Transcendental Magic

by Eliphas Levi

  THE CHERUB OF EZEKIEL

  The four living creatures—or rather the four-headed sphinx—of the same prophet are identical with the admirable Indian symbol of ADDA-NARI, given on the next page, as having reference to the Great Arcanum. In his Apocalypse St John followed and elaborated Ezekiel; indeed the monstrous figures of his wonderful book are so many magical pantacles, the key of which is easily discoverable by Kabalists. On the other hand, Christians, rejecting science in their anxiety to extend faith, sought later on to conceal the origin of their dogmas and condemned all kabalistic and magical books to the flames. To destroy originals gives a kind of originality to copies, as was doubtless in the mind of St Paul when, prompted beyond question by the most laudable intention, he accomplished his scientific auto-da-fé at Ephesus. In the same way, six centuries later, the true believer Omar sacrificed the Library of Alexandria to the originality of the Koran, and who knows whether in the time to come a future Apostle will not set fire to our literary museums and confiscate the printing-press in the interest of some fresh religious infatuation, some newly accredited legend?

  The study of talismans and pantacles is one of the most curious branches of Magic and connects with historical numismatics. There are Indian, Egyptian and Greek talismans, kabalistic medals coming from ancient and modern Jews, Gnostic abraxas, occult tokens in use among members of Secret Societies and sometimes called counters of the Sabbath. So also there are Templar medals and jewels of Freemasonry. In his “Treatise on the Wonders of Nature”, Coglenius describes the talismans of Solomon and those of Rabbi Chael. Designs of many others that are most ancient will be found in the Magical Calendars of Tycho Brahe and Duchentau, and should have a place in M. Ragon's archives on initiation, a vast and scholarly undertaking, to which we refer our readers.1

  1 “The number eighteen is that of religious dogma, which is at once all poetry and all mystery.”—La Clef des Grands Mystères, p. 69.

  1 The Powder of Succession seems to be an invention of Lévi, or at least I have failed to meet with it in the records of Magic, whether Black or White. Nor is it possible to say what is intended by such a term.

  2 It should be observed that this is Lévi's preamble to the Porta recipe and belongs to the worst order of occult zoology.

  1 The reference is to J. M. Ragon's Cours Philosophique er Interprétatif des Initiations Anciennes et Modernes, of which there were two editions, one for general circulation in 1841 and one for Masons only in 1842, which bears no comparison to the former, either in extent or importance. As might perhaps be expected, the Calendars of Tycho Brahe and Duchentau are found in neither. The first appeared in 1582 under the title of CALENDARIUM NATURALE MAGICUM PERPETUUM, PRO-FUNDISSIMAN RERUM SECRETISSIMARUM CONTEMPLATION, TOTIUSQUE PHILOSOPHIAE COGNITIONEM COMPLECTIONS. According to Lévi, Duchentau reconstructed and completed the Calendar of Tycho Brahe.

