Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi

p. 303demon after a determinate time. The Church in her exorcisms has consecrated the belief in all these things, and it may be said that black magic and its darksome prince are the true, living, and terrible creation of Roman Catholicism ; that they are even its special and characteristic work, for priests invent not God.

So do true Catholics cleave from the bottom of their hearts to the consecration and even the regeneration of this great work, which is the philosophical stone of the official and positive cultus.

In thieves' slang the devil is called the laker by malefactors ; all our desire, and we speak no longer from the standpoint of the magus, but as a devoted child of Christianity and of that Church to which we owe our earliest education and our first enthusiasms— all our desire, we say, is that the phantom of Satan may no longer be able to be termed the laker for the ministers of morality and the representatives of the highest virtue.

Will they appreciate our intention and forgive the boldness of our aspirations in consideration of our devoted intentions and the sincerity of our faith ?

The devil-making magic which dictated the Grimoire of Pope Honorius, the Enchiridion of Leo III., the exorcisms of the Ritual, the verdicts of inquisitors, the suits of Laubardement, the articles of the Veuillot brothers, the books of MM. de Falloux, de Montalembert, de Mirville, the magic of sorcerers and of pious persons who are not sorcerers, is something truly to be condemned in the one and infinitely deplored in the other.

It is above all to combat these unhappy aberrations of the human mind by their exposure that we have published this book. May it further the holy cause ! But we have not yet exhibited these impious devices in all their turpitude, and in all their monstrous folly ; we must remove the blood-stained filth of perished superstitions ; we must tax the annals of demonomania, so as to conceive of certain crimes which imagination alone could not invent.

The Kabbalist Bodin, Israelite by conviction and Catholic by necessity, had no other intention in his " Demonomania of Sorcerers >f than to impeach Catholicism 2p. 304in its works, and to undermine it in the greatest of all its doctrinal abuses. The treatise of Bodin is profoundly machiavellic, and strikes at the heart of the institutions and persons it appears to defend. It would be difficult to imagine without reading his vast mass of sanguinary and hideous histories, acts of revolting superstition, sentences and executions of stupid ferocity. " Burn all !

" the inquisitors seemed to cry. " God will distinguish His own ! " Poor fools, hysterical women, and idiots, were accordingly burned without mercy for the crime of magic, while, at the same time, great criminals escaped this unjust and sanguinary justice. Bodin gives us to understand this by recounting such anecdotes as that which he connects with the death of Charles IX.

It is an almost unknown abomination, and one which has not, so far as we know, tempted the skill of any romancer, even at the periods of the most feverish and deplorable literature. Attacked by a disease of which no physician could discover the cause or explain the frightful symptoms, King Charles IX. was dying.

The Queen-Mother, who ruled him entirely, and had everything to lose under another reign — the Queen-Mother, who has been suspected as the author of the disease, because concealed devices and unknown interests have always been attributed to her who was capable of anything— consulted her astrologers, and then had recourse to the foulest form of magic, the Oracle of the Bleeding Head, for the sufferer's condition grew worse and more desperate daily.

The infernal operation was performed in the following way. A child was selected, of beautiful appearance and innocent manners ; he was prepared for his first communion by the almoner of the palace.

When the day or rather night of the sacrifice arrived, a monk, an apostate Jacobin, given over to the occult works of black magic, celebrated the Mass of the Devil at midnight, in the sick-room, and in the presence only of Catherine de Medicis and her trusted confidants. It was offered before the image of the demon, having a crucifix upside down under its feet, and the 3p. 305sorcerer consecrated two hosts, one black and one white. The white was given to the child, who was brought in clothed as for baptism, and was murdered on the steps of the altar immediately after his communion. His head, cut by one blow from the body, was set palpitating upon the great black host which covered the bottom of the paten, and then transported to a table where mysterious lamps were burning.

The exorcism began, an oracle was besought of the demon, and an answer by the mouth of the head to a secret question which the king dared not make aloud, and had confided to no one. A strange and feeble voice, which had nothing human about it, was presently heard in the poor little martyr's head, saying in Latin : Vim patior ; " I am forced.

At this reply, which doubtless announced to the sick man that hell no longer protected him, a horrible trembling seized the monarch, his arms stiffened, and he cried in a hoarse voice : " Away with that head ! Away with that head ! " and so continued screaming till he gave up the ghost.

His attendants, who were not in the confidence of the frightful mystery, believed that he was pursued by the phantom of Coligny, and that he saw the head of the illustrious admiral ; what tormented the dying man was not, however, a remorse, but a hopeless terror and an anticipated Hell.

This darksome magical legend of Bodin recalls the abominable practices and deserved fate of Gilles de Laval, lord of Eetz, who passed from asceticism to black magic, and offered the most revolting sacrifices to conciliate the favour of Satan. This madman confessed at his trial that Satan had frequently appeared to him, but had always deceived him by promises of treasures which he had never given.

It transpired from the judicial informations that several hundred unfortunate children had fallen victims to the cupidity and atrocious fancies of this monster.