by Eliphas Levi
Attacked by a disease of which no physician could dis cover the cause or explain the frightful symptoms, King Charles IX was dying. The Queen-Mother, who ruled him entirely and had everything to lose under another reign— the Queen-Mother, who has been suspected as author of the disease, even against her own interests, because hidden devices and undeclared interests have been attributed always to her who was capable of anything—-consulted her astrolo gers and then had recourse to the foulest form of Magic, the ORACLE OF THE BLEEDING HEAD, for the sufferer's con dition grew worse and more desperate daily. The infernal operation was performed in the following way. A child was selected, of beautiful appearance and innocent manners; he was prepared for his first communion by the almoner of the palace. When the day or rather night of the sacrifice arrived, a monk, an apostate Jacobin, given over to the occult works of Black Magic, celebrated a Mass of the Devil at midnight in the sick-room, in the presence only of Catherine de Medicis and her trusted confidants. It was offered before the image of the demon, having a crucifix upside down under its feet and the sorcerer consecrated two hosts, one black and one white. The white was given to the child, who was brought in clothed as for baptism, and was murdered on the steps of the altar immediately after his communion. His head, cut by one blow from the body, was set palpitating upon the great black host which covered the bottom of the paten, and then transported to a table where mysterious lamps were burning. The exorcism began, an oracle was besought of the demon, and an answer by the mouth of the head to a secret question which the King dared not make aloud and had confided to no one. A strange and feeble voice, which had nothing human about it, was heard presently in the poor little martyr's head, saying in Latin: Vim patior—“I suffer violence”. At this reply, which doubtless announced to the sick man that hell no longer protected him, a horrible trembling seized the monarch, his arms stiffened and he cried in a hoarse voice: “Away with that head! Away with that head!” and so continued screaming till he gave up the ghost. His attendants, who were not in the confidence of this frightful mystery, believed that he was pursued by the phantom of Coligny and that he saw the head of the illustrious admiral. That which tormented the dying man was not, however, a remorse but the hopeless terror of an anticipated Hell.
This darksome magical legend of Bodin recalls the abominable practices and deserved fate of Gilles de Laval, Lord of Retz, who passed from asceticism to Black Magic and offered the most revolting sacrifices to conciliate the favour of Satan. This madman confessed at his trial that Satan had appeared to him frequently, but had always deceived him by promises of treasures which he had never delivered. It transpired from the judicial informations that several hundred unfortunate children had fallen victims to the cupidity and atrocious fancies of this monster.1
1 “The black intelligence is the divination of the Mysteries of Night, the attribution of reality to the forms of the invisible. It is belief in vague possibility, light in dream. . . . Let us respect the Mysteries of the Shadow but keep our lamps burning.”—Le Grand Arcane, p. 213. When Lévi says in the text above that the Kabalah and Magic are divided between the cultus of these two victims he means to say that as there is a Black and a White Magic, according to his hypothesis, so also there is a Black Tradition in Israel as there is a great Tradition of the Light, a Kabalism of sorcery and Grimoires and a Divine Kabalism, like that imbedded in the Zohar.
1 The Moon of CHESED is really in kabahstic symbolism the waxing moon on the side of Mercy in the Tree of Life, while the waning Moon is referred to the side of Seventy. Ir should be remembered also that the Moon in the Zohar is always and only Shekinah.
2 It is said otherwise in La Clef des Grands Mystères that initiates like the Templars were less guilty for having worshipped Baphomet than for having made it possible that this image should be remarked by the profane (loc. cit.. p. 219). Lévi goes on to affirm that the monster in question was a pantheistic figure of the Universal Agent and also the bearded demon ot alchemists. There is. however, no such demon in the pictorial emblems of Hermetic Philosophy, nor is it true, as he adds, that ancient Hermetic Masonry in its highest Grades referred the achievement of the Great Work to a bearded demon, the reason in this case being that no Hermetic Masonry is older than the second half of the eighteenth century.
1 Éliphas Lévi remained within the logic of this position when he affirmed subsequently that angels and demons are purely hypothetical or legendary beings and so relegated them to the realm of poetry because they could not belong to science.—La Science des Esprits, p. 6.
