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the Zro began to disintegrate. The magicians then began to seek a
means of making this state permanent. But in this they failed,*
so that knives had always to be replaced twice weekly; but in the
course of their failures they discovered the infinitely more
valuable eighth and ninth stages of Zro. Tradition has preserved
a hint of their efforts in Alchemy with its problems of the
fixation of the Universal Mercury, the secret of perpetual
motion, and 'potable gold--the Universal Medicine'. It has been
theoretically determined towards the end of the tenth state, that
Zro should be a solid, but whether this was confirmed is beyond
my knowledge.
To return to the main magical theory, the Quintessence, said
they, or Universal Substance (which some strove to identify with
Hyle, others with the Luminiferous Aether) is the two-in-one,
liquid and solid, the former part being also twofold, fluid and
gaseous, and the latter earthy and fiery. The combination of
these four phases of Zro accounted for the universe. This
quintessence is Zro in some state unknown and incalculable. Some
expected to find it in its twelth state, some in a seventeenth,
others in a thirty-seventh: all this was pure guesswork. Some
tradition to this effect appears to have reached Plato; and the
neo-Platonists combined with those Jews who had preserved
fragments of the Egyptian tradition to form a new initiated
hierarchy, the echo of whose teaching is found in Paracelsus. At
one period, too, missionaries (not colonists, as has been
ignorantly asserted; there was no trouble of over-population in
Atlantis) were sent to the four quarters and parties landed in
Mexico, Ireland and Egypt. The adventures of the party who
travelled South form an astounding chapter in the history of
Atlas. It was they who discovered the Magnetic South, and whose
observations rendered possible the theory which resulted in the
piercing of the Earth by Zro.*
There were also preparations of Zro which increased the size
of the user, and others which diminished it. In general use among
the lower classes, until the very end, was that composition which
made the body light. Careful adjustment would equalize its weight
with that of the displaced air, and movements of the limbs would
then permit flying. In this way the overseers visited the plains
and returned. The other and earlier art of flying needed no
apparatus, but I am forbidden to disclose the method, except to
hint that it is connected closely with the art of 'dreaming
true'.
These are but a few of the magic powers so-called of the
compounds of Zro; but they will indicate the power of Atlas by
shewing what it could afford to neglect. Yet all these powers
were implicit in the process of 'working'.
The art of prediction was in the same unsatisfactory state as
it is in England today. Nor was its practice encouraged. A
magician makes the future, and does not seek to divine it. All
true prediction was therefore necessarily catastrophe. The
greatest good fortune seemed worthless to an Atlantean, since it
was accident, and if accidents are to happen, one of them may be
fatal. They believed themselves to be equal to the whole tendency
of things, and proudly gazed on Nature as a man might upon a
virgin captive to his spear. Everything that was being was Zro;
everything that was Energy was 'working for Zro'. Outside this
was but by-product and waste-heap.
The arrangement of the houses was in accordance with the
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