Transcendental Magic
Page 11
“Ah, how do all my senses leap at this sight! I feel the young and sacred pleasure of life quivering in my nerves and veins. Was it a God who traced this sign which stills the vertigo of my soul, fills my poor heart with joy and, in a mysterious rapture, unveils the forces of Nature around me? Am I myself a God? All is so clear to me: I behold in these simple lines the revelation of active Nature to my soul. I realise for the first time the truth of the wise man's words: The world of spirits is not closed! Thy sense is obtuse, thy heart is dead! Arise! Bathe, O adept of science, thy breast, still enveloped by an earthly veil, in the splendours of the dawning day!” (Faust, Part i. sc. 1.)
On 24 July in the year 1854, the author of this book, filiphas Lévi, made an experiment of evocation with the Pentagram, after due preparation according to all the Ceremonies indicated in the thirteenth chapter of the “Ritual”. The success of this experiment, details of which, as regards its principles, will be found in the corresponding chapter of the present doctrinal part, establishes a new pathological fact, which men of true science will admit without difficulty. The experience, repeated even to a third time, gave results truly extraordinary, but positive and unmixed with hallucination. We invite sceptics to make a conscientious and intelligent trial on their own part before shrugging their shoulders and smiling. The figure of the Pentagram, completed in accordance with science and used by the author in his experiment, is that which is found at the head of this chapter, and it is more perfect than any in the Keys of Solomon or in the Magical Calendars of Tycho Brahe and Duchentau. We must remark, however, that the use of the Pentagram is most dangerous for operators who are not in possession of its complete and perfect understanding. The direction of the points of the star is in no sense arbitrary, and may change the entire character of an operation, as we shall explain in the “Ritual”.
Paracelsus, that innovator in Magic, who surpassed all other initiates in his unaided practical success, affirms that every magical figure and every kabalistic sign of the pantacles which compel spirits, may be reduced to two, which are the synthesis of all the others; these are the Sign of the Macrocosm or the Seal of Solomon, the form of which we have given already, and that of the Microcosm, more potent even than the first—that is to say, the Pentagram, of which he provides a most minute description in his occult philosophy. If it be asked how a sign can exercise so much power over spirits, we inquire in return why the whole Christian world bows down before that Sign of the Cross?1 The sign is nothing by itself, and has no force apart from the doctrine of which it is the summary and the logos. Now, a sign which summarizes, in their expression, all the occult forces of Nature, a sign which has ever exhibited to elementary spirits and others a power greater than their own, fills them naturally with respect and fear, enforcing their obedience by the empire of science and of will over ignorance and weakness. By the Pentagram also is measured the exact proportions of the great and unique Athanor necessary to the confection of the Philosophical Stone and the accomplishment of the Great Work. The most perfect alembic in which the Quintessence can be elaborated is conformable to this figure, and the Quintessence itself is represented by the Sign of the Pentagram.
1 Five is the number of the soul, which is the queen of the four elements.—Mystères de la Kabbale, p. 17. It is also the religious number, combining that of the Deity with that which belongs to woman. See La Clef des Grands Mystères, p. 26.
2 It is said elsewhere that the Universal Light is comparable to Divine Imagination, and that this world which suffers incessant mutation, though it remains invariable as regards the laws of its configuration, is an immense dream of God.—La Clef des Grands Mysteres, p. 235.
1 “That Magnetic Light which enables the future to be foreseen reveals also the hidden things of the present. Being universal life, it is the agent of human sensibility, transmitting diseases to some and health to others, according to the fatal influence of contacts or the laws of will. This explains the power of blessings and of spells, so plainly recognized by the great adepts and above all by the marvellous Paracelsus.”—La Clef des Grands Mystères, pp. 229, 230.
