The history of magic

by Éliphas Lévi

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The word signifies reception, and in Rabbinical Hebrew it denotes doctrine so communicated—that is to say, by a tradition handed down or received from the past. John Reuchlin specifies it as symbolical reception, signifying that the doctrine is not comprised simply in its surface meaning. He says further that it is of Divine Revelation, and that it belongs primarily to the life-giving contemplation of God. This is in the universal sense, but it is concerned also with secret teaching respecting particular things, meaning things manifest—contemplatio formarum separatarum.

[2] The reference is to L’Origine de tous les Cultes, ou Religion Universelle, 12 vols. in 8vo, together with an atlas in 4to. Paris, 1794. The work endeavoured to shew the unity of dogma under the multiplicity of symbols and allegories. In other words, it explained religion by astronomy, the cultus in the light of the calendar, mysteries of grace by means of natural phenomena. An abridgment in a small volume appeared about 1821. The Table of Denderah or Dendra was a great zodiac sculptured on the ceiling of the portico belonging to the Temple at that place, which was the ancient Tentyrio.

[3] Sed omnia in mensura, et numero, et pondere disposuisti: “But Thou hast ordered all things in measure and number and weight.”—Wisdom, xi. 21.

[4] The conventional Hexagram presents in pictorial symbolism the root doctrine of the Hermetic Emerald Tablet: “That which is above is equal to that which is below.” It is the sign of the interpenetration of worlds.

[5] According to the Zohar, Pt. I., fol. 21a, 21b, it was with the guardian angel of Esau that Jacob wrestled at the place which he named Peniel. The angel could not prevail against Jacob because the latter derived his strength from the Supreme Light, Kether, and from Chokmah, which is the second hypostasis. He therefore smote Jacob on the right thigh, which signifies the seventh Sephira, or Netzach.

[6] The more usual argument of high orthodox theology in the Latin school is that a sin against the Infinite Being is one of infinite culpability. If it were suggested in rejoinder that it must be one of infinite inconsequence, so far as that Being is concerned, it might not be more reasonable than the argument, but it would do less outrage to logic.

[7] It is to be noted, however, that there was mockery of its kind in the middle ages, that Satan and his emissaries in folk-lore appear under ridiculous lights. There is the prototypical story of the devil who gave a course of lectures on Black Magic at the University of Salamanca and demanded, as a consideration, the soul of one of his hearers; but he was cheated with the student’s shadow.

[8] In his earlier work, The Doctrine and Ritual of Transcendental Magic, Éliphas Lévi affirms (a) on the authority of a writer whom he does not name, that the devil is God, as understood by the wicked; (b) on another authority, that the devil is composed of God’s ruins; (c) that the devil is the Great Magical Agent employed for evil purposes by a perverse will; (d) that he is death masquerading in the cast-off garments of life; (e) that Satan, Beelzebub, Adramelek, &c., do not designate spiritual unities, but legions of impure spirits.

[9] In speaking of evil and a possible Prince of Darkness, it is necessary to proceed carefully, if we are confined, like Éliphas Lévi, within the measures of a theory of opposites. The definition of evil as the absence of rectitude is entirely insufficient to cover the facts of experience; it is that indeed, but it is also as much more as may be necessary to account for its positive and active side. The truth is that positive and negative are on both sides of the eternal balance of things postulated by the theory. So far as it goes, evil is the absence of rectitude, and, so far as it goes also, rectitude is the absence of evil; but the vital aspects of good and bad have slipped between the fingers of definition in both cases.

[10] Saint-Martin recognises the existence of an astral region, which is apparently that of sidereal rule. There is, in his view a certain science of this region, and of this the active branch is theurgic, while the passive engenders somnambulism. These divisions constitute the elementary science of the astral, but above these there is one which is more fatal and dangerous, of which he refuses to speak. There is no Martinistic doctrine concerning the Astral Light, understood as an universal medium. Éliphas Lévi seems to have used the term Martinism in a general sense, as if it included the school of Martines de Pasqually. Pasqually, however, has no doctrine concerning the Astral Light. Modern French Martinism has read it into Saint-Martin’s rather ridiculous “epico-magical poem” or allegory, called Le Crocodile, much as another school of experiment might find therein a veiled account of the Akasic records and the mode of their study. I refer to the story of Atlantis, which begins at Chant 64 and occupies a large part of the book. The account of the Chair of Silence is very curious in this connection.

[11] If the word is of Greek origin it seems to connect with the idea of watchers rather than leaders. Cf. [Greek ho egrêgoros] = Vigil, in the Septuagint.

[12] The Kabalistic explanation is (a) that Egyptian Magic was real Magic; (b) that its wisdom was of the lowermost degree only; (c) that it was overcome by the superior degrees, by which the serpent above, or Metatron, dominates the serpent below, namely, Samael. See Zohar, Part II., fol. 28a.

[13] Elsewhere Éliphas Lévi suggests that Pharaoh’s magicians refused rather than failed and that the production of flies was beneath the dignity of their Magic.

[14] It should be mentioned that this enumeration is in the reverse order of chronology, and it is not, as it happens, even in accordance with what may be called traditional chronology. Legend says—and Éliphas Lévi himself mentions subsequently—that the Sepher Yetzirah was the work of Abraham and that the Zohar is in its root-matter a literal record of discourses delivered by R. Simeon Ben Jochai, after the fall of Jerusalem, A.D. 70. The Jerusalem and Babylon Talmuds are admittedly growths of some centuries.

[15] The meanings ascribed to the names and inscriptions on the two Pillars of the Temple will be of curious interest to members of the Masonic Fraternity, who will be reminded of variants with which they are themselves familiar. It must be said, however, that the explanation of Lévi corresponds neither to Masonic nor Kabalistic symbolism. According to the latter Boaz is the left-hand Pillar, being that of Severity in the scheme of the Sephirotic Tree; it answers to Hod, and the meaning attached to its name is Strength and Vigour. Jachin is on the right hand, answering to Netzach on the Tree; it signifies the state of becoming established. That which is made firm between Hod and Netzach is Malkuth, or the kingdom below. This is the late Kabalism of the tract entitled Garden of Pomegranates.

[16] This is the particular construction which is placed by Lévi on the texts with which he is assuming to deal, and it is not really justified by these. The Zohar has, however, a doctrine of the Unknown Darkness. The Infinite is neither light nor splendour, though all lights emanate therefrom. It is a Supreme Will, exceeding human comprehension, and more mysterious than all mysteries. See Zohar, Part I., fol. 239a.

[17] Éliphas Lévi does not seem always to have made the most of his opportunities as regards the texts of Kabalism and the literature thereto belonging which were available at his period in Latin and certain modern languages, including his own. He had otherwise little opportunity of learning the real message of the Zoharic cycle. Taking all the circumstances into consideration, his guesses were sometimes very shrewd, and here and there carry with them the suggestion of intuitions. The teaching of the Zohar on the subject of sex postulates, like so much of its doctrine, a secret tradition to which it never gives expression in fulness, though it is incessantly lifting now one and now another corner of the veil. It is, however, impossible to speak of it within the limit of a note.

[18] It was not a master-word but a mode of greeting; it was neither Masonic nor Kabalistic; it was a Rosicrucian formula. It may be added that: “Peace profound, my brethren”—was answered by: “Emanuel; God is with us.” It is a perfect and highly mystical mode of salutation.

[19] Perhaps the true explanation in respect of Henry Khunrath is that, seemingly, he was of the Lutheran persuasion as one of the accidents of his birth, but in the higher consciousness he was, as he could be only, catholic. As regards the resolute protestantism, Éliphas Lévi says in his Ritual of Transcendental Magic that Khunrath “affects Christianity in expressions and in signs, but it is easy to see that his Christ is the Abraxas, the luminous pentagram radiating on the astronomical cross, the incarnation in humanity of the sovereign sun celebrated by the Emperor Julian.” See my translation of the Doctrine and Ritual of Transcendental Magic, p. 257.

[20] Éliphas Lévi has said previously (a) that the Church ignores Magic—for she must either ignore it or perish; (b) that Magic, as understood by him, is absolute religion as well as absolute science; (c) that it should regenerate all forms of worship.

[21] If it be worth while to say so the translation of this passage does not follow the text, which suggests that the act of conception—on the female side—involves suffering. The text reads: C’est le plaisir qui féconde, mais c’est la douleur qui conçoit et enfante.

[22] According to the Zohar, the letter Aleph is a sacrament of the unity which is in God, and it is thereby and therein that man obtains unity. Beth is the basis of the work of creation, and in a sense also its instrument. Gimel represents the charity and beneficence which are the help of poverty, designated by the letter Daleth. The letters He and Vau are part of the mystery which is contained in the Divine Name— יהוה. The letter Zain is likened to a sharp sword or dagger.

[23] The account which follows may be compared with that which is found, s.v. Apocryphes in Éliphas Lévi’s Dictionnaire de Littérature Chrétienne, mentioned in my preface to the present translation. It describes the legend concerning the fall of certain angels as une assez singulière histoire. He refers also to the various extant versions of the book, and to those in particular which differ from the “primitive” codex, being (a) that which he uses, and (b) “that which St. Jude cites in his catholic epistle as an authentic” work, actually composed by the prophet Enoch, to whom it is attributed.

[24] The Zohar says that the Ark of Noah was a symbol of the Ark of the Covenant, that his entrance therein saved the world, and that this mystery is in analogy with the Supreme Mystery. At this point there is a sex-implicit throughout the Kabalistic commentary, and the nature of the “unbridled appetite” which brought about the deluge is identified with that sin which caused the destruction of Judah’s second son, as told in Genesis c. xxxviii. See Zohar, Part I., section Toldoth Noah. It is intimated also that the souls of those who perished in the deluge were to be blotted out, like the remembrance of Amalek. Part I., fol. 25a. They will not even be included in the resurrection which shall go before the Last Judgment. Fol. 68b. At the same time the chastisement would have been suspended had Noah prayed to God like Moses, but the tradition supposes him to have asked only concerning himself. Zohar, Part III., fol. 14b. The Holy Land was not covered by the waters of the deluge. Part II., fol. 197a.

[25] It was the Rod of Aaron, not that of Moses, which, according to Heb. ix. 4, was placed in the Ark of the Covenant, together with the Tables of the Law and the Pot of Manna. It is said, however, most clearly in I Kings, viii. 9, that “there was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone, which Moses put there at Horeb.”

[26] Whatever the date to which the Book of the Penitence of Adam may be referable, it represents one form of a legend which was spread widely in the Middle Ages. The Gospel of Nicodemus seems to have instituted the first analogy between the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of the Cross. “All ye who have died through the wood which this man”—Adam—“hath touched: all of you I will make alive again by the wood of the cross.” The legend of the triple branch, under a strange transformation, reappears in that chronicle of the Holy Graal which has been ascribed to the authorship of Walter Map. There is no end to the stories which represent Christ dying upon a tree which was a cutting from the Tree of Knowledge. This is how the Tree of Knowledge becomes the Tree of Life in Christian legend.

[27] The Clavis Absconditorum à Constitutione Mundi, which is the chief work of Postel, outside his translation of the Sepher Yetzirah, affirms that Enoch was born at the time when Christ the Mediator would have been manifested in the flesh as the incarnation of perfect Virtue, supposing that man had remained in his first estate. There is no reference to a Genesis of Enoch.

[28] Hic intrat vivus foveam—he, being still alive, enters the tomb, says Adam of St. Victor in his third Sequence for Dec. 27.

[29] There were two canonised bishops bearing the name of Methodius at widely different periods, and as both were writers it is an open question to which of them the reference is intended. It is probably to Methodius of Olympus, who was martyred about 311. Methodius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, died in 846. There is not the least reason to suppose that the Apocalypse under the name of Bermechobus was the work of either.

[30] Compare Lopukhin’s Quelques Traits de l’Eglise Intérieure, where the sanctuary which was inaugurated by Adam is connected more especially with Abel, and was presumably maintained afterwards by Seth. In opposition thereto was the Church of Cain, which was anti-Christian from its beginning. See my introduction to Mr. Nicholson’s translation, pp. 6, 7, and the text, p. 59—Some Characteristics of the Interior Church, 1912.

[31] According to the Zohar, the intoxication of Noah contains a mystery of wisdom. He was really sounding the depths of that sin which was the downfall of the first man, and his object was to find a remedy. In this he failed, and “was drunken,” seeking to lay bare the divine essence, without the intellectual power to explore it. Section Toldoth Noah.

[32] The Sepher Ha Zohar affirms in several places that the Law was offered to the Gentiles, and was by them refused.

[33] The authority for this statement is wanting. The Zohar dwells on Genesis xxi. 9: “And Sarah saw the son of Hagar,” &c., implying that she did not acknowledge him as the son of Abraham, but of the Egyptian only. The Patriarch, however, regarded him as his own son. Sarah’s desire to expel them is justified on the ground that she had seen Ishmael worshipping the stars of heaven. See Zohar, Part I., fol. 118. There is no allusion to the alleged gifts of the father, the scripture making it evident abundantly that the bread and bottle of water are for once to be understood literally.

[34] Even at the period of Éliphas Lévi, it did not require a rabbinical scholar or a knowledge of Aramaic to prevent any fairly informed person from suggesting that the Book of Concealed Mystery, being the text here referred to, is the beginning of the Zohar. It follows the Commentary on Exodus, about midway in the whole collection, which covers the entire Pentateuch. It so happens that the little tract in question is the first of three sections rendered into Latin by Rosenroth, and this must have deceived Lévi, as a consequence of utterly careless reading. There was plenty of opportunity for correction in the Kabbala Denudata, and so also in La Kabbale—an interesting but very imperfect study by Adolphe Franck, which appeared in 1843.

