Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi
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p. 339personified as Hermanubis, a dog's head, and to their sulphur, represented by the Baphomet of the temple, or prince of the Sabbath, that goat's head which brought such odium upon the occult associations of the middle ages. For the mineral work, the first matter is exclusively mineral, but it is not a metal. It is a metallised salt. This matter is called vegetable, because it resembles a fruit, and animal, because it produces a kind of milk and blood. It alone contains the fire by which it must be dissolved.
CHAPTER XX THE THAUMATURGE WE have defined miracles as the natural effects of exceptional causes. The immediate action of the human will upon the body, or at least that action exercised without visible means, constitutes a miracle in the physical order. The influence exercised upon wills or intelligences, either suddenly or within a given time, and capable of subjugating thoughts, changing the most determined resolutions, paralysing the most violent passions — this influence constitutes a miracle in the moral order. The common error concerning miracles is to regard them as effects without causes, contradictions of nature, sudden vagaries of the divine mind, not seeing that a single miracle of this class would destroy the universal harmony, and reduce the universe to chaos. There are miracles which are impossible, even for God, namely, those which involve absurdity. Could God be absurd for one instant, neither Himself nor the world would be in existence the moment following. To expect from the divine arbiter an effect having a disproportionate cause, or even no cause at all, is what is called tempting God ; it is casting one's self into the void. God operates by His works — in heaven by angels, and on earth by men. Hence, in the circle of p. 340angelic action, the angels can perform all that is possible for God, and in the human circle of action men can dispose equally of divine omnipotence. In the heaven of human conceptions, it is humanity which creates God, and men think that God has made them in His image because they have made Him in theirs.
The domain of man is all corporeal and visible nature on earth, and if he cannot rule suns and stars, he can at least calculate their motion, compute their distances, and identify his will with their influence ; he can modify the atmosphere, act up to a certain point upon the seasons, heal or harm his neighbours, preserve life and inflict death, the conservation of life, including resurrection in certain cases, as already established.
The absolute in reason and volition is the greatest power which can be given any man to attain, and it is by means of this power that he performs what astonishes the multitude under the name of miracles. The most perfect purity of intention is indispensable tothe thaumaturge, and in the next place a favourable current and unlimited confidence. The man who has come to fear nothing and desire nothing is master of all.
This is the meaning of that beautiful allegory of the Gospel, wherein, the Son of God, thrice victor over the unclean spirit, is ministered unto by angels in the wilderness. Nothing on earth withstands a free and rational will. When the wise man says, " I will," it is God Himself who wills, and all that He commands takes place.
It is the knowledge of the physician, and the confidence placed in him, which constitute the virtue of his prescriptions, and thaumaturgy is the only real and efficacious remedy. Hence occult therapeutics are apart from all vulgar medication. It chiefly makes use of words and insufflations, and communicates by will a various virtue to the simplest substances — water, oil, wine, camphor, salt.
The water of homoeopathists is truly a magnetised and enchanted water, which works by means of faith. The dynamic substances added in, so to speak, infinitesimal quantities are consecrations and signs of the physician's wilL
p. 341What is vulgarly called charlatanism is a great means of real success in medicine, assuming that it is sufficiently skilful to inspire great confidence and to form a circle of faith. In medicine, above all, it is faith which saves.
There is scarcely a village which does not possess its male or female compounder of occult medicine, and these people are almost every where, and invariably, more successful incomparably than physicians approved by the faculty. The remedies they prescribe are often strange or ridiculous, and hence answer all the better, for they exact and realise more faith on the part of patients and operators.
An old merchant of our acquaintance, a man of eccentric character and exalted religious sentiment, after retiring from business, set himself to exercise gratuitously, and out of Christian charity, occult medicine in one of the Departments of France. His sole specifics were oil, insufflations, and prayers.
The institution of a law-suit against him for the illegal exercise of medicine established in public knowledge that ten thousand cures had been attributed to him in the space of about five years, and that the number of his believers increased in proportions calculated to alarm all the doctors of the district.
We saw also at Mans a poor nun who was regarded as slightly demented, but she healed, nevertheless, all diseases in the surrounding country by means of an elixir and plaster of her own invention. The elixir was taken internally, the plaster was applied outwardly, so that nothing escaped this universal panacea.
The plaster never stuck upon the skin save at the place where its application was necessary, and it rolled up and fell off by itself — such at least was asserted by the good sister and declared to be the case by the sufferers.
This thaumaturge was also subjected to prosecution, for she impoverished the practice of all the doctors round about her ; she was rigidly cloistered, but it was soon found necessary to produce her at least once a week, and on the day for her consultations we have seen Sister Jane-Francis surrounded by the country folk, who had arrived overnight, awaiting their turn, lying at the convent
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