by Eliphas Levi
When Christianity proscribed the public exercise of the ancient worships, the partisans of the latter were com pelled to meet in secret for the celebration of their mysteries. Initiates presided over these assemblies and soon established a kind of orthodoxy among the varieties of persecuted worships, this being facilitated by the aid of magical truth and by the fact that proscription unites wills and forges bonds of brotherhood between men. Thus, the Mysteries of Isis, of Ceres Eleusinia, of Bacchus, combined with those of the Bona Dea and primeval Druidism. The meetings took place usually between the days of Mercury and Jupiter, or between those of Venus and Saturn. The proceedings included Rites of Initiation, exchange of mysterious signs, singing of symbolical hymns, the communion of feasting in common, the successive formation of the magical chain at table and in the dance. Finally the meeting broke up after renewing pledges in the presence of chiefs and receiving instructions from them. The candidate for the Sabbath was led or rather carried to the assembly, his eyes covered by the magical mantle in which he was enveloped completely. He was passed before great fires, while alarming noises were made about him. When his face was uncovered, he found himself surrounded by infernal monsters and in the presence of a colossal and hideous goat which he was commanded to adore. All these ceremonies were tests of his force of character and confidence in his initiators. The final ordeal was most decisive of all because it was at first sight humiliating and ridiculous to the mind. The candidate received a brusque command to kiss respectfully the pos terior of the goat. If he refused, his head was covered once more, and he was transported to a distance from the assembly with such extraordinary rapidity that he believed himself whirled through the air. If he agreed, he was taken round the symbolical idol, and there found, not a repulsive and obscene object, but the young and gracious countenance of a priestess of Isis or Maia, who gave him a sisterly salute, and he was then admitted to the banquet.1 As to the orgies which in many such assemblies followed the banquet, we must beware of believing that they were permitted generally at these secret agapae, it is known, however, that a number of Gnostic sects practised them in their conventicles during the early centuries of Christianity. That the flesh had its protestants in those ages of asceticism and compression of the senses was inevitable and can occasion no surprise, but we must not accuse Transcendental Magic of irregularities which it has never authorized. Isis is chaste in her widow hood; Diana Panthea is a virgin; Hermanubis, possessing both sexes, can satisfy neither; the Hermetic hermaphrodite is pure; Apollonius of Tyana never yielded to the seductions of pleasure; the Emperor Julian was a man of rigid con tinence; Plotinus of Alexandria was ascetic in the manner of his life; Paracelsus was such a stranger to foolish love that his sex was suspected; Raymund Lully was initiated in the final secrets of science only after a hopeless passion which made him chaste for ever. It is also a magical tradition that pantacles and talismans lose all their virtue when he who wears them enters a house of prostitution or commits an adultery. The Sabbath of orgies must not therefore be considered as that of the veritable adepts.
With regard to the term Sabbath, some have traced it to the name of Sabasius, and other etymologies have been imagined. The most simple, in our opinion, connects it with the Jewish Sabbath, for it is certain that the Jews, most faithful depositaries of the secrets of the Kabalah, were almost invariably the great masters in Magic during the Middle Ages. The Sabbath was therefore the Sunday of Kabalists, the day of their religious festivals, or rather the night of their regular assembly. This feast, surrounded with mysteries, had vulgar fright for its safeguard and escaped persecution by terror. As to the diabolical Sabbath of necromancers, it was a counterfeit of that of the Magi, an assembly of malefactors who exploited idiots and fools. There horrible rites were practised and abominable potions compounded; there sorcerers and sorceresses laid their plans and compared notes for the common support of their reputation in prophecy and divination. At that period diviners were in general demand and followed a lucrative profession, while exercising a real power. Such institutions neither had nor could possess any regular rites; everything depended on the caprice of the chiefs and the vertigo of the assembly. The reports of some who had been present served as a type for all nightmares of hallucination, and from this chaos of impossible realities and demoniac dreams have issued the revolting and foolish histories of the Sabbath which figure in magical processes and in the books of such writers as Sprenger, Delancre, Delrio and Bodin.1
The Rites of the Gnostic Sabbath were imported into Germany by an association which took the name of Mopses. It replaced the kabalistic goat by the Hermetic dog, and the candidates, male or female—for the order initiated women —were brought in with eyes bandaged. The same infernal noise was made about them which surrounded the name of Sabbath with so many inexplicable rumours; they were asked whether they were afraid of the devil, and were required abruptly to choose between kissing the posterior of the Grand Master and that of a small silk-covered figure of a dog, which was substituted for the old grand idol of the Goat of Mendes. The sign of recognition was a ridiculous grimace, which recalls the phantasmagoria of the ancient Sabbath and the masks of its myrmidons. For the rest, their doctrine is summed up in the cultus of love and licence. The association came into existence when the Roman Church was persecuting Freemasonry. The Mopses pretended to recruit only among Catholics, and for the penal pledge at reception they substituted a solemn engagement upon honour to reveal no secrets of the order. It was more effectual than any oath and silenced religious objections.1
The name of the Templar Baphomet, which should be spelt kabalistically backwards, is composed of three abbreviations: TEM. OHP. AB., Templi omnium hominum pacis abbas, “the father of the temple of peace of all men”.1 According to some, the Baphomet was a monstrous head, but according to others, a demon in the form of a goat. A sculptured coffer was disinterred recently in the ruins of an old Commandery of the Temple, and antiquaries observed upon it a baphometic figure, corresponding by its attributes to the goat of Mendes and the androgyne of Khunrath. It was a bearded figure with a female body, holding the sun in one hand and the moon in the other, attached to chains. Now, this virile head is a beautiful allegory which attributes to thought alone the initiative and creative principle. Here the head represents spirit and the body matter. The orbs enchained to the human form, and directed by that Nature of which intelligence is the head, are also magnificently allegorical. The sign all the same was discovered to be obscene and diabolical by the learned men who examined it.. Can we be astonished after this at the spread of mediaeval superstition in our own day? One thing only surprises me, that, believing in the devil and his agents, men do not rekindle the faggots. M. Veuillot is logical and demands it: one should honour men who have the courage of their opinions.
