The history of magic

by Éliphas Lévi

HERMETIC MAGIC

Now the girl had an old nurse who loved her tenderly and wept bitterly at her loss. She may have been an accomplice in her misconduct, and since the burial of her beloved, being unable to sleep, she rose frequently at night in a kind of delirium and wandered round the dwelling of Machates. It came about in this manner that a few days after the episode just narrated, she observed a light in the young man’s chamber; drawing nearer and looking through the chinks of the door, she recognised Philinnium seated beside her lover, looking at him in silence and yielding to his embraces. In a state of distraction the poor woman ran back to awaken the mother and gave account of what she had seen. It was regarded at first as the raving of a visionary, but in the end, persuaded by her entreaties, the mother rose and repaired to the house of Machates. All were asleep therein and there was no answer to knocking. The lady looked through the chinks of the door, the lamp was extinguished, but a moonbeam lighted the chamber and the mother saw on a chair the draperies of her daughter and could distinguish two persons asleep in the bed. She was seized with fright, returned home trembling, not daring to visit the sepulchre of her child, and passed the rest of the night in agitation and tears. On the morrow she sought the lodging of Machates and questioned him gently. The young man confessed that Philinnium visited him every night. “Why refuse her to me?” he said to the mother. “We are affianced before the gods.” Then opening a coffer he shewed Charito the ring and girdle of her daughter, adding: “She gave me these last night, pledging me never to belong to anyone but her; seek therefore to separate us no longer, since we are united by a mutual promise.”

“Will you therefore in your turn go to the grave in search of her?” said the mother. “Philinnium has been dead for these four days, and it is doubtless a sorceress or a stryge who has assumed her likeness to deceive you. You are the spouse of death, your hair will whiten to-morrow, and the day after you also will be buried. In this manner do the gods avenge the honour of an outraged family.”

Machates turned white and trembled at this language; he began to fear on his own part that he was the sport of infernal powers; he begged Charito to bring her husband that evening, when he would hide them near his room, and at the time of the phantom’s arrival, would give a signal to warn them of the fact. They came, and at the allotted hour came also Philinnium to Machates, who was in bed, but fully clothed and only pretending to sleep. The girl undressed and placed herself beside him; Machates gave the signal; the parents entered with torches and uttered a great cry on recognising their daughter. Philinnium, with pallid face, rose from the bed to her full height, and said in a hollow and terrible voice: “O my father and my mother, why have you been jealous of my happiness and why have you pursued me even beyond the grave? My love had compelled the infernal gods; the power of death was suspended; three days only and I should have been restored to life. But your cruel curiosity makes void the miracle of Nature; you are killing me a second time.”

After these words she fell back, an inert mass, upon the bed; her countenance faded; a cadaverous odour filled the chamber; and there was nothing now but the disfigured remains of a girl who had been five days dead. On the morrow the whole town was in commotion over this prodigy. People crowded to the amphitheatre, where the history was recounted in public, and the crowd then visited the mortuary vault of Philinnium. There was no sign of her presence, but they came upon an iron ring and a gilded cup, which she had received as presents from Machates. The corpse was in the room of the tavern, but the young man had vanished. The diviners were consulted and they directed that the remains should be interred without the precincts of the town. Sacrifices were offered to the Furies and to the terrestrial Mercury; the celestial manes were conjured and there were offerings to Jupiter Hospitalis.

Phlegon, a freedman of Adrian, who was the ocular witness of these facts, and relates them in a private letter, adds that he had to exercise his authority to calm a place disturbed by so extraordinary an event, and he finishes his story with the following words: “If you think fit to inform the emperor, let me know, that I may send some of those who have been witnesses of these things.” The history of Philinnium is therefore well authenticated. A great German poet[150] has made it the subject of a ballad which everyone knows under the title of the Bride of Corinth. He supposes that the girl’s parents were Christians, and this gives him the opportunity to make a powerful poetic contrast between human passions and the duties of religion. The mediæval demonographers have not failed to explain the resurrection, or possibly the apparent death of the young Greek lady, as a diabolical obsession. On our own part, we recognise an hysterical coma accompanied by lucid somnambulism; the father and mother of Philinnium killed her by their rough awakening and public imagination exaggerated all the circumstances of this history.[151]

The terrestrial Mercury, to whom sacrifices were ordained by diviners, is no other than the Astral Light personified. It is the fluidic genius of the earth, fatal for those who arouse it without knowing how to direct; it is the focus of physical life and the magnetised receptacle of death. This blind force, which the power of Christianity enchained and cast into the abyss, meaning into the centre of the earth, made its last efforts and manifested its final convulsions by monstrous births among barbarians. There is scarcely a district in which the preachers of the gospel did not have to contend with animals in hideous forms, being incarnations of idolatry in its death-throes. The vouivres, graouillis, gargoyles, tarasques are not allegorical only; it is certain that moral disorders produce physical deformities and do, to some extent, realise the frightful forms attributed by tradition to demons. The question arises whether these fossil remains from which Cuvier built up his mammoth monsters belong really in all cases to epochs preceding our creation. Is also that great dragon merely an allegory which Regulus is represented as attacking with machines of war and which according to Livy and Pliny lived on the borders of the river Bagrada? His skin, which measured 120 feet, was sent to Rome and was there preserved until the period of the war with Numantia. There was an ancient tradition that when the gods were angered by extraordinary crimes, they sent monsters upon earth, and this tradition is too universal not to be founded upon actual facts; it follows that the stories concerning it belong more frequently to history than mythology.

In all memorials of barbarian races, at that epoch when Christianity conquered them with a view to their civilisation, we find (a) the last traces of high magical initiation spread formerly throughout the world, and (b) proofs of the degeneration which had befallen such primitive revelation, together with the idolatrous vileness into which the symbolism of the old world had lapsed. In place of the disciples of the Magi, diviners, sorcerers and enchanters reigned everywhere; God was forgotten in the deification of men. The example was given by Rome to its various provinces, and the apotheosis of the Cæsars familiarised the whole world with the religion of sanguinary deities. Under the name of Irminsul, the Germans worshipped and sacrificed human victims to that Arminius or Hermann who caused Augustus to mourn the lost legions of Varus. The Gauls referred to Brennus the attributes of Taranis and of Teutas, burning in his honour colossi built of rushes and filled with Romans. Materialism reigned everywhere, idolatry being synonymous therewith, as is also the superstition which is ever cruel because it is always base.

Providence, which predestined Gaul to become the most Christian land of France, caused, however, the light of eternal truths to shine forth therein. The original Druids were true children of the Magi, their initiation deriving from Egypt and Chaldea, or in other words, from the purest sources of primitive Kabalah.[152] They adored the Trinity under the names of Isis or Ilesus, being supreme harmony; Belen or Bel, meaning the Lord in Assyrian and having correspondence with the name Adonai; Camul or Camael, a name which personifies divine justice in the Kabalah.[153] Beneath this triangle of light they postulated a divine reflection, also consisting of three personified emanations, being: Teutas or Teuth, identical with the Thoth of the Egyptians, and the Word or formulated Intelligence; then Strength and Beauty, the names of which varied like the emblems. Finally they completed the sacred septenary by a mysterious image representing the progress of dogma and its developments to come. The form was that of a young girl, veiled and bearing an infant in her arms; they dedicated this symbol to the virgin who shall bear a child.[154]