1 It must be understood that there are no historical records of these Sabbaths of Adepti and that Lévi has arrived at his account of their alleged proceedings by eliminating the abominations of the Black Sabbath.
1 I have dealt with Bodin already. Delrio was a Jesuit who was in evidence at the same period and a little later, more curious and learned than Bodin, while of his sincerity there is no suspicion. His Six Books of Magical Disquisitions reduce witch-finding to an exact science and constitute also a safe guide for the ghostly confessor in dealing with evokers of ghosts. For the rest, he distinguished between infernal Magic and an artificial Magic of prestige, which is merely exploitation and imposture. He recognizes also a Natural Magic, but in this respect is scarcely to be regarded as a precursor of Sir David Brewster. He is worth reading, at least in the French translation of 1611—très-recherché, say the bibliophiles. There was also Wierus, who preceded Bodin, was the pupil of Agrippa and like his master was somewhat given to mockery and even to unbelief. He thought that sorcerers were more foolish than criminal, and hence Bodin wrote a quarto to demolish him. After Wierus and Bodin came Delrio—in order of publication—and after Delrio there was Delancre. They are the four chief demonologists of the Latin orthodoxy. There was also Jacobus Sprengerus and his celebrated Malleus Maleficarum, 1519. All these knew more about devils than the wretched sorcerers themselves. Wierus is priceless for folk-lore, Delancre is a mine of information upon ten thousand wonders, unheard of even by Gaffarel. The Infidelity and Enormity of Sorcery plainly Established and Table of the Inconstancy of Evil Angels and Demons are the two treatises which we owe to the last authority.
1 It is idle nonsense to say that the Mopses revived the Rites of the Gnostic or any Sabbath and also to suggest a connexion between the legendary Baphomet and the ridiculous china dog. The Order of Mopses was either a mock-Masonry or a silly substitution under the veil of which German Masons at Cologne or Viennese Masons continued their meetings when a Papal Bull was in force against the Order. As it received both sexes, the first alternative is perhaps more probable. See my New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry, ii, 105.
1 There are three things to be said on this fantastic explanation: (1) that there is no reason assigned or assignable for reading Baphomet backwards; (2) that the Latin produced from the alleged abbreviations is incredibly bad; and (3) that its import has no application to Templars, either as a chivalry or an occult sect. From neither point of view can they be regarded as apostles of peace.
1 Readers must be dissuaded from supposing that there is any authority in the records for these diabolical evocations, taken as a whole. Part of the account comes from Grimoires and MSS. of Ceremonial Magic, but Lévi has supplied most of the pictorial effects by his own inventive genius.
1 Meaning the so-called Fourth Book of Philosophia Occulta, attributed falsely to Cornelius Agrippa.
1 The ENCHIRIDION is here classed with one of the worst Rituals of Black Magic, to which it by no means belongs. Compare what Lévi says in this place with his laudation of the so-called CONSTITUTION in the History of Magic, pp. 247-50.
1 See my translation of Lévi's History of Magic, second edition, pp. 272-80.
CHAPTER XVI
WITCHCRAFT AND SPELLS
WHAT sorcerers and necromancers sought above all in their evocations of the impure spirit was that magnetic power which is the possession of the true adept, but was desired by them only that they might abuse it s
hamefully. The folly of sorcerers was an evil folly, and one of their chief ends was the power of bewitchments or harmful influences. We have set down in our “Doctrine” what we think upon the subject of bewitchment, and how it seems to us a dangerous and real power. The true Magus bewitches without cere monial and by his mere reprobation those whom he con demns and considers it necessary to punish; his forgiveness even bewitches those who do him wrong, and never do the enemies of initiates carry far the impunity of their injustice. We ourselves have witnessed numerous examples of this fatal! law. The murderers of martyrs always perish miserably, and the adepts are martyrs of intelligence; Providence seems to scorn those who despise them and to slay those who would deprive them of life. The legend of the Wandering Jew is the popular poetry of this arcanum. A Wise Man was driven by a nation to His doom; it bade Him “Go on!” when He sought to rest for a moment. What is the consequence? A similar condemnation overtakes the nation itself; it is proscribed bodily. Men have cried to it: “Get on! Get on!” for centuries, and it has found no pity and no repose.
