by Eliphas Levi
What is vulgarly called Necromancy has nothing in common with resurrection, and it is at least highly doubtful whether, in operations connected with this application of magical power, we really come into correspondence with the souls of the dead whom we evoke. There are two kinds of Necromancy, that of light and that of darkness—the evocation by Prayer, Pantacle and Perfumes, and the evoca tion by blood, imprecations and sacrilege. We have practised only the first, and advise no one to devote themselves to the second. It is certain that the images of the dead do appear to the magnetized persons who evoke them; it is certain also that they never reveal any mysteries of the life beyond. They are beheld as they still exist in the memories of those who knew them, and doubtless as their reflections have left them impressed on the Astral Light. When evoked spectres reply to questions addressed them, it is always by signs or by interior and imaginary impressions, never with a voice which really strikes the ears; and this is compre hensible enough, for how should a shadow speak? With what instrument could it cause the air to vibrate by impressing it in such a manner as to make distinct sounds? At the same time, electrical contacts are experienced from apparitions and sometimes appear to be produced by the hand of a phantom; but the phenomena is wholly subjective, is occasioned solely by the power of imagination and the local wealth of that occult force which we term the Astral Light. The proof of this is that spirits, or at least the spectres pretended to be such, may indeed touch us occasionally, but we cannot touch them, and this is one of the most affrighting characteristics of these apparitions, which are at times so real in appearance that we cannot unmoved feel the hand pass through that which seems a bodv and yet make contact with nothing.
We read in ecclesiastical historians that Spiridion, Bishop of Tremithonte, afterwards invoked as a saint, called up the spirit of his daughter, Irene, to ascertain from her the whereabouts of some concealed money which she had taken in charge for a traveller. Swedenborg communicated habitually with the so-called dead, whose forms appeared to him in the Astral Light. Several credible persons of our acquaintance have assured us that they have been revisited for years by the dead who were dear to them. The celebrated atheist Sylvanus Marechal appeared to his widow and one of her friends, to acquaint her concerning a sum of 1,500 francs which he had concealed in a secret drawer. This anecdote was related to us by an old friend of the family.
Evocations should have always a motive and a justifiable end; otherwise, they are works of darkness and folly, most dangerous for health and reason. To evoke out of pure curiosity, or to find out whether we shall see anything, is to court fruitless fatigue. The transcendental sciences admit of neither doubt nor puerility. The permissible motive of an evocation may be either love or intelligence. Evocations of love require less apparatus and are in every respect easier. The procedure is as follows. We must collect, in the first place, carefully the memorials of him—or her—whom we desire to behold, the articles he used, and on which his impression remains; we must also prepare an apartment in in which the person lived, or otherwise one of similar kind, and place his portrait veiled in white therein, surrounded with his favourite flowers, which must be renewed daily. A fixed date must then be chosen, being that of the person's birth, or one that was especially fortunate for his and our own affection, one of which we may believe that his soul, however blessed elsewhere, cannot lose the remembrance. This must be the day of evocation, and we must prepare for it during the space of two weeks. Throughout the period we must refrain from extending to anyone the same proofs of affection which we have the right to expect from the dead; we must observe strict chastity, live in retreat and take only one modest and light collation daily. Every evening at the same hour we must shut ourselves in the chamber consecrated to the memory of the lamented person, using only one small light, such as that of a funeral lamp or taper. This light should be placed behind us, the portrait should be uncovered, and we should remain before it for an hour in silence; finally, we should fumigate the apartment with a little good incense, and go out backwards. On the morning of the day fixed for the evocation, we should adorn ourselves as if for a festival, not salute anyone first, make but a single repast of bread, wine and roots, or fruits. The cloth should be white, two covers should be laid, and one portion of the broken bread should be set aside; a little wine should be placed also in the glass of the person whom we design to invoke. The meal must be eaten alone in the chamber of evocations and in presence of the veiled portrait; it must be all cleared away at the end, except the glass belonging to the dead person, and his portion of bread, which must be set before the portrait. In the evening, at the hour for the regular visit, we must repair in silence to the chamber, light a clear fire of cypress-wood and cast incense seven times thereon, pronouncing the name of the person whom we desire to behold. The lamp must then be extinguished, and the fire permitted to die out. On this day the portrait must not be unveiled. When the flame dies down, put more incense on the ashes and invoke God according to the forms of that religion to which the dead person belonged, and according to the ideas which he himself possessed of God. While making this prayer, we must identify ourselves with the evoked person, speak as he spoke, believe in a sense as he believed. Then, after a silence of fifteen minutes, we must speak to him as if he were present, with affection and with faith, praying him to appear before us. Renew this prayer mentally, covering the face with both hands; then call him thrice with a loud voice; remain kneeling, the eyes closed or covered, for some minutes; then call again thrice upon him in a sweet and affectionate tone, and slowly open the eyes. Should nothing result, the same experiment must be renewed in the following year, and if necessary a third time, when it is certain that the desired apparition will be obtained, and the longer it has been delayed the more realistic and striking it will be.
