The history of magic

by Éliphas Lévi

The religion of the Kabalists is at once hypothesis and certitude, for it proceeds from known to unknown by the help of analogy. They recognise religion as a need of humanity, as an evident and necessary fact, and it is this alone which for them is divine, permanent and universal revelation. They dispute about nothing which is, but they provide the reason for everything. So also their doctrine, by distinguishing clearly the line of demarcation which must exist for ever between science and faith, provides a basis for faith in the highest reason, guaranteeing its incontestable and permanent duration. After this come the popular forms of doctrine, which alone can vary and alone destroy one another; the Kabalist is not only undisturbed by trivialities of this kind, but can provide on the spot a reason for the most astonishing formulæ. It follows that his prayer can be joined to that of humanity at large, to direct it by illustrations from science and reason and draw it into orthodox channels. If Mary be mentioned, he will revere the realisation in her of all that is divine in the dreams of innocence, all that is adorable in the sacred enthusiasm of every maternal heart. It is not he who will refuse flowers to adorn the altars of the Mother of God, or white banners for her chapels, or even tears for her ingenuous legends. It is not he who will mock at the new-born God weeping in the manger or the wounded victim of Calvary. He repeats nevertheless, from the bottom of his heart, like the sages of Israel and the faithful believers of Islam: There is no God but God. For the initiates of true science, this signifies: There is but one Being, and this is Being. But all that is expedient and touching in beliefs, but the splendour of rituals, the pageant of divine creations, the grace of prayers, the magic of heavenly hopes—are not these the radiance of moral life in all its youth and beauty? Could anything alienate the true initiate from public prayers and temples, could anything raise his disgust or indignation against religious forms of all kinds, it would be the manifest unbelief of priests or people, want of dignity in the ceremonies of the cultus—in a word, the profanation of holy things. God is truly present when He is worshipped by recollected souls and feeling hearts; He is absent, sensibly and terribly, when discussed without light or zeal—that is to say, without understanding or love.

The adequate conception of God according to instructed Kabalism is that which was revealed by St. Paul when he said that to attain God we must believe that He is and that He recompenses those who seek Him out. So is there nothing outside the idea of being, in combination with the idea of goodness and justice: these alone are absolute. To say that there is no God or to define what He is, constitutes equal blasphemy. Every definition of God hazarded by human intelligence is a recipe of religious empiricism, out of which superstition will subsequently extract a devil.

In Kabalistic symbolism the representation of God is always by a duplicated image—one erect, the other reversed; one white, and the other black.[16] In such manner did the sages seek to express the intelligent and vulgar conceptions of the same idea—that of the God of light and the God of shadow. To the miscomprehension of this symbol must be referred the Persian Ahriman—that black but divine ancestor of all demons. The dream of the infernal king is but a false notion of God.

Light in the absence of shadow would be invisible for our eyes, since it would produce an overpowering brilliance equal to the greatest darkness. In the analogies of this physical truth, understood and considered adequately, a solution will be found for one of the most terrible of problems, the origin of evil. But to grasp it fully, together with all its consequences, is not meant for the multitude, who must not penetrate so readily into the secrets of universal harmony. It was only after the initiate of the Eleusinian mysteries had passed victoriously through all the tests, had seen and touched the holy things, that, if he were judged strong enough to withstand the last and most dreadful secret, a veiled priest passed him at flying pace and uttered in his ear the enigmatic words: Osiris is a black god. So was Osiris—of whom Typhon is the oracle—and so was the divine religious sun of Egypt, eclipsed suddenly, becoming the shadow of that grand, indefinable Isis who is all that has been and shall be, and whose eternal veil has no one lifted.

Light is the active principle for Kabalists, while darkness is analogous to the passive principle, for which reason they regarded the sun and moon as emblems of the two divine sexes and the two creative forces. So also they attributed to woman the first temptation and sin, and subsequently the first labour—the maternal labour of redemption: it is from the bosom of the dark itself that light is reborn. The void attracts the plenum, and thus the abyss of poverty and wretchedness, pretended evil, seeming nothingness and the ephemeral rebellion of creatures, attracts eternally an ocean of being, wealth, mercy and love. This interprets the symbol of the Christ descending into hell after pouring out upon the cross all immensities of the most marvellous forgiveness.

