Transcendental Magic

by Eliphas Levi

  But the most terrific of all philtres are the mystical exal tations of misdirected devotion. Will ever any impurities equal the nightmares of St Anthony or the tortures of St Theresa and St Angela de Foligny? The last applied a red- hot iron to her rebellious flesh, and found that the material fire was cooling to her hidden ardours. With what violence does Nature cry out for that which is denied her, but is brooded over continually to increase detestation thereof! The pretended bewitchments of Magdalen Bavan, of Miles de la Palud and de la Cadi ere, began with mysticism. The excessive fear of a given thing makes it almost invariably inevitable. To describe the two curves of a circle is to meet at the same point. Nicholas Remigious, criminal judge of Lorraine, who burnt alive eight hundred women as sorcerers, beheld Magic everywhere: it was his fixed idea, his mania. He was eager to preach a crusade against sorcerers, with whom Europe, in his opinion, was swarming; in despair that his word was not taken when he affirmed that nearly everyone in the world had been guilty of Magic, he ended by declaring that he was himself a sorcerer and was burned on his own confession.

  To preserve ourselves against influences, the first condition is to forbid excitement to the imagination. All who are prone to exaltation are more or less mad, and a maniac is ever governed by his mania. Place yourself therefore above puerile fears and vague desires; believe in supreme wisdom and be assured that this wisdom, having given you under standing as the means of knowledge, cannot seek to lay snares for your intelligence or reason. Everywhere about you are effects proportioned to their causes; causes are directed and modified by understanding in the realm of humanity; in a word, you will find goodness stronger and more respected than evil: why then should you assume an immense unreason in the infinite, seeing that there is reason in the finite? Truth is hidden from no one. God is visible in His works, and He requires nothing contrary to its nature from any being, for He is Himself the author of that nature. Faith is confidence; have confidence, not in men who malign reason, for they are fools or impostors, but in that eternal reason which is the Divine Word, that true light which is offered like the sun to the intuition of every human creature coming into this world. If you believe in absolute reason; if you desire truth and justice before all things, you will have no occasion to fear anyone, and you will love those only who are deserving of love. Your natural light will repel instinctively that of the wicked, because it will be ruled by your will. Thus, even poisonous substances, if such are administered to you, will not affect your intelligence; ill indeed they may make you, but never criminal.

  What most contributes to render women hysterical is their enervating and hypocritical education; if they took more exercise, if they were instructed more frankly and fully in matters of the world, they would be less capricious and consequently less accessible to evil tendencies. Weakness ever sympathizes with vice, because vice is a weakness which assumes the mask of strength. Madness holds reason in horror, and on all subjects it delights in the exaggerations of falsehood. In the first place therefore cure your diseased intelligence. The cause of all bewitchments, the poison of all philtres, the power of all sorcerers are there. As to the possible administration of narcotics or other drugs, it is a question for the doctor and the law; but we do not think such enormities very likely to be repeated at this day. Lovelaces no longer entrance Clarissas otherwise than by their gallantries, and potions, like abductions by masked men and imprisonments in subterranean dungeons, have passed even out of our romances. They must be relegated to the Confessional of the Black Penitents or the ruins of the Castle of Udolpho.

  1 In his Dictionnaire de Littérature Chrétienne, Lévi describes Calmet as a scholar of vast erudition but deficient in critical faculty. As regards the Treatise on Apparitions, it is marked by excessive credulity.

  CHAPTER XIX

  THE MASTERY OF THE SUN

  WE come now to that number which is attributed in the Tarot to the Sign of the Sun. The denary of Pythagoras and the triad multiplied by itself represent wisdom in its application to the Absolute. It is with the Absolute therefore that we are concerned here. To discover such Absolute in the infinite, the indefinite and the finite, is the Great Work of the sages, that which is termed by Hermes the Work of the Sun.1 To find the immovable foundations of true religious faith, of philosophical truth and of metallic transmutation, here is the whole secret of Hermes and here the Philosophical Stone. This Stone is both one and manifold: it is decomposed by analysis and recomposed by synthesis. In analysis it is a powder, the alchemical powder of projection; before analysis and in synthesis it is a stone. The Philosophical Stone, say the masters, must not be exposed to the air, nor to the eyes of the profane; it must be kept in concealment and preserved carefully in the most secret receptacle of the laboratory, the key of the place being always carried upon the person.

  He who possesses the Great Arcanum is truly king and is indeed above any king, for he is inaccessible to all fears and to all vain hopes. In any malady of soul and body, a single fragment broken from the precious Stone, a single grain of the divine powder are more than sufficient for their cure. “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,” as the Master said.2

  Salt, Sulphur and Mercury are only accessory elements and passive instruments of the great enterprise. Everything depends, as we have said, upon the interior tnagnes of Paracelsus. The work consists entirely in Projection, and Projection is accomplished perfectly by the effective and realizable intelligence of a single word. There is but one important operation, and that is Sublimation, which is nothing less, according to Geber, than the elevation of the dry substance by means of fire, with adherence to its proper vessel. Whosoever would acquire understanding of the Great Word and possess the Great Arcanum, after studying the principles of our “Doctrine”, should read the Hermetic philosophers carefully, and he will doubtless attain initiation, as others have attained it;2 but for the key of their allegories he must take the one dogma of Hermes, contained in the “Emerald Table”, while to classify the knowledge and direct operation he must follow the order indicated in the kabalistic alphabet of the Tarot, of which an absolute and complete explanation will be given in the last chapter of this work.

  Among the rare and priceless treatises which contain the mysteries of the Great Arcanum, the “Chemical Pathway or Manual” of Paracelsus must be placed in the first rank, as comprising all the mysteries of demonstrative physics and the most secret Kabalah. This unique manuscript is preserved in the Vatican Library; a copy was transcribed by Sendivogius and was used by Baron Tschoudy when composing the Hermetic Catechism contained in his work entitled The Blazing Star.1 This catechism, which we point out to instructed Kabalists as a substitute for the incomparable treatise of Paracelsus, expounds all the essential principles of the Great Work in a form so clear and complete that a person must be absolutely wanting in the quality of occult comprehension if he fail in attaining the absolute truth by its study. We shall now give a succinct analysis of this work, together with a few words of commentary.

  Raymond Lully, one of the grand and sublime masters of science, says that before we can make gold we must have gold. Out of nothing we can make nothing; wealth is not created absolutely: it is increased and multiplied. Hence let aspirants to knowledge understand and realize that neither miracles nor jugglers' feats are demanded of the adept. Hermetic Science, like all real sciences, is mathematically demonstrable. Even its material results are as exact as a well-worked equation. Hermetic gold is not only a true doctrine, a shadowless light, truth unalloyed with falsehood; it is also material, actual, pure gold, the most precious which can be found in the veins of the earth; but the Living Gold, Living Sulphur, or true Fire of the Philosopher, must be sought in the House of Mercury. This fire feeds on air; to express its attractive and expansive power, a better comparison is impossible than that of lightning, which primally is a dry and terrestrial exhalation united to humid vapour, and afterwards, assuming an igneous nature, in virtue of its exaltation, acts on its inherent humidity, which it at
tracts and transmutes into its own nature, when it falls rapidly to earth, where it is drawn by a fixed nature similar to its own. These words, enigmatic in form but clear in essence, express openly what the philosophers understand by their Mercury fructified by Sulphur, which becomes the master and regenerator of Salt. It is AZOTH, universal magnesia, the Great Magical Agent, the Astral Light, the light of life, fertilized by animic force, by intellectual energy, which they compare to Sulphur on account of its affinities with Divine Fire. As to Salt, it is absolute matter. All that is material contains Salt, and all Salt can be converted into pure gold by the combined action of Sulphur and Mercury, which at times act with swiftness that transmutation can take place in an instant or in an hour, without labour for the operator and almost without expense. At other times, when the tendencies of the atmospheric media are adverse, the operation requires several days, months, and occasionally even years.

  As we have said, there are two palmary natural laws— two essential laws—which, balanced against another, pro duce the universal equilibrium of things. These are fixity and motion, analogous to truth and discovery in philosophy, and in absolute conception to necessity and liberty, which are the very essence of God. The Hermetic philosophers give the name of fixed to all that is ponderable, to all that tends by its nature towards central rest and immobility. Whatsoever obeys more naturally and readily the law of motion, they term volatile; and they compose their Stone by analysis, that is, the volatilization of the fixed; then by synthesis, that is, the fixation of the volatile, which they effect by applying to the fixed—called their Salt—Sulphurated Mercury or light of life, directed and rendered omnipotent by a secret operation. They become masters in this manner of all Nature, and their Stone is found wherever there is Salt, which is the equivalent to saying that no substance is foreign to the Great Work and that even the most apparently contemptible and vile matters can be changed into gold, which is true in this sense, as we have said, that all contain the fundamental Salt, represented in our emblems by the cubic stone itself, as may be seen in the symbolic and universal frontispiece to the Keys of Basil Valentine. To know how to extract from all matter the pure Salt which is concealed in it is to possess the secret of the Stone. It is therefore a saline stone, which the Od, or universal Astral Light, decomposes or recomposes. It is one and many, for it can be dissolved and incorporated with other substances, like ordinary salt. Obtained by analysis, it may be termed the UNIVERSAL SUBLIMATE; recovered by the synthetic way, it is the veritable PANACEA of the ancients, for it cures all diseases, whether of soul or body, and is termed in an eminent manner the Medicine of all Nature. When, by means of absolute initiation, we can dispose of the forces of the Universal Agent, this Stone is always to our hand, for its extraction is then a simple and easy operation, far different from projection or metallic realization. The Stone in its sublimated state must not be exposed to the air, which might dissolve it and spoil its virtue. Moreover, to inhale its exhalations is not devoid of danger. The wise man more readily conserves it in the natural envelopes, knowing that he can extract it by a single effort of his will and by a single application of the Universal Agent to the envelopes, which Kabalists term shells. To express hieroglyphically this law of prudence, the sages ascribed to their Mercury, personified in Egypt as Hermanubis, a dog's head, and to their Sulphur, represented by the Baphomet of the Temple or Prince of the Sabbath, that goat's head which brought such odium upon the occult associations of the middle ages.