  XIX T1

  THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS—ELAGABALUS

  VOCATIO SOL AURUM

  THE ancients adored the Sun under the figure of a black stone, which they named Elagabalus, or Heliogabalus. What did this stone signify, and how came it to be the image of the most brilliant of luminaries? The disciples of Hermes, before promising their adepts the elixir of long life or the powder of projection, counselled them to seek for the Philosophical Stone. What is this Stone, and why is it so called? The Great Initiator of the Christians invites His believers to build on the stone or rock, if they do not wish their structures to be demolished. He terms Himself the corner-stone, and says to the most faithful of His Apostles, “Thou art Peter (petrus), and upon this rock (petram) I will build My church.” This Stone, say the masters in Alchemy, is the true Salt of the Philosophers, which is the third ingredient in the composition of AZOTH. Now, we know already that Azoth is the name of the great Hermetic and true Philosophical Agent; furthermore, their Salt is repre sented under the figure of a cubic stone, as may be seen in the TWELVE KEYS of Basil Valentine, or in the allegories of Trevisan. Once more, what is this Stone actually? It is the foundation of absolute philosophy, it is supreme and immovable reason. Before even dreaming of the metallic work, we must be fixed for ever upon the absolute principles of wisdom; we must possess that reason which is the touch stone of truth. Never will a man of prejudices become the king of Nature and the master of transmutations. The Philosophical Stone is hence before all things necessary; but how is it to be found? Hermes informs us in his “Emerald Table”. We must separate the subtle from the fixed with great care and assiduous attention. Thus, we must separate our certitudes from our beliefs, and distinguish sharply the respective domains of science and faith, realizing that we do not know things which we believe, and that we cease immediately to believe anything which we come actually to know. It follows that the essence of the things of faith is the unknown and the indefinite, while it is quite the reverse with the things of science. It must be inferred from this that science rests on reason and experience, whilst the basis of faith is sentiment and reason.1 In other words, the Philosophical Stone is the true certitude which human prudence assures to conscientious researches and modest doubt, whilst religious enthusiasm ascribes it exclusively to faith. Now, it belongs neither to reason without aspirations nor to aspirations without reason; true certitude is the reciprocal acquiescence of the reason which knows in the sentiment which believes and of the sentiment which believes in the reason which knows. The permanent alliance of reason and faith will result not from their absolute distinction and separation, but from their mutual control and their fraternal concurrence. Such is the significance of the two Pillars of Solomon's Porch, one named Jakin and the other BOAZ,2 one white and the other black. They are distinct and separate, they are even contrary in appearance, but if blind force sought to join them by bringing them close to one another, the roof of the temple would collapse. Separately, their power is one; joined, they are two powers which destroy one another. For precisely the same reason the spiritual power is weakened whensoever it attempts to usurp the temporal, while the temporal power becomes the victim of its encroachments on the spiritual. Gregory VII ruined the Papacy; the schismatic kings have lost and will lose the monarchy. Human equilibrium requires two feet; the worlds gravitate by means of two forces; generation needs two sexes. Such is the meaning of the arcanum of Solomon, represented by the two Pillars of the Temple, JAKIN and BOAZ.

  The Sun and Moon of the alchemists correspond to the same symbol and concur in the perfection and stability of the Philosophical Stone. The Sun is the hieroglyphic sign of truth, because it is the visible source of light, and the rough stone is the symbol of stability. This is why the ancient Magi regarded the stone Elagabalus as the actual type of the sun, and for this reason the mediaeval alchemists pointed to the Philosophical Stone as the first means of making philosophical gold, that is to say, of transforming the vital forces represented by the six metals into Sol, otherwise into truth and light, the first and indispensable operation of the Great Work, leading to the secondary adaptations and discovering, by the analogies of Nature, the natural and grosser gold to the possessors of the spiritual and living gold, of the true Salt, the true Mercury and the true Sulphur of the philosophers. To find the Philosophical Stone is then to have discovered the Absolute, as the masters say otherwise. Now, the Absolute is that which admits of no errors; it is the fixation of the volatile; it is the rule of the imagination; it is the very necessity of being; it is the immutable law of reason and truth. The Absolute is that which is. Now that which is in some sense precedes he who is. God Himself cannot be in the absence of a ground of being and can exist only in virtue of a supreme and inevitable reason. It is this reason which is the Absolute; it is this in which we must believe if we desire a rational and solid foundation for our faith. It may be said in these days that God is merely a hypothesis, but the Absolute Reason is not: it is essential to being.1