Pursuing our curious researches, we come now to the most atrocious mysteries of the Grimoire, those which are concerned with evocations of devils and pacts with hell. After attributing a real existence to the absolute negation of goodness, after having enthroned the absurd and created a god of falsehood, it remained for human folly to invoke the impossible idol, and this maniacs have done. We were informed lately that the most reverend Father Ventura, formerly Superior of the Theatines, Bishops' Examiner, etc., after reading our “Doctrine”, declared that the Kabalah was in his opinion an invention of the devil and that the Star of Solomon was another diabolical device to persuade the world that Satan was the same as God. Observe what is taught seriously by those who are masters in Israel! The ideal of nothingness and night inventing a sublime philo sophy which is the universal basis of faith and the keystone of all temples! The demon setting his signature by the side of God's! My venerable masters in theology, you are greater sorcerers than you or others are aware, and He Who said: “The devil is a liar like his father,” would have had some observations to make on the decisions of your reverences.
Evokers of the devil must before all things belong to a religion which admits a creative devil, who
is also rival of God. To invoke a power, we must believe in it. Given such firm faith in the religion of the devil, we must proceed as follows to enter into correspondence with this pseudo- Deity:
MAGICAL AXIOM
Within the circle of its action, every word creates that which it affirms.
DIRECT CONSEQUENCE
He who affirms the devil creates or makes the devil.
Conditions of Success in Infernal Evocations
(1) Invincible obstinacy; (2) a conscience at once hardened to crime and most prone to remorse and fear; (3) affected or natural ignorance; (4) blind faith in all that is incredible; (5) an utterly false idea of God.
We must afterwards (1) profane the ceremonies of the cultus in which we believe; (2) offer a bloody sacrifice; (3) procure the magic fork, which is a branch of a single bough of hazel or almond, cut at one blow with the new knife used for the sacrifice.1 It must terminate in a fork, which must be armoured with iron or steel, made from the blade of the knife before mentioned. A fast of fifteen days must be observed, taking a single unsalted repast after sundown. It should consist of black bread and blood, seasoned with unsalted spices or black beans and milky and narcotic herbs. We must get drunk every five days after sundown on wine in which five heads of black poppies and five ounces of pounded hemp-seed have been steeped for five hours, the infusion being strained through a cloth woven by a prostitute: strictly speaking, the first cloth which comes to hand may be used, should it have been woven by a woman. The evocation should be performed on the night between Monday and Tuesday, or that between Friday and Saturday. A solitary and forbidden spot must be chosen, such as a cemetery haunted by evil spirits, a dreaded ruin in the country, the vaults of an abandoned convent, a place where some murder has been committed, a druidic altar or an old temple of idols. A black seamless and sleeveless robe must be provided; a leaden cap em blazoned with the signs of the moon, Venus and Saturn; two candles of human fat set in black wooden candlesticks, carved in the shape of a crescent; two crowns of vervain; a magical sword with a black handle; the magical fork; a copper vase containing the blood of the victim; a censer holding perfumes, namely, incense, camphor, aloes, ambergris and storax, mixed together with the blood of a goat, a mole and a bat; four nails taken from the coffin of an executed criminal; the head of a black cat which has been nourished on human flesh for five days; a bat drowned in blood; the horns of a goat cum quo puella concuberit; and the skull of a parricide. All these hideous objects—though scarcely possible to obtain—having been collected, they must be arranged as follows: A perfect circle is traced by the sword, leaving, however, a break, or point of issue, on one side; a triangle is drawn in the circle, and the Pantacle thus formed is coloured with blood; a chafing-dish is placed at one of its angles, and this should have been included among the indispensable objects already enumerated. At the opposite base of the triangle three little circles are described for the sorcerer and his two assistants; behind that of the first the sign of the Labarum or monogram of Constantine is drawn, not with the blood of the victim, but with the operator's own blood. He and his assistants must have bare feet and covered heads. The skin of the immo lated victim must be brought also to the spot and, being cut into strips, must be placed within the circle, thus forming a second and inner circle, fixed at four corners by four nails from the coffin mentioned already. Hard by the nails, bi't outside the circle, must be placed the head of the cat, the human or rather inhuman skull, the horns of the goat, and the bat. They must be sprinkled with a branch of birch dipped in the blood of the victim, and then a fire of cypress and alderwood must be lighted, the two magical candles being placed on the right and left of the operator, encircled with the wreaths of vervain. The formulae of evocation can be pronounced now, as they are found in the Magical Elements of Peter of Apono, or in the Grimoires, whether printed or manuscript. That of the “Grand Grimoire”, reproduced in the vulgar Red Dragon, has been altered wilfully and should be read as follows:
