Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi

306 THE RITUAL OF TRANSCENDENT MAGIC CHAPTER XVI WITCHCRAFT AND SPELLS WHAT sorcerers and necromancers sought above all in their evocations of the impure spirit was that magnetic power which is the possession of the true adept, but was desired by them only that they might shamefully abuse it. The folly of sorcerers was an evil folly, and one of their chief ends was the power of bewitchments or harmful influences.

We have set down in our Doctrine what we think upon the subject of bewitchment, and how it seems to us a dangerous and real power. The true magus bewitches without ceremonial, and by his mere reprobation, those whom he condemns and considers it necessary to punish ; his forgiveness even bewitches those who do him wrong, and never do the enemies of initiates carry far the impunity of their injustice.

We have ourselves witnessed numerous examples of this fatal law. The murderers of martyrs always perish miserably, and the adepts are martyrs of intelligence ; Providence seems to scorn those who despise them, and to slay those who would deprive them of life. The legend of the Wandering Jew is the popular poetry of this arcanum. A wise man was driven by a nation to his doom ; it bade him " Go on ! " when he wished to rest for a moment.

What is the consequence ? A similar condemnation overtakes the nation itself; it is proscribed bodily; men have cried to it: " Get on ! Get on ! " for centuries, and it has found no pity and no repose. A man of learning had a wife whom he loved wildly and passionately in the exaltation of his tenderness ; he honoured her with blind confidence, and trusted her entirely.

Vain of her beauty and understanding, this woman became jealous of her husband's superiority, and began to hate him. Some time after she deserted him, disgracing herself with an old, ugly, stupid, and immoral man. This was the beginning of

WITCHCRAFT AND SPELLS 307 her punishment, but it did not end there. The man of learning solemnly pronounced the following sentence upon her: "I take back your understanding and your beauty. A year after she was no longer recognised by those who had known her ; she had lost her plumpness, and reflected in her countenance the hideousness of her new affections. Three years later she was ugly; seven years later she was deranged.

This happened in our own time, and we were acquainted with both persons. The magus condemns, after the manner of the skilful physician, and for this reason there is no appeal from his sentence when it has once been pronounced against a guilty person. There are no ceremonies and no invocations ; he simply abstains from eating at the same table, or if forced to do so, he neither accepts nor offers salt.

But the bewitchments of sorcerers are of another kind, and may be compared to an actual poisoning of some current of astral light. They exalt their will by ceremonies till it becomes venomous at a distance ; but, as we have observed in our Doctrine, they more often expose themselves, to be the first that are killed by their infernal machinery. Let us here stigmatise some of their guilty proceedings.

They procure the hair or garments of the person whom they seek to execrate ; they next select some animal, which seems to them symbolic of the person, and, by means of the hair or garments, they place it in magnetic connection with him or her. They give it the same name, and then slay it with one blow of the magic knife.

They cut open the breast, tear out the heart, wrap it, while still palpitating, in the magnetised objects, and hourly, for the space of three days, they drive nails, red hot pins, or long thorns therein, pronouncing maledictions upon the name of the bewitched person. They are persuaded, and often rightly, that the victim of their infamous operations experiences as many tortures as if his own heart had been pierced at all points. He begins to waste away, and after a time dies of an unknown disease.

p. 308Another bewitchment, made use of in country places, consists in consecration of nails to works of hatred by means of the stinking fumigations of Saturn and invocations of the evil genii; then, in following the footsteps of the person whom it is sought to torment, and nailing crosswise every imprint of his feet which can be traced upon the earth or sand. Yet another and more abominable practice.

A fat toad is selected; it is baptised; the name and surname of the person to be accursed is given it ; it ismade to swallow a consecrated host, over which the formulae of execration have been pronounced.

The animal is then wrapped in the magnetised objects, tied with the hairs of the victim, upon which the operator has previously spatr and buried at the threshold of the bewitched person's door,, or at some point where he is obliged to pass daily. The elementary spirit of the toad will become a nightmare and vampire, haunting the dreams of the victim, unless, indeed, he should know how to send it back to the operator.

Let us pass now to bewitchments by waxen images. The sorcerers of the middle ages, eager to please by their sacrileges him whom they regarded as their master, mixed baptismal oil and the ashes of consecrated hosts with a modicum of wax. Apostate priests were never wanting to deliver them the treasures of the Church. With the accursed wax they formed an image as much as possible resembling the person* whom they desired to bewitch.

They clothed this image with garments similar to his, they administered to it the sacraments which he received, then they called down upon its head all maledictions which could express the hatred of the sorcerer, inflicting daily imaginary tortures upon it, so as to reach and torment by sympathy the person represented by the image. This bewitchment is more infallible if thehair, blood, and, above all, a tooth of the victim can be procured.

It was this which gave rise to the proverbial saying i You have a tooth against me. There is also bewitchment by the glance, called the jettatura, or evil eye, in Italy.