by Eliphas Levi
We have mentioned already the Sympathetic Medicine of Paracelsus, who medicated waxen limbs and operated upon discharges of blood from wounds for the cure of wounds themselves. This system permitted the employment of more than usually violent remedies, and the chief specifics were sublimate and vitriol. We believe that homoeopathy is a reminiscence of the theories of Paracelsus and a return to his wise practices. But we shall follow up this subject in a special treatise consecrated to occult medicine.1
Contracts by parents forestalling the future of their children are bewitchments which cannot be condemned too strongly; children dedicated in white, for example, scarcely ever prosper; those who were formerly devoted to celibacy fell commonly into debauch, or ended in despair and mad ness. Man is not permitted to do violence to destiny, still less to impose bonds upon the lawful use of liberty.
As a supplement or appendix to this chapter, we will add a few words about mandragores and androids which several writers on Magic confound with waxen images serving the purposes of bewitchment. The natural mandragore is a filamentous root which presents more or less as a whole either the figure of a man, or that of the virile members. It is slightly narcotic and an aphrodisiacal virtue was ascribed to it by the ancients, who represented it as being sought by Thessalian sorcerers for the composition of philtres. Is this root the umbilical vestige of our terrestrial origin, as a certain magical mysticism has suggested? We dare not affirm it seriously, but it is true all the same that man issued from the slime of earth and his first appearance must have been in the form of a rough sketch. The analogies of Nature compel us to admit the notion, at least as a possibility. The first men were, in this case, a family of gigantic, sensitive mandragores, animated by the sun, who rooted themselves up from the earth. Such an assumption not only does not exclude, but on the contrary positively supposes, creative will and the providential co-operation of a First Cause, which we have REASON TO CALL GOD.
Some alchemists, impressed by this idea, indulged in reveries on the culture of the mandragore and experimented in the artificial reproduction of a soil sufficiently fruitful and a sun sufficiently active to humanize the said root, and thus create men without the concurrence of the female. Others, who regarded humanity as the synthesis of animals, despaired about vitalizing the mandragore, but they crossed monstrous pairs and projected human seed into animal earth, only for the production of shameful crimes and barren deformities. The third method of making the android was by galvanic machinery. One of these almost intelligent automata was attributed to Albertus Magnus, and it is said that St Thomas destroyed it with one blow from a stick because he was perplexed by its answers. This story is an allegory: the android was primitive scholasticism, which was broken by the Summa of St Thomas, that daring innovator who first substituted the absolute law of reason for arbitrary divinity, by formulating an axiom which we cannot repeat too often, since it comes from such a master: “A thing is not just because God wills it, but God wills it because it is just.”
The real and serious android of the ancients was a secret which they have kept hidden from all eyes, and Mesmer was the first who dared to divulge it. It was the projection of the will of the Magus into another body, organized and served by an elementary spirit; in more modern and intelligible terms, it was a magnetic subject.1
1 Éliphas Lévi published several further works and left a mass of MSS. behind him, but the treatise specified above is not numbered among them.
1 A magnetic subject in the experiments of Mesmer was not a subject possessed by an elementary spirit, and the form in which Lévi expresses his notion is little short of nonsense. If he means to afhrm that elementary spirits took possession of magnetized subjects in operations of old Magic, the challenge against him would be to produce his evidence. There is none in the known records.
CHAPTER XVII
THE WRITING OF THE STARS
WE have finished with infernus, and we breathe the fresh air freely as we turn to daylight after traversing the crypts of Black Magic. Get thee behind us, Satan! We renounce thee, with all thy pomps and works, and still more with all thy deformities, thy meanness, thy nothingness, thy deception! The Great Initiator beheld thee fall from heaven like a thunderbolt. The Christian legend changes thee, making thee set thy dragon's head mildly beneath the foot of the Mother of God. Thou art for us the image of unintelligence and mystery; thou art unreason and blind fanaticism; thou art the inquisition and its hell; thou art the god of Torque- mada and Alexander VI; thou hast become the sport of children, and thy final place is at the side of Polichinello. Henceforth thou art only a grotesque figure in our travelling booths and a means of instruction in a few so-called religious markets.
After the sixteenth Key of the Tarot, which represents the downfall of Satan's temple, we find on the seventeenth leaf a magnificent and gracious emblem. A naked woman, a young and immortal maid, pours down on earth the water of universal life from two ewers, one of gold and one of silver. Hard by there is a flowering shrub, on which rests the butterfly of Psyche; above shines an eight-pointed star with seven other stars around it. “I believe in eternal life!” Such is the final article of the Christian symbol, and this of itself is a full profession of faith.