The Grand Appellation of Agrippa1 consists only in these words: Dies Mies Jeschet Boenedoesef Douvema Enitemaus. We make no pretence of understanding their meaning; possibly they possess none, assuredly none which is reasonable, since they avail in evoking the devil, who is the sovereign unreason. Picus de Mirandola, no doubt from the same motive, affirms that in Black Magic the most barbarous and unintelligible words are the most efficacious and the best. The conjurations are repeated with uplifted voice, accompanied by imprecations and menaces, until the spirit replies. He is preceded commonly by a violent wind which seems to make the whole country resound. Then domestic animals tremble and hide away, the assistants feel a breath upon their faces, and their hair, damp with cold sweat, rises upon their heads. The Grand and Supreme Appellation, according to Peter of Apono, is as follows:
The ordinary signs and signatures of demons are given below:
But they are those of inferior demons, and here follow the official signatures of the princes of hell, attested judicially —judicially, O M. le Comte de Mirville!—and preserved in the archives of justice as convincing evidences for the trial of the unfortunate Urban Grandier:
These signatures appear under a pact of which Collin de Plancy gives a facsimile reproduction in the Atlas of his Infernal Dictionary. It has this marginal note: “The draught is in hell, in the closet of Lucifer”, a valuable item of information about a locality but imperfectly explored, and belonging to a period in no wise remote from our own, though anterior to the trial of young Labarre and Etalonde, who, as everyone knows, were contemporaries of Voltaire.
Evocations were followed frequently by pacts written on parchment of goat skin with an iron pen and blood drawn from the left arm. The document was in duplicate: one copy was carried off by the fiend and the other swallowed by the wilful reprobate. The reciprocal engagements were that the demon should serve the sorcerer during a given period of years and that the sorcerer should belong to the demon after a determined time. The Church in her exorcisms has consecrated the belief in all these things; it may be said indeed that Black Magic and its darksome prince are the true, living and terrific creations of Roman Catholicism; that they are even its special and characteristic work, for priests invent not God. So also true Catholics cleave from the bottom of their hearts to the conservation and even the regeneration of this great work, which is the philosophical stone of the official and positive cultus. In prison slang the devil is called Baker by convicts; all our desire, and we speak no longer from the standpoint of the Magus, but as a devoted child of Christianity and of that Church to which we owe our earliest education and our first enthu siasms—all our desire, we say, is that the phantom of Satan may no longer be called also the Baker for ministers of morality and representatives of the u'ghest virtue. Will they appreciate our intention and forgive the boldness of our aspirations in consideration of our devoted intentions and the sincerity of our faith?
The devil-making Magic which dictated the Grimoire of Pope Honorius, the Enchiridion of Leo III,1 the exorcisms of the Ritual, the verdicts of inquisitors, the suits of Laubardement, the articles of the Veuillot brothers, the books of MM. de Falloux, de Montalembert, de Mirville, the Magic of sorcerers and of pious persons who are not sorcerers, is truly a thing to be condemed in some and infinitely deplored in others. It is above all to combat these unhappy aberrations of the human mind by their exposure that we have published this book. May it further the holy cause!
But we have not yet exhibited these impious devices in all their turpitude, in all their monstrous folly. We must stir up the blood-stained filth or perished superstitions; we must tax the annals of demonomania, so as to explore certain crimes which imagination alone could not invent. The Kabalist Bodin, Israelite by conviction and Catholic by necessity, had no other intention in his Demonomania of Sorcerers than to impeach Catholicism in its works and undermine it in the greatest of all its doctrinal abuses. The treatise of Bodin is profoundly Machiavellian and strikes at the heart of the institutions and persons it appe
ars to defend. It would be difficult to conceive without reading it his vast mass of sanguinary and hideous histories, acts of revolting superstition, sentences and executions of stupid ferocity. “Burn all!” the inquisitors seemed to cry. “God will distinguish His own!” Poor fools, hysterical women and idiots were accordingly sacrificed without mercy for the crime of Magic, while, at the same time, great criminals eluded this infamous and sanguinary justice. Bodin gives us to understand as much by recounting such anecdotes as that which he connects with the death of Charles IX. It is an almost unknown abomination, and one which has not, so far as we are aware, tempted the skill of any romancer, even at periods of the most feverish and deplorable literature.