Transcendental Magic

by Eliphas Levi

  Of all oracles, the Tarot is the most astounding in its answers, because all possible combinations of this universal key of the Kabalah give oracles of science and of truth as their solutions. The Tarot was the sole book of the ancient Magi; it is the primitive Bible, as we shall prove in the following chapter, and the ancients consulted it as the first Christians at a later date consulted the Sacred Lots, that is, Bible verses selected by chance and determined by thinking of a number. Mile Lenormand, the most celebrated of our modern fortune-tellers, was unacquainted with the science of the Tarot, or knew it only by derivation from Etteilla, whose explanations are shadows cast upon a back ground of light. She knew neither high Magic nor the Kabalah, but her head was filled with ill-digested erudition, and she was intuitive by instinct, which deceived her rarely. The works she left behind her are Legitimist tomfoolery, ornamented with classical quotations; but her oracles, inspired by the presence and magnetism of those who consulted her, were often astounding. She was a woman in whom extravagance of imagination and mental rambling were substituted for the natural affections of her sex; she lived and died a virgin, like the ancient druidesses of the isle of Sayne. Had Nature endowed her with beauty, she might have played easily at a remoter epoch the part of a Melusine or a Velléda.

  The more ceremonies are employed in the practice of divination, the more we stimulate imagination both in ourselves and in those who consult us. The Conjuration of THE FOUR, the PRAYER OF SOLOMON, the magic sword to disperse phantoms, may then be resorted to with success; we should also evoke the genius of the day and hour of operation, and offer him a special perfume; next we should enter into magnetic and intuitive correspondence with the consultant, inquiring with what animal he is in sympathy and with what in antipathy, as also concerning his favourite flower or colour. Flowers, colours and animals connect in analogical classification with the seven genii of the Kabalah. Those who like blue are idealists and dreamers; lovers of red are material and passionate; those who prefer yellow are fantastic and capricious; admirers of green are often com mercial and crafty; the friends of black are influenced by Saturn; the rose is the colour of Venus, etc. Lovers of the horse are hard-working, noble in character, and at the same time yielding and gentle; friends of the dog are affectionate and faithful; those of the cat are independent and libertine. Frank persons hold spiders in special horror; those of a proud nature are antipathetic to the serpent; upright and fastidious people cannot tolerate rats and mice, the volup tuous loathe the toad, because it is cold, solitary, hideous and miserable. Flowers have analogous sympathies to those of animals and colours, and as Magic is the science of universal analogies, a single taste, one tendency, in a given person, enables all the rest to be divined: it is an application of the analogical anatomy of Cuvier to phenomena in the moral order.

  The physiognomy of face and body, wrinkles on the brow, lines on hands, furnish the Magus also with precious indications. Metoposcopy and chiromancy have become separate sciences; their findings, purely empirical and conjectural, have been compared, examined and combined as a body of doctrine by Goclenius, Belot, Romphilus, Indagine and Taisnier. The work of the last-mentioned writer is the most important and complete; he combines and criticizes the observations and conjectures of all the others. A modern investigator, the Chevalier D'Arpentigny, has imparted to chiromancy a fresh degree of certitude by his remarks on the analogies which really exist between the characters of persons and the form of their hands, as a whole or in detail. This new science has been developed and verified further by an artist who is also a man of letters, rich in originality and skill. The disciple has surpassed the master, and our amiable and spiritual Desbarrolles, one of those travellers with whom our great novelist Alexandre Dumas delights to surround himself in his cosmopolitan romances, is quoted already as a veritable magician in chiromancy.

  The querent should be questioned also upon his habitual dreams; dreams are the reflection of life, both interior and exterior. They were considered with serious attention by the old philosophers; patriarchs regarded them as certain revelations; most religious revelations have been given in dreams. The monsters of perdition are nightmares of Christianity, and as the author of Smarra has observed ingeniously, never could pencil or chisel have produced such prodigies if they had not been beheld in sleep. We should beware of persons whose imagination continually reflects deformities. Temperament is, in like manner, manifested by dreams, and as this exercises a permanent influence upon life, it is necessary to be well acquainted therewith, if we would conjecture a destiny with certitude. Dreams of blood, of enjoyment, and of light indicate a sanguine temperament; those of water, mud, rain, tears, are characteristic of a more phlegmatic disposition; nocturnal fire, darkness, terrors, spectres, belong to the bilious and melancholic. Synesius, one of the greatest Christian bishops of the first centuries the disciple of that beautiful and pure Hypatia who was massacred by fanatics after presiding gloriously over the school of Alexandria, in the inheritance of which school Christianity should have shared—Synesius, lyric poet like Pindar and Callimachus, priest like Orpheus, Christian like Spiridion of Tremithonte—has left us a treatise on dreams which has been the subject of a commentary by Cardan. No one concerns themselves now with these magnificent re searches of the mind because successive fanaticisms have wellnigh forced the world to despair of scientific and reli gious rationalism. St Paul burned Trismegistus; Omar burned the disciples of Trismegistus and St Paul. O perse cutors! O incendiaries! O scoffers! When will ye end your work of darkness and destruction?