Evocations of knowledge and intelligence are performed with more solemn ceremonies. If concerned with a cele brated personage, we must meditate for twenty-one days upon his life and writings, form an idea of his appearance, converse with him mentally and imagine his answers. We must carry his portrait, or at least his name, about us, following a vegetarian diet for twenty-one days and a severe fast during the last seven. We must next construct the magical oratory, described in the thirteenth chapter of our “Doctrine”, and see that all light is excluded therefrom. If, however, the proposed operation is to take place in the day time, we may leave a narrow aperture on the side where the sun will shine at the hour of evocation, place a triangular prism before this opening and a crystal globe filled with water facing the prism. If the experiment has been arranged for night, the magic lamp must be so situated that its single ray shall fall upon the altar smoke. The purpose of these preparations is to furnish the Magic Agents with elements of corporeal appearance, and to ease as much as possible the tension of imagination, which could not be exalted without danger into the absolute illusion of dream. For the rest, it will be understood easily that a beam of sunlight or the ray of a lamp coloured variously and falling upon curling and irregular smoke can in no way create a perfect image. The chafing-dish containing the sacred fire should be in the centre of the oratory and the altar of perfumes hard by. The operator must turn towards the east to pray, and the west to invoke; he must be either alone or assisted by two persons preserving the strictest silence; he must wear the magical vestments, which we have described in the seventh chapter, and must be crowned with vervain and gold. He should bathe before the operation, and all his under garments must be of the most intact and scrupulous cleanli ness. The ceremony should begin with a prayer suited to the genius of the spirit about to be invoked and one which would be approved by himself if he still lived. For example, it would be impossible to evoke Voltaire by reciting prayers in the style of St Bridget. For the great men of antiquity, we may use the Hymns of Cleanthes or Orpheus, with the oath terminating the Golden Verses of Pythagoras. In our evocation of Apollonius, we used the Magical Philosophy of Patricius for the Ritual, containing the doctrines of Zoroaster
and the writings of Hermes Trismegistus. We recited the Nuctenteron of Apollonius in Greek with a loud voice and added a Conjuration beginning: “Let the Father of all be Counsellor and thrice-great Hermes guide.”1
For the evocation of spirits belonging to religions issued from Judaism, the following Kabalistic Invocation of Solomon should be used, either in Hebrew or in any other tongue with which the spirit in question is known to have been familiar:
It should be remembered, above all in conjurations, that the names of Satan, Beelzebub, Adramelek and others do not designate spiritual unities but legions of impure spirits. “Our name is legion, for we are many,” says the spirit of darkness in the Gospel. Number constitutes law, and progress takes place inversely in hell as the domain of anarchy. That is to say, the most advanced in Satanic development and consequently the most degraded and the least intelligent and feeblest. Thus, a fatal law drives demons downward when they wish and believe themselves to be ascending. So also those who term themselves chiefs are the most impotent and despised of all. As to the horde of perverse spirits, they tremble before an unknown, invisible, incomprehensible, capricious, implacable chief, who never explains his laws, whose arm is ever stretched out to strike those who fail to understand him. They give this phantom the names of Baal, Jupiter and even others more venerable, which cannot, without profanation, be pronounced in hell. But this phantom is only the shadow and remnant of God, disfigured by wilful perversity, and persisting in imagination like a visitaiont of justice and a remorse of truth.
