TABLE OF CONTENTS

Biographical Preface

Explanation of the Figures contained in this Work

PART I. — THE DOCTRINE OF TRANSCENDENT MAGIC

Introduction.

CHAPTER I. THE CANDIDATE . Unity of the Doctrine — Qualifications necessary for the Adept
CHAPTER II. THE PILLARS OF THE TEMPLE . Foundations of the Doctrine — The Two Principles — Agent and Patient
CHAPTER III. THE TRIANGLE OF SOLOMON . Universal Theology of the Triad — The Macrocosm
CHAPTER IV. THE TETRAGRAM . Magical Virtue of the Tetrad — Analogies and Adaptations — Elementary Spirits of the Kabbalah
CHAPTER V. THE PENTAGRAM . The Microcosm and the sign thereof — Power over Elements and Spirits
CHAPTER VI. MAGICAL EQUILIBRIUM . Action of the Will — Impulse and Resistance — Sexual love — The Plenum and the Void
CHAPTER VII. "THE FIERY SWORD" . The Sanctum Regnum — The seven Angels and seven Genii of the Planets — Universal Virtue of the Septenary
CHAPTER VIII. REALIZATION . Analogical reproduction of Forces — Incarnation of Ideas — Parallelism — Necessary Antagonism
CHAPTER IX. INITIATION . The Magical Lamp, Mantle, and Staff — Prophecy and Intuition — Security and stability of the Initiate in the midst of dangers — Exercise of Magical Power
CHAPTER X. THE KABBALAH . The Sephiroth — The Semhamphoras — The Paths and Gates — Bereschith and Mercavah — Gematria and Temurah
CHAPTER XI. THE MAGIC CHAIN . Magnetic Currents — Secrets of great successes — Talking Tables — Fluidic Manifestations
CHAPTER XII. THE GREAT WORK . Hermetic Magic — Doctrines of Hermes — The Minerva of the World — The grand and unique Athanor — The Hanged Man
CHAPTER XIII. NECROMANCY . Revelations from the other World — Secrets of Death and of Life — Evocations
CHAPTER XIV. TRANSMUTATIONS . Lycanthropy — Mutual possessions, or embryonic state of souls — The Wand of Ciree — The Elixir of Cagliostro
CHAPTER XV. BLACK MAGIC . Demonomania — Obsessions — Urban Grandier — Girard — The work of M. Eudes de Mirville
CHAPTER XVI. BEWITCHMENTS . Dangerous forces — Power of life and death — Facts and Principles — Remedies — Practice of Paracelsus
CHAPTER XVII. ASTROLOGY . Knowledge of Men by the Signs of their Nativity — Phrenology — Chiromancy — Metoposcopy — Planets and Stars — Climacteric years — Predictions by means of Astral Revolutions
CHAPTER XVIII. CHARMS AND PHILTRES . Venomous Magic — Powders and Pacts of Sorcerers — The Jettatura at Naples — The Evil Eye — Superstitions — Talismans
CHAPTER XIX. THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS — ELAGABALUS . What this Stone is — Why it is a Stone — Singular Analogies
CHAPTER XX. THE UNIVERSAL MEDICINE . Extension of Life by means of Potable Gold — Resurrection — Abolition of Pain
CHAPTER XXI. DIVINATION . Dreams — Somnambulism — Presentiments — Second Sight — Divinatory Instruments — Alliette and his discoveries concerning the Tarot
CHAPTER XXII. SUMMARY AND GENERAL KEY OF THE FOUR SECRET SCIENCES . The Kabbalah — Magic — Alchemy — Magnetism or Occult Medicine

PART II. — THE RITUAL OF TRANSCENDENT MAGIC

CHAPTER I. PREPARATIONS . Unity of the Doctrine — Qualifications necessary for the Adept
CHAPTER II. MAGICAL EQUILIBRIUM . Alternative use of Forces — Oppositions necessary in the Practice — Simultaneous attack and resistance — The Sword and Trowel of the Builders of the Temple
CHAPTER III. THE TRIANGLE OF PANTACLES . Use of the Triad in Conjurations and Magical Sacrifices — Triangle of evocations and Pantacles — Triangular Combinations — The Magical Trident of Paracelsus
CHAPTER IV. THE CONJURATION OF THE FOUR . Occult Elements and their Use — Manner of overcoming and subjecting Elementary Spirits and Maleficent Genii
CHAPTER V. THE BLAZING PENTAGRAM . Use and Consecration of the Pentagram
CHAPTER VI. THE MEDIUM AND MEDIATOR . Application of Will to the Great Agent — the Natural Medium and the Extra-natural Mediator
CHAPTER VII. THE SEPTENARY OF TALISMANS . Ceremonies, Vestments, and Perfumes proper to the seven days of the week — Composition of the Seven Talismans and Consecration of Magical Instruments
CHAPTER VIII. A WARNING TO THE IMPRUDENT . Precautions necessary for the accomplishment of the Great Works of Science
CHAPTER IX. THE CEREMONIAL OF INITIATES . Its end and intention
CHAPTER X. THE KEY OF OCCULTISM . Use of Pantacles Their ancient and modern mysteries — Key of Biblical obscurities — Ezekiel and St John
CHAPTER XI. THE TRIPLE CHAIN . Methods of its formation
CHAPTER XII. THE GREAT WORK . Its Processes and Secrets — Raymond Lully and Nicholas Flamel
CHAPTER XIII. NECROMANCY . Ceremonial for the Resurrection of the Dead and for Necromancy
CHAPTER XIV. TRANSMUTATIONS . Methods for changing the nature of things — The Ring of Gyges — Words which accomplish Transmutations
CHAPTER XV. THE SABBATH OF THE SORCERERS . Rites and special evocations of the Sabbath — The Goat of Mendes and its worship — Aberrations of Catherine de Medecis and Gilles de Laval, Lord of Retz
CHAPTER XVI. WITCHCRAFT AND SPELLS . Ceremonial for the same — Mode of defence against them
CHAPTER XVII. THE WRITING OF THE STARS . Divination by Stars — Planisphere of Gaffarel — How the Destinies of Men and Empires may be read in Heaven
CHAPTER XVIII. PHILTRES AND MAGNETISM . Composition of Philtres — How to influence Destinies — Remedies and Preventives
CHAPTER XIX. THE MASTERY OF THE SUN . Use of the Philosophical Stone — How it must be preserved, disintegrated, and recomposed
CHAPTER XX. THE THAUMATURGE . Therapeutics — Warm and cold Insufflations — Passes with and without contact — mposition of hands — Diverse virtues of saliva — Oil and Wine — Incubation and Massage
CHAPTER XXI. THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS . Ceremonial for Divinatory Operations — The Clavicle of Trithemius — Probable future of Europe and of the world
CHAPTER XXII. THE BOOK OF HERMES . After what manner all science is contained in the occult work of Hermes — Antiquity of this book — Labours of Court de Gebelin and of Etteilla — The Theraphim of the Hebrews according to Gaffarel — The Key of William Postel — A book of Saint Martin — The true shape of the Ark of the Covenant — Italian and German Tarots — Chinese Tarots — A German Medal of the sixteenth century — Universal Key of the Tarot — Its application to the Symbols of the Apocalypse — The seven seals of the Christian Kabbalah — Conclusion of the entire work

SUPPLEMENT TO THE RITUAL

THE NUCTEMERON OF APOLLONIUS OF TYANA
THE NUCTEMERON ACCORDING TO THE HEBREWS

INDEX

BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE

by Arthur Edward Waite

ELIPHAS LEVI ZAHED is a pseudonym which was adopted in his occult writings by Alphonse Louis Constant, and it is said to be the Hebrew equivalent of that name. The author of the Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie was born in humble circumstances about the year 1810, being the son of a shoemaker. Giving evidence of unusual intelligence at an early age, the priest of his parish conceived a kindly interest for the obscure boy, and got him on the foundation of Saint Sulpice, where he was educated without charge, and with a view to the priesthood. He seems to have passed through the course of study at that seminary in a way which did not disappoint the expectations raised concerning him. In addition to Greek and Latin, he is believed to have acquired considerable knowledge of Hebrew, though it would be an error to suppose that any of his published works exhibit special linguistic attainments. He entered on his clerical novitiate, took minor orders, and in due course became a deacon, being thus bound by a vow of perpetual celibacy. Shortly after this step, he was suddenly expelled from Saint Sulpice for holding opinions contrary to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. The existing accounts of this expulsion are hazy, and in-corporate unlikely elements, as, for example, that he was sent by his ecclesiastical superiors to take duty in country places, where he preached with great eloquence what, however, was doctrinally unsound ; but I believe that there is no precedent for the preaching of deacons in the Latin Church. Pending the appearance of the biography which has been for some years promised in France, we have few available materials for a life of the "Abbé" Constant. In any case, he was cast back upon the world, with the limitations of priestly engagements, while the priestly career was closed to him — and what he did, or how he contrived to support himself, is unknown.

