Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi

p. 294were tests of his force of character and confidence in his initiators.

The final ordeal was most decisive of all because it was at first sight humiliating and ridiculous to the mind of the candidate ; he was commanded without circumspection to kiss respectfully the posterior of the goat ; if he refused, his head was again covered, and he was transported to a distance from the assembly with such extraordinary rapidity that he believed himself whirled through the air; if he assented, he was taken round the symbolical idol, and there found, not a repulsive and obscene object, but the young and gracious countenance of a priestess of Isis or Maia, who gave him a maternal salute, and he was then admitted to the banquet.

As to the orgies which in many such assemblies followed the banquet, we must beware of believing that they were generally permitted at these secret agapae; at the same time it is known that a number of gnostic sects practised them in their conventicles during the early centuries of Christianity, That the flesh had its protestants in those ages of asceticism and compression of the senses was inevitable, and can occasion no surprise, but we must not accuse transcendent magic of the irregularities it has never authorised.

Isis is chaste in her widowhood ; Diana Panthea is a virgin; Hermanubis, possessing both sexes, can satisfy neither ; the Hermetic hermaphrodite is pure ; Apollonius of Tyana never yielded to the seductions of pleasure; the Emperor Julian was a man of rigid continence ; Plotinus of Alexandria was ascetic in the manner of his life ; Paracelsus was such a stranger to foolish love that his sex was suspected; Raymund Lully was initiated in the final secrets of science only after a hopeless passion which made him chaste for ever.

It is also a magical tradition that pantacles and talismans lose all their virtue when he who wears them enters a house of prostitution or commits an adultery. The Sabbath of orgies must not therefore be considered as that of the veritable adepts. With regard to the term Sabbath, some have traced it to 2p. 295the name of Sabasius, and other etymologies have been imagined. The most simple, in our opinion, connects it with the Jewish Sabbath, for it is certain that the Jews, the most faithful depositaries of the secrets of the Kabbalah, were almost invariably the great masters in magic during the middle ages.

The Sabbath was therefore the Sunday of the Kabbalists, the day of their religious festivals, or rather the night of their regular assembly. This feast, surrounded with mysteries, had the vulgar timidity for its safeguard and escaped persecution by terror. As to the diabolical Sabbath of necromancers, it was a counterfeit of that of the magi, an assembly of malefactors who exploited idiots and fools.

There horrible rites were practised and abominable potions compounded, there sorcerers and sorceresses laid their plans and instructed one another for the common support of their reputation in prophecy and divination ; at that period diviners were generally consulted and followed a lucrative profession while exercising a real power.

Such institutions neither had nor could possess any regular rites ; everything depended on the caprice of the chiefs and the vertigo of the assembly.

What was narrated by some who had been present at them served as a type for all nightmares of hallucination and from this chaos of impossible realities and demoniac dreams have issued the revolting and foolish histories of the Sabbath which figure in magical processes and in the books of such writers as Spranger, Delancere, Delrio, and Bodin.

The rites of the Gnostic Sabbath were imported into Germany by an association which took the name of Mopses.

It replaced the Kabbalistic goat by the Hermetic dog, and he candidate, male or female, for the order initiated romen, was brought in with eyes bandaged ; the same ifernal noise was made in their neighbourhood, which rrounded the name of Sabbath with so many inexplicable rumours ; they were asked whether they were afraid of the levil, and were abruptly required to choose between kissing le posterior of the grand master and that of a small silk3p. 296covered figure of a dog, which was substituted for the old grand idol of the goat of Mendes. The sign of recognition was a ridiculous grimace, which recalls the phantasmagoria of the ancient Sabbath and the masks of the assistants. For the rest, their doctrine is summed up in the cultus of love and license. The association came into existence when the Eoman Church was persecuting Freemasonry.

The Mopses pretended to recruit only among Catholics, and for the oath at reception they substituted a solemn engagement upon honour to reveal no secrets of the order. It was more effectual than any oath, and left nothing for religion to object. The name of the Templar Baphomet, which should be spelt Kabbalistically backwards, is composed of three abbreviations : TEM. OHP.

AB., Templi omnium hominum pacis abbas, " the father of the temple of universal peace among men. According to some, the Bahomet was a monstrous head ; according to others, a demon in the form of a goat. A sculptured coffer was disinterred recently in the ruins of an old commandery of the temple, and antiquaries observed upon it a baphometic figure, corresponding by its attributes, to the goat of Mendes and the androgyne of Khunrath.

It was a bearded figure with a female body, holding the sun in one hand and the moon in the other, attached to chains. Now, this virile head is a beautiful allegory which attributes to thought alone the initiating and creating principle. Here the head represents spirit and the body matter. The orbs enchained to the human form, and directed by that nature of which intelligence is the head, are also magnificently allegorical.

The sign all the same was discovered to beobscene and diabolical by the learned men who examined it. Can we be surprised after this at the spread of mediaeval superstition in our own day ! One thing only surprises me, that, believing in the devil and his agents, men do not rekindle the faggots. M. Veuillot is logical and demands it ; one should honour men who have the courage of their opinions.