by Eliphas Levi
What is vulgarly called charlatanism is a great means of real success in medicine, assuming that it is sufficiently skilful to inspire great confidence and to form a circle of faith.1 In medicine, above all, it is faith which saves. There is scarcely a village which does not possess its male or female compounder of occult medicine, and these people are—almost everywhere and always—incomparably more successful than physicians approved by the faculty. The remedies which they prescribe are often strange or ridicu lous, but on this account are so much more effectual, for they exact and realize more faith on the part of patients and operators. An old merchant of our acquaintance, a man of eccentric character and exalted religious sentiment, after retiring from business, set himself to practise occult medicine, gratuitously and out of Christian charity, in one of the Departments of France. His sole specifics were oil, insuffla tions and prayers. The institution of a law-suit against him for the illegal exercise of medicine established in public knowledge that ten thousand cures had been attributed to him in the space of about five years, and that the number of his believers increased in proportions calculated to alarm all the doctors of the district. We saw also at Mans a poor nun who was regarded as slightly demented, but she healed nevertheless all diseases in the surrounding country by means of an elixir and plaster of her own invention. The elixir was taken internally, the plaster was applied outwardly, so that nothing escaped this universal panacea. The plaster never adhered to the skin save at the place where its appli cation was necessary, and it rolled up and fell off by itself—- such at least was asserted by the good sister and declared to be the case by the sufferers. This thaumaturge was also subjected to prosecution, for she impoverished the practice of all the doctors round about her; she was cloistered rigidly, but it was soon found necessary to produce her at least once a week, and on the day for her consultations we have seen Sister Jane-Frances surrounded by the country folk, who had arrived overnight, awaiting their turn, lying at the convent gate. They had slept upon the ground and tarried only to receive the elixir and plaster of the devoted sister. The remedy being the same in all diseases, it would appear needless for her to be acquainted with the cases of her patients, but she listened to them invariably with great attention and only dispensed her specific after learning the nature of the complaint. There was the magical secret. The direction of the intention imparted its special virtue to the remedy, which was insignificant in itself. The elixir was aromatic brandy mixed with the juice of bitter herbs; the plaster was a compound analogous to theriac as regards colour and smell; it was possibly electuary Burgundy pitch, but whatever the substance, it worked wonders, and the wrath of the rural folk would have been visited on those who questioned the miracles of their nun. Near Paris also we knew of an old thaumaturgic gardener who accomplished marvellous cures by putting in his phials the juice of all the herbs of St John. He had, however, a sceptical brother who derided the sorcerer, and the poor gardener, overwhelmed by the sarcasms of this infidel, began to doubt himself, whereupon all the miracles ceased, the sufferers lost confidence and the thaumaturge, slandered and despairing, died mad. The Abbé Thiers, cure of Vibraie, in his curious Treatise concerning Superstitions, records that a woman, afflicted with an apparently aggravated ophthalmia, having been suddenly and mysteriously cured, confessed to a priest that she had betaken herself to Magic. She had long importuned a clerk, whom she regarded as a magician, to give her a talisman that she might wear, and he had at length delivered her a scroll of parchment, advising her at the same time to wash three times daily in fresh water. The priest made her give up the parchment, on which were these words: Eruat diabolus oculos tuos et repleat stercoribus loca vacantia. He translated them to the good woman, who was stupefied; but, all the same, she was cured.
