The history of magic

by Éliphas Lévi

Whilst religious wars incarnadined the world, secret illuministic associations, which were nothing but theurgic and magical schools, were incorporated in Germany. The most ancient of these seems to have been that of the Rosicrucians, whose symbols go back to the times of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, as we see by the allegories in the poem of Dante and by the emblems in the Romance of the Rose.

The rose, which from all times has been the type of beauty, life, love and pleasure, expressed mystically the secret thought of all protests manifested at the Renaissance.[263] It was the flesh in rebellion against the oppression of spirit; it was Nature testifying that, like grace, she was a daughter of God; it was love refusing to be stifled by the celibate; it was life in revolt against sterility; it was humanity aspiring towards natural religion, full of reason and love, founded on the revelations of the harmony of being, of which the rose, for initiates, was the living floral symbol. It is in truth a pantacle; the form is circular, the leaves of the corolla are heart-shaped and rest harmoniously on one another; its tint offers the most harmonious shades of the primitive colours; its calyx is of purple and gold. We have seen that Flamel, or rather the Book of Abraham the Jew, represents it as the hieroglyphical sign of the fulfilment of the Great Work.[264] Here is the key to the romance of Clopinel and William de Lorris. The conquest of the rose was the problem offered by initiation to science, whilst religion was at work to prepare and to establish the universal, exclusive and final triumph of the Cross.

The problem proposed by high initiation was the union of the Rose and the Cross, and in effect occult philosophy, being the universal synthesis, must take into account all phenomena of being. Considered solely as a physiological fact, religion is the revelation and satisfaction of a need of souls. Its existence as a fact is scientific, and to deny it would be a denial of humanity itself. No one has invented it; like laws and civilisations, it is formed by the necessities of moral life. From this merely philosophical and restrained standpoint, religion must be regarded as fatal if one explains all by fatality, and as Divine if one confesses to a Supreme Intelligence as the mainspring of natural laws.[265] Hence it follows that the characteristic of every religion, properly so called, being to depend directly from Divinity by a supernatural revelation—no other mode of transmission providing a sufficient sanction of dogma—it must be concluded that the true natural religion is religion that has been revealed; this is to say, it is natural to adopt a religion only on the understanding that it has been revealed, every true religion exhorting sacrifices, and man having neither the power nor right to impose the same on his fellow-creatures, outside and especially above the ordinary conditions of humanity.

Proceeding from this strictly rational principle, the Rosicrucians were led to respect the dominant hierarchic and revealed religion. They could be therefore no more the enemies of the papacy than of legitimate monarchy, while if they conspired against popes and kings, it was because they considered these or those personally as apostates in respect of duty and supreme abettors of anarchy.[266] What in fact is a despot—whether spiritual or temporal—but a crowned anarchist? It is possible to explain in this manner the protestantism and even radicalism of certain great adepts, who were assuredly more catholic than some popes and more monarchic than some kings—of certain eccentric adepts, such as Henry Khunrath and the true illuminati of his school.

By all but those who have made a particular study of the occult sciences, Khunrath is practically unknown; he is a master notwithstanding, and one of the first rank. He is a sovereign prince of the Rosy Cross, worthy in all respects of this scientific and mystical title.[267] His pantacles are splendid as the light of the Book of Splendour, called Zohar; they are learned as Trithemius, precise like Pythagoras, complete in their disclosure of the Great Work as the book of Abraham and Nicholas Flamel.

Khunrath, who was chemist and physician, was born in 1502, and he was forty-two years old when he attained transcendent theosophical initiation.[268] The Amphitheatre of Eternal Wisdom, which is the most remarkable of his works, was published in 1598, for the approbation of the Emperor Rudolph annexed thereto was dated on June 1 of the year in question.[269] Though professing a radical protestantism, the author claims loudly the titles of catholic and orthodox; he testifies that he possesses, but keeps secret as he ought, a key to the Apocalypse, which key is one and threefold, even as universal science. The division of the work is sevenfold, and through these sections are distributed the seven degrees of initiation into transcendental philosophy. The text is a mystical commentary on the oracles of Solomon,[270] and the work ends with a series of synoptic schedules which are the synthesis of Magic and the occult Kabalah—so far as concerns that which can be made public in writing. The rest, being the esoteric and inexpressible part of the science, is formulated in magnificent pantacles carefully designed and engraved. These are nine in number, as follows: (1) The dogma of Hermes; (2) Magical realisation; (3) The path of wisdom and the initial procedure in the work; (4) The Gate of the Sanctuary enlightened by seven mystic rays; (5) A Rose of Light, in the centre of which a human figure is extending its arms in the form of a cross; (6) The magical laboratory of Khunrath, demonstrating the necessary union of prayer and work; (7) The absolute synthesis of science; (8) Universal equilibrium; (9) A summary of Khunrath’s personal doctrine, embodying an energetic protest against all his detractors.[271] It is a Hermetic pantacle surrounded by a German caricature, full of liveliness and ingenuous choler. The philosopher’s enemies are depicted as insects, zanies, oxen, and asses, the whole being decorated with Latin legends and gross German epigrams. Khunrath is shewn on the right in the garb of a citizen, and on the left in that of his student’s apartment; in both he makes faces at his adversaries. As a townsman he is armed with a sword and tramples on the tail of a serpent; as a student he is carrying a pair of tongs and is crushing the serpent’s head. In public he demonstrates and at home instructs, but as indicated by his gestures, the truth is the same always and expressed with disdain for the impure breath of his adversaries. The latter notwithstanding is so pestilential that the birds of heaven fall dead at their feet. This exceedingly curious plate is wanting in many copies of the work.