  St Thomas once said: “A thing is not just because God wills it, but God wills it because it is just.” Had St Thomas deduc
ed all the consequences of this beautiful thought, he would have found the Philosophical Stone, and besides being the angel of the schools, he would have been their reformer. To believe in the reason of God and in the God of reason is to render atheism impossible. When Voltaire said: “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him,” he felt rather than understood the reason which is in God. Does God really exist? There is no knowing, but we desire it to be so, and hence we believe it. Faith thus formulated is reasonable faith, for it admits the doubt of science, and, as a fact, we believe only in things which seem to us probable, though we do not know them. To think otherwise is delirium; to speak otherwise is to talk like illuminati or fanatics. Now, it is not to such persons that the Philosophical Stone is promised. The ignoramuses who have turned primitive Christianity from its path by substituting faith for science, dream for experience, the fantastic for the real—inquisitors who, during so many ages, have waged a war of extermination against Magic—have succeeded in enveloping with darkness the ancient discoveries of the human mind, so that we are now groping for a key to the phenomena of Nature. Now, all natural phenomena depend upon a single and immutable law, represented by the Philosophical Stone and especially by its cubic form. This law, expressed by the tetrad in the Kabalah, equipped the Hebrews with all the mysteries of their divine Tetragram. It may be said therefore that the Philosophical Stone is square in every sense, like the heavenly Jerusalem of St John; that one of its sides is inscribed with the name and the other with that of God; that one of its facets bears the name of ADAM, a second that of HEVA, and the two others those of AZOT and INRI. At the beginning of the French translation of a book by the Sieur de Nuisement on the Philosophical Salt,1 the spirit of the earth is represented standing on a cube over which tongues of flame are passing; the phallus is replaced by a caduceus; the sun and moon figure on the right and left breast; the figure is bearded, crowned and holds a sceptre in his hand. This is the AZOTH of the sages on its pedestal of Salt and Sulphur. The symbolic head of the goat of Mendes is occasionally given to this figure, and it is then the Baphomet of the Templars and the Word of the Gnostics—bizarre images which became scarecrows for the vulgar after affording food for reflection to sages—innocent hieroglyphs of thought and faith which have been a pretext for the rage of persecutions. How pitiable are men in their ignorance, but how they would despise themselves if only they came to know!

  1 “Nineteen is the number of light, the existence of God proved by the very idea of God.”—La Clef des Grands Mystères, p. 70.

  1 “Faith is that confidence which impelled the advance of Columbus when America seemed receding before him. It is belief in the unknown parts of that grand totality the existence of which is demonstrated by its known parts.”—La Clef des Grands Mystères, p. 330. “An isolated belief does not deserve the name of faith, which signifies confidence. To mistrust all authority and rely only on oneself is to be a fool. The Catholic believes in the Church because the Church represents for him the flower of the faithful.”—La Science des Esprits, p. 247. “Faith is the affirmation of that which ought to be and confident aspiration towards that which it is good to hope for.”—Le Livre des Sages, p. 12.

  2 “According to Legends, the two Pillars were channelled and contained the trunks of the two trees of Eden—the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. Be it said on our own part that they represented those symbolical trees, one of which gives life or day and the other death or night. But death prepares for life and night foretells day; the active has need of the passive and the passive draws its force from the active.”—Correspondence with Baron Spédalieri, No. 46.

  1 “In all that concerns the God of exclusive religions, I am an atheist with my whole heart; but I am an apostle of the good God of charitable souls, the afflicted and little children.”—Les Partes de l'Avenir, iv.

  1 The Sieur de Nuisement is described as Receiver-General of the Comté de Ligny-en-Barrois. He belongs to the seventeenth century and derived his alchemical inspiration from the Cosmopolite, otherwise Sendivogious or Alexander Seton. He appears to have written in Latin, and the work to which Lévi refers was rendered into French and appeared originally in 1621 as Traitez du vray Sel, Secret des Philosophes et de l'Esprit général du Monde, etc. Later editions are those of 1639 and 1649. According to Lenglet Du Fresnoy, it formed part of a work entitled Elements Chimiques et Spagiriques which has not otherwise been printed.