Insufflation is one of the most important practices of occult medicine, because it is a perfect sign of the trans mission of life. To inspire, as a fact, means to breathe upon some person or thing, and we know already, by the one doctrine of Hermes, that the virtue of things has created words, that there is an exact proportion between ideas and speech, which is the first form and verbal realization of ideas. The breath attracts or repels accordingly as it is warm or cold. The warm breathing corresponds to positive and the cold breathing to negative electricity. Electrical and nervous animals fear cold breathing, and the experiment may be made upon a cat whose familiarities are importunate. By fixedly regarding a lion or tiger and blowing in their face, they would be so stupefied as to be forced to retreat before us. Warm and prolonged insufflation recruits the circulation of the blood, cures rheumatic and gouty pains, restores the balance of the humours and dispels lassitude. When the operator is sympathetic and good, it acts as a universal sedative. Cold insufflation soothes pains occasioned by con gestions and fluidic accumulations. The two breathings must therefore be used alternately, observing the polarity of the human organism and acting in a contrary manner upon the poles, which must be subjected successively to an opposite magnetism. Thus to cure an inflamed eye, the one which is not affected must be subjected to a warm and gentle insufflation, cold insufflation being practised upon the suffering member at the same distance and in the same proportion. Magnetic passes have a similar effect to insuffla tions, and are a real breathing by transpiration and radiation of the interior air, which is phosphorescent with vital light. Slow passes constitute a warm breathing which fortifies and raises the spirits; swift passes are a cold breathing of dis persive nature, neutralizing tendencies to congestion. The warm insufflation should be performed tranversely, or from below upward; the cold insufflation is more effective when directed downward from above.1
We breathe not only by means of mouth and nostrils; the universal porousness of our body is a true respiratory apparatus, inadequate undoubtedly but most useful to life and health. The extremities of the fingers, where all nerves terminate, diffuse or attract the Astral Light accordingly as we will. Magnetic passes without contact are a simple and slight insufflation; contact adds sympathetic and equilibrat ing impression to breathing; it is good and even necessary, to prevent hallucinations at the early stages of somnambulism for it is a communion of physical reality which admonishes the brain and recalls wandering imagination; it must not, however, be too prolonged when the object is merely to magnetize. Absolute and prolonged contact is useful when the design is incubation or massage rather than magnetism properly so called. We have given some examples of incubation from the most revered book of the Christians; they all refer to the cure of apparently obstinate lethargies, as we are led to term resurrections. Massage is still resorted to largely in the East, where it is practised with great success at the public baths. It is entirely a system of frictions, traction and pressures, practised slowly along the whole extent of members and muscles, the result being renewed equilibrium in the forces, a feeling of complete repose and well-being, with a sensible restoration of activity and vigour.
The whole power of the occult physician is in the consciousness of his will, while the whole art consists in exciting the faith of his patient. “If you have faith,” said the Master, “all things are possible to him who believes.” The subject must be dominated by expression, tone, gesture; confidence must be inspired by a fatherly manner and cheerfulness stimulated by seasonable and sprightly talk. Rabelais, who was a greater magician than he seemed, made pantagruelism his special panacea. He compelled his patients to laugh, and all the remedies he administered subsequently succeeded the better in consequence. He established a magnetic sympathy between himself and them, by means of which he imparted his own confidence and good humour; he flattered them in his prefaces, termed them his precious, most illustrious patients, and dedicated his books to them. So are we convinced the Gargantua and Pantagruel cured more black humours, more tendencies to madness, more atrabilious whims, at that epoch of religious animosities and civil wars, than the whole Faculty of Medicine could boast. Occult Medicine is essentially sympathetic. Reciprocal affection, or at least real goodwill, must exist
between doctor and patient. Syrups and juleps have very little inherent virtue; they are what they become through the mutual opinion of operator and subject; hence homoeopathic medicine dispenses with them and no serious inconvenience follows. Oil and wine, combined with salt or camphor, are sufficient for the healing of all wounds and for all external frictions or soothing applications. Oil and wine are the chief medicaments of Gospel tradition. They formed the balm of the Good Samaritan, and in the Apocalypse—when describing the last plagues—the prophet prays the avenging powers to spare these substances, that is, to leave a hope and a remedy for so many wounds. What we term Extreme Unction was the pure and simple practice of the Master's Traditional Medicine, both for the early Christians and in the mind of the apostle Saint James, who has included the precept in his epistle to the faithful of the whole world. “If any man be sick among you,” he writes, “let him call in the priests of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.” This divine therapeutic science was lost gradually, and Extreme Unction came to be regarded as a religious formality, a necessary preparation for death.1 At the same time, the thaumaturgic virtue of consecrated oil could not be effaced altogether from remembrance by traditional doctrine, and it is perpetuated in the passage of the Catechism which refers to Extreme Unction. Faith and charity were the most signal healing powers among early Christians. The source of most diseases is in moral disorders; we must begin by healing the soul, and then the cure of the body will follow quickly.