1 “In sleep the soul loses for a time its individual life and plunges in the universal life, which manifests, as we have said, by two contrary currents. . . . Sleep is a bath in the light of life or in the phosphorus of death. He who enters into slumber, carrying just thoughts, bathes in the merits of the just, but he who falls asleep nourishing false thoughts or thoughts of hatred is immersed in the dead sea, where ebbs and flows the infection of the wicked. . . . He who sleeps in impiety shall not awaken in Divine Benediction.”—Le Grand Arcane, p. 21, citing Isaac de Loria: DE REVOLUTIONIBUS ANIMARUM in the Kabbala Denudata of Rosenroth. In La Clef des Grands Mystères, p. 128, it is said more clearly that we are immersed in the Astral Light by sleep.
1 In a later work Éliphas Lévi referred to the DIAPHANE or TRANSLUCID under the name of the Plastic Mediator, described otherwise as a magnet which attracts or repels the Astral Light under the impetus of will. It is a luminous body which produces forms analogous to ideas with the greatest facility. It is the mirror of imagination and is nourished by the Astral Light precisely as the organic body is nourished by the products of earth. In sleep it absorbs the Astral Light by immersion and during waking by a kind of respiration, less or more slow.—La Clef des Grands Mystères, p. 122. See also p. 287, where it is said.that the Plastic Mediator is that portion of Astral Light which is specialized in each of us and serves us by the assimilation and configuration of the elements necessary to our existence. Our will acts directly thereupon, shaping the Mediator in its own image and endowing it with aptitudes in conformity with its proper tendencies. Levi argues herefrom that moral monstrosity produces physical ugliness, for the Astral Mediator, that interior architect of our corporeal edifice, modifies unceasingly in accordance with our real or factitious needs.
1 There is, however, no recurrence to this subject.
1 “A simple scapular, worn by a truly Christian person, is a more invincible talisman than the Ring and Pantacle of Solomon. . . . The Mass is the most prodigious of evocations. . . . What are all talismans of antique science in the presence of Consecrated Host?”—Le Grand Arcane, pp. 67, 68.
VI F1
MAGICAL EQUILIBRIUM
TIPHERETH UNCUS
SUPREME intelligence is necessarily reasonable. God, in philosophy, may be only a hypothesis, but He is a hypothesis imposed by good sense on human reason. To personify the Absolute Reason is to determine the Divine Ideal. Necessity, liberty and reason—these are the great and supreme triangle of the Kabalists, who name reason KETHER, necessity CHOKMAH, and liberty BINAH, in their first or Divine Triad.2 Fatality, will and power, such is the magical triad, which corresponds in things human to the Divine Triad. Fatality is the inevitable sequence of effects and causes in a determined order. Will is the directing faculty of intelligent forces for the conciliation of the liberty of persons with the necessity of things. Power is the wise application of will which enlists fatality itself in the accomplishment of the desires of the sage. When Moses smote the rock, he did not create the spring of water; he revealed it to the people, because occult science had made it known to himself by means of the divining rod. It is in like manner with all miracles of Magic; a law exists, which is ignored by the vulgar and made use of by the initiate. Occult laws are often opposed diametrically to common ideas. For example, the crowd believes in the sympathy of things which are alike and in the hostility of things contrary, but it is the opposite which is the true law. It used to be affirmed that Nature abhors the void, but it should be said that Nature desires it, were the void not, in physics, the most irrational of fictions. In all things the vulgar mind habitually takes shadow for reality, turns its back upon light and is reflected in the obscurity which it projects itself. The forces of Nature are at the disposal of one who knows how to resist them. Are you master sufficiently of yourself to be never intoxicated? Then will you direct the terrible and fatal power of i
ntoxication. If you would make others drunk, possess them with the desire of drink, but do not partake of it yourself. That man will dispose of the love of others who is master of his own. If you would possess, do not give. The world is magnetized by the light of the sun, and we are magnetized by the Astral Light of the world. That which operates in the body of the planet repeats itself in us. Within us there are three analogical and hierarchic worlds, as in all Nature.