  One of the greatest Magi of the Christian era, Trithemius,1 irreproachable abbot of a Benedictine monastery, learned theologian and master of Cornelius Agrippa, has left among his disesteemed but inestimable works, a treatise entitled, “De Septem Secundiis”, id est intelligentiis sive spiritibus orbes post Deum moventibus. It is a key of all prophecies new or old, a mathematical, historical and simple method of surpassing Isaiah and Jeremiah in the prevision of all great events to come. The author in bold outline sketches the philosophy of history, and divides the existence of the entire world between seven genii of the Kabalah. It is the grandest and widest interpretation ever made of those seven angels of the Apocalypse who appear successively with trumpets and cups to pour out the word and its realization upon earth. The duration of each angelic reign is 354 years and 4 months, beginning with that of Orifiel, the angel of Saturn, on 13 March, for, according to Trithemius, this was the date of the world's creation; his rule answers to a period of savagery and darkness. Next came the reign of Anaël, the spirit of Venus, on 24 June, in the year of the world 354, when love began to be the instructor of mankind; it created the family, while the family led to association and the primitive city. The first civilizers were poets inspired by love; presently the exaltation of poetry produced religion, fanaticism and debauchery, culminating subsequently in the deluge. This state of things continued till 25 October, being the eighth month of the year a.m. 708, when the reign of Zachariel, the angel of Jupiter, was inaugurated, under whose guidance men began to acquire knowledge and dispute the possession of lands and dwellings. It was also the epoch of the foundation of towns and the extension of empires; its consequences were civili zation and war. The need of commerce began, furthermore, to be felt, at which time—namely, 24 February, a.m. 1063—was inaugurated the reign of Raphael, angel of Mercury, angel of science and of the word, of intelligence and industry. Then letters were invented, the first language being hieroglyphic and universal, a monument of which has been preserved in the Book of Enoch, Cadmus, Thoth and Palamedes, the kabalistic clavicle adopted later on by Solo mon, the mystical book of the TERAPHIM, URIM and THUMMIM, the primeval Genesis of the Zohar and of William Postel, the mystical wheel of Ezekiel, the Rota of the Kabalists, the Tarot of Magi and Bohemians. The invention of arts began, and navigation was attempted for the first time; relations extended, wants multiplied and there followed speedily an epoch of general corruption, preceding the universal deluge, under the reign
of Samael, angel of Mars, which was inaugurated on 26 June, a.m. 1417. After long exhaustion, the world strove towards a new birth under Gabriel, the angel of the moon, whose reign began on 28 March, a.m. 1771, when the family of Noah multiplied and re-peopled the whole earth, after the con fusion of Babel, until the reign of Michael, angel of the sun, which commenced on 24 February, a.m. 2126, to which epoch must be referred the origin of the first dominations, the empire of the children of Nimrod, the birth of sciences and religions, the first conflicts between despotism and liberty. Trithemius pursues this curious study through out the ages, and at corresponding epochs exhibits the recurrence of ruins; then civilization, born anew by means of poetry and love; empires, reconstituted by the family, enlarged by commerce, destroyed by war, repaired by universal and progressive civilization, absorbed subsequently by greater empires, which are syntheses of history. The work of Trithemius, from this point of view, is more comprehensive and independent than that of Bossuet and is a key absolute to the philosophy of history.1 His exact calculations lead him to the month of November in the year 1879, epoch of the reign of Michaël and the foundation of a new universal kingdom, prepared by three centuries and a half of anguish and a like period of hope, coinciding precisely with the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and first part of the nineteenth centuries for the lunar twilight and expectation, with the fourteenth, thirteenth, twelfth, and second half of the eleventh centuries for the ordeals, the ignorance, the sufferings- and the scourges of all Nature. We see therefore according to this calculation, that in 1879— or in twenty-four years' time—a universal empire will be founded and will secure peace to the world. This empire will be political and religious; it will offer the solution of all problems agitated in our own days, and will endure for 354 years and 4 months, after which it will be succeeded by the return of the reign of Orifiel, an epoch of silence and night. The coming universal empire, being under the reign of the Sun, will belong to him who holds the keys of the East, which are now being disputed by the princes of the world's four quarters. But intelligence and activity are the forces which rule the Sun in the superior kingdoms, and the nation which possesses at this time the initiative of intelligence and life will have also the keys of the East and will establish the universal kingdom. To do this it may have to undergo previously a cross and martyrdom analogous to those of the Man-God; but, dead or living, its spirit will prevail among nations; all peoples will acknowledge and follow in four- and-twenty years the standard of France, ever victorious or miraculously raised from the dead.1 Such is the prophecy of Trithemius, confirmed by all our previsions and rooted in all our hopes.