[35] There is no real analogy between the image attributed to Pascal and that of the Zoharic Book of Concealment. I have not verified the reference to Pascal, as the opportunity is not given by Lévi, but I have explained elsewhere that the idea was probably drawn from S. Bonaventura, who speaks of that sphæra intelligibilis, cujus centrum est ubique et circumferentia nusquam. See Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum. I have inferred that S. Bonaventura himself derived from a Hermetic book. As regards the symbolism of the Balance, the Book of Concealed Mystery says (a) that in creating the world, God weighed in the Balance what had not been weighed previously, (b) that the Balance was suspended in a region where before there was no Balance, (c) that it served for bodies as well as souls, for beings then in existence and for those who would exist subsequently. These are the only references to this subject found in the tract.

[36] As such it is old, and a monograph on the subject is included by Jacob Bryant in his Analysis of Antient Mythology, vol. ii. p. 38 et seq. Following the authorities of his period, and especially Huetius, he says that “they have supposed a Zoroaster, wherever there was a Zoroastrian: that is, wherever the religion of the Magi was adopted, or revived.” The two Zoroasters of Lévi represent two principles of religious philosophy.

[37] An English translation of the Chaldæan Oracles by Thomas Taylor, the Platonist, claims to have added fifty oracles and fragments not included in the collection of Fabricius. Mr. Mead says that the subject was never treated scientifically till the appearance of J. Kroll’s De Oraculis Chaldaicis at Breslau, in 1894.

[38] It must be understood that this summary or digest is an exceedingly free rendering, and it seems scarcely in accordance with the text on which Éliphas Lévi worked. Following the text of Kroll, Mr. Mead translates the first lines as follows: “Nature persuades us that the Daimones are pure, and things that grow from evil matter useful and good.” The last lines are rendered: “But when thou dost behold the very sacred Fire with dancing radiance flashing formless through the depths of the whole world, then hearken to the Voice of Fire.”

[39] See my Key to the Tarot, 1910, p. 32, and the cards which accompany this handbook. See also my Pictorial Key to the Tarot, 1911, pp. 144-147.

[40] One of the Chaldæan Oracles has the following counsel: “Labour thou around the Strophalos of Hecate,” which Mr. G. R. S. Mead translates: “Be active (or operative) round the Hecatic spinning thing.” He adds by way of commentary that Strophalos may sometimes mean a top. “In the Mysteries tops were included among the playthings of the young Bacchus, or Iacchus. They represented ... the fixed stars (humming tops) and planets (whipping tops).”—The Chaldæan Oracles, vol. ii. pp. 17, 18.

[41] Accepting this definition of the term of occult research, we can discern after what manner it differs from the mystic term. The one, by this hypothesis, is lucidity obtained in artificial sleep which stills the senses, and the other is Divine Realisation in the spirit after the images of material things and of the mind-world have been cast out, so that the sanctified man is alone with God in the stillness.

[42] This was La Magie Dévoilée, which was circulated in great secrecy. Later on, and probably after the decease of the author, it appeared in the ordinary way, and in 1886 an English translation was announced under the editorship of Mr. J. S. Farmer, but I believe that it was never published.

[43] Éliphas Lévi adds in a note that, according to Suidas, Cedrenus and the Chronicle of Alexandria it was Zoroaster himself who, seated in his palace, disappeared suddenly and by his own will, with all his secrets and all his riches, in a great peal of thunder. He explains that every king who exercised divine power passed for an incarnation of Zoroaster, and that Sardanapalus converted his pyre into an apotheosis.

[44] The analysis of Éliphas Lévi requires to be checked at all points. He followed the Latin version of Anquetil Duperron, made from a Persian text, and this is so rare as to be almost unobtainable. I shall therefore deserve well of my readers by furnishing the following extract from Deussen’s Religion and Philosophy of India, regarding the Oupnek’hat:

“A position apart from the 52 and the 108 Upanishads is occupied by that collection of 50 Upanishads which, under the name of Oupnek’hat, was translated from the Sanskrit into the Persian in the year 1656 at the instance of the Sultan Mohammed Dara Shakoh, and from the Persian into the Latin in 1801-2 by Anquetil Duperron. The Oupnek’hat professes to be a general collection of Upanishads. It contains under twelve divisions the Upanishads of the three older Vedas, and with them 26 Atharva Upanishads that are known from other sources. It further comprises eight treatises peculiar to itself, five of which have not up to the present time been proved to exist elsewhere, and of which therefore a rendering from the Persian-Latin of Anquetil is alone possible. Finally the Oupnek’hat contains four treatises from the Vaj. Samh. 16, 31, 32, 34, of which the first is met with in a shorter form in other collections also, as in the Nilarudra Upanishad, while the three last have nowhere else found admission. The reception of these treatises from the Samhita into the body of the Upanishads, as though there were danger of their falling otherwise into oblivion, makes us infer a comparatively later date for the Oupnek’hat collection itself, although as early as 1656 the Persian translators made no claim to be the original compilers, but took the collection over already complete. Owing to the excessive literality with which Anquetil Duperron rendered these Upanishads word by word from the Persian into Latin, while preserving the syntax of the former language—a literality that stands in striking contrast to the freedom with which the Persian translators treated the Sanskrit text—the Oupnek’hat is a very difficult book to read; and an insight as keen as that of Schopenhauer was required in order to discover within this repellant husk a kernel of invaluable philosophical significance, and to turn it to account for his own system. An examination of the material placed at our disposal in the Oupnek’hat was first undertaken by A. Weber, Ind. Stud. I, II, ix., on the basis of the Sanskrit text. Meanwhile the original texts were published in the Bibliotheca Indica in part with elaborate commentaries, and again in the Anandas’rama series. The two longest, and some of the shorter treatises have appeared in a literal German rendering by O. Bohtlingk. Max Müller translated the twelve oldest Upanishads in Sacred Books of the East, vol. i. 15. And my own translation of the 60 Upanishads contains complete texts of this character which, upon the strength of their regular occurrence in the Indian collections and lists of the Upanishads, may lay claim to a certain canonicity. The prefixed introductions and the notes treat exhaustively of the matter and composition of the several treatises.”

[45] This forms the second book of the collection entitled Orthodoxie Maçonnique, which was published in 1853. The account of magical discs and the planets corresponding to them will be found on pp. 498-501. Ragon pretended that there was a system of Occult Masonry in three Degrees.

[46] The legend concerning the Emerald Tablet is that it was found by Alexander the Great in the tomb of Hermes, which was hidden by the priests of Egypt in the depths of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh. It was supposed to have been written by Hermes on a large plate of emerald by means of a pointed diamond. I believe that there is no Greek version extant, and it is referred by Louis Figuier to the seventh century of the Christian era, or thereabouts. See L’Alchimie et les Alchimistes, p. 42.

[47] In his Lexicon Alchemiæ Rulandus reminds us that “the old astronomers dedicated the Emerald to Mercury,” and Berthelot says that this was in conformity with Egyptian ideas, which classed the Emerald and Sapphire in their list of metals. See Collection des Anciens Alchimistes Grecs, première livraison, p. 269. The planet Mercury was the planet Hermes and it may be that some mystical connection was supposed between quicksilver and the precious stone. This would have been in Græco-Alexandrian times, if ever, as ancient Egypt does not seem to have been acquainted with quicksilver.

[48] The text says: le triple binaire ou le mirage du triangle, but it is obvious that the reflected triad cannot be termed binary. The expression is confused, but the meaning is that the first triangle equals unity, or the number 1; the second triad corresponds to the duad, or number 2; the third triad to the number 3, and so onward.

[49] The reference is to Athanasius Kircher’s Œdipus Ægyptiacus, 3 vols. in folio, bound usually in four, published at Rome, 1652-1654. The Mensa Isiaca, being the Bembine Tablet, so called because its discovery is connected with the name of Cardinal Bembo, is in the third volume—a folding plate beautifully produced. The original is exceedingly late and is roughly termed a forgery. In 1669 the Tablet was reproduced on a larger scale by means of a number of folding plates in the Mensa Isiaca of Laurentius Pignorius. Both works are exceedingly rare. I suppose that these are the only records of the Tablet now extant, with the exception of a large copy in my possession made from the above sources.

[50] Mr. G. R. S. Mead tells us that Iynx in its root-meaning, according to Proclus, signifies the “power of transmission” which is said in the Chaldæan Oracles “to sustain the fountains.” Mr. Mead thinks that the Iyinges were reproduced (a) as Living Spheres and (b) as Winged Globes. He thinks, also, that (a) the Mind on the plane of reality put forth (b) the one Iyinx, (c) after this three Iyinges, called paternal and ineffable, and finally (d) there may have been hosts of subordinate Iyinges. They were “free intelligences.” It seems to follow that the Iynx was not “an emblem of universal being,” but a product of the Eternal Mind.

[51] It may be mentioned that the Hebrew alphabet was divided into (a) Three Mother Letters, namely, Aleph, Mem and Shin; (b) Seven Double Letters, being Beth, Gimel, Daleth, Kaph, Pe, Resh, Tau; and (c) Twelve Simple Letters, or He, Vau, Zain, Heth, Teth, Yod, Lamed, Nun, Samech, Ayin, Tsade, Quoph.

[52] The Sepher Yetzirah was first made known to Latin reading Europe by William Postel. Publication took place at Bâle in 1547. It is said to have been reissued at Amsterdam in 1646. The collection of Pistorius, entitled Artis Cabalisticæ Scriptores, belongs to 1587. Later and modern editions of the Book of Formation are fairly numerous. It was translated into French, together with the Arabic commentary of R. Saadya Gaon, by Mayor Lambert, in 1891. An English version by Dr. W. Wynn Westcott will serve the purpose of the general reader.

[53] The Tarots of this period belong to the year 1393, and it has been suggested recently in France that the artist Charles Gringonneur was really their inventor. It is useful to note this opinion, but I do not think that any importance attaches to it. The extant Gringonneur examples in the Bibliothèque Nationale have also been said to be of Italian origin and not therefore his work. The Venetian Tarots have been sometimes regarded as the oldest known form. The historical question is obscure beyond all extrication at present.

[54] In face of existing evidence, the description of the Tarot Trumps Major as a Kabalistic alphabet has as much and as little to support it as the claim that they constitute an Egyptian Book of Thoth. It has been reported to me, however, that there is an unknown Jewish Tarot, and it may interest students of the subject to know that before long I hope to be able to give some account at first hand concerning it. There is little reason to suppose that it will prove (a) ancient or (b) Kabalistic; but as one never knows what is at one’s threshold, I put the fact on record for whatever it may be worth in the future. Meanwhile, it is quite idle to say that our popular fortune-telling Tarots are of Jewish origin.

[55] The interpretation of Lévi seems to hesitate between several fields of symbolism, and what follows at this point suggests that the Golden Fleece is an allegory of metallic transmutation by means of alchemy. It was so regarded by many of the later disciples of this art. According to Antoine Joseph Pernety, the Golden Fleece is the symbol of the matter of the Great Work; the labours of Jason are an allegory concerning the operations therein and of the signs of progress towards perfection. The attainment of this Fleece signifies that of the Powder of Projection and the Universal Medicine. See Dictionnaire Mytho-Hermétique and Les Fables Egyptiennes et Grecques, both by Pernety, and in particular vol. i. of the latter work, pp. 437-494.

[56] Among several bearers of this name, I suppose that the reference is to him who, by tradition, was either the disciple or son of Orpheus, commemorated by Virgil. None of his poems are extant, so that the argument seems to fail. The antiquity of the Orphic poems—Argonautica, Hymns, etc.—is another question, and the conclusions of criticism on the subject are well known.

[57] Almost any of the demonologists will serve at need. The Jesuit Martinus Delrio, who wrote Disquisitionum Magicarum Libri Sex has plenty to say about Lamiæ and Stryges. There is also Joannes Wierus, the pupil of Cornelius Agrippa, whose famous work on the Illusions and Impostures of Sorcery—Histoires, Disputes et Discours—was rendered from Latin into French, in 1885.

[58] I do not know how this fable originated and the question is not worth the pains which would be necessary to elucidate it. It is narrated by Éliphas Lévi as matter of historical fact; but there is no question that M. Edouard Schuré, who owes so much to the occultist who preceded him, would have been glad to include it in his romantic biography of Pythagoras, if it had not been too mythical even for his purpose. He is content as it is to suggest that the sage of Samos had studied Jewish monotheism during a stay of twelve years at Babylon.

[59] The authorship of the Golden Verses is of course a debated point; and it is an old suggestion that their real writer was Lysis, the preceptor of Epaminondas and an exponent of Pythagorean philosophy about 388 B.C., his master being referred to the beginning of the sixth century B.C. I should add that Éliphas Lévi has presented the Verses in a metrical form of his own, which reflects the originals at a very far distance. I have not followed this rendering but have had recourse to that of Mr. G. R. S. Mead.

[60] Among the appendices to the second part of the Zohar there is a short section on physiognomy, and it embodies some very curious materials. We learn, for example, that if a man who has certain specified characteristics of colour and feature should turn to God, a white blemish will form on the pupil of his right eye. He who has three semi-circular wrinkles on his forehead and whose eyes are shining will behold the downfall of his enemies. A man who has committed an adultery and has not repented is recognisable by a growth beneath the navel, and thereon will be found two hairs. Should he do penance, the hairs will disappear but the swelling will remain. A man who has a beauty-spot on his ear will be a great master of the Law and will die young. Two long hairs between the shoulders indicate a person who is given to swearing incessantly in an objectless manner. It will be seen that these details belong to a neglected part of the science, and I am a little at a loss to know how Éliphas Lévi would have pressed them into his service, if he had been fully acquainted with the work which he quotes so often.

