Transcendental Magic

by Eliphas Levi

  Such is the great and sublime revelation of the Magi, a revelation which is the mother of all symbols, of all dogmas, of all religions. We can realize already how far Dupuis was mistaken in regarding astronomy as the source of every cultus. It is astronomy, on the contrary, which has sprung from astrology, and primitive astrology is one of the branches of the holy Kabalah, the science of sciences and the religion of religions. Hence upon the seventeenth page of the Tarot we find an admirable allegory—a naked woman, typifying Truth, Nature and Wisdom at one and the same time, turns two ewers towards earth, and pours out fire and water upon it. Above her head glitters the septenary, starred about an eight-pointed star, that of Venus, symbol of peace and love; the plants of earth are flourishing around the woman, and on one of them the butterfly of Psyche has alighted. This emblem of the soul is replaced in some copies of the sacred book by a bird, which is a more Egyptian and probably a more ancient symbol. In the modern Tarot the plate is entitled the Glittering Star; it is analogous to a number of Hermetic symbols, and is also in correspondence with the Blazing Star of Masonic initiates, which expresses most of the mysteries of Rosicrucian secret doctrine.

  1 “The number seventeen is that of intelligence and love.”—La Clef des Grands Mystères, p. 67.

  1 As Postel is referred to on several occasions, it is necessary to state clearly that he never mentions the Tarot and that his allusions to Enoch and Enochian tradition are not approximately or remotely connected therewith. Postel was the first European scholar who translated the Sepher Yetzirah into Latin and for a brief account of him my Doctrine and Literature of the Kabalah may be consulted at PP. 357–64. He was born in 1510 and died at Paris in 1581. He knew as much about cards—hieroglyphic or otherwise—as he knew of the Game of Goose. He was a man of extraordinary learning but of strange sentiment and extravagance. His tract entitled “Clavis Absconditorum a Constitutione Mundi”, by which Lévi set great store, was translated into French and published in 1899.

  1 “Mary is the human personification of Divine Wisdom or the Holy Shekinah, light manifested by reflection. She is the feminine side of the Word made flesh and participates by assumption in all the glories of Jesus Christ. Vir ascendit, Mulier assumitur. . . . The Assumption of woman is one of the great mysteries of humanity, and all the radiance of this Divine Mystery is hidden in the Song of Solomon.”—Correspondence with Baron Spédalieri, No. 69.

  1 The life of Jerome Cardan has been written at considerable length by Henry Morley and is not unreadily accessible. His works fill ten quarto volumes and include his own memoirs, which seem occasionally to reflect more credit on his sincerity than his good sense. As an astrologer, despite the panegyric pronounced by Éliphas Lévi on the process given in the text, it must be said that he was unfortunate; he calculated the date of his own death and outlived it; he calculated it a second time, when it is supposed to have been verified by the event, but his enemies suspected him of suicide. This is what Lévi terms being a martyr to faith in astrology, an illustration of the French Magus with his tongue in his cheek, a vulgar saying but devised very properly for occasions like this. Cardan was otherwise an authority on cipher writing and deserves to be consulted at need on this account. He pretends to have had commerce with elementaries, like his father before him, and is altogether a very curious person, who has been much misjudged by many and admired unduly by a few. He died at Rome in 1576.

  1 “Nothing that has lived dies for ever. The void devours nothing, for the void has no life. . . . It becomes solid like frozen water and is the realm of ineffable suffocations. Picture walls which are compressed unceasingly and always on a substance infinitely compressible, but tormented by a vast need of extension, . . . and this without judges, without executioners, in silence, alone and fatally, as if in the midst of a desert one had brought down a rock on oneself which crushes slowly in the waste of a starless night, in the solitude of the tomb. The soul thus consumes itself, brings forth its demons, dissolves in dreams of torture. . . . It is only the beginning of horrors, and I am forbidden to speak of what follows. Those who love falsehood, defend injustice and adore hatred belong to Sheol. So also those fall therein who have lived a soulless, utterly brutal and material life. But they fall like drunken men into a sewer and are soon drowned therein.”—Correspondence with Baron Spédalieri. Hereof are further samples of “the great and sublime revelation of the Magi”, but they are an example of Lévi in nightmare which naturally stultifies itself, for it begins by saying that there is no death and ends by picturing souls swallowed up in the void.

