Transcendental Magic

Alternative Religions

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Alternative Religions

Eliphas Levi, trans. A.E.Waite

We have said that the Church, whose special office is the custody of the Keys, does not pretend to possess those of the Apocalypse or of Ezekiel. In the opinion of Christians the scientific and magical Clavicles of Solomon are lost, which notwithstanding, it is certain that, in the domain of intelligence, ruled by the Word,3 nothing that has been

1"This monument is the Tarot of the Bohemians, the original of modern playing-cards. It consists of twenty-two allegorical letters and four series of ten hieroglyphics each, corresponding to the four letters of the Name Jehovah. The diverse combinations of these signs and of the numbers to which they correspond form as many kabalistic oracles, so that all science is contained in this mysterious book, a most simple philosophical machine, astonishing in the profundity and accuracy of its results."--La Clef des Grands Mysteries p. 208 .... "It alone explains all mysterious records of high initiation."--Ibid.

2 Saint-Martin knew nothing of the Tarot, but one of his works is divided, as it happens, into twenty-two sections, being the number of the Trumps Major.

It should be understood that for Eliphas Levi the Word is Reason, the Supreme Reason of God and logical understanding in man. The incarnation of God in Christ was the Sovereign Reason manifested in earthly life and time. "Intelligence is eternal", and "the life of intelligence" is the Word. "The Word manifests by creative activity, which produces form; it is clothed with human form, and when this becomes the vestment of the Word and its exact expression" it is said that the Word is made flesh.--La Science des Esprits, p. 5 1.

written can perish. Whatsoever men cease to understand exists for them no longer, at least in the order of the Word, and it passes then into the domain of enigma and mystery.

Furthermore, the antipathy and even open war of the Official Church against all that belongs to the realm of Magic, which is a kind of personal and emancipated priesthood, is allied with necessary and even with inherent causes in the social and hierarchic constitution of Christian sacerdotalism. The Church ignores Magic--for she must either ignore it or perish, as we shall prove later on; yet she does not recognize the less that her mysterious Founder was saluted in His cradle by Three Magi--that is to say, by the hieratic ambassadors of the three parts of the known world and the three analogical worlds of occult philosophy. In the School of Alexandria, Magic and Christianity almost joined hands under the auspices of Ammonius Saccas and of Plato: the doctrine of Hermes is found almost in its entirety in the writings attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite; Synesius outlined the plan of a treatise on dreams, which was annotated subsequently by Cardan, and composed hymns that might have served for the liturgy of the Church of Swedenborg, could a church of the illuminated possess a liturgy. With this period of fiery abstractions and impas- sioned warfare of words there must be connected also the philosophic reign of Julian, called the Apostate because in his youth he made unwilling profession of Christianity.1 Everyone is aware that Julian had the misfortune to be a hero out of season of Plutarch, and that he was, if one may say so, the Don Quixote of roman Chivalry; but what most people do not know is that he was one of the illuminated and an initiate of the first order: that he believed in the unity of God and in the universal doctrine of the Trinity; that, in a word, he regretted nothing of the old

1He is described elsewhere as a misunderstood spiritualist, whose paganism was less idolatrous than the faith of some Christians. "In his Hymn to the Sun he recognized that the Day-star is but the reflection and material shadow of that Sun of Truth which illuminated the world of intelligence and is itself only a gleam borrowed from the Absolute." It is said also that Julian's ideas of the Supreme God were far grander and more just than those of many Fathers of the Church who were his contemporaries and adversaries.--La Clef des Grands Mysteries p. 203.

world but its magnificent symbols and its too gracious images. Julian was not a pagan; he was a Gnostic allured by the allegories of Greek polytheism, who had the mis- fortune to find the name of Jesus Christ less sonorous than that of Orpheus. The Emperor paid in his person for the academical tastes of the philosopher and rhetorician, and alter affording himself the spectacle and satisfaction of expiring like Epaminondas with the periods of Cato, he had in public opinion, by this time fully Christianized, but anathemas for his funeral oration and a scornful epithet for his ultimate memorial.

Let us pass over the petty minds and small matters of the. Bas-Empire, and proceed to the Middle Ages ....

Stay, take this book! Glance at the seventh page, then seat yourself on the mantle which I am spreading, and let each of us cover our eyes with one of its corners .... Your head swims, does it not, and the earth seems to fly beneath your feet? Hold tightly, and do not look right or left .... The vertigo ceases: we are here. Stand up and open your eyes, but take care before all things to make no Christian sign and to pronounce no Christian words. We are in a landscape of Salvator Rosa, a troubled wilderness which seems resting after a storm. There is no moon in the sky, but you can distinguish little stars gleaming in the brushwood, and may hear about you the slow flight of great birds, which seem to whisper strange oracles as they pass. Let us approach silently that cross-road among the rocks. A harsh, funereal trumpet winds suddenly, and black torches flare up on every side. A tumultuous throng is surging round a vacant throne: all watch and wait. Suddenly they cast themselves on the ground. A goat-headed prince bounds forward among them; he ascends the throne, turns, and assuming a stooping posture, presents to the assembly a human face, which everyone comes forward to salute and to kiss, their black taper in their hands. With a hoarse laugh he recovers an upright position, and then distributes gold, secret instruc- tions, occult medicines and poisons to his faithful bondsmen.