[61] It happens that the hypothesis of reincarnation was personally unwelcome to Éliphas Lévi, and he did not know enough of Zoharic Kabalism to realise that it is of some importance therein. The traditions concerning the teaching of Pythagoras must be taken at their proper value, but there is no question that, according to these, he was an important champion of what used to be called the doctrine of metempsychosis, understood as the soul’s transmigration into successive bodies. He himself had been (a) Æthalides, a son of Mercury; (b) Euphorbus, son of Panthus, who perished at the hands of Menelaus in the Trojan war; (c) Hermotimus, a prophet of Clazomenæ, a city of Ionia; (d) a humble fisherman, and finally (e) the philosopher of Samos.

[62] In memoria æterna erit justus.

[63] Éliphas Lévi has forgotten that the word “ineffable” means something which cannot be expressed; he intended to say that, according to the Kabalists, the efficacious name was hidden.

[64] All later Kabalists agree that Tetragrammaton is the root and foundation of the Divine Names. In the Sephirotic system one of the allocations makes Chokmah, or Supernal Wisdom, to correspond with the Yod of Tetragrammaton. Kether, which is the Crown, is said to have no letter attributed thereto, because the mystery of Ain Soph, the hidden abyss of the Godhead, is implied therein. However, the apex of Yod does in a sense intimate concerning Kether. He is the second letter in the Divine Tetrad, and it is ascribed to Binah, or Supernal Understanding, wherein is all life comprehended. This is the abode of the Shekinah in transcendence. The third letter is Vau, and it is said to contain the six Sephiroth from Chesed to Yesod. The second He is the fourth and last letter; it corresponds to Malkuth, or the Kingdom, wherein is the mystery of the unity of God. This is the abode of the Shekinah in manifestation. Thus, Yod, He, Vau, He, which we render Jehovah, contains all the ten Sephiroth. There are, however, other allocations.

[65] Éliphas Lévi must have meant to say seven letters, but the point does not signify. According to Rosenroth, the Tetragrammaton with vowel-points is the eighth Divine Name— יֱהֹוִה. The points are those of Elohim and it is read as that Name. This signifies the concealment of the “Ineffable” Name, on account of the exile of Israel.

[66] This is the Divine Name which is most in proximity to created things. See the excursus thereon in Kabbala Denudata, vol. i. pp. 32-41.

[67] Cf. the Zohar, Part i. folio 15a, on Exodus iii. 14: “And God said unto Moses: I am that I am”— אהיה אשר אהיה

[68] According to the Rabbinical Lexicon of Buxtorf, Agla is formed from the initial letters of the sentence אדני לצלם נכור אהה = Tu potens es in sæculum, Domine. There seems to be no Kabalistic authority for its explanation by Lévi, and the word occurs very seldom in the Zohar.

[69] According to Petrus Galatinus, in De Arcanis Catholicæ Veritatis, the word Agla expresses the infinite power of the Divine Trinity. Like Éliphas Lévi, he gives us the separate significance of each letter and, like Buxtorf, he makes them the initials of the sentence already quoted, his rendering being: Tu potens in æternum Dominus. He terms Agla Nomen Dei, for which there seems to be as much and as little authority as there is for the suggestion that the Divina potentia is that of the Trinity.

[70] A very full exposition of this Name will be found in the section entitled De Cabale Hebræorum, forming part of Kircher’s magnum opus, the Œdipus Ægyptiacus. It is curious that a tract so important as this, within its own measures, and written with the uttermost simplicity, does not appear to have been translated, even into the French language.

[71] I must admit that this reference escapes me. The Tarot consists of four suits of 14 cards each and there are 22 Trumps Major, making 78 cards in all.

[72] The axiom has rather a convincing air, but the analogy is wrong, and the word “return” is a blunder of popular speech. The possibility of communication with those who have left this life is a question of the interpenetration of worlds. To say that the human spirit departs or comes back is a symbolic expression, like the statement that heaven is above us.

[73] The analogy is again wrong and the creation of a materialistic mind. The return of the soul to God is not annihilation but life for evermore, and it is union with all life.

[74] The soul sheds one envelope, in which it has prepared another.

[75] This expression may tend to confusion. The consciousness and activity of the soul are manifested by means of that vehicle in which it happens to reside. It is not they that belong to the vehicle, but it is the vehicle that is used by them.

[76] There is no Kabalistic authority for the sun as the abode of souls.

[77] Kabalism is silent on the question of communication with those who have left this life, though tacitly it must admit the possibility on the evidence of the case of Samuel. The axiom that the spirit clothes itself to come down and unclothes itself to go up is one of the so-called conclusiones Kabbalisticæ of Picus de Mirandula, but it is found substantially in the Zohar, and as regards the descent, this is just what occurs ex hypothesi in the phenomena of spiritistic materialisations. As regards the parable of the rich man, it has nothing to do with the question of so-called spirit-return; those who were in the bosom of Abraham had as much left this life as those who were in Sheol.

[78] It depends on those who have left us. What of the earthly and the evil? Why should the bond between them and us—supposing that there is a bond—be that of our highest feelings?

[79] The fact is that he was assassinated, the inference is that it was by or at the instance of those whose secrets he was supposed to have betrayed. The murderers, also by inference, were said to be Brethren of the Rosy Cross. It may be mentioned that the Comte de Gabalis contains the theory of communication with elementary spirits, being those of earth, air, fire and water; but the mode of treatment suggests that it is a jeu d’esprit. The Nouveaux Entretiens sur les Sciences Secrètes, Génies Assistants and Le Gnome Irréconcilable, which are supposed sequels, are forgeries, of later periods.

[80] Elsewhere in his works Éliphas Lévi says that the Astral Light is (a) the Od of the Hebrews, (b) an electro-magnetic ether, (c) a vital and luminous caloric, (d) the instrument of life, (e) the instrument of the omnipotence of Adam, (f) the universal glass of visions. It follows the law of magnetic currents, is subject to fixation by a supreme projection of will-power, is the first envelope of the soul, and the mirror of imagination. He terms it also magnetised electricity. It would seem that his contemporary disciples in France have abandoned the theory of their master, or perhaps I should say rather its doctrinal part. On the other hand, it has perhaps reappeared, under theosophical auspices, as the reservoir of the akasic records.

[81] There are also references to Lilith, a demon-wife of Adam, in the Zohar; she is called the instigator of chastisements and was really the wife of Samael, the evil angel. It may be added that, according to Paracelsus, the elementaries non sunt progeniti ex Adamo. See Liber de Nymphis, Sylphis, Pygmæis et Salamandris, Tract. I, cap. 1..

[82] In respect of male celibates, the physiological particulars referred to are the blind yearning of Nature after the nuptial state and, with a tentative reserve in respect of the life of sanctity, it is shame to those who neglect the warning or turn it to the account of sin.

[83] This is one construction of the symbol and is a little tinctured by Éliphas Lévi’s sincere admiration for the understanding which lay behind the Romance of the Rose. The text of Genesis says that a river rose to water the Garden “and from thence it was parted and became into four heads,” or four sources of rivers. These rivers did not water the Garden but the world without, and their names are familiar in the geography of the ancient world. The mystic pantacle of Eden shews therefore an enclosure constituted by a ring or circle of water, an island like that of Avalon, which is another Garden of Apples, and the waters flow out therefrom towards the four points of heaven: they form therefore a cross, and in the centre of that cross is the Paradise. If the reader will bear in mind that, according to the secret tradition, Adam was set to grow roses in the Garden of Eden, he will understand at what place of the world the symbolism of the Rosy Cross takes its origin.

[84] This is true, but it is only the science of this world in the sense that the greater includes the lesser. It is really the supernal knowledge which is called Daath in Kabalism, arising from the union of Chokmah and Binah, or Wisdom and Understanding.

[85] The commentary of the Zohar on Genesis, vi. 2—“the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair”—affirms that the angels were cast out of heaven as soon as they had conceived the desire therein suggested. Aza and Azael were the chiefs of these fallen spirits. Subsequently they taught Magic to men.

[86] The design of the builders, according to the Zohar, Part I, Fol. 75^a, was to abandon the celestial domain for that of Satan. They desired to rebuild heaven, apparently in the likeness of their own evil desires. They were the same quality of souls as the “giants in the earth in those days” and “the mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” See Genesis, c. vi. v. 4 and Zohar, Part I, Fol. 25^b.

[87] Zoharic Kabalism was dissatisfied with the visitation of the offence of Ham on his apparently innocent son, Canaan, and it accounted for the malediction pronounced upon the latter by the fact that he had removed the testes from the person of his grandfather Noah. On the surface this is a ridiculous enormity, but it is a concealed intimation that the whole Noetic myths is, like Paradise itself, a mystery of sex shadowed forth in symbolism.

[88] It should be needless to say that this is a mere presumption and is not even founded on any legend concerning the travels of Plato. He is said to have been in Egypt for a period which has been estimated at thirteen years.

[89] He was a disciple of Plato who is supposed not only to have been illustrious for his knowledge of geometry but to have paid the usual pilgrim’s visit to Egypt and to have returned an adept in astronomy.

[90] We have, unhappily, to remember that Éliphas Lévi himself wrote a great deal, and assuredly to little purpose, on the subject of squaring the circle and on perpetual motion. Elsewhere he tells us that the revolution of a square about its centre describes a circle, and thus the circle is squared. He also invented, in imagination, a clock which wound itself up in the process of running itself down, and this was perpetual motion—presumably, unless the mechanism happened to stop working or to wear itself out. The reader may settle for himself whether in these phantasies he was in hiding like an adept or pursuing like a fool.

[91] The only remark which is requisite on this chapter is that it involves throughout an abuse of the word Mysticism, which has nothing to do with religious anarchy, sects or magic. See, however, my preface to the present translation.

[92] The history of persecution may be left to speak for itself on the validity of this plea and the postulated principle mentioned by Éliphas Lévi may even be thought to have concealed a stab from behind in the dark. In any case, the alleged horror of blood is best illustrated by the method of pyre and faggot.

[93] “Change not the barbarous names of evocation,” says one of the oracles attributed to Zoroaster, as we have seen, and the reason given is because of their “ineffable power.” This was the true Zoroaster of Éliphas Lévi, and he was not, ex hypothesi, an exponent of Black Magic. “Barbarian words and signs unknown” are not less in favour with the so-called white variety.

[94] See my Book of Ceremonial Magic, pp. 100-102, for a study of this Grimoire.

[95] The reference is to a work entitled Des Hallucinations, ou Histoire raisonnée des Apparitions, des Visions, des Songes, de l’Extase, du Magnétisme et du Somnambulisme. It was first published about 1850 and was of authority at its period. Its large array of materials will be always valuable. I believe that it was translated into English.

[96] There is no need to say that the Second Birth, to which allusion is made by Christ, is not comprehended by any notion of a moral change, though such change is involved. Morality is the gate of spiritual life but is not its sanctuary.

[97] The point which escapes in this synopsis of Egyptian initiation is that which distinguishes the official mysteries—like Masonry—from vital initiation, and I mention it here because there are memorials of Egyptian mysteries which suggest that they were no mere symbolical pageants but did communicate—to those who could receive—the life which is behind such symbolism.

[98] The analogy here instituted assumes in respect of the Greek mysteries that which has been implied previously regarding those of Egypt. The laws and by-laws of the schools of philosophy, whatever they exacted from pupils, were not imitations of the grades of initiation and advancement communicated in priestly sanctuaries, if there was mystic life in those sanctuaries. Even if they were merely pageants, the comparison does not obtain; for it is obvious that Pythagoras and Plato did not confer degrees by way of ritual. Matriculation and “the little go” are not ceremonial observances in the path of symbolism.

[99] The truth is that in so far as the Jewish Kabalah contains a Logos philosophy, so far it embodies confused reminiscences of Alexandrian schools of thought. Éliphas Lévi reminds one of Jacob Bryant, Davies and the respectable Mr. Faber, who explained the whole universe of history by the help of Shem, Ham and Japhet, the deluge and the Ark of Noah. He saw the Kabalah everywhere; had he spoken of a secret tradition subsisting in all times, of which Kabalism is a part in reflection, he would have been less confused and confusing; but he applied to the whole a term which is peculiar to a part. It is said in the Zohar that the Word which discovers unto us the supreme mysteries is generated by the union of light and darkness. Part I, Fol. 32a. It is said also that the Word dwells in the superior heavens, Fol. 33b. And there are other references.

[100] Dacier was a translator in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and his study on the Doctrine of Plato appeared in the third volume of a collection entitled Bibliothèque des Anciens Philosophes, which began publication in 1771.

[101] Those who may wish to be acquainted with the sources from which Lévi drew some of his materials may consult Cœlum Sephiroticum, by J. C. Steebius, an old folio which appeared in 1679, as well as Reuchlin and Rosenroth. They will see how things change in his hands. According to the Zohar, Ain Soph reflects immediately into Kether on the path of manifestation. It is not correct to say that the king is Ain Soph in Kabalism and the letter of Plato is devoid of sephirotic analogies.

[102] It must be said that the Greek word θεοσοφια did not pass into Latin in classical times and was unknown throughout the middle ages. As an illustration of its occult prevalence, I cannot trace that it was used by Paracelsus. In so far as it can be said to have become prevalent, it was in a mystic sense only, as in the proper use of words it could alone be. It was made familiar by Jacob Böhme.