  XVIII S1

  CHARMS AND PHILTRES

  JUSTITIA MYSTERIUM CANES

  WE have now to approach the most criminal abuse to which magical sciences can be put, namely, venomous Magic, or rather sorcery. Let it be understood here that we write not to instruct but to warn. If human justice, instead of punishing the adepts, had proscribed only the nigromancers and poisoning sorcerers, it is certain, as we have observed previously, that its severity would have been well placed, since the most severe penalties could never be excessive in the case of such criminals. At the same time it must not be supposed that the right of life and death which belongs secretly to the Magus has been exercised always to satisfy some infamous vengeance, or some cupidity more infamous still. In the Middle Ages, as in the ancient world, magical associations have frequently struck down or destroyed slowly the revealers or profaners of mysteries, and when the magic sword has refrained from striking, when the spilling of blood was dangerous, then Aqua Toffana, poisoned nosegays, the shirt of Nessus, and other deadly instruments, still stranger and still less known, were used to carry out sooner or later the terrible sentence of the free judges. We have said that there is in Magic a great and indicible Arcanum, which is never mentioned among adepts, which the profane above all must be prevented from divining. In former times, whosoever revealed, or caused the key of this supreme secret to be discovered by others through impru dent revelations, was condemned immediately to death, and was often driven to execute the sentence himself. The celebrated prophetic supper of Cazotte, described by Laharpe, has not been understood hitherto. Laharpe very naturally yielded to the temptation of surprising his readers by amplifying the details of his narrative. Everyone present at this supper, Laharpe excepted, was an initiate who had divulged or at least profaned the mysteries. Cazotte, the most exalted of all in the scale of initiation, pronounced their sentence of death in the name of illuminism, and this sentence was executed variously but rigorously, even as several years and several centuries previously had occurred in the case of similar judgements against the Abbé de Villars, Urban Grandier and many others. The revolutionary philosophers perished, as did Cagliostro deserted in the prisons of the Inquisition; as did the mystic band of Catherine Theos; as did the imprudent Schroepffer, driven to suicide in the midst of magical triumphs and the universal infatuation; as did the deserter Kotzebuë, who was stabbed by Carl Sand; as did also so many others whose corpses have been discovered without anyone being able to ascertain the cause of their sudden and sanguinary death. The strange allocution addressed to Cazotte when he himself was condemned by the president of the revolutionary tribunal will be called readily to mind. The Gordian Knot of the terrible drama of '93 is still concealed in the darkest sanctuary of the Secret Societies. To adepts of good faith, who sought to emancipate the common people, were opposed those of another sect, attached to more ancient traditions, who fought against them by means analogous to those of their adversaries: the practice of the Great Arcanum was made impossible by unmasking its theory. The crowd understood nothing, but it misdoubted everything, and fell lower still in its discouragement than some had schemed to raise it. The Great Arcanum became more secret than ever; the adepts, checkmated by each other, could exercise their power neither to govern the uninitiated nor to deliver themselves; they condemned one another to the death of traitors; they abandoned one another to exile, to suicide, to the knife and the scaffold.

 
I shall be asked possibly whether equally terrible dangers threaten at this day the intruders into the occult sanctuary and the betrayers of its secret. Why should I answer any thing to the incredulity of the inquisitive? If I risk a violent death for their instruction, certainly they will not save me; if they are afraid on their own account, let them abstain from imprudent research—this is all I can say to them. Let us return to Venomous Magic.

  In his romance of Monte Christo, Alexandre Dumas has revealed some practices of this ominous science. There is no need to traverse the same ground by repeating its melancholy theories of crime; describing how plants are poisoned; how animals nourished on these plants have their flesh infected, and becoming in turn the food of men, cause death without leaving any trace of poison; how the walls of houses are inoculated; how the air is permeated by fumes which require the glass mask of St Croix for the operator. Let us leave the ancient Canidia her abominable mysteries, and refrain from investigating the extent to which the infernal rites of Sagana have carried the art of Locusta. It is enough to state that this most infamous class of male factors distilled together the virus of contagious diseases, the venom of reptiles and the sap of poisonous plants; that they extracted from the fungus its deadly and narcotic properties, its asphyxiating principles from Datura artsmonium, from the peach and bitter almond that poison one drop of which, placed on the tongue or in the ear, destroys, like a flash of lightning, the strongest and best constituted living being. The white juice of sea-lettuce was boiled with milk in which vipers and asps had been drowned. The sap of the manchineel or deadly fruit of Java was either brought back with them from their long journeys, or imported at great expense; so also was the juice of the cassada, and so were similar poisons. They pulverized flint, mixed with impure ashes the dried slime of reptiles, composed hideous philtres with the virus of mares on heat and similar secretions of bitches; they mingled human blood with infamous drugs, composing an oil the mere odour of which was fatal, therein recalling the tarte bourbonnaise of Panurge; they even concealed recipes for poisoning in the technical language of alchemy, and the secret of the Powder of Projection, in more than one old book which claims to be Hermetic, is in reality that of the Powder of Succession.1 The Grand Grimoire gives one in particular which is very thinly disguised under the title of “Method of Making Gold”; it is an atrocious decoction of verdigris, arsenic and saw dust, which, if properly prepared, should consume imme diately a branch that is plunged into it and eat swiftly through an iron nail. John Baptist Porta cites in his Natural Magica specimen of Borgia poison, but, as may be imagined, he is deceiving the vulgar and does not divulge the truth, which would be too dangerous in such a connexion. We may therefore quote his recipe to satisfy the curiosity of our readers.