Man is the Microcosm or little world, and, according to the doctrine of analogies, whatsoever is in the great world is reproduced in the small. Hence we have three centres of fiuidic attraction and projection—the brain, the heart, or epigastric region, and the genital organ. Each of these instruments is one and twofold—in other words, we find the suggestion of the triad therein. Each attracts on one side and repels on the other. It is by means of such apparatus that we place ourselves in communication with the universal fluid supplied to us by the nervous system. These three centres are, moreover, the seat of a triple magnetic operation, as we shall explain elsewhere. When the Magus has attained lucidity, whether through the mediation of a pythoness or by his own development, he communicates and directs at will the magnetic vibrations in the whole mass of the Astral Light, the currents of which he divines by means of the Magic Wand, which is a perfected divining rod. By the aid of these vibrations he influences the nervous system of persons made subject to his action, accelerates or suspends the currents of life, soothes or tortures, heals or hurts—in fine, slays or brings to life. . . . Here, however, we pause in presence of the smile of incredulity. Let us permit it to enjoy the easy triumph of denying what it does not know.1
We shall demonstrate later on that death is preceded always by a lethargic sleep, and hence takes place gradually; that resurrection is possible in certain cases; that lethargy is a real but uncompleted death; and that the final paroxysm is in many cases subsequent to inhumation. This, however, is not the subject of the present chapter. We affirm now that a lucid will can act upon the mass of the Astral Light, and in concurrence with other wills, which it absorbs and draws along, can determine great and irresistible currents. We say also that the Astral Light condenses or rarefies in proportion as currents accumulate, more or less, at certain centres. When it is deficient in the energy required for the support of life, diseases accompanied by sudden decomposition follow, of a kind which baffle physicians. There is no other cause, for example, in the case of cholera-morbus, and the swarms of animalculae observed or supposed by some specialists may be the effect rather than the cause. Cholera should be treated therefore by insufflation, did not the operator thereby run the chance of an exchange with the patient which would be very formidable for himself. Every intelligent effort of will is a projection of the human fluid or light, and here it is needful to distinguish the human from the Astral Light, and Animal from Universal Magnetism. In making use of the word fluid, we employ an accepted expression, and seek to be understoood in this manner, but we are far from deciding that the latent light is a fluid. Everything prompts us, on the contrary, to prefer the system of vibrations in the explanation of this phenomenal subject. However it may be, the light in question, being the instrument of life, cleaves naturally to all living centres, attaches itself to the nucleus of planets, even as to the heart of man—and by the heart we understand magically the great sympathetic—identifying itself with the individual life of the being which it animates, and it is by this quality of sympathetic assimilation that it is distributed without confusion. Hence it is terrestrial in its affinity with the sphere of the earth and human exclusively in its affinity with men.1
It is for this reason that electricity, caloric, light and magnetism, produced by ordinary physical means, not only do not originate, but tend rather to neutralize the effects of Animal Magnetism. The Astral Light, subordinated to a blind mechanism, and proceeding from arbitrary automatic centres, is a dead light and works mathematically, following given impulsions or fatal laws. The human light is fatal only to the ignorant, performing chance experiments; in the seer it is subjected to intelligence, submitted to imagination and dependent on will. This light, continually projected by the will, constitutes the personal atmospheres of Swedenborg. The body absorbs what environs it and radiates perpetually by projecting its influences and invisible molecules; it is the same with the spirit, so that this phenomenon, by some mystics termed Respiration, has really the influence, both physical and moral, which is assigned to it. It is undoubtedly contagious to breathe the same air as diseased persons, and to be within the circle of attraction and expansion which surrounds the wicked.
