The history of magic

by Éliphas Lévi

But it is important to ascertain whether the notion of this evil power can be reconciled with that of God—in a word, whether the devil exists, and in such case what he is. There is no longer any question of superstition or of ridiculous invention; it is a question of religion alone and hence of the whole future, with all the interests, of humanity.

Strange reasoners indeed are we: we call ourselves strong-minded when we are indifferent to everything except material advantages, as, for example, money; and we leave to their own devices the ideas which are mothers of opinions and may, or at least can, by their sudden veering, upset all fortunes. A conquest of science is much more important than the discovery of a gold mine. Given science, gold is utilised in the service of life; given ignorance, wealth furnishes only destroying weapons.

For the rest, it is to be understood absolutely that our scientific revelations pause in the presence of faith, that—as Christian and Catholic—our work is submitted entirely to the supreme judgment of the Church. This said, to those who question the existence of a devil, we would point out that whatsoever has a name exists; speech may be uttered in vain, but in itself it cannot be vain, and it has a meaning invariably. The Word is never void, and if it be written that it is in God, as also that it is God, this is because it is the expression and the proof of being and of truth. The devil is named and personified in the Gospel, which is the Word of truth; he exists therefore and can be considered as a person. But here it is the Christian who defers: let science or reason speak; these two are one.[8]

Evil exists; it is impossible to doubt it; we can work good or evil. There are beings who work evil knowingly and willingly. The spirit which animates these beings and prompts them to do ill is bewrayed, turned aside from the right road, and thrown across the path of good as an obstacle; this is the precise meaning of the Greek word diabolos, which we render as devil. The spirits who love and perform evil are accidentally bad. There is therefore a devil who is the spirit of error, wilful ignorance, vertigo; there are beings under his obedience who are his envoys, emissaries, angels; and it is for this reason that the Gospel speaks of an eternal fire which is prepared, and in a sense predestined, for the devil and his angels. These words are themselves a revelation, so let us search their meaning, giving, in the first place, a concise definition of evil. Evil is the absence of rectitude in being. Moral evil is falsehood in action, as the lie is a crime in speech. Injustice is of the essence of lying, and every lie is an injustice. When that which we utter is just, there is no falsity. When that which we do is equitable and true in mode, there is no sin. Injustice is the death of moral being, as lying is the poison of intelligence. The false spirit is therefore a spirit of death. Those who hearken to him become his dupes and are by him poisoned. But if we had to take his absolute personification seriously, he would be himself absolutely dead and absolutely deceived, which means that the affirmation of his existence must imply a patent contradiction. Jesus said that the devil is a liar like his father. Who then is the father of the devil? Whosoever gives him a personal existence by living in accordance with his inspirations; the man who diabolises himself is the father of the incarnate spirit of evil. But there is a rash, impious and monstrous conception, traditional like the pride of the Pharisees, and in fine there is a hybrid creation which armed the paltry philosophy of the eighteenth century with an apparent defence. It is the false Lucifer of the heterodox legend—that angel proud enough to think that he was God, brave enough to buy independence at the price of eternal torment, beautiful enough to worship himself in the plenary Divine Light; strong enough to reign still in darkness and in dole and to make a throne of his inextinguishable fire. It is the Satan of the heretical and republican Milton, the pretended hero of black eternities, calumniated by deformity, bedecked with horns and talons which would better become his implacable tormentor. It is the devil who is king of evil, as if evil were a kingdom, who is more intelligent than the men of genius that fear his wiles. It is (a) that black light, that darkness with eyes, that power which God has not willed but which no fallen creature could create; (b) that prince of anarchy served by a hierarchy of pure spirits;[9] (c) that exile of God who on earth seems, like Him, everywhere, but is more tangible, is more for the majority in evidence, and is served better than God himself; (d) that conquered one, to whom the victor gives his children that he may devour them; (e) that artificer of sins of the flesh, to whom flesh is nothing, and who therefore can be nothing to flesh, unless indeed he be its creator and master, like God; (f) that immense, realised, personified and eternal lie; (g) that death which cannot die; (h) that blasphemy which the Word of God will never silence; (i) that poisoner of souls whom God tolerates by a contradiction of His omnipotence or preserves as the Roman emperors guarded Locusta among the trophies of their reign; (k) that executed criminal, living still to curse his Judge and still have a cause against him, since he will never repent; (l) that monster accepted as executioner by the Sovereign Power, and who, according to the forcible expression of an old catholic writer, may term God the God of the devil by describing himself as a devil of God.

Such is the irreligious phantom which blasphemes religion. Away with this idol which hides our Saviour. Down with the tyrant of falsehood, the black god of Manicheans, the Ahriman of old idolaters. Live God and His Word incarnate, who saw Satan fall from heaven. And live Mary, the Divine Mother, who crushed the head of the infernal serpent.

So cry with one voice the traditions of saints, and so cry faithful hearts. The attribution of any greatness whatsoever to a fallen spirit is a slander on Divinity; the ascription of any royalty whatsoever to the rebel spirit is to encourage revolt and be guilty, at least in thought, of that crime which the horror of the middle ages termed sorcery. For all the offences visited with death on the old sorcerers were real crimes and were indeed the greatest of all. They stole fire from heaven, like Prometheus; they rode winged dragons and the flying serpent, like Medea; they poisoned the breathable air, like the shadow of the manchineel tree; they profaned sacred things and even used the body of the Lord in works of destruction and malevolence.

How is all this possible? Because there is a composite agent, a natural and divine agent, at once corporeal and spiritual, an universal plastic mediator, a common receptacle for vibrations of movement and images of form, a fluid and a force which may be called, in a sense at least, the imagination of Nature. By the mediation of this force every nervous apparatus is in secret communication together; hence come sympathy and antipathy, hence dreams, hence the phenomena of second sight and extra-natural vision. This universal agent of Nature’s works is the Od of the Jews and of Reichenbach, the Astral Light of the Martinists,[10] which denomination we prefer as the more explicit.

The existence and possible employment of this force constitute the great secret of Practical Magic; it is the Wand of Thaumaturgy and the Key of Black Magic. It is the Edenic serpent who transmitted to Eve the seductions of a fallen angel. The Astral Light warms, illuminates, magnetises, attracts, repels, vivifies, destroys, coagulates, separates, breaks and conjoins everything, under the impetus of powerful wills. God created it on the first day, when He said: “Let there be light.” This force of itself is blind but is directed by Egregores, that is, by chiefs of souls, or, in other words, by energetic and active spirits.[11]

Herein is the complete explanatory theory of prodigies and miracles. How, as a fact, could good and bad alike compel Nature to reveal her hidden forces, how could there be divine and diabolical miracles, how could the reprobate and bewrayed spirit have more power in certain ways and cases than the just spirit, which is in truth so powerful in simplicity and wisdom, unless we postulate an instrument which all can use, upon certain conditions, but some for the great good and others for the great evil?

Pharaoh’s magicians accomplished at first the same miracles as Moses. The instrument which they used was therefore the same; the inspiration alone differed; when they confessed themselves conquered, they proclaimed that, for them, human powers had reached their limit, and that there must be something superhuman in Moses.[12] This took place in Egypt, that mother of magical initiations, that land where it was all occult science, hierarchic and sacred instruction. Was it, however, more difficult to make flies appear than frogs? No, assuredly; but the magicians knew that the fluidic projection by which the eyes are biologised cannot proceed beyond certain bounds, and these had been passed already by Moses.[13]