When they compared the calm and peaceful immensity of heaven, thronged with immovable lights, to the tumults and darkness of this world, the ancients believed themselves to have discovered in that beautiful book, written in letters of gold, the final utterance of the enigma of destinies. In imagin ation they drew lines of correspondence between these shining points of divine writing; and it is said that the first constellations marked out by the shepherds of Chaldea were also the first letters of the kabalistic alphabet. These characters, expressed first of all by means of lines, then enclosed in hieroglyphic figures, would, according to M. Moreau de Dammartin, author of a very curious treatise on alphabetic characters, have determined the ancient Magi in the choice of the Tarot figures, which are considered by this man of learn ing, as by ourselves, an essentially hieratic and primitive book. Thus, in his opinion, the Chinese Tseu, the Hebrew Aleph and the Greek ALPHA expressed hieroglyphically by the figure of the juggler, would be borrowed from the constellation of the Crane, in the vicinity of the celestial Fish, a sign of the eastern hemisphere. The Chinese Tcheou, the Hebrew BETH and the Latin B, corresponding to Pope Joan or Juno, were formed from the head of the Ram; the Chinese Yn, the Hebrew GHIMEL and the Latin G, represented by the Empress, would be derived from the constellation of the Great Bear, etc. The Kabalist Gaffarel, whom we have cited more than once, erected a planisphere in which all the constellations form Hebrew letters; but we confess that the con figurations are frequently arbitrary in the highest degree, and upon the indication of a single star, for example, we can see no reason why a should be traced rather than a or four stars will also give indifferently a , , or , as well as an . We are deterred therefore from reproducing a copy of Gaffarel's planisphere, examples of which are, moreover, not exceedingly rare. It was included in the work of Montfaucon on the religions and superstitions of the world, and also in the treatise upon Magic published by the mystic Eckartshau-sen.1 Scholars, moreover, are not agreed upon the configuration of the letters of the primitive alphabet. The Italian Tarot, of which the lost Gothic originals are much to be regretted, connects by the disposition of its figures with the Hebrew alphabet in use after the captivity, and known as the Assyrian alphabet; but there are fragments of anterior Tarots where the disposition is different. There should be no conjecture in matters of research, and hence we suspend our judgement in the expectation of fresh and more con clusive discoveries. As to the alphabet of the stars, we believe it to be instinctive, like the configuration of clouds, which seem to assume any form that imagination lends them. Star-groups are like points in geomancy or the figures of cartomancy. They are a pretext for auto-magnetism, an instrument to fix and determine native intuition. Thus, a Kabalist, familiar with mystic hieroglyphics, will perceive signs in the stars which will not be disc
erned by a simple shepherd, but the shepherd, on his part, will observe combinations that will escape the Kabalist. Country people substitute a rake for the belt and sword of Orion, while a Kabalist recognizes in the same sign—considered as a whole —all the mysteries of Ezekiel, the Ten SEPHIROTH arranged in a triadic manner, a central triangle formed of four stars, then a line of three stars making the JOD, the two figures taken together expressing the mysteries of BERESHITH, and finally, four stars constituting the wheels of MERCAVAH, and completing the divine chariot. Looked at after another manner, and postulating other ideal lines, he will notice a well-formed GHIMEL placed above JOD, in a large DALETH, a symbol typifying the strife between good and evil, with the final triumph of good. As a fact, the GHIMEL superposed on the JOD is the triad produced by unity, the manifestation of the Divine Word, whilst the reversed DALETH is the triad composed of the evil duad multipied by itself. Thus re garded, the figure of Orion would be identical with that of the angel Michaël doing battle with the dragon, and the appearance of this sign, so understood, would be, for the Kabalist, a portent of victory and happiness.
A long contemplation of the sky exalts imagination, and then the stars respond to our thoughts. The lines drawn mentally from one to another by primitive observers have given man his first notions of geometry. Accordingly as our soul is troubled or at rest, the stars seem burning with menace or sparkling with hope. The sky is thus the mirror of the human soul, and when we think that we are reading in the stars it is in ourselves we read.
Gaffarel, applying the presages of celestial writing to the destinies of empires, says that not in vain did the ancients place all signs of evil augury in the northern region of the sky; calamities have been in all ages regarded as coming from the north to spread themselves over the earth by the invasion of the south. “For this reason,” he tells us, “the ancients represented in the northern parts of the heaven a serpent or dragon near two bears, since these animals are the true hieroglyphs of tyranny, pillage and all oppression. As a fact, glance at history, and you will see that all great devastations proceed from the north. The Assyrians or Chaldeans, incited by Nebuchadnezzar or Salmanasor, gave fullest evidence of this truth by the destruction of the most splendid and most holy temple and city in the universe, and by the complete overthrow of a people whom God Himself had taken under His special protection and of whom He termed Himself Father especially. So also that other Jeru salem, Rome the blessed, has it not too experienced fre quently the violence of this evil northern race, when it beheld its altars demolished and the towers of its proud edifices brought level with the foundations, through the cruelty of Alaric, Genseric, Attila and other princes of the Goths, Huns, Vandals and Alani ___ Very properly therefore in the secrets of this celestial writing, do we read calamities and misfortunes on the northern side, since a septentrione pandetur omne malum. Now, the word , which we translate by pandetur, is also an equivalent of depingetur or scribetur, and the prophecy signifies equally: All misfortunes of the world are written in the northern sky.”1
We have transcribed this passage at length, because it is not without application in our own day, when the north once more seems to threaten Europe;2 but it is also the destiny of hoar-frost to be melted by the sun, and darkness disappears of itself when the light manifests. Such is for us the last word of prophecy and the secret of the future. Gaffarel adds yet another prognosis drawn from the stars, as, for example, the progressive weakening of the Ottoman empire; but, as mentioned already, his constellated letters are exceedingly arbitrary. He states, for the rest, that he derived his predictions from a Hebrew Kabalist, Rabbi Chomer, but does not pretend to understand him especially well.
Here follows a table of magical characters designed according to the zodiacal constellations by ancient astro logers: each of them represents the name of a genius, be he good or evil. It is known that the Signs of the Zodiac correspond to various celestial influences and consequently signify an annual alternative of good or evil.
The names of the genii designated by the above charac ters are: For the Ram, SATAARAN and SARAHIEL; for the Bull, BAGDAL, and ARAZIEL; for the TWINS, SAGRAS and SARAÏEL; for the Crab, RAHDAR and PHAKIEL; for the Lion, Sagham and Seratiel; for the Virgin, Iadara and SCHALTIEL; for the Balance, GRASGARBEN and HADAKIEL; for the Scorpion, RIEHOL and SAISSAIEL; for the Archer, VHNORI and SARITAÏEL; for the Goat, SAGDALON and SEMAKIEL; for the Water-Bearer, SSAKMAKILE; for the Fishes, RASAMASA and VACABIEL.
The wise man, seeking to read the sky, must observe also the days of the moon, the influence of which is very great in astrology. The moon attracts and repels alternately the magnetic fluid of the earth, and thus produces the ebb and flow of the sea; we must be well acquainted therefore with its phases and be able to distinguish its days and hours. The new moon is favourable at the beginning of all magical works: from first quarter to full moon its influence is warm; from full moon to third quarter it is dry; and from third quarter to last it is cold. Here follow the special characters of all days of the moon, distinguished by the twenty-two Tarot Keys and by the signs of the seven planets.
1. The Juggler, or Magus.
The first day of the moon is that of the creation of the moon itself. This day is consecrated to mental enterprises and should be favourable for opportune innovations.
2. Pope Joan, or Occult Science.
The second day, the genius of which Enediel, was the fifth of creation, for the moon was made on the fourth day. The birds and fishes, created on this day, are living hiero glyphs of magical analogies and of the universal doctrine of Hermes. The water and air, which were filled thereby with forms of the Word, are elementary figures of the Mercury of the Sages, that is, of intelligence and speech. This day is propitious to revelations, initiations and great discoveries of science.
3. The Celestial Mother, or Empress.
The third day was that of man's creation.1 So is the moon called the Mother in Kabalah, when it is represented in association with the number 3. This day is favourable to generation and generally to all productions, whether of body or mind.
4. The Emperor, or Ruler.
The fourth day is baleful: it was that of the birth of Cain; but it is favourable to unjust and tyrannical enterprises.
5. The Pope, or Hierophant.
The fifth day is fortunate; it was that of the birth of Abel.
6. The Lover, or Liberty.
The sixth day is a day of pride; it was that of the birth of Lamech, who said unto his wives: “I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt. If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.” This day is propitious for conspiracies and rebellions.
7. The Chariot.
On the seventh day, birth of Hebron, who gave his name to the first of the seven sacred cities of Israel. A day of religion, prayers and success.
8. Justice.
Murder of Abel. Day of expiation.
9. The Old Man, or Hermit.
Birth of Methuselah. Day of blessing for children.
10. Ezekie Vs Wheel of Fortune.
Birth of Nebuchadnezzar. Reign of the Beast. Fatal day.
11. Strength.
Birth of Noah. Visions on this day are deceitful, but it is one of health and long life for children born on it.
12. The Victim, or Hanged Man.
Birth of Samuel. Prophetic and kabalistic day, favourable to the fulfilment of the Great Work.
13. Death.
Birthday of Canaan, the accursed son of Cham. Baleful day and fatal number.
14. The Angel of Temperance.
Blessing of Noah on the fourteenth day of the moon. This day is governed by the angel Cassiel of the hierarchy of Uriel.
15. Typhon, or the Devil.
Birth of Ishmael. Day of reprobation and exile.
16. The Blasted Tower.
Birthday of Jacob and Esau; the day also of Jacob's predestination, to Esau's ruin.
17. The Glittering Star.
Fire from he
aven burns Sodom and Gomorrah. Day of salvation for the good and ruin for the wicked: dangerous on a Saturday. It is under the dominion of the Scorpion.
18. The Moon.
Birth of Isaac. Wife's triumph. Day of conjugal affection and good hope.
19. The Sun.
Birth of Pharoah. A beneficent or fatal day for the great of earth, according to the different merits of the great.
20. The Judgement.
Birth of Jonah, the instrument of God's judgement. Propitious for Divine Revelations.
21. The World.
Birth of Saul, material royalty. Danger to mind and reason.
22.Influence of Saturn.
Birth of Job. Day of trial and suffering.
23. Influence of Venus.
Birth of Benjamin. Day of preference and tenderness.