When the magnetic atmosphere of two persons is so equilibrated that the attractive faculty of one draws the expansive faculty of the other, a tendency is produced which is termed sympathy; then imagination, calling up to it all the rays or reflections analogous to that which it experiences, makes a poem of the desires which captivate will, and if the persons differ in sex, it occasions in them, or more commonly in the weaker of the two, a complete intoxication of the Astral Light, which is termed passion par excellence, or love. Love is one of the great instruments of magical power, but it is categorically forbidden to the Magus, at least as an intoxication or passion. Woe to the Samson of the Kabalah if he permit himself to be put asleep by Delilah! The Hercules of science, who exchanges his royal sceptre for the distaff of Omphale, will soon experience the vengeance of Dejanira, and nothing will be left for him but the pyre of Mount Oeta, in order to escape the devouring folds of the coat of Nessus. Sexual love is ever an illusion, for it is the result of an imaginary mirage. The Astral Light is the universal seducer, typified by the serpent of Genesis.1 This subtle agent, ever active, ever vigorous, ever fruitful in alluring dreams and sensuous images; this force, which of itself is blind and subordinated to every will, whether for good or evil; this ever-renewing circulus of unbridled life, which produces vertigo in the imprudent; this corporeal spirit; this fiery body; this impalpable omnipresent ether; this monstrous seduction of Nature—how shall we define it comprehensively and how characterize its action? To some extent indifferent in itself, it lends itself to good as to evil; it transmits light and propagates darkness; it may be called equally Lucifer and Lucifuge; it is a serpent but it is also an aureole; it is a fire, but it may belong equally to the torments of infernus or the sacrifice of incense offered up to heaven. To dispose of it, we must, like the predestined woman, set our foot upon its head.
In the elementary world water corresponds to the kabalistic woman and fire to the serpent. To subdue the serpent, that is, to govern the circle of the Astral Light, we must place ourselves outside its currents: in other words, we must isolate ourselves. For this reason Apollonius of Tyana wrapped himself completely in a mantle of fine wool, setting his feet thereon and drawing it over his head. Then he bent his back in semicircular fashion, and closed his eyes, after performing certain rites—probably magnetic passes and sacramental words, designed to fix imagination and determine the action of will. The woollen mantle is of great use in Magic and was the common conveyance of sorcerers on their way to the Sabbath, which proves that the sorcerers did not really go to the Sabbath, but the Sabbath came to the sorcerers, when isolated in their mantle, and brought before their TRANSLUCID images analogous to their magical preoccupations, combined with reflections of all kindred acts accomplished previously in the world.
This torrent of universal life is represented also in religious doctrines by the expiatory fire of hell. It is the instrument of initiation, the monster to be overcome, the enemy to subdue; it is this which brings to our evocations and to the conjurations of Goetic Magic such swarms of larvae and phantoms. Therein are preserved all the fantastic and fortuitous assemblages of forms which people our nightmares with such abominable monstrosities. To be sucked down by this whirling stream is to fall into abysses of madness, more frightful than those of death; to expel the shades of this chaos and compel it to give perfect forms to our thoughts—this is to be a man of genius; it is
to create, it is to be victorious over hell! The Astral Light directs the instincts of animals and offers battle to the intelligence of man, which it strives to pervert by the enticements of its reflections and the illusion of its images. It is a fatal and inevitable operation, directed and made still more calamitous by elementary spirits and suffering souls, whose restless wills seek out sympathies in our weakness and tempt us, but not so much to destroy us as to win friends for themselves.
That book of consciences which, according to Christian doctrine, shall be opened at the last day, is no other than the Astral Light, which preserves the impress of every logos—that is to say, of all actions and all forms. Our acts modify our magnetic respiration in such a way that a seer, meeting any person for the first time, can tell whether he is innocent or criminal, and what are his virtues or his crimes. This faculty, which belongs to divination, was called by the Christian mystics of the early Church the discernment of spirits.
Those who abdicate the empire of reason and permit their wills to wander in pursuit of reflections in the Astral Light, are subject to alternations of mania and melancholy which have originated all the marvels of demoniacal possession, though it is true, at the same time, that by means of these reflections impure spirits can act upon such souls, make use of them as docile instruments and even habitually torment their organism, wherein they enter and reside by obsession, or embryonically. These kabalistic terms are explained in the Hebrew book of the Revolution of Souls, of which our thirteenth chapter will contain a succinct analysis. It is therefore extremely dangerous to make sport of the Mysteries of Magic; it is above all excessively rash to practise its rites from curiosity, by way of experiment and as if to exploit higher forces. The inquisitive who, without being adepts, busy themselves with evocations or occult magnetism, are like children playing with fire in the neighbourhood of a cask of gunpowder; sooner or later they will fall victims to some terrible explosion.