[103] The classical authorities for the visitation of the cave of Trophonius include Pausanias of Cæsarea, who wrote the history of Greece, Cicero, Pliny and Philostratus, not to mention the allusion found in the Clouds of Aristophanes. The account of Éliphas Lévi must be taken with certain reservations, but it is not a matter in which accuracy or its opposite is of any consequence outside scholarly research. There were various sacrifices and other ceremonies prior to the visitation, and the candidate for the experience usually descended alone. It is not, I think, on record that the effect of the visit was lasting.

[104] The actual formula seems to have been: “He has consulted the oracle of Trophonius.”

[105] There is no question that, according to the Zohar, the sun is the centre of the planetary system, of which planets the earth is one.

[106] There is extraordinary confusion, at the least by way of expression, in this paragraph, which will inevitably create in the reader a notion that the work of Cebes was a picture. As a fact, it is a description of human life contained in a dialogue, to which the title of Tabula was given. It has been printed several times, and once, I believe, at Glasgow, in 1747.

[107] I have intimated elsewhere that the Zohar is in several respects a work of high entertainment, and that its reading is much more diverting than Arabian or Ambrosial Nights. But Éliphas Lévi is right in saying that it calls for some preliminary training. He does not quite mean, however, what I mean in making the suggestion. On the serious side the Zohar is assuredly a work of initiation and one of the great books of the world, though Sir John Lubbock and others of kindred enterprise did not happen to know of it. Lévi is substantially right also in saying that it requires a key, though his meaning is not expressed rightly. The explanation is that it is not a methodical system and presupposes throughout, on the part of its readers, an acquaintance with the tradition which it embodies in allusive form.

[108] It is difficult to say what authority was followed in producing this account. Pentheus was the second King of Thebes, succeeding Cadmus, who built the city. Bacchus was the son of Semele, the daughter of Cadmus, by Jupiter, but he was never a candidate for the Theban throne. The offence of Pentheus was not one of usurpation but of refusal to recognise the divinity of Bacchus. He was not torn to pieces by the daughters of Cadmus, but by a crowd of Bacchanals, among whom was his own mother. It is impossible to turn this story into an allegory of pantheism, as Lévi proceeds to do.

[109] The classical story is the very contrary of this. The effect of his experiments with the serpents was like that of passing through the foot of the rainbow; Tiresias was changed into a girl. He married in this form; but having met a second time with some other interlaced serpents, he again smote them and recovered his original sex. So far from being unable to consummate marriage in either case, he became an authority with the gods on the comparative extent of satisfaction attained by the two sexes in the act of sex.

[110] The term geometrical scarcely applies to the figures of geomancy.

[111] The Bacchus who was depicted with horns was the son of Jupiter and Proserpine. As regards the androgynous nature of Iacchos, I do not know Lévi’s authority, but such a characteristic was ascribed to several deities, though sometimes against general likelihood. It was even said of Jupiter that he was a man but also an immortal maid.

[112] Lévi affirms elsewhere that the satisfaction of all the calls of sense is required for the work of philosophy. In the present place he confuses the issue by implying that chastity means either celibacy or the virgin state. Yet he did not fail to understand that the nuptial life is also a life of chastity; he speaks eloquently of the home and its sanctity, and he alludes elsewhere to the chaste and conjugal Venus.

[113] There were two pagan festivals which have a certain likeness between them: (a) Charisia, which was in honour of Aglaia, Thalia and Euphrosyne, the Charites or Graces. It was celebrated by dances at night, and the person who maintained the exercise longest was presented with a cake, (b) Charistia, a Roman festival, for the reconciliation of relations and friends, at which food was eaten. It could be wished for the perpetuity and catholicity of the sacraments that there were traces of an Eucharist in the Christian sense prior to Christian times.

[114] It may be mentioned that 13 is also the number of resurrection, or birth into new life.

[115] The Grimoire mentioned under the name of Little Albert is called in the Latin edition Alberti Parvi Lucii Libellus, and is “a treasure of marvellous secrets.” The original intention was to father it on Albertus Magnus, and in fact there is another collection which is known as the Great Albert. It is of similar value.

[116] I have suffered these lines to stand as they are given by Éliphas Lévi, following the French translation of Salomon Certon. Shelley, who rendered Homer’s Hymn to Mercury into verse which is unworthy of his name, represented the Greek original by asterisks at this point, and I have taken a lesson from the counsel. Lévi gives some further lines—I scarcely know why, but they stand as follows in Shelley’s version:

“Phœbus on the grass

Him threw, and whilst all that he had designed

He did perform—eager although to pass,

Apollo darted from his mighty mind

Towards the subtle babe the following scoff:—

‘Do not imagine this will get you off,

“‘You little swaddled child of Jove and May!’

And seized him: ‘By this omen I shall trace

My noble herds, and you shall lead the way.’”

[117] We shall meet with this sect accordingly, and it will be found that the present remark is either (a) not intended to justify the alleged traditional interpretation or (b) that the initial reference has to be qualified by its subsequent extension. Johannite Christianity has been the subject of much romancing among the exponents of High-Grade Masonry. Woodford’s Cyclopædia of Freemasonry identifies its followers with Nazarenes and Nasarites, and adds that they regarded St. John the Baptist as “the only true prophet.” One order of Templar Masonry, which is now extinct, seems to have claimed connection with the Johannite sect.

[118] I have quoted elsewhere the previous remark of the author on the same subject as a curious example of how things are apt to strike a French exponent of occultism at different periods of time and in other states of emotion. “St. Paul burnt the books of Trismegistus”—not Göetic texts or works of necromancy; “Omar burned the disciples of Trismegistus (?) and St. Paul. O persecutors! O incendiaries! O coffers! When will you finish your work of darkness and destruction!” This is from the Rituel de la Haute Magie, p. 327.

[119] In his Fundamental Philosophy, James Balmes seeks to shew that the Eucharistic Mystery, understood in the literal sense of transubstantiation, is not absurd in itself, that is to say, is not intrinsically contradictory. To establish that it is, one must demonstrate: (a) that to abstract passive sensibility from matter is to destroy the principle of contradiction; (b) that the correspondences between our sense organs and objects are intrinsically immutable; (c) that it is absolutely necessary for impressions to be transmitted to the sensitive faculties of the soul by those organs and that they can never be transmitted otherwise. See Book III, Extension and Space, c. 33, Triumph of Religion. I make this citation because it seems to me that Éliphas Lévi acted incautiously in debating the observation of Rousseau.

[120] The place of his birth is uncertain; Cyprus is one of the alternatives.

[121] This is Dositheus of Samaria, who was contemporary with Christ. There is an account of him by St. Epiphanius and he is also mentioned by Photius.

[122] It is, I believe, one of the Christian apologists who mentions that Helen was found by Simon in a house of ill-fame at Tyre. It is said otherwise that she was Helen of Troy in a previous incarnation.

[123] Because they were both favourites of Nero, or because the reference to a feast reminded Éliphas Lévi of the celebrated Banquet in the Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter. Sophronius Tigellinus was one of Nero’s ministers.

[124] The dispute between St. Peter and Simon the Magician is not a matter of popular rumour; it is a methodical account contained in one of the forged Recognitions ascribed to St. Clement. It will be understood that the version presented by Éliphas Lévi is decorated by his own imagination. It seems generally regarded as certain that Simon visited Rome to enrol disciples, and there is the authority of Eusebius for some kind of meeting with St. Peter.

[125] It might be more accurate to say that there were many successors, of whom Menander was the chief. So also there were many Simonian sects, including the school which followed Dositheus, described by Lévi and others as the master of Simon. Menander claimed to be the envoy of the Supreme Power of God.

[126] They were not included at the period—about 1865—in La France Mystique of Erdan, though it contained choses inouies; and they are not found among les petites religions de Paris at the present day, though it contains a Gnostic church confessing to a hierarchic government and, I believe, with an authorised branch at San Francisco—perhaps less in partibus infidelium than is the sect in its own country.

[127] I have given Lévi’s version literally without pretending to account for it. In the authorised version the passage reads: “If thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.” Genesis, iv. 7.

[128] I suppose that reference is intended to Epitome Delictorum, sive de Magia, in qua aperta vel occulta invocatio Dæmonum, &c., 4to. I have no record of the first edition, but it was reprinted at Leyden in 1679.

[129] It has to be observed that the Hyphasis was a certain river of India which is assigned by tradition as the boundary of Alexander’s conquests. Had Éliphas Lévi been acquainted with this fact he might have allegorised with success thereon.

[130] It is noticeable that the alchemists of past centuries, who were so apt to see the Hermetic Mystery at large in all literature, and who fathered many mythical treatises on the great and the holy men of old, are silent regarding Apollonius. I am far from admitting the interpretation of Éliphas Lévi, as Philostratus belongs to the dawn of the third century, when alchemy may be said to have been unborn; but I am sure that if the early expositors had known the life of Apollonius, they might almost have suspected something. Even the Abbé Pernety missed the obvious opportunity in his discourse on the Hermetic significance of the Greek and Egyptian fables.

[131] It must be remembered that the Stone in symbolism is far older than the particular symbol which is called the Philosophical Stone, or Stone of Alchemy.

[132] The last statement obtains in respect of the Mystic Stone, as understood, for example, by Zoharic writers.

[133] The introduction to the Dogme de la Haute Magie says: (a) That Julian was one of the illuminated and an initiate of the first order; (b) That he was a Gnostic allured by the allegories of Greek polytheism; (c) That he had the satisfaction of expiring like Epaminondas with the periods of Cato.

[134] The Golden Legend was compiled about 1275 by Jacobus de Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa. His authorities were (a) Eusebius, (b) St. Jerome, (c) legendary matter. I am sure that Kabalistic mysteries and Johannite initiation must look elsewhere for their records. The suggestion, however, is not worth debating.

[135] In the Golden Legend the story is entitled “Of St. Justina,” whose festival is on September 26. St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, is entirely distinct from the Cyprian of legend.

[136] This pictorial sign appears in an old Grimoire.

[137] With this reverie of Éliphas Lévi on the subject of the mystic ass let us compare another which is of an entirely different order, though it belongs to the same category, (1) It is recorded by Josephus that a certain Jew named Onias obtained leave from Ptolemy Philometor to build a temple in honour of God at a certain place in Arabia which was subsequently called Onium, after the founder. (2) This Onium was not Heliopolis, as supposed commonly. (3) The Temple at Onium, on account of a similitude of sound, was connected with the Greek word ονος, signifying Ass. (4) The Greeks in consequence believed themselves to have discovered the secret object of Jewish worship, being the animal in question. (5) It was asserted that there was an ass’s head in the vestibule of every Jewish temple. (6) As the Greeks did not closely distinguish between Jews and Christians, the ass came also to be called the god of the Christians.—Jacob Bryant: Analysis of Antient Mythology, 3rd edition, vol. vi. pp. 82 et seq.

[138] The commentary of the Zohar on Genesis ii. 22, says that the words—“which the Lord God had taken from man”—signify that the Tradition has issued from the Written Doctrine. The words “and brought him to man” indicate that the Traditional Law must not remain isolated: it can only exist in union with the Written Law. Part I, Fol. 48^b. It follows, and is made plain elsewhere, that man is the Written Law and woman the Secret Doctrine.

[139] In one of the pictorial symbols of Alchemy the head of the winged solar man is represented rising from a chest. It is a recurring image.

[140] It is obvious that Éliphas Lévi pictures only the dark side of Gnosticism; he says nothing and perhaps knew nothing of the higher aspects. His stricture on the copulation of Eons reads strangely for a defender of Kabalism, seeing that the Zohar abounds in similar images.

[141] This statement requires to be checked by a French authority of the period, with whom Éliphas Lévi could not fail to be acquainted. I refer to Jacques Matter and his Histoire Critique du Gnosticisme, a second and enlarged edition of which was published in 1843. According to the testimony of this writer: (a) Some Gnostics rejected the Eucharist entirely; (b) Those who preserved it never taught the real communication of man in the flesh and blood of the Saviour; (c) for them it was an emblem of their mystic union with a being belonging to the Pleroma; (d) The wonder-working Eucharist was particular to Marcos, but according to St. Irenæus it was the result of trickery; (e) He filled chalices with wine and water, pronounced over them a formula of his own, and caused these liquids to appear purple and ruby in colour. Op. cit., vol. ii. pp. 344-346.

[142] This assertion is merely a matter of inference.

[143] The materials here embodied come direct from Matter, and the last sentence is almost in his own words. The earlier writer says that he caused women to bless the chalice. Nothing is said as to the intervention of men, other than Marcos, in the celebration.

[144] The dream ascribed to Marcos and his followers is that, however, of the Zohar, the opening section of which describes the letters of the Hebrew alphabet as coming before God in succession, praying to be used in the work of creation which was about to begin. They were set aside in their turn for the reason applying to each, with the exception of Beth, which was taken as the basis of the work, while Aleph was installed as the first of all the letters, the Master of the Universe affirming that His own Divine Unity was in virtue of this letter. The meaning was that Aleph corresponds to the No. 1. This, says the Zohar, with ingenuous subtlety, is why the two first words of Scripture have Beth as their initial and the two next words have Aleph.—Zohar, Part I, Fols. 2b-3b.

[145] It will be seen in a later section that this charge against Vintras rests upon the evidence of persons expelled from the sect which he founded, and, so far as I am aware, it has not been put forward seriously.

[146] The question, however, stood over until the appearance of La Clef des Grands Mystères, a considerable part of which is embodied in the digest of Lévi’s writings which I published long since as The Mysteries of Magic. The Astral Light is explained as “magnetised electricity “—as already quoted.

