by Eliphas Levi
The triad, being the foundation of magical doctrine must be necessarily observed in evocations; for it is the symbolical number of realization and effect. The letter is commonly traced upon kabalistic pantacles which have the fulfilment of a desire for their object. It is also the sign of the scapegoat in mystic Kabalah,1 and Saint-Martin observes that inserted in the Incommunicable Tetragram it forms the Name of the Redeemer, . It is this which the mystagogues of the Middle Ages represented in their nocturnal assemblies by the exhibition of a symbolical goat, carrying a lighted torch between its two horns. In the fifteenth chapter of this “Ritual” we shall describe the allegorical forms and strange cultus of this monstrous animal, which represented Nature doomed to anathema but ransomed by the sign of light. The Gnostic Agapae and pagan priapic orgies which followed in its honour sufficiently revealed the moral consequence which the adepts drew from the exhibition. All this will be explained, together with the Rites, decried and now regarded as fabulous, of the Great Sabbath and of Black Magic.
Within the grand circle of evocations a triangle was usually traced, and the side towards which the upper point should be directed was a matter for careful observation. If the spirit were supposed to be from heaven, the operator placed himself at the top, and set the altar of fumigations at the bottom; but if the spirit came from the abyss this method was reversed. Moreover, the sacred symbol of two interlaced triangles, forming the six-pointed star, known in magic as the Pantacle or Seal of Solomon, must be worn upon the forehead and the breast, and graven in the right hand. Independently of these signs, the ancients, in their evocations, made use of those mystical combinations of Divine Names which we have reproduced in our “Doctrine” from the Hebrew Kabalists. The magic triangle of pagan theosophists was the celebrated ABRACADABRA, to which they attributed extraordinary virtues and represented as follows:
This combination of letters is a key of the Pentagram. The initial A is repeated five and reproduced thirty times, thus giving the elements and numbers of the two following figures:1
The isolated A represents the unity of the first principle, otherwise, the intellectual or active agent. A united to B represents the fertilization of the duad by the monad. R is the sign of the triad, because it represents hieroglyphically the emission which results from the union of the two principles. The number n, which is that of the letters of the word, combines the unity of the initiate with the denary of Pythagoras, and the number 66, the added total of all the letters, form kabalistically the number 12, which is the square of the triad and consequently the mystic quadrature of the circle. We may remark, in passing, that the author of the Apocalypse, that key of the Christian Kabalah, com posed the number of the beast, that is to say, of idolatry, by adding a 6 to the double senary of ABRACADABRA, which gives 18 kabalistically, the number attributed in the Tarot to the hieroglyphic sign of night and of the profane—the moon, together with the towers, dog, wolf and crab—a mysterious and obscure number, the kabalistic key of which is 9, the number of initiation. On this subject the sacred Kabalist says expressly: “He that hath understanding”—that is, the key of kabalistic numbers—“let him count the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is six hundred three score and six.” It is, in fact, the decade of Pythagoras multiplied by itself and added to the sum of the triangular Pantacle of ABRACADABRA: it is thus the sum of all Magic in the ancient world, the entire programme of human genius, which the Divine Genius of the Gospel sought to absorb or transplant.
These hieroglyphical combinations of letters and numbers belong to the practical part of the Kabalah, which, from this point of view, is divided into GEMATRIA and THEMURA.1 Such calculations, which now seem to us arbitrary or devoid of interest, belonged then to the philosophical symbolism of the East, and were of the highest importance in the teaching of holy things emanating from the occult sciences. The absolute kabalistic alphabet, which connected primitive ideas with allegories, allegories with letters, and letters with numbers, was then called the Keys of Solomon. We have stated already that these Keys, pre served to our own day, but wholly misconstrued, are nothing else than the game of Tarot, the antique allegories of which were remarked and appreciated for the first time in the modern world by the learned archaeologist, Court de Gebelin.
The double triangle of Solomon is explained by St John in a remarkable manner. He says, “There are three which give record in heaven—the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit”; and “there are three which give testimony on earth—the spirit, the water and the blood.” Thus, St John agrees with the masters of Hermetic philosophy, who attribute to their Sulphur the name of Ether,2 to their Mercury that of Philosophical Water, and to their Salt the qualification of the Dragon's Blood or Menstruum of the Earth. Blood or Salt corresponds by opposition with the Father, Azotic or Mercurial Water with the Word or Logos, and the Ether with the Holy Spirit. But the things of transcendent symbolism can only be understood rightly by the true children of science.
