Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi

p. 291fabulous images of Satan, owing to his sign of the pentagram. Let us assert most strongly, to combat the remnants of Manichseanism which are daily appearing among Christians, that as a superior personality and power Satan does not exist. He is the personification of all errors, perversities, and, consequently, weaknesses.

If God may be defined as He who necessarily exists, may we not define His antagonist and enemy as he who necessarily does not exist ? The absolute affirmation of good implies the absolute negation of evil ; so also in the light shadow itself is Inminous. Thus, erring spirits are good to the extent of their participation in being and in truth. There are no shadows without reflections, no nights without moon, phosphorescence, and stars.

If hell be just, it is good. No one has ever blasphemed God. The insults and mockeries addressed to His disfigured images attain Him not. We have named Manichaeanism, and it is by this monstrous heresy that we shall explain the aberrations of black magic.

The misconstrued doctrine of Zoroaster and the magical law of two forces constituting universal equilibrium, have caused some illogical minds to imagine a negative divinity, subordinate but hostile to the active divinity. Thus, the impure duad comes into being. Men were mad enough to halve God ; the star of Solomon was separated into two triangles, and the Manichaeans imagined a trinity of night.

This evil God, product of sectarian fancies, inspired all manias and all crimes. Sanguinary sacrifices were offered him ; monstrous idolatry replaced the true religion; black magic traduced the transcendent and luminous magic of true adepts, and horrible conventicles of sorcerers, ghouls, and stryges took place in caverns and desert places, for dementia soon changes into frenzy, and from human sacrifices to cannibalism there is only one step.

The mysteries of the Sabbath have been variously described, but they figure always in grimoires and in magical trials ; the revelations made on the subject may be classified under three heads —

p. 2921. those referring to a fantastic and imaginary Sabbath ; 2. those which betray the secrets of the occult assemblies of veritable adepts ; 3. revelations of foolish and criminal gatherings, having for their object the operations of black magic.

For a large number of unhappy men and women, given over to these mad and abominable practices, the Sabbath was but a prolonged nightmare, where dreams appeared realities, and were induced by means of potions, fumigations, and narcotic frictions. Baptista Porta, whom we have already signalised as a mystifier, gives in his "Natural Magic," a pretended recipe for the sorcerer's unguent, by means of which they were transported to the Sabbath.

It is a composition of child's fat, of aconite boiled with poplar leaves, and some other drugs, the whole mixed with soot, which could not contribute to the beauty of the naked sorceresses who repaired to the scene anointed with this pomade. There is another and more serious recipe given by Baptista Porta, which we transcribe in Latin to preserve its grimoire character.

Recipe : suim, acorum vulgar e, pentaphyllon, verspertillionis sanguinem solanum somniferum et oleum, the whole boiled and incorporated to the consistence of an unguent. We infer that compositions containing opiates, the pith of green hemp, datura-stramonium or laurel-almond, would enter quite as successfully into such preparations.

The fat or blood of night-birds added to these narcotics, with black magical ceremonies, would impress imagination and determine the direction of dreams.

To Sabbaths dreamed in this manner we must refer the accounts of a goat issuing from pitchers and going back into them after the ceremony ; infernal powders obtained from the ordure of this goat, who is called Master Leonard; banquets where abortions are eaten without salt and boiled with serpents and toads ; dances, in which monstrous animals or men and women with impossible shapes, take part ; unbridled debauches where incubi project cold sperm.

Nightmare alone could produce or explain such scenes. The unfortunate cure, Gaufridy, and his abandoned penitent, Madeline de la

p. 293Palud, went mad through kindred delusions, and were burned for persisting in affirming them. We must read the depositions of these diseased beings during their trial to understand the extent of the aberration possible to an afflicted imagination.

But the Sabbath was not always a dream ; it did exist in reality ; even now there are secret nocturnal assemblies for the practice of the rites of the old world, some of which assemblies have a religious and social object, while that of others is concerned with orgies and conjurations. From this two-fold point of view we propose to consider and condemn the true Sabbath, of the magic of light in one case and the magic of darkness in the other.

When Christianity proscribed the public exercise of the ancient worships, the partisans of the latter were compelled to meet in secret for the celebration of their mysteries. Initiates presided over these assemblies, and soon established among the varieties of the worships a kind of orthodoxy, more easily facilitated by the aid of magical truth, because proscription unites wills and gathers up the bonds of brotherhood between men.

Thus, the mysteries of Isis, of Ceres Eleusinia, of Bacchus, combined with those of the good goddess and primeval Druidism.

The meetings took place usually between the days of Mercury and Jupiter, or between those of Venus and Saturn ; the proceedings included the rites of initiation, exchange of mysterious signs, singing of symbolical hymns, the cementing of union at the banqueting board, the successive formation of the magical chain t table and in the dance ; and, finally, the meeting broke p after renewing pledges in the presence of the chiefs and receiving instructions from them.

The candidate for the Sabbath was led, or rather carried, to the assembly, with his eyes covered by the magical mantle in which he was completely enveloped, he was led between immense fires, while alarming noises were made about him. When his face was bared, he found himself surrounded by infernal monsters, and in the presence of a colossal and hideous goat which he was commanded to adore. All these ceremonies