By the year 1839 he had made some literary friendships, including that of Alphonse Esquiros, the forgotten author of a fantastic romance, entitled" The Magician";^[1] and Esquiros introduced him to Ganneau, a distracted prophet of the period, who had adopted the dress of a woman, abode in a garret, and there preached a species of political illuminism, which was apparently concerned with the restoration of la vraie légitimité. He was, in fact, a second incarnation of Louis XVII. — "come back to earth for the fulfilment of a work of regeneration."^[2] Constant and Esquiros, who had visited him for the purpose of scoffing, were carried away by his eloquence, and became his disciples. Some element of socialism must have combined with the illuminism of the visionary, and this appears to have borne fruit in the brain of Constant, taking shape ultimately in a book or pamphlet, entitled "The Gospel of Liberty," to which a transient importance was attached, foolishly enough, by the imprisonment of the author for a term of six months. There is some reason to suppose that Esquiros had a hand in the production, and also in the penalty. His incarceration over, Constant came forth undaunted, still cleaving to his prophet, and undertook a kindof apostolic mission into the provinces, addressing the country people, and suffering, as he himself tells us, persecution from the ill-disposed.^[3] But the prophet ceased to prophesy, presumably for want of an audience, and la vraie légitimité was not restored, so the disciple returned to Paris, where, in spite of the pledge of his diaconate, he effected a runaway match with Mdlle. Noémy, a beautiful girl of sixteen. This lady bore him two children, who died in tender years, and subsequently she deserted him. Her husband is said to have tried all expedients to procure her return,^[4] but in vain, and she even further asserted her position by obtaining a legal annulment of her marriage, on the ground that the contracting parties were a minor and a person bound to celibacy by an irrevocable vow. The lady, it may be added, had other domestic adventures, ending in a second marriage about the year 1872. Madame Constant was not only very beautiful, but exceedingly talented, and after her separation she became famous as a sculptor, exhibiting at the Salon and elsewhere under the name of Claude Vingmy. It is not impossible that she may be still alive ; in the sense of her artistic genius, at least, she is something more than a memory.

At what date Alphonse Louis Constant applied himselfto the study of the occult sciences is uncertain, like most other epochs of his life. The statement on page 142 of this translation, that in the year 1825 he entered on a fateful path, which led him through suffering to knowledge, must not be understood in the sense that his initiation took place at that period, which was indeed early in boyhood. It obviously refers to his enrolment among the scholars of Saint Sulpice, which, in a sense, led to suffering, and perhaps ultimately to science, as it certainly obtained him education. The episode of the New Alliance — so Gannean termed his system — connects with transcendentalism, at least on the side of hallucination, and may have furnished the required impulse to the mind of the disciple ; but in 1846 and 1847, certain pamphlets issued by Constant under the auspices of the Libraire Societaire and the Libraire Phalanstérienne shew that his inclinations were still towards Socialism, tinctured by religious aspirations. The period which intervened between his wife's desertion^[5] and the publication of the Dogme de la Haute Magie, in 1855, was that, probably, which he devoted less or more to occult study. In the interim he issued a large "Dictionary of Christian Literature," which is still extant in the encyclopaedic series of the Abbé Migne ; this work betrays no leaning towards occult science, and, indeed, no acquaintance therewith. What it does exhibit unmistakably is the intellectual insincerity of the author, for he assumes therein the mask of perfect orthodoxy, and that accent in matters of religion which is characteristic of the voice of Rome. The Dogme de la Haute Magie was succeeded in 1856 by its companion volume the Rituel, both of which are here translated for the first time into English. It was followed in rapid succession by the Histoire de la Magie, 1860; La Clef des Grands Mysteres, 1861 ; a second edition of the Dogme et Rituel, to which a long and irrelevant introduction was unfortunately prefixed, 1862; Fables et Symloles, 1864; Le Sorcier de Meudon, a beautiful pastoral idyll, impressed with the cachet cabalistique ; and La Science des Esprits, 1865. The two last works incorporate the substance of the amphlets published in 1846 and 1847.

The precarious existence of Constant's younger days was in one sense but faintly improved in his age. His books did not command a large circulation, but they secured him admirers and pupils, from whom he received remuneration in return for personal or written courses of instruction. He was commonly to be found chez lui in a species of magical vestment, which may be pardoned in a French magus, and his only available portrait — prefixed to this volume — represents him in that guise. He outlived the Franco-German war, and as he had exchanged Socialism for a sortof transcendentalised Imperialism, his political faith must have been as much tried by the events which followed the siege of Paris as was his patriotic enthusiasm by the reverses which culminated at Sédan. His contradictory life closed in 1875 amidst the last offices of the church which had almost expelled him from her bosom. He left many manuscripts behind him, which are still in course of publication, and innumerable letters to his pupils — Baron Spedalieri alone possesses nine volumes — have been happily preserved in most cases, and are in some respects more valuable than the formal treatises.

No modern expositor of occult science can bear any comparison with Eliphas Levi, and among ancient expositors, though many stand higher in authority, all yield to him in living interest, for he is actually the spirit of modern thought forcing an answer for the times from the old oracles. Hence there are greater names, but there is no influence so great no fascination in occult literature exceeds that of the French magus. The others are surrendered to specialists and the typical serious students to whom all dull and unreadable masterpieces are dedicated, directly or not ; but he is read and appreciated, much as we read and appreciate new and delightful verse which, through some conceit of the poet, is put into the vesture of Chaucer. Indeed, the writings of Eliphas Levi stand, as regards the grand old line of initiation, in relatively the same position as the "Earthly Paradise" of Mr William Morris stands to the "Canterbury Tales." There is the recurrence to the old conceptions, and there is the assumption of the old drapery, but there is in each case the new spirit. The "incommunicable axiom " and the "great arcanum," Azoth, Inri, and Tetragrammaton, which are the vestures of the occult philosopher, are like the "cloth of Bruges and hogs-heads of Guienne, Florence gold cloth, and Ypres napery" of the poet. In both cases it is the year 1850 ct seq., in a mask of high fantasy. Moreover, "the idle singer of an empty day" is paralleled fairly enough by "the poor and obscure scholar who has recovered the lever of Archimedes." The comparison is intentionally grotesque, but it obtains notwithstanding, and even admits of development, for as Mr Morris in a sense voided the raison d'etre of his poetry, and, in express contradiction to his own mournful question, has endeavoured to "set the crooked straight" by betaking himself to Socialism, so Eliphas Lévi surrendered the rod of miracles and voided his Doctrine of Magic by devising a one-sided and insincere concordat with orthodox religion, and expiring in the arms of "my venerable masters in theology," the descendants, and decadent at that, of the "imbecile theologians of the middle ages." But the one is, as the other was, a man of sufficient ability to make a paradoxical defence of a position which remains untenable.

Students of Eliphas Lévi will be acquainted with the qualifications and stealthy retractations by which the some-what uncompromising position of initiated superiority in the "Doctrine and Ritual," had its real significance read out of it by the later works of the magus. I have dealt with this point exhaustively in another place,^[6] and there is no call to pass over the same ground a second time. I propose rather to indicate as briefly as possible some new considerations which will help us to understand why the rewere grave discrepancies between the "Doctrine and Ritual of Transcendent Magic" and the volumes which followed these. In the first place, the earlier books were written more expressly from the standpoint of initiation, and in the language thereof ; they obviously contain much which it would be mere folly to construe after a literal fashion, and what Eliphas Lévi wrote at a later period is not so much discrepant with his earlier instruction though it is this also as the qualifications placed by a modern transcendentalist on the technical exaggerations of the secret sciences. For the proof we need travel no further than the introduction to "The Doctrine of Magic," and to the Hebrew manuscript cited therein, as to the powers and privileges of the magus. Here the literal interpretation would be insanity ; these claims conceal a secret meaning, and are trickery in their verbal sense. They are what Eliphas Lévi himself terms "hyperbolic," adding: "If the sage do not materially and actually perform these things, he accomplishes others which are much greater and more admirable" (p. 223). But this consideration is not in itself sufficient to take account of the issues that are involved ; it will not explain, for example, why Eliphas Levi, who consistently teaches in the "Doctrine and Ritual" that the dogmas of so-called revealed religion are nurse-tales for children, should subsequently have insisted on their acceptation in the sense of the orthodox Church by the grown men of science, and it becomes necessary here to touch upon a matter which, by its nature, and obviously, does not admit of complete elucidation.

The precise period of study which produced the "Doctrine and Ritual of Transcendent Magic" as its first literary result is not indicated with any certainty, as we have seen, in the life of the author, nor do I regard Eliphas Lévi as constitutionally capable of profound or extensive book study. Intensely suggestive, he is at the same time without much evidence of depth ; splendid in generalisation, he is without accuracy in detail, and it would be difficult to cite a worse guide over mere matters of fact. His "History of Magic" is a case in point ; as a philosophical survey it is admirable, and there is nothing in occult literature to approach it for literary excellence, but it swarms with historical inaccuracies ; it is in all respects an accomplished and in no way an erudite performance, nor do I think that the writer much concerned himself with any real reading of the authorities whom he cites. The French verb parcourir represents his method of study, and not the verb approfondir. Let us take one typical case. There is no occult writer whom he cites with more satisfaction, and towards whom he exhibits more reverence, than William Postel, andof all Postel's books there is none which he mentions sooften as the Clavis Absconditorum a Constitutione Mundi; yet he had read this minute treatise so carelessly that he missed a vital point concerning it, and apparently died unaware that the symbolic key prefixed to it was the work of the editor and not the work of Postel. It does not therefore seem unreasonable to affirm that had Lévi been left to himself, he would not have got far in occult science, because his Gallic vivacity would have been blunted too quickly by the horrors of mere research ; but he did some-how fall within a circle of initiation which curtailed the necessity for such research, and put him in the right path, making visits to the Bibliotheque Rationale and the Arsenal of only subsidiary importance. This, therefore, constitutes the importance of the "Doctrine and Ritual" ; disguised indubitably, it is still the voice of initiation ; of what school does not matter, for in this connection nothing can be spoken plainly, and I can ask only the lenience of deferred judgment from my readers for my honourable assurance that I am not speaking idly. The grades of that initiation had been only partly ascended by Eliphas Lévi when he published the "Doctrine and Ritual," and its publication closed the path of his progress : as he was expelled by Saint Sulpice for the exercise of private judgment in matters of doctrinal belief, so he was expelled by his occult chiefs for the undue exercise of personal discretion in the matter of the revelation of the mysteries. Now, these facts explainin the first place the importance, as I have said, of the "Doctrine and Ritual," because it represents a knowledge which cannot be derived from books ; they explain, secondly, the shortcomings of that work, because it is not the resultof a full knowledge ; why, thirdly, the later writings contain no evidences of further knowledge ; and, lastly, I think that they materially assist us to understand why there are retractations, qualifications, and subterfuges in the said later works. Having gone too far, he naturally attempted to go back, and just as he strove to patch up a species of modus vivendi with the church of his childhood, so he endeavoured, by throwing dust in the eyes of his readers, to make his peace with that initiation, the first law of which he had indubitably violated. In both cases, and quite naturally, he failed.