[147] In my Book of Ceremonial Magic I have given full opportunities for the judgment of this so-called occult ritual, which should certainly have been kept in concealment, or better still allowed to perish, not on account of its secrets but because it is in all respects worthless, and its ascription to Leo III an insult to that pontiff.

[148] It is laid down in the work of Synesius (a) that chastity and temperance are indispensable for the knowledge of divination by dreams; (b) that these being granted, divination by dreams is both valuable and simple; (c) that all things past, present and future convey their images to us; (d) that there is no general rule of interpretation; (e) that each should make his divinatory science for himself, by noting his dreams. The philosopher gives some account of the profit which he had derived personally from a study of the images of sleep. Divination also preserved him from the ambushes laid by certain magicians, so that he suffered no harm at their hands.

[149] Éliphas Lévi’s knowledge of the works attributed to Dionysius is doubtless derived from the translation of Monsignor Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, which appeared in 1845. There is an elaborate introduction designed to establish the authenticity of the texts and this is excellent, at least for its period, as a piece of special pleading. The reader who refers to the treatise on Divine Names need not be distressed when he finds that it embodies no mysteries of rabbinical theology. To many of us at the present day the most important of the Dionysian writings is that on Mystical Theology, which is omitted in the enumeration of Lévi and not perhaps unnaturally, as it is a pelagus divinitatis over which he would not have ventured to sail.

[150] Goethe.

[151] This explanation is not in accordance with the recorded facts for which Phlegon and Proclus are the authorities. The works of Phlegon were published at Leyden in 1620, under the editorship of Meursius and again in 1775 at Halle, by Franzius; they contain the story of Philinnion—as the name is spelt by Phlegon. Machates was a foreign friend of Demostratus from Pella, not an innkeeper. Philinnion appeared to him after her death in the house of his parents and declared her love. Her intercourse with Machates was discovered accidentally by a servant, and the denouement is much as it is given in the present place. Philinnion said, however, that she acted with the consent of the gods. Éliphas Lévi accounts for his discrepancies by an appeal to the narratives of French demonographers, but he makes no references by which we can check him. He states, however, that they are answerable for the alleged fact that Machates was the keeper of a tavern. The date of the actual occurrence is the reign of Philip II of Macedon, and the “Emperor” referred to should be King Philip. Lévi confuses the date of Phlegon (Hadrian’s reign) with the date of the incident. Phlegon was merely a collector of curious stories, and could not, of course, have witnessed an incident which took place 500 years before his birth!

[152] It will be understood at the present day that this is reverie and only serves to remind us that Aristotle ascribed the philosophy of Greece to a source in Gaul, while it is affirmed by Clement of Alexandria that Pythagoras derived therefrom. It is thought now, on the other hand, that Druidism in its later developments may have been influenced not only by Greek but also by Phœnician ideas.

[153] In Druidic mythology, Belen, otherwise Heol, was the sun-god; Camael was god of war. The highest divinity is believed to have been that Esus who is mentioned by Lucan. He is represented by the circle, as a sign of infinity, and all fate was beneath him. The most important goddess was Keridwen, who presided over wisdom. The conclusion of Lévi’s enumeration is like the beginning—a dream.

[154] A note by Éliphas Lévi says that a Druidic statue was found at Chartres, having the inscription: Virgini Parituræ. It is curious that Druidic inscriptions should be in the Latin tongue.

[155] It was supposed to increase the species by preventing sterility, and it was dignified by other ascribed virtues; it was the ethereal tree and the growth of the high summit. It was included among the ingredients of the mystical cauldron of Keridwen, in which genius, inspiration and serenity were said to dwell.

[156] The same occult importance attaches to this statement as to another in the Dogme et Rituel, where Éliphas Lévi, explaining the superstitions of the past, affirms for those who can suffer it that the toad is not poisonous but is a sponge for poisons. I suppose, however, it is obvious that if “popular confidence” can render mistletoe magnetic, popular distrust may instil poison into toads.

[157] The floating traditions and chansons concerning Melusine were collected by Jean d’Arras into a beautiful romance of chivalry, at the close of the fourteenth century.

[158] Whether this hypothesis of antiquity is warranted or not, the fact that it is adopted should have prevented Éliphas Lévi from characterising the romance of Melusine as an imitation pf the fable of Psyche: it is obviously the reverse side. The allegory in the latter case is that of the assumption of the soul by the Divine Spirit, so that all which is capable of redemption in our human nature, its emotion, its desire and its love, may enter into the glorious estate of the mystic marriage. The allegory in the former case is that of the union instituted between the psychic part and all that is of earth in our nature; but this earth is not capable of true marriage, and whereas the other experiment ends in the world of unity, this terminates, as it can only, in that of separation.

[159] See Jules Garinet: Histoire de la Magie en France, 1818, pp. 11, 12.

[160] The story of Fredegonde and her connection with sorcery is told by Gregory of Tours, but Éliphas Lévi derived it from Jules Garinet, already cited. The particulars concerning Klodswinthe appear to be his own invention, of which her imputed discourse bears all the marks.

[161] See Garinet, Histoire de la Magie en France, pp. 14-16, and Th. de Cauzons, La Magie et la Sorcellerie en France, vol. ii. p. 100. The original authority is again Gregory of Tours: Histoire des Francs, Book VI, c. 35. The account of Lévi is rather incorrect, for after unheard-of tortures, the life of Mummol was spared, but he died on the way to Bordeaux. It does not appear that he defied his executioners and the renewed torture was ordained by Chilperic.

[162] The work in question is called Acta Disputationis cum quodam Nicolai.

[163] A story of the days of St. Louis is obviously not Talmudic and the antiquity of the idea of immortality among the Jews fortunately rests on a better foundation than this. The criticism exposes the carelessness of Lévi if he is regarded as a man of learning. Some will think that he traded on the ignorance of his readers.

[164] What was actually intended by the expression amatores diaboli should have been perfectly well understood by Éliphas Lévi. It corresponds to the legends concerning incubi and succubi. For a specific example see Brierre de Boismont, Des Hallucinations, p. 151 et seq.

[165] The story comes from Gregory of Tours.

[166] The account of Zedekias and the atmospheric marvels is taken from Garinet, pp. 34 et seq.

[167] See pp. 34-37 of his History. But the account in Garinet is derived from the Cinquième Entretien in the romance entitled Le Comte de Gabalis.

[168] It is not in reality an occult tradition; it is simply the unauthorised claim of the grimoire.

[169] It should be mentioned that this enumeration of assumptions expressed or implied in the claims of occult tradition, by the hypothesis of its present exponent, has nothing to do with the Enchiridion, which makes only two claims, and these are particular to itself. They are (a) that it was sent to Charlemagne by Pope Leo and (b) that certain prayers, which rank as its chief feature, possess mysterious power. The suggestion of Lévi’s next paragraph notwithstanding, there is no other point of view from which the book can be regarded.

[170] It is said elsewhere by Éliphas Lévi that the Enchiridion has never been published with its true figures, and one is led to suppose that a more important MS. copy may have been in his possession. The plates which he describes belong to a printed edition, but there are no particulars concerning it. Most of the symbols are perfectly well known otherwise, and I have given them in the Book of Ceremonial Magic, where they were taken from examples with which I am acquainted. Some of them correspond to the description of Lévi.

[171] Adonai according to the Zohar is one of the titles of Shekinah.

[172] He has said elsewhere (a) that to pronounce the word Agla Kabalistically is to undergo all the trials of initiation and fulfil all its works; (b) that the occult forces which comprise the empire of Hermes are obedient to him who can pronounce, according to science, the incommunicable name of Agla; (c) and that its letters represent (1) unity, (2) fecundity, (3) the perfect cycle, and (4) the expression of the synthesis.

[173] He means that it symbolises the Creative Intelligence rising over the waters of creation. It is not, strictly speaking, Zoharic symbolism, but it corresponds to his own construction of one of the sections, namely, the Book of Concealment.

[174] It is more especially a Rosicrucian number, and its importance in Kabalism arises from its frequent recurrence in the scriptures of the Old Testament. When the days of the greater exile draw to their close, and judgment is coming upon all the peoples and all the kings of the world who have oppressed Israel, it is said that a pillar of fire shall be raised from earth to heaven and shall be visible to everyone for a period of forty days. The King Messiah will leave that place which is called the Bird’s Nest in the Garden of Eden and will manifest in the land of Galilee. At the end of the forty days a splendid star of all colours will appear in the East, &c. Zohar, Part II., fol. 7b.

[175] A reference to Plate III in the Book of Ceremonial Magic will shew that the emblem in question is not the Labarum. For a design which is intended to represent the latter, see Plate IV, Fig. 2. There is really no connection between the Sigils of the Enchiridion and the text of the work.

[176] Éliphas Lévi wrote and published much after the History of Magic, but the intention here expressed did not pass into realisation.

[177] At the period in question Westphalia comprehended the region between the Rhine and the Weser. Its southern boundary was the mountains of Hesse; its northern the district of Friesland, which at that time extended from Holland to Schleswig.

[178] No secret mission in the sense intended by Éliphas Lévi was ever entrusted by Charlemagne. He had overcome the Saxons of Westphalia after a thirty years’ war, had enforced the religion of the conqueror upon them, and had established a Frankish system of government therein.

[179] The origin of the Secret Tribunal is clouded, like all the history of its period, but it is quite certain that it is referable to the middle of the thirteenth century. It should be added that Éliphas Lévi was by no means author of the Charlemagne hypothesis, which had been advanced many years previously. The competitive views are numerous. It will be seen directly that a document of the Tribunal claims that it originated in the days of Charlemagne, supposing that it has been quoted correctly. Jules Garinet supported the claim without shewing any knowledge on the subject.

[180] The meetings of the Tribunal were frequently held in the town-house and the castle, sometimes in the market-place, and on rare occasions in churchyards. There is only one record concerning a session underground. The general place was under trees in the open air.

[181] An accused person had the right to conduct his own defence, or he could bring an advocate with him. There were also certain circumstances under which there was the right of appeal.

[182] The evidence is wanting for this extraordinary statement. Éliphas Lévi seems to have been under the impression that the Tribunal was like a Masonic Grand Lodge, with one mode and place of meeting. It was naturally composed of many tribunals and met, as we have seen, in all kinds of places.

[183] That this statement is amply justified may be seen by a reference to La Magie et la Sorcellerie en France, by T. De Cauzons, a work of considerable research published within the last few years in 4 vols. The section entitled La Magie sous les premiers Capétiens is a record of trivialities concerning diabolical manifestations and can have been included only for the sake of chronological completeness.

[184] The story of Rabbi Jechiel’s device of self-protection is told by Bartolocci, s.v. R. Jechiel de Parisio, in the Magna Bibliotheca Rabbinica, vol. iii. pp. 834, 835. It is on the authority of R. Ghedalia ben David Iacchia. But although Jechiel is supposed to have been a magician there was neither electricity nor magic in his process, only a kind of trap at his own door step or threshold.

[185] It so happens that he went to see him and fell into the trap of the Jew. Garinet is the authority for the imaginary visit to the court of St. Louis. He follows Sauval.

[186] This paragraph is adapted from Garinet, Hist. de la Magie en France, p. 76.

[187] Many treatises on alchemy have been fathered on Albertus Magnus, including Libellus de Alchymia and Concordantia Philosophorum.

[188] According to the Zohar, Adam was formed of earth brought from the four quarters, and this is really an allusion to the symbolic correspondence between the parts of his personality and the four elements of ancient physics.

[189] The universal secret which was sought by mystic Alchemy was more truly that of the life of life; it was the quest of transmutation in God.

[190] The thesis of physical Alchemy was that Nature always intended to produce gold but was thwarted by the impurity of the media amidst which she worked under the earth. The inferior metals resulted. The end of Hermetic art was to complete the design of Nature and raise what is base to perfection.

[191] St. Thomas Aquinas wrote eight treatises on alchemy, if the ascriptions of the literature could be trusted. They are of the same authenticity as those of Albertus Magnus.

[192] The study in question was enjoined in a particular manner by Leo XIII.

[193] I do not know or have forgotten how this legend originated, but in any case no works on transmutation have been imputed to St. Dominic, which leads me to think that the story of his adeptship did not attain any considerable currency.

[194] A fragment of Ostanes is included in the Byzantine collection of ancient alchemists. Romarius should read Comarius, whose tract in the same collection is supposed to be addressed to Cleopatra. Salmanas wrote on the fabrication of artificial pearls and was supposed to be an Arab. A treatise on weights and measures is attributed to Cleopatra and there are also some Latin forgeries. The other names are well known in the literature of Alchemy.

[195] This must be understood in the general sense of the Secret Tradition perpetuated in various forms through Christian times. The Templars had no concern in the secret schools of Jewry. On the basis of the official process which resulted in their condemnation, they have been accused of Black Magic, Sorcery and of entering into a league with the Order of Assassins.

[196] I have dealt with the claims of this speculation in my Secret Tradition in Freemasonry, vol. i. p. 300 et seq.

[197] The reference is really to the fourth chapter of the apocryphal Book of Nehemiah, which is the Second Book of Esdras, and to the Masons of Nehemiah, not of Zerubbabel. The latter was concerned with the building of the Second Temple and the former with that of the walls about Jerusalem. Half of the young men did the work of restoring the fortifications and half stood in readiness to fight. The builders also were girded with a sword about the reins. The sword in one hand and trowel in another is a symbolical expression.

[198] It is obvious that the arrangement of four triangular blades in a cruciform pattern would constitute an ordinary Maltese cross or cross of the Knights of St. John. This was an Assyrian emblem in pre-Christian times.