  1 “The presentiment faculty can be stimulated by means of certain conventional or arbitrary signs which put thought into partial sleep, a kind of auto-hypnosis. Such signs are drawn at hazard, the demand being on oracles of fatality rather than those of reason. It is an invocation of the shadow, an appeal to mania, a sacrifice of lucid thought to the business walking in the night.”—Le Grand Arcane p. 121.

  1 Trithemius, who was born at Trittenheim in 1462 and died at Wurtzbourg in 1516, is of considerable importance in the literature and history of Magic, but his supposed “key of all prophecies” by no means deserves the hectic enthusiasm of Éliphas Lévi and has been stultified sufficiently by the events post 1879. He wrote on alchemy, magical seals, steganography and kabalistic writing. He was defended by a German Benedictine against the suspicion of sorcery, though there is no doubt of his devotion to the occult sciences. He compiled also a monumental series of monastic chronicles.

  1 After all we prefer Bossuet. De Septem Secundiis does little honour to the great name of Trithemius, while the encomium of Lévi has precisely that value which attaches to an appreciation of prophecy by a person who believed in prophecy as much and as little as he believed in Latin dogma.

  1 But that which followed this forecast was the year 1870 and the crushing defeat of Sedan.

  CHAPTER XXII

  THE BOOK OF HERMES

  THE end of our work is upon us; it is here that we must give the universal key thereof and utter its final Word. The universal key of magical works is that of all ancient religious dogmas—the key of the Kabalah and the Bible, the Little Key of Solomon. Now, this Clavicle, regarded as lost for centuries, has been recovered by us, and we have been able to open the sepulchres of the ancient world, to make the dead speak, to behold the monuments of the past in all their splendour, to understand the enigmas of every sphinx and to penetrate all sanctuaries. Among the ancients the use of this key was permitted to none but the high priests, and even so its secret was confided only to the flower of initiates. Now, this was the key in question: (1) a hieroglyphic and numerical alphabet, expressing by characters and numbers a series of universal and absolute ideas; (2) a scale of ten numbers, multiplied by four symbols and connected with twelve figures representing the twelve signs of the zodiac; (3) plus the four genii of the cardinal points.

  The symbolical tetrad, represented in the Mysteries of Memphis and Thebes by the four forms of the sphinx—man eagle, lion and bull—corresponded with the four elements of the old world, water being signified by the cup held by the man or aquarius; air by the circle or nimbus surrounding the head of the celestial eagle; fire by the wood which nourishes it, by the tree fructifying in the heat of earth and sun, finally, by the sceptre of royalty, which the lion typifies; earth by the sword of Mithras, who each year immolates the sacred bull, and, together with its blood, pours forth that sap which gives increase to all fruits of earth. Now, these four signs, with all their analogies, explain the one word hidden in all sanctuaries, that word which the bacchantes seemed to divine in their intoxication when they worked themselves into frenzy for Io Evohe. What then was the meaning of this mysterious term? It was the name of four primitive letters of the mother-tongue: Jod, symbol of the vine-stock, or paternal sceptre of Noah; He, type of the cup of libations and also of maternity; Vau, which joins the two, and was depicted in India by the great and mysterious lingam. Such was the triple sign of the triad in the Divine Word; but the mother-letter appeared a second time, to express the fecundity of Nature and woman and to formulate the doctrine of universal and progressive analogies, descending from causes to effects and ascending from effects to causes. Moreover, the sacred word was not pronounced: it was spelt, and expressed in four words, which are the four sacred words—JOD HE VAU HE.1