The threefold repetition of names with varied intonations were united to triangular combinations in magical ceremonies. The Magic Wand was frequently surmounted with a small magnetized fork, which Paracelsus replaced by the trident represented below.3
This trident is a pantacle expressing the synthesis of the triad in the monad, thus completing the sacred tetrad. He ascribed to this figure all the virtues which kabalistic Hebrews attribute to the name of Jehovah and the thauma- turgic properties of the ABRACADABRA, used by the hiero- phants of Alexandria. Let us recognize here that it is a pantacle and consequently a concrete and an absolute sign of an entire doctrine, which has been that of an immense magnetic circle, not only for ancient philosophers but also for adepts of the Middle Ages. The restoration in our own day of its original value by the comprehension of its mysteries, might not that also restore all its miraculous virtue and all its power against human diseases?
The old sorceresses, when they spent the night at the meeting-place of three cross-roads, yelled three times in honour of triple Hecate. All these figures, with the acts analogous thereto, all these dispositions of numbers and of characters, are, as we have said, so many instruments for the education of the will, by fixing and determining its habits. They serve, furthermore, to combine all powers of the human soul in action and to increase the creative force of imagination. It is the gymnastics of thought in training for realization: and hence the effect of these practices is infallible, like Nature, when they are fulfilled with absolute confidence and indomitable perseverance. The Great Master tells us that faith could transplant trees into the sea and remove mountains. Even a superstitious and insensate practice is efficacious because it is a realization of will. Hence a prayer is more powerful if we visit a church to say it than when it is recited at home, and it will work miracles if we fare to a famous sanctuary for the purpose—in other words, to one which is magnetized strongly by the great number of its frequenters—traversing two or three hundred leagues with bare feet and asking alms by the way. Men laugh at the simple woman who denies herself a pennyworth of milk in the morning that she may carry a penny taper to burn on the magic triangle in a chapel; but they who laugh are ignorant, and the simple woman does not pay too dearly for what she thus purchases of resignation and of courage. Great minds pass by in great pride, shrugging their shoulders; they rise up against superstition with a din which shakes the world; and what happens? The towers of great minds collapse, and their ruins revert to the providers and purchasers of penny tapers, who are content to hear it proclaimed everywhere that their reign is for ever ended, provided that they rule always.
The great religions have never had more than one serious rival, and this rival is Magic. Magic produced the occult associations which brought about the revolution termed the Renaissance; but it has been the doom of the human mind, blinded by insensate passions, to realize literally the allegorical history of the Hebrew Hercules: by over throwing the pillars of the temple, it has been buried itself under the ruins. The Masonic ass
ociations of the present time are no less ignorant of the high meaning of their symbols than are the rabbins of the Sepher Yetzirah and the Zohar concerning the ascending scale of the three degrees, with the transverse progression from right to left and from left to right of the kabalistic septenary. The com pass of the G A and the square of Solomon have become the gross and material level of unintelligent Jacobinism, realized by a steel triangle: this obtains both for heaven and earth. The initiated divulgers to whom the illuminated Cazotte predicted a violent death have, in our own days, exceeded the sin of Adam; having rashly gathered the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge, which they did not know how to use for their nourishment, they have cast them to the beasts and reptiles of the earth. So is the reign of superstition inaugurated, and it must persist until the period when true religion shall be constituted again on the eternal foundations of the hierarchy of three degrees and of the triple power which that hierarchy exercises blindly or providentially in the three worlds.
1 The statements of Lévi may be checked by reference to “Steganographia”, hoc est Ars per occultam Scripturam absentibus mentem suam aperire, a Jo. Trithemio, Frankfurt, 1608. See also the same writer's Polygraphiae Libri Tres, Frankfurt, 1550.
1 The answer of Lévi is worthless, failing a canon of criticism as to what constitutes “evident impossibility”. The possibility of conjuring spirits raises a question of fact—i.e. whether they have been conjured, and Lévi offers no evidence that they have. His own evocation of Apollonius is at best only evidence of auto-hallucination.
1 That is to say, in Éliphas Lévi's imagined or manufactured version, for neither in true and original Kabalism, nor in the commentaries of late successors like Isaac de Loria, is there any trace or notion of the so-called Templar Baphomet, See Sepher Ha Zohar, Part II, fol. 33a, for the sacrifice of the goat as a sop thrown to Satan; Zohar Part III, fol. 28a, for the emissary goat which is loaded with all the sins of Jacob; and ibid., fol. 63a, for a curious dissertation on the ceremony of driving forth the goat and on the confession of the sins of Israel made by Aaron the High Priest.
1 This “discovery” may be commended to mathematicians—if any—who are drawn towards “occult science”, and it should be compared with what Lévi has said previously on the revolution of the square. Hereof is “the eternal mathematics of thought”. The question is whether even a professed Magus could put it forward seriously.
1 See my Doctrine and Literature of the Kabalah, 1902, p. 27, for a short notice of GEMATRIA, NOTARICON and THEMURA.
2 It does not appear that Hermetic writers made use of the word Ether as a synonym of Philosophical Sulphur or that it occupied otherwise any place of importance in the word-book of alchemy.