  For the mineral work, the First Matter is exclusively mineral, but it is not a metal. It is a metallized salt. This Matter is called vegetable because it resembles a fruit, and animal because it produces a kind of milk and blood. It contains within itself the fire by which it must be dissolved.

  1 “The uncreated infinite and the infinitely created finite are like two parallel straight lines which approach each other eternally without ever being able to meet.”—Le Livre des Sages, p. 64. It should be observed that an “infinitely created finite” is metaphysical nonsense, arrayed in caps and bells.

  2 At a later period Éliphas Lévi produced two definitions of the Great Secret which scarcely belong to one another, though they appear in the same chapter: (1) The Great Secret of virtue, virtuality and life—whether temporal or eternal—may be formulated as the art of balancing forces to equilibrate movement; (2) the Great Secret of Magic, the One and Incommunicable Secret, has for its object to place in a sense divine power at the service of the will of man.—Le Grand Arcane, PP. 37, 38.

  1 “The great, indicible, perilous, incomprehensible arcanum may be formulated definitely as that of the divinity of man. It is ineffable because in the very act of its formulation it becomes the most monstrous of all falsehoods. As a fact, man is not God, which notwithstanding the most valiant, most obscure and most splendid of religions tells us to worship the Man-God. . . . The Man-God has neither rights nor duties: he has knowledge, will and power. He is more than free, he is master. He imposes obedience but himself obeys not, because none can command him. What others call duty he terms his good pleasure; he does good because he wills it and can will nothing else; he co-operates freely with all justice, and for him sacrifice is the luxury of moral life and magnificence of heart. He is implacable towards evil because he is without hatred for the wicked man. He regards reparative chastisement as a benefaction and does not understand vengeance. Such is he who has reached the central point of equilibrium, and he can be called the Man-God without blasphemy or folly, because his soul is identified with the eternal principle of truth and justice. It is towards this sovereign independence that the human soul must press forward amidst the difficulties of progress. Here is the true Grand Secret of Occultism, for so is realised the mysterious promise of the serpent: Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”—Le Grand Arcane, pp. 214-18.

  1 There is nothing in the work of Baron Tschoudy to indicate that he drew from the source mentioned by Levi, nor am I acquainted with any evidence for the statement that Sendivogius transcribed the Vatican MS. If he did, there is certainly none for the notion that this transcript came into the possession of the author of L'Étoile Flamboyante.

  CHAPTER XX

  THE THAUMATURGE

  WE have defined miracles as the natural effects of exceptional causes. The immediate action of the human will upon bodies, or at least that action exercised without visible means, constitutes a miracle in the physical order. The influence exercised upon wills or intelligences, either suddenly or within a given time, and capable of subjugating thoughts, changing the most determined resolutions, paralysing the most violent passions—this influence constitutes a miracle in the moral order. The common error concerning miracles is to regard them as effects without causes, contradictions of Nature, sudden vagaries of the Divine Mind, not seeing that a single miracle of this class would destroy the universal harmony and reduce the universe to chaos.1 There are miracles which are impossible even for God, namely, those that involve absurdity. Could God be absurd for one instant, neither Himself nor the world would be in existence the moment following. To expect from the Divine Arbiter an effect having a disproportionate cause, or even no cause at all, is what is called tempting God: it is casting one's self into the void. God operates by His works—in heaven by angels and on earth by men. Hence, in the circle of angelic action, the angels can perform all that is possible for God, and in the human circle of action men can dispose equally of Divine Omnipotence. In the heaven of human conceptions it is humanity which creates God, and men think that God has made them in His image because they have made Him in theirs. The domain of man is all corporeal and visible Nature on earth, and if he cannot rule suns and stars, he can at least calculate their motion, compute their distances and identify his will with their influence. He can modify the atmosphere, act up to a certain point upon the seasons, heal or harm his neighbours, preserve life and inflict death. By the conservation of life we understand resurrection in certain cases, as already established. The absolute in re
ason and volition is the greatest power which can be given any man to attain, and it is by means of this power that he per forms what astonishes the multitude under the name of miracles.

  The most perfect purity of intention is indispensable to the thaumaturge, and in the next place a favourable current and unlimited confidence. The man who has come to fear nothing and desire nothing is master of all. This is the meaning of that beautiful allegory of the Gospel, wherein the Son of God, thrice victor over the unclean spirit, receives ministration from angels in the wilderness. Nothing on earth withstands a free and rational will. When the wise man says, “I will,” it is God Himself Who wills, and all that he commands takes place. It is the knowledge and self-reliance of the physician which constitute the virtue of his prescriptions, whence thaumaturgy is the only real and efficacious remedy. It follows that occult therapeutics are apart from all vulgar medication. It makes use for the most part of words and insufflations, and communicates by will a diverse virtue to the simplest substances—water, oil, wine camphor, salt. The water of homoeopathists is truly a mag netized and enchanted water, which works by means of faith. The dynamic substances added in, so to speak, infinitesimal quantities are consecrations and signs of the physician's will.