1 “The miracles of the Eternal are eternal. To acknowledge that the wonders of the Gospel are symbolism is to magnify their light, to proclaim their universality and permanence. No, these things have in no sense passed away, as it is said: they will remain eternally. The things that pass are accidents that pass; the things which Divine Genius reveals by symbolism are immutable truths.”—La Science des Esprits, p. 121. Lévi says also that casual or fleeting prodigies are accidents foreseen by the universal harmony and are no more evidence of the intervention of spirits than meteors prove the existence of stars. “The Supreme Reason is like the sun, and he who sees it not is insensate”—that is to say, is blind.—Ibid., p. 265.
1 “Charlatanism, when successful, is a great instrument of pwer, in Magic as in all things else. To fascinate the vulgar skilfully, is not this also to govern them?”—La Clef des Grands Mystères, p. 225. Compare Le Livre des Sages, p. 73: “The wise who die for reason bequeath their science to fools. We must live rather for reason, while making use of folly. Hoc est arcanum magnum.”
1 Compare La Clef des Grands Mystères, p. 126, in which are the following statements: (1) The act of magnetizing may be performed by the will operating on the Plastic Mediator of another person, whose acts and will are subordinated in this manner. (2) It may be performed alternatively by acting on the will of the subject, using either intimidation or persuasion, so that the impressed will modifies to our liking the Plastic Mediator and actions of the said subject. (3) The act of magnetizing is performed by radiation, contact, glance and speech. (4) Voice-vibrations modify the movement of the Astral Light and are a potent vehicle of magnetism. (5) The warm breathing magnetizes positively and the cold negatively. (6) Magnetic passes serve only to direct the will of the operator, confirming the same by acts. They are signs and nothing else, expressing and not performing the act of will. The thesis in chief of the text above is stultified by the last statement. If passes are arbitrary or conventional signs, the fingers do not diffuse the Astral Light.
1 Lévi has either forgotten his sacraments or is betraying unintentionally his real feeling on the outward signs of inward grace. In the mind of the Holy Latin Church, Extreme Unction is so little a formality and so much a preparation for death that it is the essential safeguard of the departing soul and is administered in preference to the Eucharist when the imminence of death does not give time for both.
CHAPTER XXI
THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS
THIS chapter is consecrated to divination, which, in its broadest sense, and following the grammatical signficance of the word, is the exercise of divine power, and the realiza tion of divine knowledge. It is the priesthood of the Magus. But divination, in general opinion, is concerned more closely with the knowledge of hidden things. To know the most secret thoughts of men; to penetrate the mysteries of past and future; to evoke age by age the exact revelation of effects by the precise knowledge of causes: this is what is universally called divination. Now, of all mysteries of Nature, the most profound is the heart of man; but at the same time Nature forbids its depth to be inaccessible. In spite of deepest dissimulation, despite the most skilful policy, she herself outlines and makes plain in the bodily form, in the light of glances, in movements, in carriage, in voice, a thousand tell-tale indices. The perfect initiate has no need of these; he reads the truth in the light; he senses an impression which makes known the whole man; his glance penetrates hearts, though he may feign ignorance to disarm the fear or hatred of the wicked whom he knows too well. A man of bad conscience thinks always that he is being accused or suspected; he recognizes himself in a touch of collective satire; he applies it in toto to himself, and cries loudly that he is traduced. Ever suspicious, but as curious as he is apprehensive, in the presence of the Magus he is like Satan of the parable, or like those scribes who questioned tempting. Ever stubborn and ever feeble, what he fears above all is the recognition that he is in the wrong. The past disquiets him, the future alarms him; he seeks to compound with himself and to believe that he is a good and well-disposed man. His life is a perpetual struggle between amiable aspirations and evil habits; he thinks himself a philosopher after the manner of Aristippus or Horace when accepting all the corruption of his time as a necessity which he must suffer; he distracts himself with some philosophical pastime and assumes the protecting smile of Mecaenas, to persuade himself that he is not simply a battener on famine like Verres or a parasite of Trimalcion. Such men are always mercenaries, even in their good works. They decide on making a gift to some public charity, and they postpone it to secure the discount. The type which I am describing is not an individual but a class of men with which the Magus is liable to come frequently in contact, especially in our own century. Let him follow their example by mistrusting them, for they will be invariably his most compromising friends and most dangerous enemies.