[199] The blasphemous fiction is well known and its root is in the Sepher Toldos Jeshu; it is inaccurate to call it a tradition; more properly it is a lying invention. I have failed to discover a source for the Theoclet story, but it is barely possible that it may have risen up within the circle of Fabré Palaprat’s Ordre du Temple.

[200] In the year 1844 Jacques Matter made a special study of the accusations against Knights Templar in his Histoire Critique du Gnosticisme, vol. iii. p. 315 et seq. He states that the alleged preference of the Templars for St. John’s Gospel is nowhere attested by the history of the Order. They were not therefore tinctured by remanents of Paulician Gnosticism, as it is not likely that they would be.

[201] Elsewhere Éliphas Lévi says: (a) That the hypothetical idol Baphomet was a symbolical figure representing the First Matter of the Magnum Opus, which is the Astral Light; (b) That it signified further the god Pan, which may be identified with “the Christ of dissident sacerdotalism”; (c) That the Baphometic head is “a beautiful allegory which attributes to thought alone the first and creative cause”; and finally, (d) That it is “nothing more than an innocent and even a pious hieroglyph.”

[202] The suggestion is that they were summoned by Jacques de Molay to appear before the Divine Tribunal within a year and a day, there to answer for their injustice, and that they died within the time mentioned, which does not happen to be true.

[203] The revision of the process which condemned the Maid of Orléans was begun by Charles VII himself in 1449. In 1552 twelve articles were drawn up, designed to exhibit its illegality and injustice. For political reasons, meaning the relations between France and England, the mother and brothers of Joan were made plaintiffs at Rome, and Pope Callixtus V appointed a commission. In 1456 the commission pronounced its judgment, reversing and annulling the first process on the ground of roguery, calumny, injustice, contradictions and manifest error in fact and law.—La Magie et la Sorcellerie en France, vol. ii. pp. 514-518.

[204] It has been suggested that the charge of sorcery covered a political conspiracy for his destruction and was of the same value as the same charge in respect of the Knights Templar.

[205] Francesco Prelati seems to have been a magician by profession and as regards Gilles de Sillé, it is said otherwise that he was a priest of St. Malo.

[206] This was Catherine de Thouars, and it was to her that the bulk of his fortune was due. He is said to have been one of the richest nobles in Europe.

[207] It will be understood that what follows is merely romantic narrative. See Gilles de Rais, dit Barbe Bleue, by Bossard et Maulde.

[208] The account at this point represents the admixture of the Blue-Beard or folk-element and may be read in conjunction with Perrault.

[209] It does not appear that Francesco Prélati and Gilles de Sillé were brought to account subsequently.

[210] He was really cited to appear before Jean de Malestroit, Bishop of Nantes and Chancellor of Brittany. He obeyed this summons.

[211] The records say that he was insolent at the beginning but soon changed his methods, and the confession which he made involved two of his servants, named Henri and Poitou.

[212] It was the servants of Gilles de Rais who accused him under torture.

[213] This explanation is absolutely supposititious, there being no tittle of evidence for the existence of such a process in the records of Black Magic. It is of course possible that some readers may ascribe secret sources of information to Éliphas Lévi. Speaking generally, Black Magic and the synonymous white variety were concerned little enough in alchemical processes, good or bad. Their amateurs and adepts sought enrichment by the discovery of buried treasures with the assistance of demons; they sought also to communicate with evil spirits who could bring gold and precious stones from the mines, or who could themselves accomplish transmutation.

[214] It is just to say that Gaffarel wrote in defence of the Jews and to clear them of many accusations besides those made by Philo. His thesis was that many things were falsely imposed upon them.

[215] His fate was shared by the servants already mentioned, who are said to have been his accomplices.

[216] The Marquis Eudes de Mirville wrote Des Esprits et de leurs Manifestations Fluidiques devant la Science Moderne, 1858, and other large books, which were highly recommended by ecclesiastical authority of the day. He saw the intervention of Satanism everywhere in psychic and occult phenomena. Remove the personality of Satan and Éliphas Lévi says exactly the same thing.

[217] The reference is to La Réalité des Esprits et le Phénomène Merveilleux de leur Écriture Directe. It appeared in 1857 and is a very curious collection of materials. Long after, or in 1875, the same writer published La Morale Universelle, which seems to be a plea for secular education.

[218] The reader should understand that Éliphas Lévi is only giving expression to a point of view; it must not be supposed that there were adepts—either true or false—who said or thought the things which are here set down at the period in question, or indeed at any other period.

[219] See Gabriel Naudé: Apologie pour les Grands Hommes faussement accusés de la Magie.

[220] Bartholemæus Platina was assistant-librarian of the Vatican, and his Opus in Vitas Summorum Pontificum appeared at Venice in 1479, two years before his death.

[221] “Let the popes see to it,” he remarks, according to a Note of Lévi; “it is they who are concerned in the question.”

[222] Éliphas Lévi, in his defence of the Catholic Religion, by which he means that of Rome, reminds one of Talleyrand proceeding to consecrate and entreating his familiars about him not to make him laugh: in the symbolic language of the man in the street, his tongue is so evidently in his cheek. An open enemy of Rome would think twice before saying that the pope who authorised the instruments which were used in the execrable massacres of Albigensians and Vaudois was “so eminently catholic.”

[223] I refer the readers of this section to my Book of Ceremonial Magic, where the content and history of this Grimoire are considered with special reference to the criticism of Éliphas Lévi.

[224] I have mentioned in the Book of Ceremonial Magic that the first edition of the Grimoire of Honorius is referred to 1629, being about 900 years after the death of its alleged author. I have also referred it to its proper source in the Sworn Book of Honorius, which belongs to the fourteenth century. The Honorius here in question was the spokesman of magicians assembled at a mythical place. He is described as the son of Euclid and Master of the Thebans.

[225] This is another way of stating that it is precisely of the same character as the Key of Solomon the King, the Keys of Rabbi Solomon and the Magical Elements of Peter de Abano, which correspond to the description given.

[226] The Grimoire is, on the contrary, a Ritual for the evocation of evil spirits and, granting only the legality of this operation, it is conformable in all respects to the doctrine of the Latin Church. Now, it is idle to say that this Church substitutes the passive for the active principle, the cultus of the Blessed Virgin notwithstanding.

[227] I am not acquainted with this frontispiece, but I have seen a copy having a design on the title-page representing the sun within an inverted triangle.

[228] This exegesis is personal to Éliphas Lévi and has no authority in Kabalism, as there is no need to say, seeing that the Secret Tradition in Jewry did not maintain the hierarchy of the Latin Church. In the Zohar, Adonai is a title of Shekinah, as already stated.

[229] On the assumption of course that the letter Aleph stands for Adam, while Cheth and Vau are the first letters in the name of Eve. The interpretation throughout is of the same value and Éliphas Lévi was not more serious in expressing it than I am in translating it. The Grimoire of Honorius is no such abyss of decorative philosophical iniquity.

[230] I have used the translation made from the Grimoire itself, published in my Book of Ceremonial Magic, p. 107.

[231] It affirms that the power to command demons is resident in the Seat of Peter and then proceeds to communicate that power by dispensation to “venerable brethren and dear sons in Jesus Christ,” being those comprised in the ranks of the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

[232] It must be explained that the oration in the Grimoire is not rhythmic, but the “when I shall impose my will upon them” recurs several times, literally or in substance. In this manner Éliphas Lévi gets the refrain of his verses: Je leur imposerai ma volonté pour loi. His metrical rendering is well conceived and executed.

[233] I have rendered in prose that which is given by Lévi in verse, which is anything but in the words of the Ritual. Compare my translation of the prayer taken from the Grimoire in the Book of Ceremonial Magic, pp. 280-282.

[234] The Ritual proceeds to the conjuration of the Kings presiding in the four quarters of heaven and the evil angels who rule over the days of the week.

[235] The presence of the gipsies in Europe can be traced prior to the fifteenth century.

[236] The authority of George Borrow is quoted for this statement.

[237] Long before Vaillant, this Chinese inscription was described by Court de Gebelin, who also believed that it was a form of the Tarot.

[238] If certain beautiful Tarot cards preserved in the Bibliothèque du Roi and at the Musée Carrer are the work of Jacques Gringonneur, which is disputed, as we have seen, then the Tarot is first heard of in 1393 and as it was in 1423 that St. Bernardin of Sienna preached against playing cards, which were no doubt Tarots, it is probable that they were put to the same use at the earlier date that they were put to at the later.

[239] The romantic history of Raymund Lully on which Éliphas Lévi worked was written by Jean Marie de Vernon.

[240] What is certain historically is as follows: (a) That the story of Ambrosia di Castello, so far as regards its root-matter, concerns the original and only Raymund Lully, who was the author of the Ars Magna; (b) That it is in all probability fictitious; (c) That it has been decorated and dramatised by Éliphas Lévi, who has done his work admirably; (d) That concerning the father of the illuminated doctor we know only that he was a great soldier; (e) That the author of the alchemical treatises was not the author of the Ars Magna; (f) That the alchemical writer is said to have been (1) another Raymund Lully, which, I think, means only that he assumed the name in order to father his works upon a celebrated person, and (2) a proselyte of the gate, being a person who becomes a Jew, but this is manifestly contradicted by the evidence of the alchemical texts; (g) That when the works of Raymund Lully were collected, at the end of the eighteenth century, into eight enormous folio volumes, we find, as I have said elsewhere, a third Raymund Lully, who was a mystic; but as to his real identity we know nothing.

[241] Rose Nobles were replaced by Angels in 1465, temp. Edward IV.

[242] Louis Figuier wrote occult romances under the guise of history, and did not know what he was talking about in respect of the Ars Magna. There is no reason to suppose that it had even passed through his hands. It was otherwise as regards the little alchemical texts; and there is no reason to question what he says concerning them.

[243] The story of a transmutation performed by some one called Raymund Lully in England depends from the alchemical texts mentioned, and is therefore no evidence, and from a forged Testament of John Cremer, who called himself Abbot of Westminster, but no person of this name filled the office in question, either at the supposed period or any other.

[244] The tracts extant under the name of the alchemical Raymund Lully are enumerated by Lenglet du Fresnoy in connection with those attributed to the author of the Ars Magna. Mangetus printed sixteen in his Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa, 1702. The Codicillus, Vade Mecum, or Cantilena is a considerable work, divided into 74 chapters.

[245] The reader may consult at this point my study of the life and writings of Raymund Lully in the Lives of Alchemystical Philosophers, pp. 68-88.

[246] There is no reference to a title in the original text.

[247] It is stated once only in the Apocalypse that “there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.” See Chapter VIII, verse 1.

[248] The Book of Nicholas Flamel describes the symbols as follows: (1) A Wand and serpents devouring one another; (2) a Cross, on which a serpent was crucified; (3) Deserts, in the midst of which were many fair fountains, whence issued a number of serpents that glided here and there.

[249] Mercury and Saturn—as Flamel supposed them to be—were depicted on the obverse side of this leaf and the symbolic flower was on the reverse side. It is not said to be a rose, but simply a fair flower. The rose-tree was on the obverse side of the fifth leaf.

[250] The original has no reference to solidified air.

[251] Otherwise, Arisleus, who figures prominently in the discourses of the Turba Philosophorum.

[252] There is an old story that he translated the Sepher Ha Zohar into Latin, but the manuscript has never been found.

[253] It was first published at Basel and afterwards at Amsterdam in 1646. In 1899 the second edition was rendered into French. It deserves and will repay careful reading from the mystic point of view.

[254] This promise represents another unfulfilled intention of Éliphas Lévi.

[255] See Les Six Voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernier, en Turquie, en Perse et aux Indes, Paris, 1676. There were five French editions, and the work was also translated into English.

[256] This is really the title of a particular treatise, but as it is exceedingly long and may be said to be de omnibus rebus, it may not be taken unjustly to represent his philosophy at large.

[257] The latest and most successful apologist of Paracelsus says that the charge of intemperance was invented by his enemies. See the Life of Paracelsus, by Miss Anna M. Stoddart, 1911.

[258] Éliphas Lévi, who rather misquotes Dante, held that he had performed the same kind of mental pilgrimage, and had escaped in the same manner—by reversing dogma. He says elsewhere: “It was after he had descended from gulf to gulf and from horror to horror to the bottom of the seventh circle of the abyss ... that Dante ... rose consoled and victorious to the light. We have performed the same journey, and we present ourselves before the world with tranquillity on our countenance and peace in our heart ... to assure mankind that hell and the devil ... and all the rest of the dismal phantasmagoria are a nightmare of madness.”

[259] The interpretation of the Divine Comedy as embodying an act of war against the papacy was begun by Gabriele Rossetti, about 1830, in his Disquisitions on the Anti-Papal Spirit which produced the Reformation. For the obscure and dubious tenets to which Éliphas Lévi gives the name of Johannite, he substitutes the doctrines of Albigenses and Waldenses. The same thesis, taken over from its Italian deviser, was maintained in the same interest by Eugène Aroux, firstly in Les Mystêres de la Chevalerie, and afterwards in the great body of annotation attached to his translation of Dante. The latter work appeared in 1856. The interpretation of Lévi is a variant of that of Aroux. The disquisitions of the French writer are a fountain of joy for criticism. He produced yet another monument, being Dante, Hérétique, Revolutionnaire et Socialiste, 1854. He was a devoted member of the Latin Church, though I think that there would have been joy among the faithful had his books been burnt at Rome.

[260] The authority is the demonographer Bodin. Trois-Échelles confessed to the King that he had given himself over to a spirit who enabled him to perform prodigies. He was forgiven on condition that he denounced others who were guilty of sorcery. It is supposed that his subsequent condemnation was the consequence of new operations on his own part.

