and his reactions respond to the brain, plants refuse any external contact as soon as man makes touch with them.
For example, vegetables lose magnetism by mere hand contact of man. If you cut them, they lose further magnetism, and the same occurs when we carry, wash, cook, prepare and serve them. Vegetables have practically lost their subtle substance when they get to mouth of man.
Gray magicians were aware of these secrets of nature; thence their identification with it through a completely natural and simple living, in order to control nature.