A man of learning had a wife whom he loved wildly and passionately, in the exaltation of his tenderness; he honoured her with blind confidence and trusted her entirely. Vain of her beauty and understanding, this woman became jealous of her husband's superiority and began to hate him. Some time after she deserted him, disgracing herself with an old, ugly, stupid and immoral man. This was the beginning of her punishment, but it did not end there. The man of learning pronounced solemnly the following sentence upon her: “I take back your understanding and your beauty.” A year after she was no longer recognized by those who had known her; she was disfigured by obesity and reflected in her countenance the hideousness of her new affections. Three years later she was ugly; seven years later she was deranged. This happened in our own time, and we were acquainted with both persons.
The Magus condemns after the manner of the skilful physician, and for this reason there is no appeal from his sentence when it has been once pronounced against a guilty person. There are no ceremonies and no invocations; he does but abstain from eating at the same table, or if forced to do so neither accepts nor offers salt. But the bewitchments of sorcerers are of another kind, and may be compared to an actual poisoning of some current of Astral Light. They exalt their will by ceremonies till it becomes venomous at distance; but, as we have observed in our “Doctrine”, they expose themselves more often to be the first that are killed by their infernal machinery. Let us stigmatize at this point some of their guilty proceedings. They procure hair or garments of the person whom they seek to destroy; they select an animal which seems to them symbolic of the person, and by means of the hair or garments they place it in magnetic connexion with him or her. They give it the same name and then slay it with one blow of the magic knife. They cut open the breast, tear out the heart, wrap it, while still palpitating, in the magnetized objects and hourly, for the space of three days, they drive nails, red-hot pins, or long thorns therein, pronouncing malediction upon the name of the bewitched being. They are persuaded, and often rightly, that the victim of their infamous operations experiences as many tortures as if his own heart had been pierced at all points. He begins to waste away and dies after a time of an unknown disease.
Another bewitchment, made use of by country people, consists in consecration of nails to works of hatred by means of the stinking fumigations of Saturn and invocations of evil genii. They follow the footsteps of the person whom it is sought to torment, and drive the nails cross-wise into every imprint of his feet which can be traced upon the earth or sand. Yet another and more abominable practice. A fat toad is selected; it is baptized; the name and surname of the person to be bewitched is given it; it is made to swallow a Consecrated Host over which the formulae of execration have been pronounced. The animal is then wrapped in magnetized objects, bound with the hairs of the victim, upon which the operator has previously spat, and is buried at the threshold of the bewitched person's door, or at some point where he is obliged to pass daily. The elementary spirit of the toad will become a nightmare and vampire, haunting the dreams of the victim, unless indeed he should know how to drive it back on the operator.
Let us pass now to bewitchments by waxen images. The sorcerers of the Middle Ages, eager to please by their sac rileges him whom they regarded as their master, mixed baptismal oil and ashes of Consecrated Hosts with a modi cum of wax. Apostate priests were never wanting to deliver them the treasures of the Church. With the accursed wax they formed an image as far as possible resembling the person whom they desired to bewitch. They clothed this image with garments similar to his; they administered to it the sacraments which he received; they called down upon its head all maledictions which could express the hatred of the sorcerer, inflicting daily imaginary tortures upon it, so as to reach and torment by sympathy the person whom the image represented. This bewitchment is more infallible if the hair, blood and above all a tooth of the victim can be procured. It was this which gave rise to the proverbial saying: You have a tooth against me—meaning, you bear me a grudge. There is also bewitchment by the glance, called the jettatura or evil eye in Italy. During our civil wars, a shopkeeper had the misfortune to inform against one of his neighbours, who after a period of detention was set at liberty, but with his position lost. His sole vengeance was to pass twice daily the shop of the informer, whom he regarded fixedly, saluted and went on. Some little time after, the shopkeeper, unable to bear the torment of his glance any longer, sold his goods at a loss and changed his neighbourhood, leaving no address. In a word, he was ruined.