[261] That is, Pierre de l’Étoile. See Véritable Fatalité de Saint Cloud, art. 8.

[262] This account is drawn from Garinet, who cites two pamphlets of the period: (A) Les Sorcelleries de Henri de Valois, et les Oblations qu’il faisait au Diable dans le Bois de Vincennes, 1589; (B) Remonstrances à Henri de Valois sur les choses horribles envoyées par un enfant de Paris, 1589.

[263] Compare Aroux: La Comédie de Dante, vol. ii., p. 33 of his Clef de la Comédie. The Rose is “the Albigensian Church and its doctrines ... transformed into a mystic flower.” Hence the immense vogue of the romance of William of Lorris, despite the anathemas of Gerson.

[264] The words of Flamel are as follows: “On the fifth leaf was a fair rose-tree, flowered, in the midst of a garden, growing up against a hollow oak, at the foot whereof bubbled forth a fountain of pure white water, which ran headlong down into the depths below. Yet it passed through the hands of a great number of people who digged in the earth, seeking after it, but, by reason of their blindness, none of them knew it, except a very few, who considered its weight.” Le Livre de Nicolas Flamel.

[265] It will be seen that this is the counter-thesis to the explanation of the spiritual world by means of natural law; it is the explanation of the natural world by means of spiritual law. So also Éliphas Lévi is right when he goes on to affirm in substance that the religion of supernatural grace is the font of natural religion. It is in the light of the instituted sacraments that we find the hidden grace of those in Nature.

[266] “We do now securely call the Pope Antichrist, which was formerly a capital offence.... We do hereby condemn the East and the West, meaning the Pope and Mahomet.... He (the Pope) shall be torn in pieces with nails, and a final groan shall end his ass’s braying.... The judgment due to the Roman impostor who now poureth his blasphemies with open mouth against Christ.... The mouth of this viper shall be stopped.” See Confessio Fraternitatis, R.C., 1616.

[267] The Masonic title of Sovereign Princes Rose-Croix ascribed in France to the members of the Eighteenth Degree, under the obedience of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, has been changed in England to Excellent and Perfect Princes. The old Rosicrucian title was that of Frater, and the head of the Order was termed Imperator.

[268] I have let this date stand, as it is difficult to say what Éliphas Lévi is driving at. Khunrath was born in 1559 or 1560, and he died early in the seventeenth century.

[269] This is a mistake. The Amphitheatrum appeared in 1609, the licence having been obtained previously.

[270] The work contains (a) 365 versicles drawn from Proverbs and the apocryphal Book of Wisdom, the Latin Vulgate being printed side by side with a new translation by Khunrath. These versicles are divided into seven grades. (b) An interpretation at length of each versicle. (c) An introduction to the first engraved plate; (d) to the second; (e) to the third; (f) to the fourth; and (g) an epilogue or conclusion to the whole work.

[271] Éliphas Lévi has misplaced most of the plates, and it is difficult to follow his descriptions. No. 1 is the laboratory and oratory of the adept. No. 2 is apparently that which he calls the Path of Wisdom. No. 3 is the Philosophical Stone. No. 4 is that which Lévi describes as the Dogma of Hermes, because the sentences of the Emerald Tablet are inscribed on a Rock of Ages or Mountain of Initiation. No. 5 is the Gate of the Sanctuary, but it is enlightened by three rays. No. 6 is that which Lévi terms a Rose of Light, but it is really the sun with Christ in the centre. Nos. 7 and 9 correspond to the descriptions given; but No. 8 is scarcely a doctrine of equilibrium: it is the doctrine of regeneration through Christ, in Whom the law is fulfilled.

[272] The Basilica Chymica was translated into French by J. Marcel de Boulene and published at Lyons in 1624. It was reprinted at Paris in 1633. The third part is the Book of Signatures. The Latin edition appeared at Frankfort in 1608.

[273] Some of these names are exceedingly obscure, and no importance attaches to their literary remains. Philip Muller wrote Miracula et Mysteria Medico-Chymica, 1614. It was printed eight times at various places. Of John Torneburg I have no record. Ortelius was a commentator on Sendivogius; Michael Poterius or Potier was the author of ten alchemical tracts, but I have never heard that they were in estimation among lovers of the art. The Baron de Beausoleil was still more voluminous and is better known. The works of David de Planis Campe were collected into a folio in 1646; he is regarded as an alchemical dreamer. Duchesne was Sieur de la Violette, and his writings are in six volumes. Benjamin Mustapha, or rather Mussaphia, wrote on potable gold. The other names are known to science, as Lévi would express it, and are famous therein.

[274] The sum of this intimation is a little obscure. See my Real History of the Rosicrucians, pp. 388-390, for various versions of the proclamation.

[275] I have been unable to find the authority for this discourse, as a whole, but some fragments of it are cited by Gabriel Naudé.

[276] There does not appear to be a story with this title either in The Phantasus or elsewhere in the works of Tieck.

[277] See Pierre De Lancre: Tableau de l’Inconstance des Démons, Book VI., Discourse 4. But Éliphas Lévi seems to have followed the summary account of Garinet.

[278] The account is in Bodin and in the record of Henri Boguet. Her physical peculiarity is described as un trou qu’elle avait au dessous de sa parti gorrière. The work of Boguet is entitled Discours Exécrables des Sorciers, 1602. It is exceedingly rare.

[279] The prosecution and execution of secular priests and monks recur frequently throughout the annals of sorcery.

[280] The names appear to have been Madeleine de Mandol, daughter of the Seigneur de la Palud and Louise Capel.

[281] The actual charges were (a) that Madeleine was seduced by Gaufridi when she was nine years old, (b) that he had taken her to the Sabbath, (c) that he had sent her 666 devils. To Louise he had sent four only.

[282] See L’Histoire Admirable de la Possession et de la Conversion d’une Pénitente séduite par un Magicien, by the Inquisitor Michaëlis, 1612.

[283] He was a priest of Marseilles and curé of Accoules.

[284] The confession included: (1) Visions of Lucifer, (2) compact with him, (3) obtaining the love of women by breathing upon them, (4) visiting the Black Sabbath, (5) celebration of Black Masses, &c.

[285] Louise is heard of no further in the history of the period. Madeleine was cast out by her family and lived on alms at Avignon, till in 1653 the Parliament of Aix condemned her to perpetual seclusion.

[286] The historical facts are that Grandier insisted on one occasion in taking precedence of Richelieu, then Bishop of Luçon and in disgrace at Coussay. It is not even quite clear that the priest appealed to the King, but he was involved in much litigation on charges of immorality. It is just, however, to add that, according to Garinet, Grandier went to Paris and pleaded his cause before the King.

[287] The first victim of the phenomena appears to have been the Lady Superior.

[288] The director of the convent was named Mignon, and he called to his assistance not only certain Carmelites but a secular priest of the district, who was a great believer in diabolical interventions.

[289] This letter is quoted by Garinet, pp. 218, 219.

[290] Notwithstanding the application of what was called the ordinary and extraordinary torture, no confession of guilt in respect of the charges was ever extracted from Grandier, who indeed refused to reply. Éliphas Lévi’s picture of his deportment is throughout accurate as well as admirably told.

[291] This took place as stated and, moreover, the inhabitants of the town, after a meeting in the town hall, wrote to the King complaining of the pretence, absurdity and vexation of the process. See Garinet, Pièces Justificatives, No. XVI.

[292] This remark, in which I concur unreservedly, may be noted by students of Masonic history as an offset against the pretentious nonsense which has been talked on the subject by French makers of fable and especially by J. M. Ragon, the dullest and most imbecile of all.

[293] This opinion is showing signs of recrudescence at the present day, and it is well to say that there is no evidence to support it.

[294] It may be mentioned that Masonry, wheresoever established, is elective and not hierarchical.

[295] The Legend of Hiram has been told after several manners. English Masons will see that the present version is utterly incorrect, and it may be added further that it incorporates reveries borrowed from old High Grades.

[296] The names ascribed to the three assassins are High Grade inventions, and so also is all that follows concerning them.

[297] It is understood that Éliphas Lévi entered Masonry in the ordinary way, but it is quite true that vital integration therein and real understanding thereof are consequences of personal work.

[298] It has been called the most ancient of all the Chinese books, being ascribed to the year 3468 B.C. It consists of 10 chapters.

[299] See my translation of this work: Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual, 1896.

[300] It will be observed and appreciated at its proper value that Éliphas Lévi does not attempt to elucidate the Chinese puzzle of which he claims to possess the key, and the explanation is that if he had known his subject critically he would not have attempted to create Zoharic analogies which in the nature of things are non-existent.

[301] The Book of Concealed Mystery is not a key to the Zohar; it is one of the tracts inserted therein and its influence on the text at large is almost nil.

[302] It will be noticed that this remark is not borne out by the instance which is supposed to illustrate it and that the lucubration on China is a curious preamble to a study of remarkable authors of the eighteenth century, who had nothing to do with China.

[303] Emmanuel Swedenborg never gave expression to this view, and in respect of the criticism as a whole, it must be remarked that the communications which came to him came unawares, his psychic states not being self-induced.

[304] The Kabalah has no principle of the hierarchy; its one counsel is the study of the Doctrine and that study continually brought forward new developments of the deep meanings which lay behind (a) the Law, (b) the prophets and (c) the historical books of the Old Testament. The Zohar presupposes throughout a widely diffused knowledge of its Secret Doctrine, as already intimated.

[305] He was the recipient of a revelation and was not concerned with assisting those whom he addressed to attain the interior states into which he entered himself. He was bent only on delivering the message which he had received.

[306] Éliphas Lévi refers to a work entitled: Mesmer—Mémoires et Aphorismes Suivis des Procédés d’Eslon, 1846. The Aphorisms of Anton Mesmer have been frequently reprinted.

[307] The reference is probably to a French work, which in the absence of date and fuller description cannot be identified with certainty.

[308] The writer in question certifies (a) that the Comte de Gabalis was a German, (b) that he was a great nobleman and a great Kabalist, (c) that his lands were on the frontiers of Poland, (d) that he was a man of good presence who spoke French with a foreign accent. Saint-Germain testified on his own part to Prince Karl of Hesse that he was the son of Prince Ragoczy of Transylvania. Perhaps the latter place will be regarded as sufficiently in proximity to Poland to make the story of Éliphas Lévi a little less unlikely than it appears on the surface. But the prince in question was Franz-Leopold Ragoczy, who spent his life in conspiracies against the Austrian Empire, “with the object of regaining his independent power” and the freedom of his principality. No more unlikely person can be thought of as the original of the ridiculous Comte de Gabalis, and the Comte de Saint-Germain never intimated that he belonged to a line of Kabalists, least of all such a Kabalist and occultist as is depicted by the Abbé de Villars. See Mrs. Cooper Oakley’s Monograph on the Comte de St. Germain, Milan, 1912.

[309] See Madame la Comtesse de Genlis: Mémoires Inédites pour servir à l’Histoire des XVIII^me et XIX^me Siècles.

[310] See the Essai sur la Secte des Illuminés, which appeared anonymously in 1789, the author being the Marquis de Luchet. The story here reproduced is given in Note XV to the essay in question. It affirms that the Order of Initiated Knights and Brethren of Asia became the Order of St. Joachim about 1786. There is no mention of Saint-Germain in this Note.

[311] Éliphas Lévi explains in a note that the neophyte whose experience is related, and who was mistaken for a corpse, was in a state of somnambulism induced by magnetism. In respect of the green arbour, and the effects produced by the harmonica, he refers to Deleuze: Histoire Critique du Magnétisme Animal, 2nd edition, 1829. It contains curious accounts of the magnetic chain and trough, magnetised trees, music, the voice of the mesmerist and the instruments employed by him. Lévi adds that the author was a partisan of mesmerism which does not leave his opinions open to suspicion. I do not know what this is intended to convey, but the work of Deleuze was of authority in its own day and is still worth reading.

[312] It will be observed that Éliphas Lévi is taking the story more seriously than he proposed to do at the beginning. If therefore I may on my own part take the Marquis de Luchet for a moment in the same manner and assume that he was right in saying that the Order of Saint Joachim was a transformation of the Knights and Brethren of Asia, it seems certain that the latter did not owe their origin to Saint-Germain and that their connection with Rosicrucianism was of the Masonic kind only, members of the fifth degree being called True Brothers Rose Croix, otherwise Masters of the Sages, Royal Priests, and Brothers of the Grade of Melchisedek.

[313] Compare the ribaldries of the Marquis de Luchet respecting the Harmonica and his supplementary account of its use in the evocations of Lavater.

[314] Jachin is connected in Kabalism with the Sephira Netzach, because it is the right hand pillar, and on account of Netzach, Jachin is in correspondence with צבאוה ידוד and צבאוה. The Divine Name Tetragrammaton cannot be said on Kabalistical authority to be veiled in Netzach. It was really veiled in Adonai because of Shekinah, and the cohabiting glory between the cherubim was the manifestation, vestment and concealment of Jehovah.

[315] There is no secret as to the authorship of the tract on Illuminism, and Lévi could have been enlightened on the subject by his friend, J. M. Ragon. So far from being imbecile, the monograph of the Marquis de Luchet is entertaining if it is not brilliant. As to the transmutations of Saint-Germain, it is meant that there is no evidence of gold being produced by his methods, but it is otherwise in respect of precious stones. For the exoneration of De Luchet it does not signify that the evidence is bad.

