The history of magic

by Éliphas Lévi

After his return from Egypt, Plato was journeying with Simmias on the confines of Caria when he was met by some men of Delos, who begged him to interpret an oracle of Apollo. It declared that to make an end of the woes in Greece the cubic stone must be doubled. The attempt had been made with a stone kept in the temple of Apollo; but the work of doubling it on every side resulted in a polyhedron having twenty-five surfaces; to restore the cubic form they had to increase it twenty-six times the original volume of the stone, by a process of successive doubling. Plato sent back the emissaries to the mathematician Eudoxus,[89] saying that the oracle had counselled the study of geometry. Whether he did not himself understand the deep sense of the symbol or disdained to unveil it to the ignorant are points which must be left to conjecture; but that which is certain is that the cubic stone and its multiplication explains all secrets of sacred numbers, including the mystery of perpetual motion, hidden by adepts and pursued by fools under the name of squaring the circle.[90] By this cubic agglomeration of twenty-six cubes about a single central cube, the oracle indicated to the Delians not only the elements of geometry but the key of creative harmonies, explained by the inter-relation of forms and numbers. The plan of all great allegorical temples throughout antiquity is found in the multiplication (a) of the cube by the cross, (b) about which a circle is described, and then (c) the cubic cross moving in a globe. These notions, which are rendered more intelligible by a diagram, have been handed on to our own days in Masonic initiations, and they are a perfect justification of the name attributed to the modern societies in question, for they are also the root-principles of architecture and the science of building.

The Delians thought to answer the geometrical question by reducing their multiplication by half, but they had already obtained eight times the volume of their cubic stone. For the rest, the number of their experiments may be extended at will, for the story itself is probably a problem set to his disciples by Plato. If the utterance of the oracle has to be taken as a fact, we can find a still deeper meaning in it; to double the cubic stone is to extract the duad from unity, form from idea, action from thought. It is to realise in the world the exactitude of eternal mathematics, to establish politics on the basis of exact sciences, to harmonise religious dogma with the philosophy of numbers.

Plato has more eloquence but less depth than Pythagoras; he aspires to reconcile the philosophy of logicians with the immutable dogmas of seers; he does not seek to vulgarise but would reconstruct science. So was his philosophy destined at a later date to provide dawning Christianity with theories prepared beforehand and with vivifying doctrines. Notwithstanding, however, that he based his theorems on mathematics, Plato was poet rather than geometrician; he was rich in harmonious forms and was prodigal of marvellous hypotheses. Aristotle, who was a calculating genius exclusively, referred everything to debate in the schools; he made everything subject to the demonstrations of numeral evolutions and the logic of calculations. Excluding the faith of Platonism, he sought to prove all and likewise to comprehend all in his categories; he turned the triad into syllogism and the binary into enthymeme. For him the chain of being became a sorites. He reduced everything to an abstraction and reasoned on everything; being itself passed into an abstraction in his process and was lost amidst the hypotheses of ontology. Plato was destined to inspire the Fathers of the Church; Aristotle to be the master of mediæval scholastics; God knows what clouds gathered about this logic which had no faith in anything and yet set out to explain all. A second Babel was in plan and another confusion of tongues was at no far distance. Being is being and in being is the reason of being. In the beginning is the Word and the Word, or Logos, is logic formulated in speech, or spoken reason. The Word is in God and the Word is God Himself manifested to intelligence. But this is precisely a truth which exceeds all philosophies and is that, also precisely, which must be believed, under the penalty of knowing nothing and falling back into the irrational doubt of Pyrrho. As guardian of faith, the priesthood rests entirely on this ground of science, and we are compelled to salute in its teaching the Divine principle of the Eternal Word.

CHAPTER II
MYSTICISM

The legitimacy of Divine Right is so rooted in the priesthood that true priesthood does not exist apart from it. Initiation and consecration are a veritable heritage. So is the sanctuary inviolable on the part of the profane and so also it cannot be seized by sectarians. For the same reason the glorious lights of divine revelation are diffused in accordance with supreme reason, because they come down in order and harmony. God does not enlighten the world by means of meteors and flashes, but He causes every planetary system to gravitate about its particular sun. It is this very harmony which vexes certain souls, who have grown impatient with duty, and it is thus that people come forward to pose as reformers of morals, having failed in coercing revelation to concur with their vices. Like Rousseau, they exclaim: “If God has spoken, why have I heard nothing?” And then presently they add: “He has spoken, but it is to me.” Such is their dream, and they end by believing it themselves. So do the makers of sects begin, and these are fomenters of religious anarchy: we would by no means condemn them to the flames, but it is certainly desirable to intern them as sufferers from contagious folly. It is precisely in this manner that those mystic schools were founded which brought about the profanation of science. We have seen how the Indian fakirs attained their so-called uncreated light, that is to say, by the help of erethism and cerebral congestion. Egypt had also its sorcerers and enchanters, while Thessaly, in the days of Greece, swarmed with conjurations and witchcraft. To enter into direct communication with deities is to suppress the priesthood and subvert the basis of the throne—a fact which is realised keenly by the anarchic instinct of pretended illuminism. It was by the allurement of licence that such conspirators looked to recruit disciples, giving absolution beforehand to every scandal in manners, on the condition of strictness in revolt and energy in protestation against sacerdotal legitimacy.[91]