3 See the ARCHIDOXIS MAGICAE of Paracelsus, LIBER PRIMUS, p. 699 in vol. ii of the Geneva Opera Omina, 1658.
CHAPTER IV
THE CONJURATION OF THE FOUR
THE FOUR elementary forms separate and distinguish roughly the created spirits which the universal movement disengages from the central fire. The spirit toils everywhere and fructifies matter by life; all matter is animated; thought and soul are everywhere. By possessing ourselves of the thought which produces diverse forms we become masters of forms and make them serve our purposes. The Astral Light is saturated with such souls, which it disengages in the unceasing generation of beings. These souls have imperfect wills, which can be governed and employed by wills more powerful; then mighty invisible chains form and may occasion or determine great elementary commotions. The phenomena established by the criminal trials of Magic, and quite recently by M. Eudes de Mirville, have no other cause. Elementary spirits are like children: they torment chiefly those who trouble about them, unless indeed they are con trolled by high reason and great severity. We designate such spirits under the name of occult elements, and it is these who frequently occasion our bizarre or disturbing dreams, who produce the movements of the divining rod and rappings upon walls or furniture; but they can manifest no thought other than our own, and when we are not thinking, they speak to us with all the incoherence of dreams. They reproduce good and evil indifferently, for they are without free will and are hence irresponsible; they exhibit themselves to ecstatics and somnambulists under incomplete and fugitive forms. This explains the nightmares of St Anthony and most probably the visions of Swedenborg. Such creatures are neither damned nor guilty; they are curious and innocent. We may use or abuse them like animals or children. Therefore the Magus who makes use of them assumes a terrible responsibility, for he must expiate all the evil which he causes them to accomplish, and the extent of his punishment will be in proportion to that of the power which he may have exercised by their mediation.
To govern elementary spirits and thus become king of the occult elements, we must first have undergone the four ordeals of ancient initiations; and seeing that such initiations exist no longer, we must have substituted analogous experi ences, such as exposing ourselves boldly in a fire, crossing an abyss by means of the trunk of a tree or a plank, scaling a perpendicular mountain during a storm, swimming through a dangerous whirlpool or cataract. A man who is timid in the water will never reign over the Undines; one who is afraid of fire will never command Salamanders; so long as we are liable to giddiness we must leave the Sylphs in peace and forbear from irritating Gnomes; for inferior spirits will only obey a power which has overcome them in their own element. When this incontestable faculty has been acquired by exercise and daring, the word of our will must be imposed on the elements by special consecrations of air, fire, water and earth. This is the indispensable preliminary of all magical operations. The air is exorcised by breathing towards the four cardinal points and saying:
The Prayer of the Sylphs must be recited next, after tracing their sign in the air with the quill of an eagle.
Water is exorcised by imposition of hands, breathing and speech; consecrated salt and a little of the ash which remains in the pan of incense are mingled also with it. The aspergillus is formed of twigs of vervain, periwinkle, sage, mint, ash and basil, tied by a thread taken from a virgin's distaff and provided with a handle of hazelwood from a tree which has not yet fruited. The characters of the seven spirits must be graven thereon with the magic bodkin. The salt and ash must be consecrated separately, saying:
Fire is exorcised by the sprinkling of salt, incense, white resin, camphor and sulphur; by thrice pronouncing the three names of the genii of fire: MICHAEL, king of the sun and lightning; SAMAEL, king of volcanoes; and ANAEL, prince of the Astral Light; and, finally, by reciting the1
The earth is exorcised by aspersion of water, by breath ing and by fire, with the perfumes proper for each day and the
It must be borne in mind that the special kingdom of Gnomes is at the north, that of Salamanders at the south, that of Sylphs at the east, and that of Undines at the west. These beings influence the four temperaments of man; that is to say, the Gnomes affect the melancholy, Sala manders the sanguine, Undines the phlegmatic and Sylphs the bilious. Their signs are: the hieroglyphs of the Bull for the Gnomes, who are commanded with the sword; those of the Lion for Salamanders, who are commanded with the bifurcated rod or magic trident; those of the Eagle for the Sylphs, who are commanded by the holy pantacles; finally, those of the Water-Carrier for Undines, who are commanded by the cup of libations. Their respective sovereigns are Gob for the Gnomes, Djin for the Salamanders, Paralda for the Sylphs and Nicksa for the Undines.
When an elementary spirit torments, or at least vexes, the inhabitants of this world, it must be conjured by air, water, fire and earth; by breathing, sprinkling, burning of perfumes; and by tracing on the ground the Star of Solomon and the Sacred Pentagram. These figures must be perfectly correct and drawn either with the charcoal of consecrated fire or with a reed dipped in various colours, mixed with powdered loadstone. Then, holding the Pantacle of Solomon in one hand and taking up successively the sword, rod and cup, the Conjuration of the Four should be recited with a loud voice, after the following manner: