Éliphas Lévi

“ The magical septenary of Chaldea passes into music on the seven strings of the Orphic lyre. It is harmony which transforms the woods and wildernesses of Greece. To the melody of the songs of Orpheus, the rocks are smoothed, the oaks sway in measures and the wild beasts become subject to man. By such magic did Amphion raise up the walls of Thebes—that wisdom-city of Cadmus, the city of initiation, itself a pantacle like the seven wonders of the world. As Orpheus gave life to numbers, so Cadmus bound thought to the sigils of letters. ”

“ There she became a mother, impregnated by the thought of his sun, and she brought into the world angels, whom she reared by herself without speaking of them to their father. The angels rebelled against her and imprisoned her in a mortal body. It was then that the splendour of God was compelled to descend in its turn that it might redeem Helena, and so the Jew Simon was manifested on earth. There he had to overcome death and carry his Helena through the air, followed by the triumphant choir of the elect, while the rest of mankind was abandoned on earth to the eternal tyranny of the angels. ”

“ All this notwithstanding, its reign is over, though it will not perish overwhelmed by a bolt from heaven; science has conquered the lightning and converted it into torches; the monster will dissolve before the brightness of science and truth; the genius of ignorance and darkness can only be blasted by the light. ”

“ The regeneration and redemption of love are indicated already therein. Orpheus descends into hell, seeking Eurydice and must bring her back without seeing her; so must the pure man create his companion, raise her to himself by devotion and not by desire of her. It is in renouncing the object of passion that we deserve to possess the object of true love. We are already in the atmosphere of the pure dreams of Christian chivalry. But the hierophant is still a man; he falters, questions and looks. Ab miseror Eurydicem. She is lost, the error is committed, the expiation must now begin. ”

“ The genius of China is the dragon of the Hesperides—which defends the golden apples in the garden of science. Their human type of divinity, instead of conquering the dragon, like Cadmus, cowers fascinated and magnetised by the monster who flashes before it a changing mirage of its scales. Mystery alone is alive in China, science is in a state of lethargy, or at least is in a deep sleep and speaks only in dream. ”

“ But is not the infinite itself an absurdity for our finite appreciation? We feel all the same that it is; the infinite invades us, overflows us, renders us dizzy at its abysses and crushes us by its awful height.
Scientifically probable hypotheses are one and all the last half-lights or shadows of science; faith begins where reason falls exhausted. Beyond human reason there is that Reason which is Divine—for my weakness a supreme absurdity, but an infinite absurdity which confounds me, and in which I believe. ”

“ Such a scandal had never afflicted the church—howling, writhing nuns, making the most obscene gestures, blaspheming, striving to cast themselves on Grandier like the Bacchantes on Orpheus; the most sacred things of religion mixed up with this hideous spectacle and drawn in the filth thereof; amidst all Grandier alone calm, shrugging his shoulders and defending himself with dignity and mildness; in fine, pallid, distraught judges, sweating profusely, and Laubardemont in his red robe, hovering over the conflict, like a vulture awaiting a corpse: such was the prosecution of Urbain Grandier. ”

“ Distracted also are those who say that catholicism is only a dead trunk and that we must put the axe thereto. They do not see that beneath its dry bark the living tree is renewed unceasingly. Truth has no past and no future; it is eternal; it is not that which ends; it is our dream only. Hammer and hatchet, which destroy in the sight of man, are in God’s hand as the knife of a pruner, and the dead branches—being superstitions and heresies in religion, science and politics—can alone be lopped from the tree of everlasting convictions and beliefs. ”

“ Such is the rock of peril for esoteric science; the truth must be veiled, yet not hidden from the people; symbolism must not be disgraced by a lapse into absurdity; the sacred veil of Isis must be preserved in its beauty and dignity. It was over this that the Egyptian priesthood failed; the vulgar and the foolish understood the hieroglyphic forms of Isis and Hermanubis as real things, so that Osiris was understood to be an ox, while the wise Hermes was a dog. ”

“ They think themselves wiser than society; they dream of founding a religion, but they stand alone; they believe that they have secured for their private use the secret keys of life, but their intelligence is plunged already in death. ”

“ It is not he who will mock at the new-born God weeping in the manger or the wounded victim of Calvary. He repeats nevertheless, from the bottom of his heart, like the sages of Israel and the faithful believers of Islam: There is no God but God. For the initiates of true science, this signifies: There is but one Being, and this is Being. But all that is expedient and touching in beliefs, but the splendour of rituals, the pageant of divine creations, the grace of prayers, the magic of heavenly hopes—are not these the radiance of moral life in all its youth and beauty? ”

“ The secret of the occult sciences is that of Nature herself; it is the secret of the generation of angels and worlds; it is that of God’s own omnipotence. “Ye shall be as the Elohim, knowing good and evil.” So testified the serpent of Genesis, and so did the Tree of Knowledge become the Tree of Death. For six thousand years the martyrs of science have toiled and perished at the foot of this Tree, so that it may become once more the Tree of Life.
That Absolute which is sought by the foolish and found only by the wise is the truth, the reality and the reason of universal equilibrium. ”

“ They love their old castles, their old legends of the banks of the Rhine; they read with the uttermost patience the darksome treatises of their philosophy; they behold in the fogs of their sky and in the smoke of their pipes a thousand things inexpressible, by which they are initiated into the marvels of the other world. Long before there was any question of mediums and their evocations in America and France, Prussia had its illuminati and seers, who had habitual communications with the dead. ”

“ Where is the sovereign in the world who can boast that he has acquired from me any secret of science? Where is the millionaire whom I have given reason to believe that I would set my fortune against his? When we look at earthly wealth from beneath it, we may yearn for it as the sovereign felicity, but it is despised when we consider it from above and when one realises how little temptation there can be to recover that which has been dropped as if it were hot iron. ”

“ The celestial Venus, the chaste and fruitful Venus, the triple mother of the three Graces, rose in her turn, no longer from the sleeping deeps of chaos, but from the living and flowing waves of that echoing archipelago of poetry, where islands embroidered with green trees and flowers seem as the vessels of gods. ”

“ These profound allegories are a warning to false adepts, profaners of Magic Science and partisans of Black Magic. The power of Black Magic is a contagion of vertigo and an epidemic of unreason. The fatality of passion is like a fiery serpent which twists and writhes about the world devouring the [Pg 517] souls therein. But intelligence—peaceable, smiling and full of love—represented by the Mother of God, sets her foot upon its head. Fatality consumes itself and is that old serpent of Kronos eternally devouring its tail. ”

“ Now the hierarchy is graduated on an ascending scale, becoming more and more monarchic. At the same time reason cannot pause in the presence of one absolute chief without being overwhelmed by the heights which it discerns above this supreme king; it takes refuge therefore in silence and gives place to adoring faith. That which is certain, for science and for reason alike, is that the idea of God is the grandest, most holy and most serviceable of all aspirations in man; that morality and its eternal sanction repose on this belief. ”

“ Heir to the monstrous forms of all false gods cast down successively from their thrones, the grotesque scarecrow has turned into a mere bugbear through very deformity and hideousness. Yet observe as to this that those only dare to laugh at the devil who know not the fear of God. Can it be that for many diseased imaginations he is God’s own shadow, or is he not often the idol of degenerate souls who only understand supernatural power as the exercise of cruelty with impunity? ”

“ The temple is surrounded with clouds or glows with supernatural brilliance at the will of the priests; now it is dark in the daylight and again the night is enlightened; the lamps of the temple spring of themselves into flame; the gods are radiant; the thunders roll; and woe to that impious person who may have invoked on his own head the malediction of initiates. The temples protect the palaces and the king’s retainers do battle for the religion of the Magi. The monarch himself is sacred; he is a god on earth; the people lie prone as he passes ”

