Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
348 THE BITUAL OF TRANSCENDENT MAGIC foresee obstacles that he will encounter, possibly the violent death which awaits him ; but it cannot foresee his private, voluntary, capricious determinations of the moment following the consultation, unless, indeed, the ruse of the diviner itself prepares the fulfilment of the prophecy.
For example, you say to a woman who is becoming passd, and is anxious to secure a husband : You will be present this evening or to-morrow evening at such or such a performance, and you will there see a man who will be to your liking. This man will observe you, and by a curious combination of circumstances the result will be a marriage.
You may count on the lady going, you may count on her seeing a man and believing that he has noticed her, you may count on her anticipating marriage. It may not come to that in the end, but she will not lay the blame on you, because she would be giving up the opportunity for another illusion ; on the contrary, she will return perseveringly to consult you.
We have said that the astral light is the great book of divinations ; the faculty of reading therein is either natural or acquired, and there are hence two classes of seers, the instinctive and the initiated. For this reason, children, uneducated people, shepherds, even idiots, have more aptitude for natural divination than scholars and thinkers. The simple herd-boy, David, was a prophet even as Solomon, king of kabbalists and magi.
The perceptions of instinct are often as certain as those of science ; the persons least clairvoyant in the astral light are those who reason most. Somnambulism is a state of pure instinct, and hence somnambulists require to be directed by a seer of science; sceptics and reasoners only lead them astray.
Divinatory vision operates only in the ecstatic state, to arrive at which state, doubt and illusion must become impossible by enchaining or putting to sleep thought. The instruments of divination are hence only methods of magnetising ourselves and of self-diversion from exterior light, so that we may pay attention to the interior light alone. It was for this reason
THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 349 that Apollonius completely enveloped himself in a woollen mantle, and fixed his eyes on his navel in the gloom. The magical mirror of Dupotet is kindred to the device of Apollonius. Hydromancy and vision in the thumb-nail, when it has been polished and blackened, are varieties of the magical mirror.
Perfumes and evocations stupefy thought ; water and the colour black absorb the visual rays ; a kind of dazzlement and vertigo ensue, followed by lucidity in subjects who have a natural aptitude or are suitably disposed thereto.
Geomancy and cartomancy are other means to the same end; combinations of symbols and numbers, which are at once fortuitous and necessary, bear enough resemblance to the chances of destiny for the imagination to perceive realities by the pretext of such emblems. The more the interest is excited, the greater is the desire to see ; the fuller the confidence in the intuition, the more clear the vision becomes.
To combine the points of geomancy on chance or to set out the cards for trifling is to jest like children ; the lots become oracles only when they are magnetised by intelligence and directed by faith. Of all oracles, the Tarot is the most astounding in its answers, because all possible combinations of this universal key of the kabbalah give oracles of science and of truth for their solutions.
The Tarot was the sole book of the ancient magi ; it is the primitive Bible, as we shall prove in the following chapter, and the ancients consulted it as the first Christians at a later date consulted the Sacred Lots, that is, Bible verses selected by chance and determined by thinking of a number. Mile.
Lenormand, the most celebrated of our modern fortune-tellers, was unacquainted with the science of the Tarot, or knew it only by derivation from Etteilla, whose explanations are shadows cast upon a background of light. She knew neither high magic nor the kabbalah, but her head was filled with ill-digested erudition, and she was intuitive by an instinct which deceived her rarely.
The works she left behind her are Legitimist tomfoolery, ornamented with classical quotations, but her oracles inspired by the p. 350presence and magnetism of those who consulted her, were often astounding. She was a woman in whom extravagance of imagination and mental rambling were substituted for the natural affections of her sex ; she lived and died a virgin, like the ancient druidesses of the isle of Sayne. Had nature endowed her with beauty, she might have easily at a remoter epoch played the part of a Melusine or a Velleda.
The more ceremonies employed in the practice of divination, the more we excite imagination both in ourselves and in those who consult us.
The Conjuration of the Four, the Prayer of Solomon, the magic sword to disperse phantoms, may thus be resorted to with success ; we should also evoke the genius of the day and hour of operation, and offer him a special perfume ; next we should enter into magnetic and intuitive correspondence with the consulting person, inquiring with what animal he is in sympathy and with what in antipathy, and so also concerning his favourite flower or colour.
Flowers, colours, and animals connect in analogical classification with the seven genii of the kabbalah. Those who love blue are idealists and dreamers ; lovers of red are material and passionate ; those who love yellow are fantastic and capricious ; lovers of green are frequently commercial and crafty ; the friends of black are influenced by Saturn ; the rose is the colour of Venus, &c.
Lovers of the horse are hard-working, noble in character, and at the same time yielding and gentle; friends of the dog are affectionate and faithful ; those of the cat are independent and libertine.
Frank persons hold spiders in special horror ; those of haughty nature are antipathetic to the serpent ; upright and fastidious persons cannot tolerate rats and mice ; the voluptuous loathe the toad, because it is cold, solitary, hideous, and miserable.
Flowers have analogous sympathies to those of animals and colours, and as magic is the science of universal analogies, a single taste, one tendency, in a given person, enables all the rest to be divined ; it is an application of the analogical anatomy of Cuvier to phenomena in the moral order.
No commentary for this page under the selected tracks.
There is commentary on page 1.