  The learned Gaffarel regards the TERAPHIM of the Hebrews, by means of which they consulted the oracles of the URIM and THUMMIM, as the figures of the four kabalistic animals, which symbols, as we shall show shortly, were epitomized by the sphinxes or cherubs of the ark. In connexion with the usurped Teraphim of Michas, he cites a curious passage from Philo, which is a complete revelation as to the ancient and sacerdotal origin of our TAROTS. Gaffarel thus expresses himself: “He (Philo the Jew), speaking of the history concealed in the before mentioned chapter of JUDGES, says that Michas made three images of young boys and three young calves, three also of a lion, an eagle, a dragon and a dove, all of fine gold and silver; so that if anyone sought him to discover a secret concerning his wife, he interrogated the dove; concerning his children, the young boy; concerning wealth, the eagle; concerning strength and power, the lion; concerning fecun dity, the cherub or bull; concerning length of days, the dragon.” This revelation of Philo, though deprecated by Gaffarel, is for us of the highest importance. Here, in fact, is our key of the tetrad, and here also are the images of the four symbolical animals found in the twenty-first Key of the Tarot; that is, in the third septenary, thus repeating and summarizing all the symbolism expressed by the three septenaries superposed; next, the antagonism of colours expressed by the dove and the dragon; the circle or Rota, formed by the dragon or serpent to typify length of days; finally, the kabalistic divination of the entire Tarot, as practised in later days by Egyptian Bohemians, whose secrets were divined and recovered imperfectly by Etteilla.

  We see in the Bible that the high priests consulted t
he Lord on the golden table of the holy ark between the cherubim, or bull-headed and eagle-winged sphinx; that they consulted by the help of the Teraphim, Urim and Thummim, and by the Ephod. Now, it is known that the Ephod was a magical square of twelve numbers and twelve words engraved on precious stones. The word TERAPHIM in Hebrew signifies hieroglyphs or figured signs; the URIM and THUMMIM were the above and beneath, the East and West, the yes and no, and these signs corresponded to the two Pillars of the Temple, JAKIN and BOAZ. When therefore the high priest wished to consult the oracle, he drew by lot the Teraphim or tablets of gold, which bore the images of the four sacred words, and placed them by threes round the rational or Ephod; that is, between the two onyx stones which served as clasps to the little chains of the Ephod. The right onyx signified GEDULAH, or mercy and magnificence; the left referred to GEBURAH, and signified justice and anger. If, for example, the sign of the lion were found on the left side of the stone which bore the name of the tribe of Judah, the high priest would read the oracle thus: “The staff of the Lord is angered against Judah.” If the TERAPHIM represented the man or cup and were found also on the left, near the stone of Benjamin, the high priest would read: “The mercy of the Lord is weary of the offences of Benjamin, which outrage Him in His love. Therefore He will pour out on him the chalice of his wrath,” etc. When the sovereign priest hood ceased in Israel; when all oracles were silenced in the presence of the Word made man, and speaking by the mouth of the most popular and mildest of Sages; when the ark was lost, the sanctuary profaned and the temple destroyed; the mysteries of the EPHOD and TERAPHIM, no longer traced on gold and precious stones, were written, or rather drawn, by some learned Kabalists on ivory, parchment, gilt and silvered copper, and, finally, on simple cards, which were always suspected by the official Church as enclosing a dangerous key to its mysteries. Hence came those Tarots, the antiquity of which, revealed to the erudite Court de Gebelin by the science of hieroglyphs and numbers, so exercised later the doubtful perspicacity and persistent in vestigation of Etteilla. Court de Gebelin, in the eighth volume of his Primeval World, gives sketches of the twenty- two Keys and four aces of the Tarot, and demonstrates their perfect analogy with all symbols of the highest antiquity. He endeavours subsequently to supply their explanation and goes astray naturally, because he does not start from the universal and sacred TETRAGRAM, the Io EVOHE of the Bacchanalia, the JOD HE VAU HE of the sanctuary, the of the Kabalah.