[316] See L’Alchimie et les Alchimistes, by Louis Figuier, pp. 320 et seq. I have intimated that it is very difficult to trust this writer in matters of historical fact, but he represents Lascaris as appearing in Germany at the end of the seventeenth century, being then about fifty years old, and in any case it is a mistake to say that he was in evidence when the Comte de Saint-Germain was making a sensation in Paris. Lascaris had long since vanished from the theatre of Hermetic events.

[317] It was in the presence of the rack that the testimony of his wife was extracted, and I suppose that there is no one at this day who will count it as infidelity on her part.

[318] This device is inscribed on the symbolic bridge which is mentioned in the Grade of Knight of the East, or of the Sword.

[319] According to the account of himself which Cagliostro gave at the famous trial arising out of the Diamond Necklace affair, Acharat was the name which he bore in the years of childhood which he spent at Medina. His “governor” was Althotas, who has been sometimes identified with Kölmer, the instructor of Weishaupt in Magic.

[320] In his Lexicon Alchimiae, 1612, Martinus Rulandus explains that, according to the system of Paracelsus, Azoth was the Universal Medicine, though for others it is one of the names ascribed to the Philosophical Stone. It was evidently neither in the process of Cagliostro, but—if questioned—he might have identified it with Philosophical Mercury, a substance which can be extracted from any metallic body.

[321] It is interesting to note that Mr. W. R. H. Trowbridge, who has made the latest attempt to exonerate Cagliostro, has omitted all reference to the regeneration processes and the alleged attempt to renew thereby the youth of Cardinal de Rohan.

[322] As seen already, Menander was the successor of Simon Magus, and the baptism which he performed was claimed to confer immortality.

[323] This story has been altered from the original narrative to make it appear that Cagliostro escaped. He did nothing of the sort, for the monk proved the stronger of the two. Prince Bernard of Saxe-Weimar is the authority for the account, and he is said to have guaranteed its accuracy.

[324] Saint-Martin did not continue the school of theurgic Masonry founded by Martines de Pasqually. He abandoned the school and all active connection with Rites and Lodges. The evidence for his acquaintance with the Tarot rests on the fact that his Tableau Natural des Rapports qui existent entre Dieu, l’Homme et l’Univers happens to be divided into 22 sections, and there are 22 Tarot Trumps Major. On the same evidence the same assertion is made in respect of the Apocalypse. That which seemed adequate for Éliphas Lévi continues to be found sufficient for the school of Martinism to-day and for its Grand Master, Papus.

[325] See Deleuze: Mémoires sur la Faculté de la Prévision, 1836.

[326] The reader who is in search of romances may also consult P. Christian: Histoire de la Magie, published about 1871. It pretends that Court de Gebelin left an account in MS. of the interrogation of Count Cagliostro in the presence of many Masonic dignitaries, including Cazotte, at the Masonic Convention of Paris. The date was May 10, 1785. Cagliostro on that occasion predicted the chief events of the French Revolution, and, at the suggestion of Cazotte, gave the name, then unknown, of the Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte.

[327] The Tractatus de Revolutionibus Animarum was the work of R. Isaac de Loria, a German Kabalist. It is contained in the second volume of Kabbala Denudata. It is not allegorical and it has no Talmudic or Zoharic authority. As it was translated into French in 1905, most people can judge for themselves on the subject.

[328] The reference is here to the latest development of Templary under the ægis of Fabré-Palaprat. It came into public knowledge about 1805, and its invention is not much earlier. Its documents were fictitious, like its claims.

[329] Éliphas Lévi mentions in a note that he quotes these words as they were given to him by an old man who heard them. They are cited differently in the Journal of Prudhomme.

[330] I have failed to trace this story to its source, but Éliphas Lévi was curiously instructed in the byways of French occult history, and though he could seldom resist the decoration and improvement of his narratives, they had always a basis in fact.

[331] Christian Antoine Gerle was born in 1740 and died in 1805. He was a Carthusian, who came into some prominence under the Constituent Assembly. On April 10, 1790, Dom Gerle proposed a decree that “the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church was and should remain always the religion of the nation, and that its worship should be alone authorised.” See Albert Sorel: L’Europe et la Révolution Française, vol. ii. p. 121. He was imprisoned at the Conciergerie but was liberated, and during the reign of Napoleon he was appointed to an office in the Home Department.

[332] She is said to have been imprisoned in the Bastille, but this seems to be an error, for it is certain that she died in the Conciergerie at the age of 70. She called herself the mother of God, prophesied the speedy advent of a Messiah and promised that eternal life would then begin for the elect.

[333] See my Studies in Mysticism, pp. 99-111, for a summary account of the Saviours of Louis XVII.

[334] St. Hildegarde died in 1179 at the age of 81. She wrote three books of Revelations, which were approved by the Council of Trèves, and Latin authorities have termed her one of the most illustrious mystics of Germany. In the fifteenth century the Council of Basle approved the Revelations of St. Bridget, who was born about 1307 and she died on July 23, 1373. A translation in full of her memorial was published at Avignon in four small volumes, dated 1850.

[335] Out of a great body of claimants, computed by one writer to have been forty, and by another two hundred in number, there are four who may rank as competitors at least one with another for recognition as the escaped Dauphin: they are the Baron de Richemont, Augustus Mèves, Eleazar Williams and Naündorff.

[336] The work of De Luchet is quite worthless from the evidential standpoint, but the so-called correspondence is cited in a Note on pp. 182-186 of the essay. It appears that the House Magical had been sold to King Frederick William, but the person who assisted at the evocations is called un grand Seigneur, which may or may not veil the royal identity. Moreover, Steinert was the adept who compounded the “magical elixir,” and was pensioned on this account; but it is not stated that he was the magus of the ceremonial proceedings. I have been unable to check the recital of Eckartshausen, which is very difficult to meet with in England.

[337] In the Secret Tradition in Freemasonry I have indicated that Schroepfer is, on the whole, rather likely to have possessed some psychic powers, which notwithstanding his story ran the usual course of imposture. As he practised evocation perpetually, his suicide can be accounted for owing to the conditions which supervened on this account. There seems no real reason to suppose that he killed himself because he doubted his powers; however, the question does not signify.

[338] It is just to say that another side of Lavater is shewn in his Secret Journal of a Self-Observer, which is a very curious memorial—or human document, as it would be termed in our modern language of inexactitude. It contains no suggestion of evocations and dealings with Jewish Kabalists, in or out of the flesh.

[339] Cahagnet is the author of the following works: Arcanes de la Vie Future, 3 vols., 1848-1854; Lumière des Morts, 1851; Magie Magnétique, 2nd Edition, 1858; Sanctuaire du Spiritualisme, 1850; Révélations d’outre Tombe, 1856.

[340] This account is taken from Note XV. appended to the Essai sur la Secte des Illuminés, but the Marquis de Luchet depended on another writer, the latter drawing from Lavater’s Spiritus Familiaris Gablidone, published at Frankfort and Leipsic in 1787.

[341] It is suggested by Clavel that when Charles VI suppressed Masonry in Austria, owing to a Bull of Pope Clement XII, the brethren of certain lodges instituted the Order of Mopses to fill the gap. See Histoire Pittoresque de la Francmaçonnerie, 3rd edition, 1844, p. 154. Ragon reproduces the opinion in his Manuel de l’Initié, 1861, p. 88.

[342] Liber Mirabilis: qui Prophetias: Revelationesque: nec non res mirandas: preteritas: presentes: et futuras aperte demonstrat, 1522. The work is in two parts, of which the first is in Latin and the second in French.

[343] I have used the seventeenth century English translation. The original says: En l’Eglise au plus pire, traiter les prêtres comme l’eau fait l’éponge. I do not quite see how Lévi’s explanation follows, but the point is not worth discussing.

[344] Les Dernières Prophéties de Mlle. Lenormand appeared in 1843 and are joyful reading. She was born at Alençon in 1772 and died on June 25, 1843.

[345] I have failed to verify the statement that this person had access to the Emperor Alexander.

[346] It should be understood that Valérie appeared at Paris in 1803, when the writer was thirty-nine years old. Her acquaintance with the Russian Emperor was eleven years later, and it was during the intervening period that her spiritual development took place. She was no longer an amiable coquette, though the description may once have applied to her. There is no question that the portrait of Valérie was, and was intended to be, her own portrait. As to the identity of her hero, he was her husband’s secretary and there was no intimacy between them in the evil sense of the term, though she was not of unblemished reputation in other respects.

[347] It was the Empress Elizabeth, wife of Alexander, who first brought Madame de Krudener to the notice of her husband. She shewed him some of her letters to draw him under religious influence. The King and mystic met, under singular circumstances, on June 4, 1815. Madame de Krudener was 13 years older than the Emperor, with pale, emaciated and drawn features. The story repeated by Éliphas Lévi, whencesoever it may come, is an execrable calumny. The acquaintance began at Würtemberg and continued during the Emperor’s residence in Paris, or till September 28, 1815. Those were the days which ended in the proclamation of the Holy Alliance, and Madame de Krudener’s part in that work is a matter of history.

[348] Thomas Ignatius Martin is said to have foretold the revolution of 1830, but the fact is dubious. In his interview with Louis XVIII he is said also to have told the French King that he was not the rightful occupant of the French throne, but this is more than dubious. The particular legitimacy which he supported was that of Naündorff.

[349] See La France Mystique, by Alexandre Erdan, vol. ii. p. 135 et seq. for notices of four chief disciples of Fourier, the maddest being Victor Hennequin.

[350] He was the prophet of a third and final alliance between God and man.

[351] It is said that after the rupture of his relations with Wronski, M. Arson instituted a kind of humanitarian religion on his own account, and combined it with some aspect of metempsychosis speculations.

[352] The discourses of St. Michael with Vintras are said to have concerned (a) the destinies of France, (b) the future of religion, (c) the reform of the clergy. The Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph and Christ Himself also visited the seer, according to his own testimony.

[353] L’Œuvre de la Miséricorde prit une teinte fleur-de-lys très prononcée.—Alexandre Erdan.

[354] See my Mysteries of Magic: a Digest of the Writings of Éliphas Lévi.

[355] The charges are contained in a pamphlet entitled Le Prophète Vintras, published by Gozzoli in 1851. I do not think that Geoffroi wrote anything.

[356] Vintras was arrested at Tilly-sur-Seules in 1842 on a charge of roguery; he was tried at Caen and condemned to five years’ imprisonment. After his release in 1848, he found an asylum in England.

[357] See La France Mystique, vol. i. p. 36 et seq. for a contemporary account of Du Potet and of the periodical magnetic séances which took place au dessus du restaurant des Frères Provençaux, au Perron du Palais-Royal.

[358] According to another account, the Magic Mirror was an ordinary circle of evocation drawn with charcoal. Wandering spirits were supposed to be conjured therein.

[359] His madness is said otherwise to have been partial, or characterised by many lucid intervals. His second work was Religion, and it preached the doctrine of reincarnation, with periodical changes of sex. It described the Deity as an infinite substance in which circulated myriads of soul-entities.

[360] His other works include the Gospel of the People, 1840, to which Éliphas Lévi refers subsequently. For this he was imprisoned. In 1847 he published a Histoire des Montagnards. At the end of 1851 he was compelled to leave France, and seems to have lived in England. Henri Alphonse Esquiros was born in 1814.

[361] Henri Delaage seems to have taken the question of physical beauty rather seriously to heart. In 1850, under the title of Perfectionnement physique de la Race Humaine, he made a collection of processes and methods for acquiring beauty, drawn—as he claimed—from Chaldean Magi and Hermetic Philosophers.

[362] The Église Française was forcibly closed about 1840, but in 1848 an attempt was made to reopen it in a small room. A particular kind of Mass was celebrated in the French language, and it appears that the church had fixed festivals of its own. In doctrinal matters, Abbé Châtel regarded the relation between God and the universe as comparable to that between the soul and body, “but in an infinitely more excellent manner.” Paradise, Purgatory and Hell were alike abolished, and in their place two states were substituted, one of glory and felicity, the other of reparation.

[363] See the appendix to Essai sur le Secte des Illuminés, by the Marquis de Luchet, already quoted.

[364] Joseph Pitton de Tournefort: Relation d’un Voyage du Levant, 1717, 2 vols. It was translated into English and published in 3 vols., 1741.

[365] I wish that it were possible to quote the moving panegyric on Ganneau in a letter addressed by Éliphas Lévi to Alexandre Erdan and printed by him in La France Mystique, vol. ii. p. 184-188. He is described as one of the élite of intelligence, an artist, a poet of original and inexhaustible eloquence. He was sometimes bizarre but never absurd or wearisome. He was, finally, one of those hearts under the inspiration of which the zealous will crucify themselves with joy for the ungrateful. Erdan once saw Ganneau addressing a crowd in the Place de la Concorde, “uplifting his great arms and raising to heaven his beautiful Christ-like head.”

[366] I suppose that this would be a St. Andrew’s cross with the addition of a vertical branch, on which would rest the head of the crucified person.

[367] There was a son of this marriage, and in 1855 M. Alexandre Erdan was inquiring what had become of him.

[368] To suggest that the Zohar exists to propound and interpret a thesis of equilibrium is like saying that the vast text is written about the legend of the Edomite Kings or that it is a violent attack on Christianity, because there is a reference to each of these subjects. The symbolism of the Balance is practically confined to a single tract imbedded in the Zohar.

[369] “God stretched forth His right hand and created the world above, and He stretched forth His left hand and created the world below.... God created the world below on the model of the world above, for the image is found beneath of all that abides on high.”—Zohar, Part II., fol. 20a.

[370] Joseph de Maistre: Soirées de St. Pétersbourg, 1821, p. 308.

[371] For the sake of completeness, I have included this preface, though from some points of view it might have been reasonably omitted altogether.