It remains for me to state what I feel personally to be the chief limitation of Lévi, namely, that he was a transcendentalist but not a mystic, and, indeed, he was scarcely a transcendentalist in the accepted sense, for he was fundamentally a materialist — a materialist, moreover, who at times approached perilously towards atheism, as when he states that God is a hypothesis which is "very probably necessary" ; he was, moreover, a disbeliever in any real communication with the world of spirits. He defines mysticism as the shadow and the buffer of intellectual light, and loses no opportunity to enlarge upon its false illuminism, its excesses, and fatuities. There is, therefore, no way from man to God in his system, while the sole avenues of influx from God to man are sacramentally, and in virtue merely of a tolerable hypothesis. Thus man must remain in simple intellectualism if he would rest in reason ; the sphere of material experience is that of his knowledge; and as to all beyond it, there are only the presumptions of analogy. I submit that this is not the doctrine of occult science, nor the summum bonum of the greater initiation ; that transcendental pneumatology is more by its own; hypothesis than an alphabetical system argued kabbalistically ; and that more than mere memories can on the same assumption be evoked in the astral light. The hierarchic order of the visible world has its complement in the invisible hierarchy, which analogy leads us to discern, being at the same time a process of our perception rather than a rigid law governing the modes of manifestation in all things seen and unseen ; initiation takes us to the bottom step of the ladder of the invisible hierarchy and instructs us in the principles of ascent, but the ascent rests personally with ourselves; the voices of some who have preceded can beheard above us, but they are of those who are still upon the way, and they die as they rise into the silence, towards which we also must ascend alone, where initiation can no longer help us, unto that bourne from whence no traveller returns, and the influxes are sacramental only to those who are below.

An annotated translation exceeded the scope of the present undertaking, but there is much in the text which follows that offers scope for detailed criticism, and there are points also where further elucidation would be useful. One of the most obvious defects, the result of mere carelessness or undue haste in writing, is the promise to explain or to prove given points later on, which are forgotten subsequently by the author. Instances will be found on p. 65, concerning the method of determining the appearance of unborn children by means of the pentagram ; on p. 83, concerning the rules for the recognition of sex in the astral body; on p. 97, concerning the notary art ; on p. 100, concerning the magical side of the Exercises of St Ignatius; on p. 123, concerning the alleged sorcery of Grandier and Girard ; on p. 125, concerning Schroepffer's secrets and formulas for evocation ; on p. 134, concerning the occult iconography of Gaffarel. In some cases the promised elucidations appear in other places than those indicated, but they are mostly wanting altogether. There are other perplexities with which the reader must deal according to his judgment. The explanation of the quadrature of the circle on p. 37 is a childish folly ; the illustration of perpetual motion on p. 55 involves a mechanical absurdity ; the doctrine of the perpetuation of the same physiognomies from generation to generation is not less absurd in heredity ; the cause assigned to cholera and other ravaging epidemics, more especially the reference to bacteria, seems equally outrageous in physics.

There is one other matter to which attention should be directed ; the Hebrew quotations in the original and the observation applies generally to all the works of Lévi swarm with typographical and other errors, some of which it is impossible to correct, as, for example, the passage cited from Rabbi Abraham on p. 266. So also the Greek conjuration, pp. 277and 278, is simply untranslatable as it stands, and the version given is not only highly conjectural, but omits an entire passage owing to insuperable difficulties. Lastly, after careful consideration, I have judged it the wiser course to leave out the preliminary essay which was prefixed to the second edition of the "Doctrine and Ritual " ; its prophetic utterances upon the mission of Napoleon III. have been stultified by subsequent events ; it is devoid of any connection with the work which it precedes, and, representing as it does the later views of Lévi, it would be a source of confusion to the reader. The present translation represents, therefore, the first edition of the Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, omitting nothing but a few unimportant citations from old French grimoires in an unnecessary appendix at the end. The portrait of Lévi is from a carte-de-visite in the possession of Mr Edward Maitland, and was issued with his "Life of Anna Kingsford," a few months ago.

LONDON, September 1896.

— Arthur Edward Waite

---

Notes by A.E. Waite:

[1] M. Papus, a contemporary French occultist, in an extended study of the "Doctrine of Eliphas Levi," asks scornfully: " Who now remembers anything of Paul Augnez or Esquiros, journalists pretending to initiation, andposing as professors of the occult sciences in the salons they frequented? "No doubt they are forgotten, but Eliphas Levi states, in the Histoire de la Magie, that, by the publication of his romance of "The Magician," Esquirosfounded a new school of fantastic magic, and gives sufficient account of hiswork to show that it was in parts excessively curious.

[2] A woman who was associated with his mission, was, in like manner, supposed to have been Marie Antoinette. See Histoire de la Magie, 1. 7., c. 5.

[3] A vicious story, which has received recently some publicity in Paris, charges Constant with spreading a report of his death soon after his release from prison, assuming another name, imposing upon the Bishop of Eveux, and obtaining a licence to preach and administer the sacraments in that diocese, though he was not a priest. He is represented as drawing large congregations to the cathedral by his preaching, but at length the judge who had sentenced him unmasked the impostor, and the sacrilegious farce thus terminated dramatically.

[4] Including Black Magic and pacts with Lucifer, according to the silly calumnies of his enemies.

[5] I must not be understood as definitely attaching blame to Madame Constant for the course she adopted. Her husband was approaching middle life when he withdrew her — still a child — from her legal protectors, and the runaway marriage which began by forswearing was, under the circumstances, little better than a seduction thinly legalised, and it was afterwards not improperly dissolved.

[6] See the Critical Essay prefixed to "The Mysteries of Magic : a Digest ofthe Writings of Eliphas Levi." London : George Redway. 1886.

[« toc ]

EXPLANATION OF THE FIGURES IN THIS WORK

FIGURE I. — The Great Symbol of Solomon.

The Double Triangle of Solomon, represented by the two Ancients of the Kabbalah; the Macroprosopus and the Microprosopus ; the God of Light and the God of Reflections ; mercy and vengeance ; the white Jehovah and the black Jehovah.

FIGURE II. — Sacerdotal Esotericism making the sign of Excommunication.

A sacerdotal hand making the sign of esotericism and projecting the figure of the demon in its shadow. Above aro tho Ace of Deniers, as found in the Chinese Tarot, and two superposed triangles, one white and one black. It isa new allegory explaining the same mysteries ; it is the origin of good and evil ; it is the creation of the demon by mystery.

FIGURE III. — The Triangle of Solomon.

FIGURE IV. — The Four Great Kabbalistic Names.

FIGURE V. — The Pentagram of Faust.

FIGURE VI. — The Tetragram of the Zohar.

FIGURE VII. — Addha-Nari, grand Indian Pantacle.

This pantheistic image represents Religion or Truth, terrible for the profane and gentle for initiates. It has more than one analogy with the Cherub of Ezekiel. The human figure is placed between a bridled bull and a tiger, thus forming the triangle of Kether, Geburah, and Gedulah, or Chesed. In the Indian symbol, the four ‘magical signs of the Tarot are found in the four hands of Addha-Nari — on the side of the initiate and of mercy are the sceptre and the cup ; on the side of the profane, represented by the tiger, are the sword and the circle, which latter may become either the ring of a
chain or an iron collar. On the side of the initiate, the goddess is clothed only with the skin of the tiger ; on that of the tiger itself she wears a long star-spangled robe, and even her hair is veiled. A fountain of milk springs from her forehead, falls on the side of the initiate, and about Addha-Nari and the two animals it forms a magic circle, enclosing them in an island which represents the world. The goddess wears round her neck a magic chain, formed of iron links on the side of the profane and of intelligent heads on that of the initiate ; sho bears on her forehead the figure of the lingam, and on either side of her are three superposed lines which represent the equilibrium of the triad, and recall the trigrams of Fo-Hi.

FIGURE VIII. — The Pantacles of Ezekiel and Pythagoras.