The book as a whole contains all mysteries of the highest initiation. As the title announces, it is Christo-Kabalistic, Divine-magical, physico-chemical, threefold-one, and universal. It is a true manual of Transcendental Magic and Hermetic Philosophy. A more complete and perfect initiation cannot be found elsewhere, unless indeed it is in the Sepher Yetzirah and Zohar. In the four important corollaries which follow the explanation of the third figure, Khunrath establishes: (1) That the cost of accomplishing the Great Work (apart from the operator’s maintenance and personal expenses) should not exceed the sum of thirty thalers. He adds: “I speak with authority, having learned from one who had knowledge; those who expend more deceive themselves and waste their money.” It follows that either Khunrath had not himself composed the Philosophical Stone or did not wish to admit it for fear of persecution. He proceeds to establish the duty of the adept not to devote more than the tenth part of his wealth to his personal use, the rest being consecrated to the glory of God and works of charity. Finally, he affirms that the mysteries of Christianity and Nature interpret and illuminate one another, and that the future reign of Messiah will rest on the dual foundation of science and faith. The oracles of the Gospel being thus confirmed by the book of Nature, it will be possible to convince Jews and Mohammedans regarding the truth of Christianity on the grounds of science and reason, so that—with the help of Divine Grace—they will be converted infallibly to the religion of unity. He ends with this maxim: “The seal of Nature and of Art is simplicity.”

Contemporary with Khunrath there was another initiated doctor, Hermetic philosopher and disciple of Paracelsian medicine; this was Oswald Crollius, author of the Book of Signatures, or True and Vital Anatomy of the Greater and Lesser World.[272] The preface to this work is a sketch of Hermetic philosophy, exceedingly well done; Crollius seeks to demonstrate that God and Nature have, so to speak, signed all their works, that every product of a given natural force bears the stamp of that force printed in indelible characters, so that he who is initiated in the occult writings can read, as in an open book, the sympathies and antipathies of things, the properties of substances and all other secrets of creation. The characters of different writings were borrowed primitively from these natural signatures existing in stars and flowers, on mountains and the smallest pebble. The figures of crystals, the marks on minerals, were impressions of the thought which the Creator had in their formation. The idea is rich in poetry and grandeur, but we lack any grammar of this mysterious language of worlds and a methodical vocabulary of this primitive and absolute speech. King Solomon alone is credited with having accomplished the dual labour; but the books of Solomon are lost. The enterprise of Crollius was not a reconstitution of these, but an attempt to discover the fundamental principles obtaining in the universal language of the creative Word.

It was recognised on these principles that the original hieroglyphics, based on the prime elements of geometry, corresponded to the constitutive and essential laws of forms, determined by alternating or combined movements, which, in their turn, were determined by equilibratory attractions. Simples were distinguished from composites by their external figures; and by the correspondence between figures and numbers it became possible to make a mathematical classification of all substances revealed by the lines of their surfaces. At the root of these endeavours, which are reminiscences of Edenic science, there is a whole world of discoveries awaiting the sciences. Paracelsus had divined them, Crollius indicates them, another who shall follow will realise and provide the demonstration concerning them. What seemed the folly of yesterday will be the genius of to-morrow, and progress will hail the sublime seekers who first looked into this lost and recovered world, this Atlantis of human knowledge.

The beginning of the seventeenth century was the great epoch of alchemy; it was the period of Philip Muller, John Torneburg, Michael Maier, Ortelius, Poterius, Samuel Norton, Baron de Beausoleil, David Planis Campe, Jean Duchesne, Robert Fludd, Benjamin Mustapha, D’Espagnet, the Cosmopolite—who is in the first rank—de Nuisement, who translated and published the Cosmopolite’s writings, John Baptist van Helmont, Eirenæus Philalethes, Rodolph Glauber, the sublime shoemaker Jacob Böhme.[273] The chief among these initiates were devoted to the researches of Transcendental Magic, but they concealed most carefully that detested name under the veil of Hermetic experiments. The Mercury of the Wise which they desired to discover and hand on to their disciples was the scientific and religious synthesis, the peace which abides in the sovereign unity. The mystics themselves were but blind believers in the true illuminati, while illuminism, properly so called, was the universal science of light.