A threat is a real bewitchment, because it acts power fully on the imagination, above all when the latter is open readily to belief in an occult and unlimited power. The terrible menace of hell, that bewitchment of humanity during so many centuries, has created more nightmares more nameless diseases, more furious madness, than all vices and all excesses combined. This is what Hermetic artists of the Middle Ages represented by the incredible and unheard-of monsters which they carved about the doorways of basilicas. But bewitchment by threat produces an effect altogether contrary to the intentions of the operator when it is evidently a vain intimidation; when it does outrage to the legitimate pride of the menaced person and consequently provokes his resistance; or, finally, when it is ridiculous by its atrocity. The sectaries of hell have discredited heaven. Say to a reasonable man that equilibrium is the law of motion and life, that liberty, which is moral equilibrium, rests upon an eternal and immutable distinction between true and false, between good and bad; tell him that, endowed as he is with free will, he must place himself by his works in the empire of truth and goodness, or slide back eternally like the rock of Sisyphus, into the chaos of falsehood and evil; then he will understand the doctrine, and if you term truth and goodness heaven, falsehood and evil hell, he will believe in your heaven and hell, over which the Divine Ideal rests calm, perfect and inaccessible to either wrath or offence, because he will understand that if in principle hell be eternal as liberty, it cannot in fact be more than a temporary agony for souls, because it is an expiation, and the idea of expiation necessarily supposes that of reparation and destruction of evil. This said, not with dogmatic intention, which is outside our province, but to indicate the moral and reasonable remedy for the bewitchment of consciences by the terrors of the life beyond, let us speak of the means of escaping the baleful influences of human wrath. The first among all is to be reasonable and just, giving no opportunity or excuse to anger. A legitimate indignation is greatly to be feared; make haste therefore to acknowledge and expiate your faults. Should anger persist after that, then it certainly proceeds from vice; seek to know what vice and unite yourself strongly to the magnetic currents of the opposite virtue. The be witchment will have no further power upon you. Wash carefully the clothes which you have finished with before giving them away; otherwise, burn them; never use a gar ment which has belonged to an unknown person without purifying it by water, sulphur and such aromatics as cam phor,
incense, amber, etc.
A potent means of resisting bewitchment is not to fear it; it acts after the manner of contagious maladies. In times of epidemic, the terror-struck are the first to be attacked. The secret of not fearing an evil is not to think about it, and my advice is completely disinterested since I give it in a work on Magic of which I am the author, when I urge upon persons who are nervous, feeble, credulous, hysterical, superstitious devotees, foolish, without energy and without will, never to open a book on Magic, to close this one if they have opened it, to turn a deaf ear to those who talk of the occult sciences, to deride them, never to believe in them and to drink water as said the great pantagruelist magician, the excellent cure of Meudon.
As for the wise—and it is time that we turned to them after making an allowance for the foolish—they have scarcely any sorceries to fear save those of fortune; but seeing that they are priests and physicians, they may be called upon to cure the bewitched, and this should be their method of procedure. They must persuade such a person to do some act of goodness to his tormentor, render him some service which he cannot refuse, and lead him directly or otherwise to the communion of salt. A person who believes himself bewitched by the execration and interment of the toad must carry about him a living toad in a horn box. For the be witchment of the pierced heart, the afflicted individual must be made to eat a lamb's heart seasoned with sage and onion, and to carry a Talisman of Venus or of the Moon in a satchel filled with camphor and salt. For bewitchment by the waxen figure, a more perfect figure must be made, and set about as far as possible with things belonging to the person; seven talismans must be hung round the neck; it must be placed in the middle of a great Pantacle representing the Pentagram, and each day must be rubbed slightly with a mixture of oil and balm, after reciting the Conjuration of the Four to turn aside the influence of elementary spirits. At the end of seven days the image must be burnt in consecrated fire, and one may rest assured that the figure fabricated by that sorcerer will at such moment lose all its virtue.