The public exercise of divination is derogatory at the present period to a veritable adept, for he would be frequently driven to jugglery and sleight of hand in order to keep his clients and impress his public. Accredited diviners, both male and female, have always secret spies, who instruct them as to the private life or habits of those who consult them. A code of signals is established between cabinet and antechamber; an unknown applicant receives a number at his first visit; a day is arranged, and he is followed; door keepers, neighbours, servants are engaged in gossip, and details are thus arrived at which overwhelm simple minds, leading them to invest an impostor with the reverence which should be reserved for true science and genuine divination.
The divination of events to come is possible only in the case of those the realization of which is in some sense con tained in their cause. The soul, scrutinizing by means of the whole nervous system the circle of the Astral Light, which influences a man and from him receives an influence; the soul of the diviner, we repeat, can comprehend by a single intuition all the loves and hatreds which such a person has evoked about him; it can read his intentions in his thoughts, foresee obstacles that he will encounter, possibly the violent death which awaits him; but it cannot divine his private, voluntary, capricious determinations of the moment following consultation, unless indeed the ruse of the diviner itself prepares the fulfilment of the prophecy. For example, you say to a woman who is on the wane and is anxious to secure a husband: You will be present this evening or tomorrow evening at such or such a performance, and you will there see a man who will be to your liking. This man will observe you, and by a curious combination
of circumstances the result will be a marriage.
You may count on the lady going, you may count on her seeing a man and believing that he has noticed her, you may count on her anticipating marriage. It may not come to that in the end, but she will not lay the blame on you, because she would be giving up the opportunity for another illusion: on the contrary, she will return diligently to consult you.
We have said that the Astral Light is the great book of divinations; the faculty of reading therein is either natural or acquired, and there are hence two classes of seers, the instinctive and the initiated. This is why children, unedu cated people, shepherds, even idiots, have more aptitude for natural divination than scholars and thinkers. The simple herd-boy David was a prophet even as Solomon, king of Kabalists and Magi. The perceptions of instinct are often as certain as those of science; those who are least clairvoyant in the Astral Light are those who reason most. Somnam bulism is a state of pure instinct, and hence somnambulists require to be directed by a seer of science: sceptics and reasoners merely lead them astray. Divinatory vision operates only in the ecstatic state, to arrive at which doubt and illusion must be rendered impossible by enchaining or putting to sleep thought. The instruments of divination are hence only auto-magnetic methods and pretexts for auto- isolation from exterior light, so that we may pay attention to the interior light alone. It was for this reason that Apollonius enveloped himself completely in a woollen mantle and fixed his eyes on his navel in the dark. The magical mirror of Dupotet is kindred to the device of Apollonius. Hydromancy and vision in the thumb-nail, when it has been polished and blackened, are varieties of the magical mirror. Perfumes and evocations still thought; water and the colour black absorb the visual rays; a kind of dazzlement and vertigo ensue, followed by lucidity in subjects who have a natural aptitude or are suitably disposed in this direction. Geomancy and cartomancy are other means to the same end; combinations of symbols and numbers, which are at once fortuitous and necessary, bear sufficient resemblance to the chances of destiny for the imagination to perceive realities by the pretext of such emblems. The more the interest is excited, the greater is the desire to see; the fuller the confidence in the intuition, the more clear the vision becomes. To combine the points of geomancy on chance or to set out the cards for trifling purposes is to jest like children: the lots become oracles only when they are magnetized by intelligence and directed by faith.1