When the evoked spirit of light manifests with sad or irritated countenance, we must offer him a moral sacrifice, that is, be inwardly disposed to renounce whatever offends him; and before leaving the oratory, we must dismiss him, saying: “May peace be with thee! I have not wished to trouble thee; do thou torment me not. I shall labour to improve myself as to anything that vexes thee. I pray and will still pray, with thee and for thee. Pray thou also both with and for me, and return to thy great slumber, expecting that day when we shall awake together. Silence and adieu!”
We must not close this chapter without giving some details on Black Magic for the benefit of the curious. The practices of Thessalian sorcerers and Roman Canidias are described by several ancient authors. In the first place, a pit was dug, at the mouth of which they cut the throat of a black sheep; the psyllae and larvae presumed to be present, and swarming round to drink the blood, were driven off with the magic sword; the triple Hecate and the infernal gods were evoked, and the phantom whose apparition was desired was called upon three times. In the Middle Ages, necromancers violated tombs, composing philtres and unguents with the fat and blood of corpses combined with aconite, belladonna and poisonous fungi. They boiled and skimmed these frightful compounds over fires fed with human bones and crucifixes stolen from churches; they added dust of dried toads and ash of consecrated hosts; they anointed their temples, hands, and breasts with the infernal unguent, traced diabolical Pantacles, evoked the dead beneath gibbets or in deserted graveyards. Their howlings were heard from afar, and belated travellers imagined that legions of phantoms rose out of the earth. The very trees, in their eyes, assumed appalling shapes; fiery orbs gleamed in the thickets; frogs in the marshes seemed to echo mysterious words of the Sabbath with croaking voices. It was the magnetism of hallucination and the contagion of madness.
The end of procedure in Black Magic was to disturb reason and produce the feverish excitement which em boldens to great crimes. The Grimoires, once seized and burnt by authority everywhere, are certainly not harmless books. Sacrilege, murder, theft, are indicated or hinted as means to realization in almost all these works. Thus, in the Grand Grimoire and its modern version the Red Dragon, there is a recipe entitled “Composition of Death, or Philosophical Stone”, a broth of aqua fortis, copper, arsenic and verdigris. There are also necromantic processes, com prising the tearing up of earth from graves with the nails, dragging out bones, placing them crosswise on the breast, then assisting at midnight mass on Christmas eve, and flying out of the church at the moment of consecration, crying: “Let the dead rise from their tombs!” Thereafter the procedure involves returning to the graveyard, taking a handful of earth nearest to the coffin, running back to the door of the church, which has been alarmed by the clamour, depositing the two bones crosswise and again shouting: “Let the dead rise from their tombs!” If the operator escapes being seized and shut up in a madhouse, he must retire at a slow pace, and count four thousand five hundred steps in a straight line, which means following a broad road or scaling walls. Having traversed this space, he lies down upon the earth, as if in a coffin, and repeats in lugubrious tones: “Let the dead rise from their tombs!” Finally, he calls thrice on the person whose apparition is desired. No doubt anyone who is mad enough and wicked enough to abandon himself to such operations is predisposed to all chimeras and all phantoms. Hence the recipe of the Grand Grimoire is most efficacious, but we advise none of our readers to test it.
1 “Life is eternal. Death, being ideologically the negation of life, can be only apparent and transitory. Transitory death is but a phenomenon of eternal life, analogous to that of sleeping or waking.”—Le Livre des Sages, p. 61.
1 The reader will do well to observe this luminous syllogism, as an example of the logic belonging to “universal science” and a discoverer of the absolute in France of the Second Empire. It is otherwise a test of values for Lévi's “occult sanctuary”, not because he really thought that “from this escape is difficult”, but because he knew well enough that he had taken out a licence in mockery.
1 The Conjuration referred to is given in Greek by Lévi without translation and without reference to source. It is in such a corrupt state as printed that no rendering is possible except the opening words which I have given in the text above—and those of the last paragraph, namely: “Oh Apollonius, O Apollonius, O Apollonius, thou teachest the Magic of Zoroaster (follower) of Ormuzd: and this is the service of the gods.”