The Bacchantes, who dismembered Orpheus, believed themselves inspired by a god, and they sacrificed the great hierophant to their deified drunkenness. The orgies of Bacchus were mystical tumults; the apostles of mania have always had recourse to disordered movements, frenetic agitations and horrible convulsions. From the effeminate priesthood of Bacchus to the Gnostics; from whirling dervishes to epileptics at the tomb of Paris the deacon; the characteristics of superstition and fanatic exaltation have been always the same. It has been invariably under the pretext of purifying doctrine and in the name of an exaggerated spiritualism that the mystics of all times have materialised the symbols of the cultus. It has been the same precisely with those who have profaned the science of the Magi, for transcendental Magic, as it is needful to remember, is the primeval priestly art. It condemns all that is done outside the lawful hierarchy, and it justifies the condemnation—though not the torture—of sectarians and sorcerers. The two classes are here connected intentionally, because all heretics have been evokers of spirits and phantoms, whom they have foisted upon the world as gods; all have arrogated to themselves the power of working miracles in support of their falsehoods. On these evidences they were all practisers of Göetic, that is to say, of Black Magic.

Anarchy being the point of departure and the palmary characteristic of dissident mysticism, religious concord is impossible between sectarians, and yet they are in astonishing unanimity upon a single point, being the hatred of hierarchic and lawful authority. This in reality is the whole root of their religion, as it is the sole bond which links them one to another. It is ever the crime of Ham, contempt of the family principle and outrage offered to the father, whose nakedness and shame they expose with sacrilegious mirth. All the anarchic mystics confuse the Intellectual with the Astral Light; they worship the serpent instead of doing honour to that dutiful and pure wisdom which crushes its head. So are they intoxicated by vertigo and so fall inevitably into the abyss of folly.

All fools are visionaries and may no doubt believe sincerely that they work wonders; indeed hallucination is contagious and things inexplicable occur, or seem to occur, frequently enough in their vicinity. Moreover, the phenomena of the Astral Light in the excess of its attraction or projection are themselves of a kind to confuse those who are half-educated. It is centralised in bodies and, as the result of violent molecular distention, it imparts to them so high a degree of elasticity that bones may be twisted and muscles stretched out of all measure. It forms whirlpools and waterspouts, so to speak, which levitate the heaviest bodies and can sustain them in the air for a length of time proportionate to the force of the projection. The sufferers feel on the point of bursting and cry for compression or percussion to relieve them. The most violent blows and the utmost constriction, being counterpoised by the fluidic tension, cause neither bruises nor wounds and relieve instead of crushing the patient.

As fools hold physicians in horror, so the hallucinated mystics detest wise men; they flee them in the first place and afterwards persecute them blindly, as if against their own will. In so far as they are mild and indulgent, it is in respect of vices; towards reason in submission to authority they are implacable; the most tolerant of heretics in appearance will be seized with fury and hatred, if conformity and the hierarchy are mentioned. Hence heresies have led to disturbances invariably. The false prophet must slay if he cannot pervert. He clamours for tolerance towards himself but takes good care in what sense it shall be extended to others. Protestants were loud in their outcries against the faggots and pyres of Rome at the very time that John Calvin, on the warrant of his private judgment, condemned Servetus to be burnt. The crimes of the Donatists, Circumcisionists, and others too many for enumeration, drove Catholic rulers into excess and caused the Church to abandon those who were guilty to the secular arm. Would it not be thought that Vaudois, Albigensians and Hussites were lambs if one gave heed to the groans of irreligion? Where was the innocence of those darksome Puritans of Scotland and England who brandished the dagger in one hand and their Bible in the other, while preaching the extermination of Catholics? One only Church in the midst of so many reprisals and horrors has always postulated and in principle at least has maintained its hatred of blood: this is the hierarchic and legitimate Church.[92]