  XX U

  THE UNIVERSAL MEDICINE

  CAPUT RESURRECTIO CIRCULUS

  THE majority of our physical complaints come from our moral diseases, according to the one and universal dogma, and by reason of the law of analogies. A great passion to which we abandon ourselves corresponds always to a great malady in store. Mortal sins are so named because they cause death physically and positively. Alexander the Great died of pride; he was naturally temperate, and it was through pride that he yielded to the excess which occasioned his death. Francis I died of an adultery. Louis XV died of his Parc-aux-Cerfs. When Marat was assassinated he was perishing of rage and envy. He was a monomaniac of pride, who believed himself to be the only just man and would have slain everything that was not Marat. Several of our contemporaries perished of fallen ambition after the Revolution of February. So soon as any will is confirmed irrevocably in the tendency towards the absurd, the man is dead, and the rock on which he will break is not remote. It is therefore true to say that wisdom preserves and prolongs life. The great Master told us: “My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath everlasting life.” And when the crowd murmured, He added: “Here the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you are spirit and life.” So also, when He was about to die, He attached the remembrance of His life to the sign of Bread, and that of His spirit to the symbol of Wine, thus instituting the communion of faith, hope and charity. Now, it is in the same sense that the Hermetic masters have said: Make gold potable, and you will have the Universal Medicine—that is to say, appropriate truth to your needs, let it become the source at which you daily drink, and you will in yourself have the immortality of the sages. Temperance, tranquillity of soul, simplicity of character, calmness and rationality of will, these things not only make us happy but strong and well. By growth in reason and goodness man becomes immortal. We are the authors of our own destiny, and God does not save us apart from our own concurrence. There is no death for the sage; death is a phantom, made horrible by the weakness and ignorance of the vulgar. Change is the sign of motion, and motion reveals life; if the corpse itself were dead, its decomposition would be impossible; all its constituent molecules are living and working out their liberation. Yet you dream that the spirit is set free first so that it may cease to live! You believe that thought and love can die when the grossest matter is imperishable! If change must be called death, we die and are reborn daily, because daily our forms change. Fear therefore to soil or rend your garments, but do not fear to lay them by when the hour of sleep approaches.

  The embalming and mummification of bodies is a superstition which is against Nature; it is an attempt to create death; it is the forcible petrification of a substance which is needed by life. But, on the other hand, we must not be quick to destroy or make away with bodies; there is no suddenness in the operations of Nature, and we must not risk any violent rupture of the bonds of a departing soul. Death is never instantaneous; it is, like sleep, gradual. So long as the blood has not become absolutely cold, so long as the nerves can quiver, a man is not wholly dead, and if none of the vital organs are destroyed the soul can be recalled, either by accident or by a strong will. A philosopher declared that he would discredit universal testimony rather than believe in the resurrection of a dead person, but his utterance was rash, for it was on the faith of universal testimony that he believed in the impossibility of resurrection. Supposing such an occurrence were proved, what would follow? Must we deny evidence or renounce reason? It would be absurd to say so. We shou
ld infer rather that we were wrong in supposing resurrection to be impossible. Ab actu ad posse valet consecutio.

  Let us now make bold to affirm that resurrection is possible and occurs oftener than might be thought. Many persons whose deaths have been attested legally and scientifically have been found afterwards in their coffins dead indeed, but having evidently come to life and having bitten through their clenched hands so as to open the arteries and escape from their horrible agonies. A doctor would tell us that such persons were in a lethargy and not dead. But what is lethargy? It is the name which we give to an uncompleted death, a death which is falsified by return to life. It is easy by words to escape from a difficulty when it is impossible to explain facts. The soul is joined to the body by means of sensibility, and when sensibility ceases it is a sure sign that the soul is departing. The magnetic sleep is a lethargy or factitious death which is curable at will. The etherization or torpor produced by chloroform is a real lethargy which ends sometimes in absolute death, when the soul, ravished by its temporary liberation, makes an effort of will to become free altogether, which is possible for those who have conquered hell, that is to say, whose moral strength is superior to that of astral attraction. Hence resurrection is possible only for elementary souls, and it is these above all who run the risk of involuntary revival in the tomb. Great men and true sages are never buried alive. The theory and practice of resurrection will be given in our “Ritual”; to those meanwhile who may ask whether I have raised the dead, I would say that if I replied in the affirmative they would not believe me.

  It remains now to examine whether the abolition of pain is possible, and whether it is wholesome to employ chloro form or magnetism for surgical operations. We think, and science will acknowledge it later on, that by diminishing sensibility we diminish life, and what we subtract from pain under such circumstances turns to the profit of death. Suffering bears witness to the struggle for life, and hence we observe that the dressing of a wound is excessively painful for the persons who have been operated on under anaesthetics. If chloroform were resorted to at each dressing, one of two things would happen—either the patient would die or the pain would return and continue between the dressings. Nature is not violated with impunity.