Meanwhile, fires are lighted of fern and alder, piled up with human bones and the fat of executed criminals. Druidesses, crowned with wild parsley and vervain, immolate unbap- tized children with golden knives and prepare horrible love-feasts. Tables are spread, masked men seat themselves by half-nude females, and a Bacchanalian orgy begins; there is nothing wanting but salt, the symbol of wisdom and immortality. Wine flows in streams, leaving stains like blood; obscene advances and abandoned caresses begin. A little while, and the whole assembly is beside itself with drink and wantonness, with crimes and singing. They rise, a disordered throng, and form infernal dances .... Then come all legendary monsters, all phantoms of nightmare; enormous toads play inverted flutes and thump with paws on flanks; limping scarabaei mingle in the dance; crabs play the castanets; crocodiles beat time on their scales; elephants and mammoths appear habited like Cupids and foot it in the ring: finally, the giddy circles break up and scatter on all sides .... Every yelling dancer drags away a dishevelled female .... Lamps and candles formed of human fat go out smoking in the darkness .... Cries are heard here and there, mingled with peals of laughter, blasphemies and rattlings in the throat. Come, rouse your- self: do not make the sign of the cross! See, I have brought you home. You are in your bed, not a little worn out, possibly a trifle shattered, by your night's journey and its orgy; but you have beheld that of which everyone talks without knowledge; you have been initiated into secrets no less terrible than the grotto of Triphonius; you have been present at the Sabbath. It remains for you now to preserve your wits, to have a wholesome dread of the law, and to keep at a respectful distance from the Church and her faggots.

Would you care, as a change, to behold something less fantastic, more real and also more truly terrible? You shall assist at the execution of Jacques de Molay and his accom- plices or his brethren in martyrdom .... Be not misled, however; confuse not the guilty and the innocent! Did the Templars really adore Baphomet? Did they offer a shameful salutation to the buttocks of the goat of Mendes? What was actually this secret and potent association which imperilled Church and State, and was thus destroyed unheard? Judge nothing lightly; they are guilty of a great crime; they have exposed to profane eyes the sanctuary of antique initiation.

They have gathered again and have shared the fruits of the tree of knowledge, so that they might become masters of the world.1 The judgement pronounced against them is higher and far older than the tribunal of pope or king: "On the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die," said God Himself, as we read in the Book of Genesis.

What then is taking place in the world, and why do priests and potentates tremble? What secret power threatens tiaras and crowns? A few bedlamires are roaming from land to land, concealing, as they say, the Philosophical Stone under their ragged vesture. They can change earth into gold, and they are without food or lodging! Their brows are encircled by an aureole of glory and by a shadow of ignominy! One has discovered the universal science and goes vainly seeking death to escape the agonies of his triumph: he is the Majorcan Raymond Lully. Another heals imaginary diseases by fantastic remedies, belying beforehand that proverb which enforces the futility of a cautery on a wooden leg: he is the marvellous Paracelsus, always drunk and always lucid, like the heroes of Rabelais. Here is William Postel -writing naively to the fathers of the Council of Trent, proclaiming that he has discovered the absolute doctrine, hidden from the foundation of the world, and is longing to share it with them. The Council heeds not the maniac, does not vouchsafe to condemn him, but proceeds

1 The purport of this accusation does not transpire. See, however, my translation of Levi's History of Magic. second edition, 1922, and the chapter on Knights Templar, with the speculations of which may be compared La Clef des Grands Mysteres, pp. 359, 360, as follows: "The very name and attributes of Masonry have reference to the rebuilding of the Temple, that universal dream of Kabalism", and here Levi quotes appositely a dictum referred to a Master: "There is no true Israelite for whom the Temple is not an edifice realisable immediately, for he rebuilds it in his heart." He goes on to suggest that the Temple was therefore "a social Utopia and a symbol of perfect government founded on the democratic hierarchy of merit and intelligence. The Templars, initiated in the East into this doctrine, were veritable and terrible conspirators, whom popes and kings could not do otherwise than exterminate for the security of their own existence." As regards building in the heart, see the Masonic Ritual of the Red Cross of Constantine. See also Werner's Sons of the Valley for the betrayal of secret things the Knights Templar.

to examine the grave questions of efficacious grace and sufficing grace. He whom we behold perishing poor and abandoned is Cornelius Agrippa, less of a magician than any, though the vulgar persist in regarding him as a more potent sorcerer than all because he was sometimes a cynic and mystifier.1 What secret do these men bear with them to their tomb? Why are they wondered at without being understood? Why are they condemned unheard? Why are they initiates of those terrific secret sciences of which the Church and society are afraid? Why are they acquainted with things of which others know nothing? Why do they conceal what all men burn to know? Why are they invested with a dread and unknown power? The occult sciences! Magic! These words will reveal all and give food for further thought! De omni re scribili et quibusdum aliis.

But what, as a fact, was this Magic? What was the power of these men who were at once so proud and so persecuted? If they were really strong, why did they not overcome their enemies? But if they were impotent and foolish, why did people honour them by fearing them? Does Magic exist? Is there an occult knowledge which is in truth a power and works wonders comparable to the miracles of authorized religions? To these two palmary questions we make answer by an affirmation and a book. The book shall justify the affirmation, and the affirmation is this: There was and there still is a potent and real Magic; all that is said of it in legend is true after a certain manner, yet--contrary to the common course of popular exaggeration--it falls below the truth. There is indeed a formidable secret, the revelation of which has once already transformed the world, as testified in Egyptian religious tradition, summarized symbolically by

1 "You are reading Agrippa, and confess to a certain disappointment: did it happen that you took him for a master? He was only a bold vulgarizer, and for- tunately very Superficial in his studies, never possessing tile keys of the Sepher Yetzirah and Zohar. He was a brave, restless and trifling soul. His work, however, is the first which did Something to spread knowledge of the higher sciences. Too shallow for a Magus, he was pleased to pass as a magician and a sorcerer. He is accused even of coining false money under the pretext of Hermetic science, and could scarcely do better, being ignorant of the natural philosophy of Hermes. This notwithstanding, his books are useful reading when one knows more and better than he did. --Correspondence with Baron Spedalieri.

Moses at the beginning of Genesis. This secret constitutes the fatal Science of Good and Evil, and the consequence of its revelation is death1 Moses depicts it under the figure of a Tree which stands in the midst of the Terrestrial Paradise,2 is in proximity to the Tree of Life and is joined at the root thereto. At the foot of this tree is the source of the four mysterious rivers; it is guarded by the sword of fire and by the four symbolical forms of the Biblical sphinx, the Cherubim of Ezekiel .... Here I must pause, and I fear that already I have said too much.

I testify in fine that there is one sole, universal and imperishable dogma, strong as supreme reason; simple, like all that is great; intelligible, like all that is universally and absolutely true; and this dogma is the parent of all others. There is also a science which confers on man powers apparently superhuman. They are enumerated thus in a Hebrew manuscript of the sixteenth century:

"Hereinafter follow the powers and privileges of him who holds in his right hand the Clavicles of Solomon, and in his left the Branch of the Blossoming Almond.

ALEPH.--He beholds God face to face, without dying. and converses familiarly with the seven genii who command the entire celestial army. BETH.--He is above all griefs and all fears.

GHIMEL.--He reigns with all heaven and is served by all hell. DALETH.--He rules his own health and life and can influence equally those of others. HE.--He can neither be surprised by misfortune nor overwhelmed by disasters, nor can he be conquered by his enemies. VAU.--He knows the reason of the past, present and future. ZAIN.--He possesses the secret of the resurrection of the dead and the key of immortality.

Such are the seven chief privileges, and those which rank next are these:--

1 We may compare La Clef des Grands Mysteres, p. 241; "There is a dogma, a key, a sublime tradition; and this tradition, this key, this dogma are Transcendent Magic. There alone are found the absolute of science, the eternal base of law, defence against all superstition and all error, Eden of the understanding, repose of heart and peace of soul."

2 According to Genesis, it was the Tree of Life which was placed in the centre of the garden.

CHETH--To find the Philosophical Stone. TETH.----To possess the Universal Medicine. IOD.--To know the laws of perpetual motion and to prove the quadrature of the circle. CAPH.--To change into gold not only all metals but also the earth itself, and even the refuse of the earth. LAMED.--To subdue the most ferocious animals and have power to pronounce those words which paralyse and charm serpents. MEM.--To have the ARS NOTORIA which gives the Universal Science. NUN.- To speak learnedly on all subjects, without preparation and without study.

These, finally, are the seven least powers of the Magus :--- SAMECH.---To know at a glance the deep things of the souls of men and the mysteries of the hearts of women.

AYIN.--To force Nature to make him free at his pleasure. PE.--To foresee all future events which do not depend on a superior free will, or on an undis- cernible cause.

TSADE.--To give at once and to all the most efficacious consolations and the most whole- some counsels. KOPH.---To triumph over adversities. RESH.---To conquer love and hate. SHIN.--To have the secret of wealth, to be always its master and never its slave. To enjoy even poverty and never become abject or miserable.

TAU.---Let us add to these three septenaries that the wise man rules the elements, stills tempests, cures the diseased by his touch and raises the dead ! But certain things have been sealed by Solomon with his triple seal. It is enough that the initiates know; as for others, whether they deride, doubt or believe, whether they threaten or fear, what matters it to science or to us ?"