The four-headed Cherubim of Ezekiel's prophecy, explained by the double triangle of Solomon. Below is the wheel of Ezckiel, key of all pantacles, and the pantacle of Pythagoras. The cherub of Ezekiel is here represented as it is described by the prophet. Its four heads are the tetrad of Mercavah ; its six wings are the senary of Bereschith. The human figure in the middle represents reason ; the eagle's head is faith ; the bull is resignation and toil ; the lion is warfare and conquest. This symbol is analogous to that of the Egyptian sphinx, but is more appropriate to the Kabbalah of the Hebrews.

FIGURE IX. — The Sabbatic Goat. The Baphomet of Mendes.

A pantheistic and magical figure of the Absolute. The torch placed between the two horns represents the equilibrating intelligence of the triad. The goat's head, which is synthetic, and unites some characteristics of the dog, bull, and ass, represents the exclusive responsibility of matter and the expiation of bodily sins in the: body. The hands are human, to exhibit the sanctity of labour ; they make the sign of esotericism above and below, to impress mystery on initiates, and they point at two lunar crescents, the upper being white and the lower black, to explain the correspondences of good and evil, mercy and justice. The lower part of the body is veiled, portraying the mysteries of universal generation, which is expressed solely by the symbol of the caduceus. The belly of the goat is scaled, and should be coloured green ; the semi-circle above should be blue ; the plumage, reaching to the breast, should be of various hues. The goat has female breasts, and thus its only human characteristics are those of maternity and toil, otherwise the signs of redemption. On its forehead, between the horns and beneath the torch, is the sign of the microcosm, or the pentagram with one beam in the ascendant, symbol of human intelligence, which, placed thus below the torch, makes the flame of the latter an image of divine revelation. This Pantheos should be seated on a cube, and its footstool should be a single ball, or a ball and a triangular stool. In our design we have given the former only to avoid complicating the figure.

FIGURE X. — The Triangle of Solomon.

FIGURE XI. — The Trident of Paracelsus.

This trident, symbol of the triad, is formed of three pyramidal teeth superposed on a Greek or Latin tau. On one of its teeth is a jod, which on one side pierces a crescent, and on the other a trans-verse line, a figure which recalls hieroglyphically the zodiacal sign of the Crab. On the opposite tooth is a composite sign recalling that of the Twins and that of the Lion. Between tho claws of the Crab is the sun, and the astronomical cross is seen in proximity to the lion. On the middle tooth there is hieroglyphically depicted the figure of the celestial serpent, with the sign of Jupiter for its head. By the side of the Crab is the word OBITO, or Begone, Retire ; and by the side of the Lion is the word IMO, Although, Persist. In the centre, and near tho symbolical serpent there is AP Do SEL, a word composed of an abbreviation, of a word written kabbalistically and in the Hebrew fashion, and, finally, of a complete ordinary word ; AP, which should be read AR, because these are the first two letters of the Greek ARCHEUS ; Do, which should be read OD ; and, lastly, SEL, Salt.

These are the three prime substances, and tle occult names of Archeus and Od have the same significance as the Sulphur and Mercury of the Philosophers. Ou the iron stem which serves as a haft for the trident there is the triplicated letter P.P. P., a phallic and lingamic hieroglyph, with the words VLX DOX FATO, which must be read by taking the first letter for the number of the Pentagram in Roman figures, thus completing the phrase PENTAGRAMMATICA LIBERTATE DOX FATO, equivalent to the three letters of Cagliostro — L. P. D. — Liberty, Power, Duty.

On the one side, absolute liberty ; on the other, necessity or invincible fatality ; in the centre, REASON, the Kabbalistic Absolute, which constitutes universal equilibrium. This admirable magical summary of Paracelsus will serve as a key to the obscure works of the Kabbalist Wronski, a remarkable man of learning who more than once allowed himself to be carried away from his ABSOLUTE REASON by the mysticism of his nation, and by pecuniary speculations unworthy of so distinguished a thinker. We allow him at the same time the honour and the glory of having discovered before us the secret of the Trident of Paracelsus. Thus, Paracelsus represents the Passive by the Crab, the Active by the Lion, Intelligence or equilibrating Reason by Jupiter or the Man-King ruling the serpent ; then he balances forces by giving the Passive the fecundation of the Active represented by the Sun, and to the Active space and might to conquer and enlighten under the symbol of the Cross. He says to the Passive: Obey the impulse of the Active and advance with it by the very equilibrium of resistance. To the Active he says: Resist the immobility of obstacle ; persist and advance.

Then he explains these alternated forces by the great central triad — LIBERTY, NECESSITY, REASON, — REASON in the centre, LIBERTY and NECESSITY in counter-poise. There is the power of the Trident, there its haft and founda poise. There is the power of the Trident, there its haft and foundation ; it is the universal law of nature ; it is the very essence of the Word, realised and demonstrated by the triad of human life — the Archeus, or mind ; the Od, or plastic mediator ; and the Salt or visible matter. We have given separately the explanation of this figure because it is of the highest importance, and gives the measure of the greatest genius of the occult sciences. After this interpretation, it will be understood why, in the course of our work, we invariably bow with the traditional veneration of true adepts before the divine Paracelsus.

FIGURE XII. — The Pentagram.

FIGURE XIII. — Magical Instruments the Lamp, Rod, Sword, and Dagger.

FIGURE XIV. — The Key of Thoth.

FIGURE XV. — Goetic Circle of Black Evocations and Pacts.

FIGURE XVI. and XVII. — Divers infernal characters taken from Agrippa, Peter of Apono, a number of Grimoires, and the documents of the trial of Urban Grandier.

FIGURE XVIII. — Kabbalistic signs of Orion.

FIGURE XIX. — Infernal Characters of the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac.

FIGURE XX. — Magic Squares of the Planetary Genii according to Paracelsus.

FIGURE XXI. — Chariot of Hermes, seventh Key of the Tarot.

FIGURE XXII. — The Ark of the Covenant.

FIGURE XXIII. — Apocalyptic Key The Seven Seals of St John.

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INTRODUCTION — Transcendental Magic, its Doctrine and Ritual

by Eliphas Lévi

BEHIND the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegories of ancient doctrines, behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the seal of all sacred writings, in the ruins of Nineveh or Thebes, on the crumbling stones of old temples and on the blackened visage of the Assyrian or Egyptian sphinx, in the monstrous or marvellous paintings which interpret to the faithful of India the inspired pages of the Vedas, in the cryptic emblems of our old books on alchemy, in the ceremonies practised at reception by all secret societies, there are found indications of a doctrine which is everywhere the same and everywhere carefully concealed. Occult philosophy seems to have been the nurse or god-mother of all intellectual forces, the key of all divine obscurities and the absolute queen of society in those ages when it was reserved exclusively for the education of priests and of kings. It reigned in Persia with the Magi, who perished in the end, as perish all masters of the world, because they abused their power; it endowed India with the most wonderful traditions and with an incredible wealth of poesy, grace and terror in its emblems; it civilized Greece to the music of the lyre of Orpheus; it concealed the .principles of all sciences, all progress of the human mind, m the daring calculations of Pythagoras; fable abounded in its miracles, and history, attempting to estimate this unknown power, became confused with fable; it undermined or con- solidated empires by its oracles, caused tyrants to tremble on their thrones and governed all minds, either by curiosity or by fear. For this science, said the crowd, there is nothing impossible, it commands the elements, knows the language of the stars and directs the planetary courses; when it speaks, the moon falls blood-red from heaven; the dead rise in their graves and mutter ominous words, as the night wind blows through their skulls. Mistress of love or of hate, occult science can dispense paradise or hell at its pleasure to human hearts; it disposes of all forms and confers beauty or ugliness; with the wand of Circe it changes men into brutes and animals alternately into men; it disposes even of life and death, can confer wealth on its adepts by the transmutation of metals and immortality by its quintessence or elixir, compounded of gold and light.

Such was Magic from Zoroaster to Manes, from Orpheus to Apollonius of Tyana, when positive Christianity, victorious at length over the brilliant dreams and titanic aspirations of the Alexandrian school, dared to launch its anathemas publicly against this philosophy, and thus forced it to become more occult and mysterious than ever. Moreover, strange and alarming rumours began to circulate concerning initiates or adepts; they were surrounded every where by an ominous influence, and they destroyed or distracted those who allowed themselves to be beguiled by their honeyed eloquence or by the sorcery of their learning.

The women whom they loved became Stryges and their children vanished at nocturnal meetings, while men whispered shudderingly and in secret of blood-stained orgies and abominable banquets. Bones had been found in the crypts of ancient temples, shrieks had been heard in the night, harvests withered and herds sickened when the magician passed by. Diseases which defied medical skill appeared at times in the world, and always, it was said, beneath the envenomed glance of the adepts. At length a universal cry of execration went up against Magic, the mere name became a crime and the common hatred was formulated in this sentence: "Magicians to the flames!" — as it was shouted some centuries earlier: "To the lions with the Christians?' Now the multitude never conspires except against real powers; it does not know what is true, but it has the instinct of what is strong. It remained for the eighteenth century to deride both Christians and Magic, while infatuated with the disquisitions of Rousseau and the illusions of Cagliostro.

Science, notwithstanding, is at the basis of Magic, as at the root of Christianity there is love, and in the Gospel symbols we find the Word Incarnate adored in His cradle by Three Magi, led thither by a star — the triad and the sign of the microcosm — and receiving their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, a second mysterious triplicity, under which emblem the highest secrets of the Kabalah are allegorically contained. Christianity owes therefore no hatred to Magic, but human ignorance has ever stood in fear of the unknown. The science was driven into hiding to escape the impassioned assaults of blind desire: it clothed itself with new hieroglyphics, falsified its intentions, denied its hopes. Then it was that the jargon of alchemy was created, an impenetrable illusion for the vulgar in their greed of gold, a living language only for the true disciple of Hermes.

Extraordinary fact! Among the sacred records of the Christians there are two texts which the infallible Church makes no claim to understand and has never attempted to expound: these are the Prophecy of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse, two Kabalistic Keys reserved assuredly in heaven for the commentaries of Magian Kings, books sealed as with seven seals for faithful believers, yet perfectly plain to an initiated infidel of the occult sciences.^[1] There is also another work, but, although it is popular in a sense and may be found everywhere, this is of all most occult and unknown, because it is the key of the rest. It is in public evidence without being known to the public; no one suspects its existence and no one dreams of seeking it where it actually is. This book, which may be older than that of Enoch, has never been translated, but is still preserved unmutilated in primeval characters, on detached leaves, like the tablets of the ancients. The fact has eluded notice, though a distinguished scholar has revealed, not indeed its secret, but its antiquity and singular preservation. Another scholar, but of a mind more fantastic than judicious, passed thirty years in the study of this masterpiece, and has merely suspected its plenary importance. It is, in truth, a monumental and extraordinary work, strong and simple as the architecture of the pyramids, and consequently enduring like those — a book which is the summary of all sciences, which can resolve all problems by its infinite combinations, which speaks by evoking thought, is the inspirer and moderator of all possible conceptions, and the masterpiece perhaps of the human mind.^[2] It is to be counted Unquestionably among the very great gifts bequeathed to us by antiquity; it is a universal key, the name of which has been explained and comprehended only by the learned William Postel; it is a unique test, whereof the initial characters alone plunged into ecstasy the devout spirit of Saint-Martin,^[3] and might have restored reason to the sublime and unfortunate Swedenborg. We shall recur to this book later on, for its mathematical and precise explanation will be the complement and crown of our conscientious undertaking.

The original alliance between Christianity and the Science of the Magi, once demonstrated fully, will be a discovery of no second-rate importance, and we do not doubt that the serious study of Magic and the Kabalah will lead earnest minds to a reconciliation of science and dogma, of reason and faith, heretofore regarded as impossible.

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,^[4] nothing that has been 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.^[5] 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 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 misfortune 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.^[6] 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 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.^[7] 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.

Moses at the beginning of Genesis. This secret constitutes the fatal Science of Good and Evil, and the consequence of its revelation is death^[8] Moses depicts it under the figure of a Tree which stands in the midst of the Terrestrial Paradise,^[9] 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:

 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?"

Such actually are the issues of occult philosophy, and we are in a position to meet the charge of insanity or the suspicion of imposture when we affirm that these privileges are real. To demonstrate this is the sole end of our work on occult Philosophy. The Philosophical Stone, the Universal Medicine, the transmutation of metals, the quadrature of the circle and the secret of perpetual motion are neither mystifications of science nor dreams of delusion. They are terms which must be understood in their proper sense; they formulate the varied applications of one and the same secret, the several aspects of a single operation, which is defined in a more comprehensive manner under the name of the Great Work. Furthermore, there exists in Nature a force which is immeasurably more powerful than steam, and a single man, who is able to adapt and direct it, might change thereby the face of the whole world. This force was known to the ancients; it consists in a Universal Agent having equilibrium for its supreme law, while its direction is concerned immediately with the Great Arcanum of Transcendental Magic.^[10]

By the direction of this agent it is possible to modify the very order of the seasons; to produce at night the phenomena of day; to correspond instantaneously between one extremity of the earth and the other; to see, like Apollonius, what is taking place on the other side of the world; to heal or injure at a distance; to give speech a universal success and reverberation. This agent, which barely manifests under the uncertain methods of Mesmer's followers, is precisely that which the adepts of the Middle Ages denominated the First Matter of the Great Work. The Gnostics represented it as the fiery body of the Holy Spirit; it was the object of adoration in the Secret Rites of the Sabbath and the Temple, under the hieroglyphic figure of Baphomet or the Androgyne of Mendes. All this will be proved.

Here then are the secrets of occult philosophy, and such is Magic in history. Let us glance at it now as it appears in its books and its acts, in its Initiations and its Rites. The key of all magical allegories is found in the tablets which we have mentioned, and these tablets we regard as the work of Hermes. About this book, which may be called the keystone of the whole edifice of occult science, are grouped innumerable legends that are either its partial translation or its commentary reproduced perpetually, under a thousand varied forms. Sometimes the ingenious fables combine harmoniously into a great epic which characterizes an epoch, though how or why is not clear to the uninitiated.

Thus, the fabulous history of the Golden Fleece resumes and also veils the Hermetic and magical doctrines of Orpheus; and if we recur only to the mysterious poetry of Greece, it is because the sanctuaries of Egypt and India to some extent dismay us by their resources, leaving our choice embarrassed in the midst of such abundant wealth. We are eager, moreover, to reach the Thebaid at once, that dread synthesis of all doctrine, past, present and future; that — so to speak — infinite fable, which reaches, like the Deity of Orpheus, to either end of the cycle of human life. Extraordinary fact! The seven gates of Thebes, attacked and defended by seven chiefs who have sworn upon the blood of victims, possess the same significance as the seven seals of the Sacred Book interpreted by seven genii and assailed by a monster with seven heads, after being opened by a Lamb which liveth and was dead, in the allegorical work of St John. The mysterious origin of Oedipus, found hanging on the tree of Cithaeron like a bleeding fruit, recalls the symbols of Moses and the narratives of Genesis.

He makes war upon his father, whom he slays without knowing — tremendous prophecy of the blind emancipation of reason apart from science. Thereafter he meets with the sphinx, that symbol of symbols, the eternal enigma of the vulgar, the granite pedestal of the sciences of the sages, the Voracious and silent monster whose unchanging form expresses the one dogma of the Great Universal Mystery.

How is the tetrad changed into the duad and explained by the triad? In more common but more emblematic terms,^[11] what is that animal which in the morning has four feet, two at noon, and three in the evening? Philosophically speaking, how does the doctrine of elementary forces produce the dualism of Zoroaster, while it is summarized by the triad of Pythagoras and Plato? What is the ultimate reason of allegories and numbers, the final message of all symbolisms? Oedipus replies with a simple and terrible word which destroys the sphinx and makes the diviner King of Thebes: the answer to the enigma is MAN! . . . . .

Unfortunate! He has seen too much, and yet through a clouded glass. A little while and he will expiate his ominous and imperfect clairvoyance by a voluntary blindness, and then vanish in the midst of a storm, like all civilizations which — each in its own day — shall divine an answer to the riddle of the sphinx without grasping its whole import and mystery. Everything is symbolical and transcendental in this titanic epic of human destinies. The two antagonistic brothers formulate the second part of the Grand Mystery, completed divinely by the sacrifice of Antigone.^[12] There follows the last war; the brethren slay one another; Capaneus is destroyed by the lightning which he defies; Amphiaraus is swallowed by the earth; and all these are so many allegories which, by their truth and their grandeur, astonish those who can penetrate their triple hieratic sense. Aeschylus, annotated by Ballanche, gives only a weak notion concerning them, whatever the primeval sublimities of the Greek poet or the ingenuities of the French critic.

The secret book of antique initiation was not unknown to Homer, who outlines its pla and chief figures on the shield of Achilles, with minute precision. But the gracious Homeric fictions replaced too soon in popular memory the simple and abstract truths of primeval revelation. Humanity clung to the form and allowed the idea to be forgotten; signs lost power in their multiplication; Magic became corrupted also at this period, and degenerated with the sorcerers of Thessaly into the most profane enchantments. The crime of Oedipus brought forth its deadly fruits, and the science of good and evil erected evil into a sacrilegious divinity. Men, weary of the light, took refuge in the shadow of bodily substance; the dream of that void which is filled by God seemed in their eyes to be greater than God Himself, and thus hell was created.

When, in the course of this work, we make use of the comecrated terms God, Heaven and Hell, let it be understood, once and for all, that our meaning is as far removed from that which the profane attach to them as initiation is remote from vulgar thought. God, for us, is the AZOT of the sages, the efficient and final principle of the Great Work.^[13] Returning to the fable of Oedipus, the crime of the King of Thebes was that he failed to understand the sphinx that he destroyed the scourge of Thebes without being pure enough to complete the expiation in the name of his people. The plague, in consequence, avenged speedily the death of the monster, and the King of Thebes, forced to abdicate, sacrificed himself to the terrible manes of the sphinx, more alive and voracious than ever when it had passed from the domain of form into that of idea. Oedipus divined what was man and he put out his own eyes because he did not see what was God.^[14] He divulged half of the Great Arcanum, and, to save his people, it was necessary for him to bear the remaining half of the terrible secret into exile and the grave.

Everything is contained in a single word, which word consists of four letters: it is the Tetragram of the Hebrews,^[15] the AZOT of the alchemists, the Thot of the Bohemians, or the Taro of the Kabalists. This word, expressed after so many manners, means God for the profane, man for the philosophers, and imparts to the adepts the final term of human sciences and the key of divine power; but he only can use it who understands the necessity of never revealing it. Had Oedipus, instead of killing the sphinx, overcome it, harnessed it to his chariot and thus entered Thebes, he would have been king without incest, without misfortunes and without exile. Had Psyche, by meekness and affection, persuaded Love to reveal himself, she would never have lost Love. Now, Love is one of the mythological images of the Great Secret and the Great Agent, because it postulates at once an action and a passion, a void and a plenitude, a shaft and a wound. The initiates will understand me, and on account of the profane I must not speak more clearly.