“ Orpheus is widowed and remains as such in purity; the marriage with Eurydice had not attained consummation, and as the widower of one who was a virgin he rested himself in virginity. The poet is not two-hearted and children of the race of gods love once and once alone. Paternal inspirations, yearnings for an ideal which shall be found beyond the tomb, widowhood made holy in its consecration to the sacred muse. What a revelation in advance of inspirations yet to come. Orpheus, bearing in his heart a wound that nothing but death shall heal, becomes a doctor of souls and bodies ”

“ The ecstasy of the poet is controlled by the indifference of the prosaic multitude, and every enthusiast who is rejected by general good sense is a fool and not a genius. Do not count the great artists as bondsmen of the ignorant crowd, for it is the crowd which imparts to their talent the balance of reason.
Light is the equilibrium between shadow and brightness. Motion is the equilibrium between inertia and activity. Authority is the equilibrium between liberty and power. Wisdom is equilibrium in thought; virtue is equilibrium in the affections; beauty is equilibrium in form. ”

“ But afterwards, realising that an unfortunate woman must not be punished for having suffered what she could not prevent, he cried: “My mother has in no wise sinned, nor has she lost her innocence; she is virgin and yet is mother: let the twofold honour be paid to her. As for me, I have no father on earth; I am the son of God and humanity.” ”

“ Down with the tyrant of falsehood, the black god of Manicheans, the Ahriman of old idolaters. Live God and His Word incarnate, who saw Satan fall from heaven. And live Mary, the Divine Mother, who crushed the head of the infernal serpent.
So cry with one voice the traditions of saints, and so cry faithful hearts. The attribution of any greatness whatsoever to a fallen spirit is a slander on Divinity; the ascription of any royalty whatsoever to the rebel spirit is to encourage revolt and be guilty, at least in thought, of that crime which the horror of the middle ages termed sorcery. ”

“ The more perfect the sign the more powerfully is the thought formulated, and the will is consequently directed with more force. Blind faith moves mountains, and what therefore would be possible to faith if enlightened by complete and indubitable science? ”

“ This prince, abandoned to luxury and indolence, reduced the science of the Magi to the level of one of his courtesans. What purpose did marvels serve if they failed in ministration to pleasure? Compel, O enchanters, compel the winter to produce roses; double the savour of wine; apply your power over the light to make the beauty of women shine like that of divinities. The Magi obeyed and the king passed from intoxication to intoxication. ”

“ But the Book of Thoth, being the key of oracles and the elementary work on science, should not have involved such long research before its signs were identified, if Cornuphis had been really proficient in the Sacerdotal [Pg 122] Art. Another proof that primeval truths were obscured at this period is the fact that the oracles which registered their protest on the subject were in a style that was understood no longer.
After his return from Egypt, Plato was journeying with Simmias on the confines of Caria when he was met by some men of Delos, who begged him to interpret an oracle of Apollo. ”

“ Blind and unfortunate indeed were those initiates of the Antique Mysteries who ridiculed the ass of Bethlehem without perceiving the infant God Who shone upon the peaceful animals in the stable—the Child on whose forehead reposed the conciliating star of all the past and future. Whilst philosophy, convicted of impotence, offered insult to victorious Christianity, the fathers of the Church assumed all the magnificence of Plato and created a new philosophy based upon the living reality of the Divine Word, ever present in His Church, reborn in each of its members and immortal in humanity. ”

“ Light in the mode of brightness exists only for eyes which look thereon, and the soul enamoured with the pageant of universal beauty, and fixing its attention on that luminous script of the endless book which is called things manifest, seems to cry on its own part, as God at the dawn of the first day, the sublime and creative words: Fiat lux. ”

“ Thereafter, when things are no longer visible, when the Vault of Heaven and the expanse of the universe have dissolved, when the stars have ceased to shine and the lamp of the moon is veiled, when the earth trembles and the lightning plays around it, invoke not the visible phantom of Nature’s soul, for thou must in no wise behold it until thy body has been purified by the holy ordeals. Enervators of souls, which they distract from sacred occupations, the dog-faced demons issue from the confines of matter and expose to mortal eyes the semblances of illusory bodies. ”