[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 XVIIIme et XIXme 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.