  The toad itself is not venomous, but it is a sponge for poisons, and is the mushroom of the animal kingdom.2 Take, then, a plump toad, says Porta, and place it with vipers and asps in a globular bottle. Let poisonous fungi, foxgloves and hemlock be their sole nourishment during a period of several days. Then enrage them by beating, burning and tormenting in every conceivable manner, till they die of rage and hunger; sprinkle their bodies with powdered spurge and ground glass; place them in a well-sealed retort; and extract all their moisture by fire. Let the glass cool; separate the ash of the dead bodies from the incombustible dust which will remain at the bottom of the retort. You will then have two poisons—one liquid, the other a powder. The first will be fully as efficacious as the terrible Aqua Toffana; the second, in a few days' time, will cause any person who may have a pinch of it mixed with his drink to grow wilted and old, and subsequently to die amidst horrible sufferings, or in a state of complete collapse. It must be admitted that this recipe has a magical physiognomy of the blackest and most revolting kind, and sickens one by its recollections of the abominable confections of Canidia and Medea. The sorcerers of the Middle Ages pretended to receive such powders at the Sabbath and sold them at a high price to the malicious and ignorant. The tradition of similar mysteries spread terror in country places and came to act as a spell. The imagination once impressed, the nervous system once assailed, the victim rapidly wasted away, the very dread of his relatives and friends sealing his doom. The sorcerer and sorceress were almost invariably a species of human toad, swollen with long-enduring rancours. They were poor, repulsed by all and consequently full of hatred. The fear which they inspired was their consolation and their revenge; poisoned themselves by a society of which they had experienced nothing but the rebuffs and the vices, they poisoned in their turn all those who were weak enough to fear them, and avenged upon beauty and youth their accursed old age and their atrocious ugliness. The perpetration of these evil works and the fulfilment of these loathsome mysteries constituted and confirmed what was then called a pact with the devil. It is certain that the operator must have been given over body and soul to evil and justly deserved the universal and irrevocable reprobation expressed by the allegory of hell. That human souls could descend to such an abyss of crime and madness must assuredly astonish and afflict us. But is not such gulf needed as a basis for the exaltation of the most sublime virtues? Does not the depth of infernus demonstrate by antithesis the infinite height and grandeur of heaven?

  In the north, where the instincts are more repressed and deep-rooted; in Italy, where the passions are more unreserved and fiery, charms and the evil eye are still dreaded; the jettatura is not to be braved with impunity in Naples, and persons who are endowed unfortunately with this power are even distinguished by certain exterior signs. In order to guard against it, experts affirm that horns must be carried on the person, and the common people, who take everything literally, hasten to adorn themselves with small horns, not dreaming of the sense of the allegory. These attributes of Jupiter Ammon, Bacchus and Moses are a symbol of moral power or enthusiasm, so that the magicians mean to say that, in order to withstand the jettatura, the fatal current of instincts must be governed by great intrepidity, great enthusiasm, or a great thought. In like manner, almost all popular superstitions are vulgar interpretations of some grand maxim or marvellous secret of occult wisdom. Did not Pythagoras, in his admirable symbols, bequeath a perfect philosophy to sages but a new series of vain observances and ridiculous practices to the vulgar? Thus, when he said: “Do not pick up what falls from the table; do not cut down trees on the great highway; kill not the serpent when it slips into your garden”—was he not inculcating the precepts of charity, either social or personal, under transparent allegories? When he said: “Do not look at yourself by torchlight in a mirror,” was he not teaching ingeniously that true self-knowledge which is incompatible with factitious lights and the prejudgements of systems? It is the same with the other precepts of Pythagoras, who is well known to have been followed literally by a swarm of unintelligent disciples; and indeed amongst our provincial superstitious observances there are many which belong indubitably to the primitive misconception of Pythagorean symbols.

  Superstition is derived from a Latin word which signifies survival. It is the sign surviving the thought; it is the dead body of a Religious Rite. Superstition is to initiation what the notion of the devil is to that of God. This is the sense in which the worship of images is forbidden, and in this sense also a doctrine most holy in its original conception may become superstitious and impious when it has lost its spirit and its inspiration. Then does religion, ever one, like the Supreme Reason, exchange its vestures and abandon old Rites to the cupidity and roguery of fallen priests, transformed by their wickedness and ignorance into jugglers and charlatans. We may include among superstitions those magical emblems and characters, of which the meaning is understood no longer, which are engraved by chance on amulets and talismans. The magical images of the ancients were pantacles, i.e. kabalistic syntheses. Thus the wheel of Pythagoras is a pantacle analogous to the wheels of Ezekiel; the two emblems contain the same secrets and belong to the same philosophy; they constitute the key of all pantacles, and we have made mention previously of both.<
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