The history of magic

by Éliphas Lévi

We are not writing a treatise on alchemy, although this science is really Transcendental Magic put into operation; we reserve its revelations and wonders for other special and more extended works.

Popular tradition affirms that Flamel did not die and that he buried a treasure under the tower of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie. According to illuminated adepts, this treasure, contained in a cedar box covered with plates of the seven metals, was the original copy of the famous book attributed to Abraham the Jew, with commentaries in the writing of Flamel and sufficient specimens of the Powder of Projection to transmute the sea into gold, supposing that the sea were Mercury.

After Flamel came Bernard Trevisan, Basil Valentine and other famous alchemists. The twelve Keys of Basil Valentine are at once Kabalistic, magical and Hermetic. Then in 1480 appeared Trithemius, who was the master of Cornelius Agrippa and the greatest dogmatic magician of the middle ages. Trithemius was an abbot of the Order of St. Benedict, of irreproachable orthodoxy and unimpeachable conduct. He was not so imprudent as to write openly on occult philosophy, like his venturesome disciple Agrippa. All his magical works turn on the art of concealing mysteries, while his doctrine was expressed in a pantacle, after the manner of true adepts. This pantacle is excessively rare, and is found only in a few manuscript copies of his tract De Septem Secundeis. A Polish gentleman and man of exalted mind and noble heart, Count Alexander Branistki possesses a curious example which he has kindly shewn to us. The pantacle consists of two triangles joined at the base, one white and the other black. At the apex of the black triangle there is a fool crouching, who turns his head with difficulty and gazes awe-struck into the triangle, where his own likeness is reflected. On the apex of the white triangle stands a man in the prime of life, armed as a knight, having a steady glance and an attitude of strong and peaceful command. In this triangle are inscribed the letters of the divine Tetragram. The natural and exoteric sense of the emblem may be explained by an aphorism as follows: The wise man rests in the fear of the true God, but the fool is overwhelmed by the terror of a false god made in his own image. By meditating on the pantacle as a whole, and thereafter on its constituents successively, the adepts, however, will find therein the last word of Kabalism and the unspeakable formula of the Great Arcanum. In other words, it is the distinction between miracles and prodigies, the secret of apparitions, the universal theory of magnetism and the science of all mysteries.

Trithemius composed a history of Magic, written entirely in pantacles, under the title: Veterum Sophorum Sigilla et Imagines Magicæ. In his Steganography and Polygraphy he gives the key to all occult writings and explains in veiled terms the real science of incantations and evocations. Trithemius is in Magic the master of masters, and we have no hesitation in proclaiming him the most wise and learned of adepts.

It is otherwise with Cornelius Agrippa, who was a seeker all his life and attained neither science nor peace. His books are full of erudition and assurance; he was himself of an independent and phantastic character, so it came about that he passed for an abominable sorcerer and was persecuted by the priesthood and princes. In the end he wrote against the sciences which had failed to bring him happiness, and he died in misery and abandonment.

We now come to the mild and pleasing figure of that learned and sublime Postel who is known only by his over-mystical love for an elderly but illuminated woman. There is something far different in Postel from the disciple of Mother Jeanne, but vulgar minds prefer to disparage rather than to learn and have no wish to see anything better in him. It is not for the benefit of these that we propose to make known the genius of William Postel.

He was the son of a poor peasant, belonging to the district of Barenton in Normandy; by force of perseverance and much sacrifice, he contrived to teach himself and became the most learned man of his time; but poverty pursued him always and want occasionally compelled him to sell his books. Full of resignation and sweetness, he worked like a labouring man to win a morsel of bread and then went back to his studies. He acquired all known languages and sciences of his period; he discovered rare and priceless manuscripts, including the apocryphal gospels and the Sepher Yetzirah; he initiated himself into the mysteries of the transcendental Kabalah,[252] and in his simple admiration for that absolute truth, for that supreme reason of all philosophies and dogmas, it was his ambition to reveal it to the world. He therefore spoke the language of mysteries openly and wrote a book entitled the Key of Things kept Secret from the Foundation of the World.[253] He dedicated this work to the fathers assembled at the Council of Trent, entreating them to enter the path of conciliation and universal synthesis. No one understood him, some accused him of heresy and the most moderate were contented to say that he was a fool.

The Trinity, according to Postel, made man in Its image and Its likeness. The human body is dual and its triadic unity is through the union of the two halves. The human soul is also dual; it is animus and anima, or intellect and emotion; it has also two sexes, the male being resident in the head and the female in the heart. Redemption in its completion must also be dual in humanity; the mind by its purity makes good the errors of the heart, and then the generosity of the heart must rescue the egoistic barrenness of the brain. Christianity, from Postel’s standpoint, has been so far understood only by the reasoning mind and has not entered into the heart. The Word has been made man, but the world will be saved when the Word shall have been made woman. The sublime grandeurs of the spirit of love will be taught by the maternal genius of religion, and then reason will be harmonised with faith, because it will comprehend, interpret and restrain the sacred excesses of devotion.

Observe, he remarks, how religion is understood by the majority of Christians; it is only as an ignorant and persecuting partiality, a superstitious and stupid stubbornness, and fear—base fear—above all. Why is this? Because those who profess it have not the woman-heart, because they are foreign to the divine enthusiasms of that mother-love which explains all religion. The power that has invaded the brain and binds the spirit is not that of the good, understanding and longsuffering God; it is of the wicked, imbecile and cowardly Satan. It comes about in this manner that there is far more fear of the devil than love for the Divine. The frozen and shrivelled brain weighs on the dead heart like a tombstone. What an awakening will it be for understanding, what a rebirth for reason, what a victory for truth when the heart shall be raised by grace. Why am I the first and almost the only person to comprehend this, and what can one who has attained resurrection perform alone among the dead who can hear nothing? Come therefore and come quickly, O mother-spirit, who appeared to me at Venice in the soul of a virgin inspired by God; descend and teach the women of the new world their redeeming mission and their apostolate of holy and spiritual life.

It is a fact that Postel owed these noble inspirations to a pious woman named Jeanne, whose acquaintance he had made at Venice. He was the spiritual adviser of this elect soul and was drawn into the current of mystic poetry which eddied about her. When he administered the Eucharist to her she became radiant and transfigured in his eyes, and although she was more than fifty years old, the poor priest confesses innocently that he would have taken her for less than fifteen: so did the sympathy of their hearts transform her in his eyes. One must have followed the life of asceticism to understand such celestial hallucinations and lyrical puerilities, such a mystic marriage between two virginal beings, such extraordinary enthusiasms of love in two pure souls. In her he discerned the living spirit of Jesus Christ by which the world would be regenerated. I have seen, says he, this light of the heart which will drive the hideous spectre of Satan from all minds; it is no chimera of my dreams; she has appeared in the world, has taken flesh in a maid, in whom I have hailed the mother of the world to come. This is analysing rather than translating Postel, but the rapid abridgment of his sentiments and language will make plain that he spoke figuratively and, as maintained by the learned Jesuit Desbillons, in his notice on the life and works of Postel, that nothing was further from his thoughts than to represent, as some have pretended, a second incarnation of divinity in this poor hospital sister who had only drawn him by the brightness of her humble virtues. We are utterly certain that all those who have slandered and ridiculed Postel are not worth one Mère Jeanne.