CHAPTER XIV
TRANSMUTATIONS
ST AUGUSTINE speculates, as we have said, whether Apuleius could have been changed into an ass and then have resumed his human shape. The same doctor might have concerned himself equally with the adventure of the comrades of Ulysses, transformed into swine by Circe. In vulgar opinion, transmutations and metamorphoses have always been the very essence of Magic. Now, the crowd, being the echo of opinion, which is queen of the world, is never perfectly right or entirely wrong. Magic does change the nature of things, or rather modifies their appearances at pleasure, according to the strength of the operator's will and the fascination of ambitious adepts.1 The spoken word creates its form, and when a person held infallible confers a name upon a given thing, the latter is really transformed into the substance signified by the name. The masterpiece of speech and of faith in this order is the real transmutation of a substance without change in its externals. Had Apol- lonius offered a cup of wine to his disciples, and said to them: “This is my blood, of which ye shall drink hence forth to perpetuate my life within you”; and had his disciples through centuries believed that they effected transformation by repeating the same words; had they taken the wine, despite its odour and taste, for the real, human and living blood of Apollonius, we should have to acknowledge this master in theurgy as the most accomplished of enchanters and most potent of all the Magi. It would remain for us then to adore him.
Now, it is well known that mesmerists impart for their somnambulists any taste that they chose to plain water; and if we assume a Magus with sufficient command over the astral fluid to magnetize at the same moment a whole assembly of persons, otherwise prepared for magnetism by extreme super-excitement, we shall be in a position to explain readily, not indeed the Gospel miracle of Cana but works of the same class. Are not the fascinations of love, which result from the universal Magic of Nature, truly prodigious, and do they not actually transform persons and things? Love is a dream of enchantments that transfigures the world; all becomes music and
fragrance, all intoxication and felicity. The beloved being is beautiful, is good, is sublime, is infallible, is radiant, glows with health and happiness. When the dream ends we seem to have fallen from the clouds; we are inspired with disgust for the brazen sorceress who took the place of the lovely Melusine, for the Thersites whom we deemed was Achilles or Nereus. What faith is that which we cannot inspire in those who love us? But also what reason or justice can we instil into those who have finished with such love? Love begins magician and ends sorcerer. After creating the illusions of heaven on earth, it realizes those of hell. Its hatred is absurd like its ardour, because it is passional, that is, subject to the fatalities of its own influences. For this cause it has been proscribed by sages, who declare it the enemy of reason. Are they to be envied or commiserated for thus condemning, doubtless without understanding, the most alluring of miscreants? All that can be said is that when they spoke thus, either they had not yet loved or else they loved no longer.
Things that are external are for us what our word internal makes them. To believe that we are happy is to be happy; whatsoever we esteem becomes precious in proportion to the estimation itself: this is the sense in which we can say that Magic changes the nature of things. The Metamor phoses of Ovid are true, but they are allegorical, like the Golden Ass of rare Apuleius. The life of beings is a progressive transformation, and its forms can be deter mined, renewed, prolonged further, or destroyed sooner. If the doctrine of metempsychosis were true, might one not say that the debauch represented by Circe really and materially changes men into swine, seeing that, on this hypothesis, the retribution of vices would be a relapse into animal forms corresponding thereunto? Now, metem psychosis, which has been misinterpreted frequently, has a perfectly true side; for animal forms communicate their sympathetic impressions to the astral body of man, which reacts speedily on his lineaments according to the force of his habits.1 A man of intelligent and passive mildness assumes the inert physiognomy and ways of a sheep, but in somnambulism it is a sheep that is seen, and not a man with a sheepish countenance, as the ecstatic and learned Swedenborg experienced a thousand times. In the kabalistic book of Daniel the seer, this mystery is represented by the legend of Nebuchadnezzar changed into a beast, which, after the common fate of magical allegories, has been mistaken for an actual history. In this way, we can really transform men into animals and animals into men; we can metamorphose plants and alter their virtue; we can endow minerals with ideal properties: it is all a question of willing. We can equally render ourselves visible or invisible at will, and this enables us to explain the mysteries of the Ring of Gyges.