After the marvellous Golden Ass of Apuleius, we find no more magical epics. Science, conquered in Alexandria by the fanaticism of the murderers of Hypatia, became Christian, or rather concealed itself under Christian veils with Ammonius, Synesius and the pseudonymous author of the books of Dionysius the Areopagite. In such times it was necessary to exonerate miracles under the pretence of superstition and science by an unintelligible language. Hieroglyphic writing was revived; pantacles and characters were invented to summarize an entire doctrine by a sign, a whole sequence of tendencies and revelations in a word.

What was the end of the aspirants to knowledge? They sought the secret of the Great Work, the Philosophical Stone, the perpetual motion, the quadrature of the circle, the Universal Medicine — formulae which often saved them from persecution and hatred by causing them to be taxed with madness, but all signifying one of the phases of the Great Magical Secret, as we shall show later on. This absence of epics continues till our Romance of the Rose; but the rose-symbol, which expresses also the mysterious and magical sense of Dante's poem, is borrowed from the transcendent Kabalah, and it is time that we should have^[16] recourse to this vast and hidden source of universal philosophy.

The Bible, with all its allegories, gives expression to the religious knowledge of the Hebrews only in an incomplete and veiled manner. The book which we have mentioned, the hieratic characters of which we shall explain subsequently, that book which William Postel names the Genesis of Enoch, existed certainly before Moses and the prophets, whose doctrine, fundamentally identical with that of the ancient Egyptians, had also its exotericism and its veils.

When Moses spoke to the people, says the sacred book allegorically, he placed a veil over his face, and he removed it when communing with God: this accounts for the alleged Biblical absurdities which so exercised the satirical powers of Voltaire. The books were written only as memorials of tradition and in symbols that were unintelligible to the profane. The Pentateuch and the poems of the prophets were, moreover, elementary works, alike in doctrine, ethics and liturgy; the true secret and traditional philosophy was not committed to writing until a later period and under veils even less transparent. Thus arose a second and unknown Bible, or rather one which was not comprehended by Christians, a storehouse, so they say, of monstrous absurdities — for in this case believers, involved by the same ignorance, speak the language of sceptics — but a monument, as we affirm, which comprises all that philosophical and religious genius has ever accomplished or imagined in the sublime order, a treasure encompassed by thorns, a diamond concealed in a rude and opaque stone: our readers will have guessed already that we refer to the Talmud. How strange is the destiny of the Jews, those scapegoats, martyrs and saviours of the world, a people full of vitality, a bold and hardy race, which persecutions have preserved intact, because it has not yet accomplished its mission! Do not our apostolical traditions declare that after the decline of faith among the Gentiles salvation shall again come forth out of the house of Jacob, and that then the crucified Jew Who is adored by the Christians will give the empire of the world into the hands of God His Father?

On penetrating into the sanctuary of the Kabalah one is seized with admiration in the presence of a doctrine so logical, so simple and at the same time so absolute. The essential union of ideas and signs; the consecration of the most fundamental realities by primitive characters; the trinity of words, letters and numbers;^[17] a philosophy simple as the alphabet, profound and infinite as the Word; theorems more complete and luminous than those of Pythagoras; a theology which may be summed up on the fingers; an infinite which can be held in the hollow of an infant's hand; ten figures and twenty-two letters, a triangle, a square and a circle: such are the elements of the Kabalah.

These are the component principles of the written Word, reflection of that spoken Word which created the world! All truly dogmatic religions have issued from the Kabalah and return therein. Whatsover is grand or scientific in the religious dreams of the illuminated, of Jacob Bohme, Swedenborg, Saint-Martin and the rest, is borrowed from the Kabalah; all Masonic associations owe to it their secrets and their symbols. The Kabalah alone consecrates the alliance of universal reason and the Divine Word; it establishes by the counterpoise of two forces in apparent opposition, the eternal balance of being; it alone reconciles reason with faith, power with liberty, science with mystery: it has the keys of the present, past and future!

To become initiated into the Kabalah it is insufficient to read and to meditate upon the writings of Reuchlin, Galalinus, Kircher, or Picus de Mirandola; it is necessary to study and understand the Hebrew writers in the collection of Pistorius, the Sepher Yetzirah above all; it is essential in particular to master the great book Zohar, to investigate the collection of 1684, entitled Kabbala Denudata, especially the treatise on "Kabalistic Pneumatics" and that on the "Revolution of Souls"; and afterwards to enter boldly into the luminous darkness of the whole dogmatic and allegorical body of the Talmud.^[18] Then we shall be then in a position to understand William Postel, and shall admit secretly that — apart from his very premature and over-generous dreams about the emancipation of women — this celebrated, learned, illuminated man could not have been so mad as is pretended by those who have not read him. 

We have sketched rapidly the history of occult philosophy; we have indicated its sources and analysed in a few words its chief memorials. The present division of our work refers only to the science, but Magic, or rather magical power, comprehends two things, a science and a force: without the force the science is nothing, or rather it is a danger. To give knowledge to power alone, such is the supreme law of initiations. Hence did the Great Revealer say: "The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent only shall carry it away." The door of truth is closed, like the sanctuary of a virgin: he must be a man who would enter. All miracles are promised to faith, and what is faith except the audacity of will which does not hesitate in the darkness, but advances towards the light in spite of all ordeals, and surmounting all obstacles? It is unnecessary to repeat here the history of ancient initiations: the more dangerous and terrible they were, the greater was their efficacy. Hence, in those days, the world had men to govern and instruct it. The Sacerdotal Art and the Royal Art consisted above all in ordeals of courage, discretion and will.

It was a novitiate similar to that of those priests who, under the name of Jesuits, are so unpopular at the present day, but would govern the world notwithstanding, had they a truly wise and intelligent chief.

It was a novitiate similar to that of those priests who, under the name of Jesuits, are so unpopular at the present day, but would govern the world notwithstanding, had they a truly wise and intelligent chief.

After passing our life in the search for the Absolute in religion, science and justice; after revolving in the circle of Faust, we have reached the primal doctrine and the first book of humanity. At this point we pause, having discovered the secret of human omnipotence and indefinite progress, the key of all symbolisms, the first and final doctrine: we have come to understand what was meant by that expression so often made use of in the Gospel--the Kingdom of God.

To provide a fixed point as a fulcrum for human activity is to solve the problem of Archimedes, by realizing the use of his famous lever. This it is which was accomplished by the great initiators who have electrified the world, and they could not have done so except by means of the Great and Incommunicable Secret. However, as a guarantee of its renewed youth, the symbolical phoenix never reappeared before the eyes of the world without having consumed solemnly the remains and evidences of its previous life.

So also Moses saw to it that all those who had known Egypt and her mysteries should end their life in the desert; at Ephesus St Paul burnt all books which treated of the occult sciences; and in fine, the French Revolution, daughter of the great Johannite Orient and the ashes of the Templars, spoliated the churches and blasphemed the allegories of the Divine Cultus. But all doctrines and all revivals proscribe Magic and condemn its mysteries to the flames and to oblivion. The reason is that each religion or philosophy which comes into the world is a Benjamin of humanity and insures its own life by destroying its mother. It is because the symbolical serpent turns ever devouring its own tail; it is because, as essential condition of existence, a void is necessary to every plenitude, space for every dimension, an affirmation for each negation: herein is the eternal realization of the phoenix allegory.

Two illustrious scholars have preceded me along the path that I am travelling, but they have, so to speak, spent the dark night therein. I refer to Volney and Dupuis, to Dupuis above all, whose immense erudition produced only a negative work, for in the origin of all religions he saw nothing but astronomy, taking thus the symbolic cycle for doctrine and the calendar for legend. He was deficient in one branch of knowledge, that of true Magic which comprises the secrets of the Kabalah Dupuis passed through the antique sanctuaries, like the prophet Ezekiel over the plain strewn with bones, and only understood death, for want of that word which collects the virtue of the four winds and can make a living people of all the vast ossuary, by crying to the ancient symbols: 'Arise! Take up a new form and walk? But the hour has come when we must have the courage to attempt what no one has dared to perform previously. Like Julian, we would rebuild the temple, and in so doing we do not believe that we shalt be belying a wisdom that we venerate, which also Julian would himself have been worthy to adore, had the rancorous and fanatical doctors of his period permitted him to understand it. For us the Temple has two Pillars, on one of which Christianity has inscribed its name. We have therefore no wish to attack Christianity: far from it, we seek to explain and accomplish it. Intelligence and will have exercised alternately their power in the world; religion and philosophy are still at war with one another, but they must end in agreement. The provisional object of Christianity was to establish, by obedience and faith, a supernatural or religious equality among men, to immobilize intelligence by faith, so as to provide a fulcrum for virtue which came for the destruction of the aristocracy of science, or rather to replace that aristocracy, then already destroyed. Philosophy, on the contrary, has laboured to bring back men by liberty and reason to natural inequality, and to substitute wits for virtue by inaugurating the reign of industry. Neither of these operations has proved complete or adequate; neither has brought men to perfection and felicity. That which is now dreamed, almost without daring to hope for it, is an alliance between the two forces so long regarded as contrary, and there is good ground for desiring it, seeing that these two great powers of the human soul are no more opposed to one another than is the sex of man opposed to that of woman. Undoubtedly they differ, but their apparently con- trary dispositions come only from their aptitude to meet and unite.

"No less is proposed, therefore, than a universal solution of all problems?" The answer is yes, unquestionably, since we are concerned with explaining the Philosophical Stone, perpetual motion, the secret of the Great Work and of the Universal Medicine. We shall be accused of insanity, like the divine Paracelsus, or of charlatanism, like the great and unfortunate Agrippa. If the pyre of Urban Grandier be extinguished, the sullen proscriptions of silence and of calumny remain.^[19] We do not defy but are resigned to them. We have not Sought the publication of this book of our own will, and we believe that if the time be come to bear witness, it will be borne by us or by others. We shall therefore remain calm and shall wait.

Our work is in two parts: in the one we establish the kabalistic and magical doctrine in its entirety; the other is consecrated to the cultus, that is, to Ceremonial Magic. The one is that which the ancient sages termed the Clavicle, the other that which people on the country-side still call the Grimoire. The numbers and subjects of the chapters which correspond in both parts, are in no sense arbitrary, and are all indicated in the great universal key, of which we give for the first time a complete and adequate explanation. Let this work now go its way where it will and become what Providence determines; it is finished, and we believe it to be enduring, because it is strong, like all that is reasonable and conscientious.

— Eliphas Lévi

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I  A

THE CANDIDATE

DISCIPLINA ENSOPH KETHER^[1]

WHEN a philosopher adopted as the basis for a new apocalypse of human wisdom the axiom: "I think, therefore I am", in a measure he altered unconsciously, from the standpoint of Christian Revelation, the old conception of the Supreme Being. I am that I am, said the Being of beings of Moses. I am he who thinks, says the man of Descartes, and to think being to speak inwardly, such a one may affirm, like the God of St John the Evangelist: I am he in whom and by whom the word manifests — In principio erat verbum. Now, what is this principle? It is a groundwork of speech, it is a reason for the existence of the word. The essence of the word is in the principle; the principle is that which is; intelligence is a principle which speaks. What, further, is intellectual light? It is speech. What is revelation? It is also speech ; being is the principle, speech is the means, and the plenitude or development and perfection of being is the end. To speak is to create. But to say : "I think, therefore I exist," is to argue from consequence to principle, and certain contradictions which have been adduced by a great writer, Lamennais, have abundantly proved the philosophical imperfection of this method.

I am, therefore something exists — might seem to be a more primitive and simple foundation for experimental. philosophy. I AM, THEREFORE BEING EXISTS. Ego sum qui sum — such is the first revelation of God in man and of man in the world, while it is also the first axiom of occult philosophy. אהיה אשר אהיה Being is being. Hence this philosophy, having that which is for its principle, can be in no sense hypothesis or guesswork.

Mercurius Trismegistus begins his admirable symbol known under the name of the "Emerald Table,"^[2] by this threefold affirmation: "It is true, it is certain without error, it is of all truth." Thus, in physics, the true confirmed by experience; in philosophy, certitude purged from any alloy of error; in the domain of religion or the infinite, absolute truth indicated by analogy: such are the first necessities of true science, and Magic only can impart these to its adepts.

But you, before all things, who are you, thus taking this work in your hands and proposing to read it? On the pediment of a temple consecrated by antiquity to the God of Light was an inscription of two words: "Know thyself." I impress the same counsel on every man when he seeks to approach science. Magic, which the men of old denominated the SANCTUM REGNUM, the Holy Kingdom, or Kingdom of God, REGNUM DEI, exists only for kings and for priests.

Are you priests? Are you kings? The priesthood of Magic is not a vulgar priesthood, and its royalty enters not into competition with the princes of this world. The monarchs of science are the priests of truth, and their sovereignty is hidden from the multitude, like their prayers and sacrifices. The kings of science are men who know the truth and them the truth has made free, according to the specific promise given by the most mighty of all initiators.

The man who is enslaved by his passions or worldly prejudices can be initiated in no wise; he must reform or he will never attain; meanwhile he cannot be an adept, for this word signifies a person who has achieved by will and by work. The man who loves his own opinions and fears to part with them, who suspects new truths, who is unprepared to doubt everything rather than admit anything on chance, should close this book: for him it is useless and dangerous. He will fail to understand it, and it will trouble him, while if he should divine the meaning, there will be a still greater source of disquietude. If you hold by anything in the world more than by reason, truth and justice; if your will be uncertain and vacillating, either in good or evil; if logic alarm you, or the naked truth make you blush; if you are hurt when accepted errors are assailed; condemn this work straight away. Do not read it; let it cease to exist for you; but at the same time do not cry it down as dangerous.

The secrets which it records will be understood by an elect few and will be reserved by those who understand them.

Show light to the birds of the night-time, and you hide their light; it is the light which blinds them and for them is darker than darkness. It follows that I shall speak clearly and make known everything, with the firm conviction that initiates alone, or those who deserve initiation, will read all and understand in part.

There is a true and a false science, a Divine and an Infernal Magic — in other words, one which is delusive and tenebrous.^[3] It is our task to reveal the one and to unveil the other, to distinguish the magician from the sorcerer and the adept from the charlatan. The magician avails himself of a force which he knows, the sorcerer seeks to misuse that which he does not understand. If it be possible in a scientific work to employ a term so vulgar and so discredited, then the devil gives himself to the magician and the sorcerer gives himself to the devil. The magician is the sovereign pontiff of Nature, the sorcerer is her profaner only. The sorcerer is in the same relation to the magician that a superstitious and fanatical person bears to a truly religious man.

Before proceeding further, let us define Magic in a sentence. Magic is the traditional science of the secrets of Nature which has been transmitted to us from the Magi. By means of this science the adept is invested with a species of relative omnipotence and can operate superhumanly — that is, after a manner which transcends the normal pos- sibility of men. Thereby many illustrious hierophants, such as Mercurius Trismegistus, Osiris, Orpheus, Apollonius of Tyana, and others whom it might be dangerous or unwise to name, came after their death to be adored and invoked as gods^[4] Thereby others also — according to that ebb-and- flow of opinion which is responsible for the caprices of success — became emissaries of infernus or suspected adventurers, like the Emperor Julian, Apuleius, the enchanter Merlin and that arch-sorcerer, as he was termed in his day, the illustrious and unfortunate Cornelius Agrippa.

To attain the SANCTUM REGNUM, in other words, the knowledge and power of the Magi, there are four indis- pensable conditions — an intelligence illuminated by study, an intrepidity which nothing can check, a will which cannot be broken, and a prudence which nothing can corrupt and nothing intoxicate. To KNOW, TO DARE, TO WILL, TO KEEP SILENCE — such are the four words of the Magus, inscribed upon the four symbolical forms of the sphinx.^[5] These maxims can be combined after four manners and explained four times by one another.

On the first page of the Book of Hermes the adept is depicted with a large hat, which, if turned down, would conceal his entire head. One hand is raised towards heaven, which he seems to command with his wand, while the other is placed upon his breast; before him are the chief symbols^[6] or instruments of science, and he has others hidden in a juggler's wallet. His body and arms form the letter ALEPH, the first of that alphabet which the Jews borrowed from the Egyptians: to this symbol we shall have occasion to recur later on.

The Magus is truly that which the Hebrew Kabalists term MICROPROSOPUS — otherwise, the creator of the little world. The first of all magical sciences being the knowledge of one's self, so is one's own creation first of all works of science; it comprehends the others and is the beginning of the Great Work. The expression, however, requires explanation. Supreme Reason being the sole invariable and consequently imperishable principle — and death, as we call it, being change — it follows that the intelligence which cleaves closely to this principle and in a manner identifies itself therewith, does hereby make itself unchangeable and as a result immortal. To cleave invariably to reason it will be understood that it is necessary to attain independence of all those forces which by their fatal and inevitable operation produce the alternatives of life and death. To know how to suffer, to forbear and to die — such are the first secrets which place us beyond reach of affliction, the desires of the flesh and the fear of annihilation. The man who seeks and finds a glorious death has faith in immortality and universal humanity believes in it with him and for him, raising altars and statues to his memory in token of eternal life.

Man becomes king of the brutes only by subduing or taming them: otherwise he will be their victim or slave. Brutes are the type of our passions; they are the instinctive forces of Nature. The world is a field of battle, where liberty struggles with inertia by the opposition of active force. Physical laws are millstones; if you cannot be the miller you must be the grain. You are called to be king of air, water, earth and fire; but to reign over these four living creatures of symbolism, it is necessary to conquer and enchain them. He who aspires to be a sage and to know the Great Enigma of Nature must be the heir and despoiler of the sphinx: his the human head, in order to possess speech; his the eagle's wings, in order to scale the heights: his the bull's flanks, in order to furrow the depths; his the lion's talons, to make a way on the right and the left, before and behind.

You therefore who seek initiation, are you learned as Faust? Are you insensible as Job? No, is it not so? But you may become like unto both if you choose. Have you over- come the vortices of vague thoughts? Are you without indecision or capriciousness? Do you consent to pleasure only when you will, and do you wish for it only when you should? No, is it not so? Not at least invariably, but this may come to pass if you choose. The sphinx has not only a man's head, it has woman's breasts; do you know how to resist feminine charms? No, is it not so? And you laugh outright in replying, parading your moral weakness for the glorification of your physical and vital force. Be it so: I allow you to render this homage to the ass of Sterne or Apuleius. The ass has its merit, I agree; it was consecrated to Priapus as was the goat to the god of Mendes. But take it for what it is worth, and decide whether ass or man shall be master. He alone can possess truly the pleasure of love who has conquered the love of pleasure. To be able and to forbear is to be twice able. Woman enchains you by your desires; master your desires and you will enchain her. The greatest injury that can be inflicted on a man is to call him a coward. Now, what is a cowardly person? One who neglects his moral dignity in order to obey blindly the instincts of Nature. As a fact, in the presence of danger it is natural to be afraid and seek flight: why, then, is it shameful? Because honour has erected it into a law that we must prefer our duty to our inclinations or fears. What is honour from this point of view? It is a universal presentience of immortality and appreciation of the means which can lead to it. The last trophy which a man can win from death is to triumph over the appetite for life, not by despair but by a more exalted hope, which is contained in faith, for all that is noble and honest, by the undivided consent of the world.

To learn self-conquest is therefore to learn life, and the austerities of stoicism were no vain parade of freedom! To yield to the forces of Nature is to follow the stream of collective life and to be the slave of secondary causes. To resist and subdue Nature is to make for one's self a personal and imperishable life: it is to break free from the vicissitudes of life and death. Every man who is prepared to die rathe than renounce truth and justice is most truly living, for immortality abides in his soul. To find or to form such men was the end of all ancient initiations. Pythagoras dis ciplined his pupils by silence and all kinds of self-denial; candidates in Egypt were tried by the four elements; and we know the self-inflicted austerities of fakirs and brahman in India for attaining the kingdom of free will and divine independence. All macerations of asceticism are borrowed from the initiations of the Ancient Mysteries; they have ceased because those qualified for initiation, no longer finding initiators, and the leaders of conscience becoming in the lapse of time as uninstructed as the vulgar, the blind have grown weary of following the blind, and no one has cared to pass through ordeals the end of which was only in doubt and despair: the path of light was lost. To succeed in performing something we must know that which it is proposed to do, or at least must have faith in someone who does know it. But shall I stake my life on a venture, or follow someone at chance who himself cannot see where he is going?

We must not set out rashly along the path of the trans cendental sciences, but, once started, we must reach the end or perish. To doubt is to lose one's reason; to pause is to fall; to recoil is to plunge into an abyss. You, therefore, who are undertaking the study of this book, if you persevere to the end and understand it, you will be either a monarch or madman. Do what you will with the volume, you will be unable to despise or to forget it. If you are pure, it will be your light; if strong, your arm; if holy, your religion; i wise, the rule of your wisdom. But if you are wicked, for you it will be an infernal torch; it will lacerate your breast like a poniard; it will rankle in your memory like a remorse it will people your imagination with chimeras, and will drive you through folly to despair. You will endeavour to laugh at it, and will only gnash your teeth; it will be like the file in the fable which the serpent tried to bite, but it destroyed all his teeth.

Let us now enter on the series of initiations. I have said that revelation is the word. As a fact, the word, or speech, is the veil of being and the characteristic sign of life. Every form is the veil of a word, because the idea which is the mother of the word is the sole reason for the existence of forms. Every figure is a character, every character derives from and returns into a word. For this reason the ancient sages, of whom Trismegistus is the organ, formulated their sole dogma in these terms: "That which is above is like unto that which is below, and that which is below unto that which is above." In other words, the form is proportional to the idea; the shadow is the measure of the body calcu- lated in its relation to the luminous ray; the scabbard is as deep as the sword is long; the negation is in proportion to the contrary affirmation; production is equal to destruction in the movement which preserves life; and there is no point in infinite extension which may not be regarded as the centre of a circle having an expanding circumference receding indefinitely into space. Every individuality is therefore indefinitely perfectible, since the moral order is analogous to the physical, and since we cannot conceive any point as unable to dilate, increase and radiate in a philosophically unlimited circle. What can be affirmed of the soul in its totality may be affirmed of each faculty of the soul. The intelligence and will of man are instruments of incalculable power and capacity. But intelligence and will possess as their help-mate and instrument a faculty which is too imperfectly known, the omnipotence of which belongs exclusively to the domain of Magic. I speak of the imagination, which the Kabalists term the DIAPHANE or TRANSLUCID.

Imagination, in effect, is like the soul's eye; therein forms are outlined and preserved; thereby we behold the reflections of the invisible world; it is the glass of visions and the apparatus of magical life. By its intervention we heal diseases, modify the seasons, warn off death from the living and raise the dead to life, because it is the imagination which exalts will and gives it power over the Universal Agent. Imagination determines the shape of the child in its mother's womb and decides the destiny of men; it lends wings to contagion and directs the arms of warfare. Are you exposed in battle? Believe yourself to be invulnerable like Achilles, and you will be so, says Paracelsus. Fear attracts bullets, but they are repelled by courage. It is well known that persons with amputated limbs feel pain in the vicinity of members which they possess no longer. Paracelsus operated upon living blood by medicating the product of a bleeding; he cured headache at a distance by treating hair cut from the patient. By the science of the theoretical unity and solidarity between all parts of the body, he anticipated and outstripped the theories, or rather experiences, of our most celebrated magnetists. Hence his cures were miraculous, and to his name of Philip Theophrastus Bombast, he deserved the addition of Aureolus Paracelsus, with the further epithet of divine!

Imagination is the instrument of THE ADAPTATION OF THE WORD. Imagination applied to reason is genius. Reason is one, as genius is one, in all the variety of its works. There is one principle, there is one truth, there is one reason, there is one absolute and universal philosophy. Whatsoever is subsists in unity, considered as beginning, and returns into unity, considered as end. One is in one; that is to say, all is in all. Unity is the principle of numbers; it is also the principle of motion and consequently of life^[7] The entire human body is recapitulated in the unity of a single organ, which is the brain. All religions are summed up in the unity of a single dogma, which is the affirmation of being and its equality with itself, and this constitutes its mathematical value. There is only one dogma in Magic, and it is this: — The visible is the manifestation of the invisible, or, in other terms, the perfect word, in things appreciable and visible, bears an exact proportion to the things which are inappreciable by our senses and unseen by our eyes. The Magus raises one hand towards heaven and points down with the other to earth, saying: "Above, immensity: Below immensity still! Immensity equals immensity. " — This is true in things seen, as in things unseen.

The first letter in the alphabet of the sacred language, Aleph, א, represents a man extending one hand towards heaven and the other to earth.^[8] It is an expression of the active principle in everything; it is creation in heaven corresponding to the omnipotence of the word below. This letter is a pantacle in itself — that is, a character expressing the universal science. It is supplementary to the sacred signs of the Macrocosm and Microcosm; it explains the Masonic double-triangle and five-pointed blazing star; for the word is one and revelation is one. By endowing man with reason, God gave him speech; and revelation, manifold in its forms but one in its principle, consists entirely in the universal word, the interpreter of absolute reason. This is the significance of that term so much misconstrued, CATHOLICITY, which, in modern hieratic language, means INFALLIBILITY. The universal in reason is the Absolute, and the Absolute is the infallible. If absolute reason impelled universal society to believe irresistibly the utterance of a child, that child would be infallible by the ordination of God and of all humanity. Faith is nothing else but reasonable confidence in this unity of reason and in this universality of the word. To believe is to place confidence in that which as yet we do not know when reason assures us beforehand of ultimately knowing or at least recognizing it. Absurd are the so-called philosophers who cry: "I will never believe in a thing which I do not know!" Shallow reasoners! If you knew, would you need to believe?

But must I believe on chance and apart from reason? Certainly not. Blind and haphazard belief is superstition and folly. We may have faith in causes which reason compels us to admit on the evidence of effects known and appreciated by science. Science! Great word and great problem! What is science? We shall answer in the second chapter of this book.

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THE PILLARS OF THE TEMPLE

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THE TRIANGLE OF SOLOMON

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THE TETRAGRAM

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THE PENTAGRAM

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MAGICAL EQUILIBRIUM

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THE FIERY SWORD

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REALIZATION

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INITIATION

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THE KABBALAH

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THE MAGIC CHAIN

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THE GREAT WORK

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NECROMANCY

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TRANSMUTATIONS

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BLACK MAGIC

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BEWITCHMENTS

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ASTROLOGY

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CHARMS AND PHILTRES

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THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS — ELAGABALUS

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THE UNIVERSAL MEDICINE

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DIVINATION

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SUMMARY AND GENERAL KEY OF THE FOUR SECRET SCIENCES

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PREPARATIONS

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MAGICAL EQUILIBRIUM

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THE TRIANGLE OF PANTACLES

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THE CONJURATION OF THE FOUR

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THE BLAZING PENTAGRAM

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THE MEDIUM AND MEDIATOR

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THE SEPTENARY OF TALISMANS

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A WARNING TO THE IMPRUDENT

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THE CEREMONIAL OF INITIATES

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THE KEY OF OCCULTISM

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THE TRIPLE CHAIN

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THE GREAT WORK

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NECROMANCY

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TRANSMUTATIONS

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THE SABBATH OF THE SORCERERS

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WITCHCRAFT AND SPELLS

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THE WRITING OF THE STARS

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PHILTRES AND MAGNETISM

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THE MASTERY OF THE SUN

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THE THAUMATURGE

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THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS

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THE BOOK OF HERMES

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THE NUCTEMERON OF APOLLONIUS OF TYANA

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THE NUCTEMERON ACCORDING TO THE HEBREWS

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INDEX

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