By the same law of harmony in the analogy of opposites the Kabalists explain also all mysteries of sexual love. Why is this passion more permanent between two unequal natures and two contrary characters? Why is there in love one always who immolates and one who is victim? Why are the most obstinate passions those the satisfaction of which would seem impossible? By this law also they would have decided once and for ever the question of precedence between the sexes, as brought forward in all seriousness by the Saint-Simonism of our own day. The natural strength of woman being that of inertia or resistance, they would have ruled that modesty is the most imprescriptible of her rights, and hence that she must neither perform nor desire anything demanding a species of masculine boldness. Nature has otherwise provided to this end by giving her a soft voice, not to be heard in large assemblies, unless raised to a ridiculously discordant pitch. She who would aspire to the functions of the opposite sex must forfeit thereby the prerogatives of her own. We know not to what point she may arrive in the ruling of men, but it is certain at least that in reaching it she will lose the love of men and, that which will be more cruel for her, the love of children.

The conjugal law of the Kabalists[17] furnishes further, by analogy, a solution of the most interesting and difficult problem of modern philosophy, being the agreement between reason and faith, authority and liberty of conscience, science and belief. If science be the sun, belief is the moon—a reflection of day amidst night. Faith is the supplement of reason in the darkness left by science before and behind it. It emanates from reason but can neither be confounded therewith nor bring it to confusion. The trespasses of reason upon faith or of faith upon reason are eclipses of sun or moon. When they come about, both source and reflector of light are rendered useless.

Science perishes on account of systems which are no other than beliefs and faith succumbs to reason. In order to sustain the edifice, the two pillars of the temple must be parallel and separate. When they are brought by force together, as Samson brought them, they are thrown down, and the whole building collapses on the blind zealot or revolutionary, whose personal or national resentment has destined him beforehand to death. The struggles between the spiritual and temporal powers at all periods of humanity have been quarrels over domestic management. The papacy has been a jealous mother, seeking to supplant a husband in the temporal power, and she has lost the confidence of her children, while the temporal power in its usurpation of the priesthood is not less ridiculous than a man who should pretend to know better than a mother how to manage the home and nursery. The English, for example, from the moral and religious point of view, are like children swaddled by men, as we may appreciate by their spleen and dulness.

If religious doctrine is comparable to a nurse’s story, on the understanding that it is ingenious and beneficial morally, it is perfectly true for the child, and the father would be very foolish to contradict it. Give therefore to mothers a monopoly in tales of faerie, in songs and household solicitudes. Maternity is a type of the priesthoods, and it is because the Church must be a mother only that the catholic priest renounces the right of man and transfers in advance to herself his claim on fatherhood. It must never be forgotten that the papacy is either nothing or that it is the universal mother. It may be even that Pope Joan, out of which protestants have constructed a tale of scandal, is only an ingenious allegory, and when sovereign pontiffs have ill-used Emperors and Kings, it has been Pope Joan trying to beat her husband, to the great scandal of the Christian world. So also schisms and heresies have been other conjugal quarrels; the Church and Protestantism speak evil one of another, lament one another, make a show of avoiding and being weary one of another, like spouses living apart.

It is by the Kabalah, and this alone, that all is explained and reconciled. All other doctrines are vivified and made fruitful thereby; it destroys nothing but, on on the contrary, gives reason to all that is. So all the forces of the world are at the service of this one and supreme science, while the true Kabalist can make use at his pleasure, without hypocrisy and without falsehood, of the science possessed by the wise and the zeal of believers. He is more catholic than M. de Maistre, more protestant than Luther, more Jewish than the chief rabbi, and a prophet more than Mahomet. Is he not above systems and the passions which darken truth? Can he not at will bring together their scattered rays, so variously reflected in all the fragments of that broken mirror which is universal faith—fragments which are taken by men for so many opposite beliefs? There is one being, one law and one faith, as there is only one race of man— אהיה אשר אהיה .