Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi

THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 351 The physiognomy of face and body, the wrinkles on the brow, the lines on the hands, equally furnish the magus with precious indications. Metoposcopy and chiromancy have become separate sciences; their observations, purely empirical and conjectural, have been compared, examined, and then united into a body of doctrine by Goglenius, Belot, Kornphile, Indagine, and Taisnier.

The work of the last-mentioned writer is the most important and complete ; he combines and criticises the observations and conjectures of all the others. A modern investigator, the Chevalier D'Arpentigny, has imparted to chiromancy a fresh degree of certitude by his remarks on the analogies which really exist between the characters of persons and the form of their hands as a whole or in detail.

This new science has been further developed and verified by an artist who is also a man of letters, rich in originality and skill. The disciple has surpassed the master, and our amiable and spiritual Desbarrolles, one of those travellers with whom our great novelist Alexandre Dumas delights to surround himself in his cosmopolitan romances, is already cited as a veritable magician in chiromancy.

The consulting person should also be questioned upon his habitual dreams ; dreams are the reflection of life, both interior and exterior. The old philosophers paid them great attention; the patriarchs regarded them as certain revelations ; most religious revelations have been given in dreams.

The monsters of perdition are nightmares of Christianity, and as the author of Smarra has ingeniously remarked, never could pencil or chisel have produced such beings if they had not been beheld in sleep. We should beware of persons whose imagination continually reflects deformities.

Temperament is, in like manner, manifested by dreams, and as this exercises a permanent influence upon life, it is necessary to be well acquainted therewith if we would conjecture a destiny with certitude. Dreams of blood, of enjoyment, and of light indicate a sanguine temperament ; those of water, mud, rain, tears, are occasioned

352 THE EITUAL OF TKANSCENDENT MAGIC by a more phlegmatic disposition ; fire by night, darkness, terrors, spectres, belong to the bilious and melancholic.

Synesius, one of the greatest Christian bishops of the first centuries, the disciple of that beautiful and pure Hypatia who was massacred by fanatics after presiding gloriously over the school of Alexandria, in the inheritance of which school Christianity should have shared- — Synesius, lyric poet like Pindar and Callimachus, priest like Orpheus, Christian like Spiridion of Tremithonte — has left us a treatise on dreams which has been supplied with a commentary by Cardan.

No one concerns themselves now with these magnificent researches of the mind, because successive fanaticisms have wellnigh forced the world to despair of scientific and religious rationalism. St Paul burned Trismegistus ; Omar burned the disciples of Trismegistus and of St Paul. 0 persecutors ! 0 incendiaries ! O scoffers ! when will ye end your work of darkness and destruction ?

One of the greatest magi of the Christian era, Trithemius, irreproachable abbot of a Benedictine monastery, learned theologian, and master of Cornelius Agrippa, has left among his unappreciated and inestimable works, a treatise entitled, De septem secundeis, id est intelligentiis sive spiritibus orbes post Deum moventibus.

It is a key of all prophecies new or old, a mathematical, historical, and simple method of surpassing Isaiah and Jeremiah in the prevision of all great events to come. The author in bold outline sketches the philosophy of history, and divides the existence of the entire world between the seven genii of the kabbalah.

It is the grandest and widest interpretation ever made of those seven angels of the Apocalypse who appear successively with trumpets and cups to pour out the word and its realisation upon the earth.

The duration of each angelic reign is 354 years and four months, beginning with that of Orifiel, the angel of Saturn, on the 13th of March, for, according to Trithemius, this was the date of the world's creation; it was a period of savagery and darkness. Next came the

THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 353 reign of Anael, the spirit of Venus, on the 24th of June, in the year of the world 354, when love began to be the instructor of mankind ; it created the family, and the family led to association and the primitive city. The first civilisers were poets inspired by love; presently the exaltation of poetry produced religion, fanaticism, and debauchery, culminating subsequently in the deluge.

This state of things continued till the 25th of October, being the eighth month of the year A.M. 708, when the reign of Zachariel, the angel of Jupiter, was inaugurated, under whose guidance men began to acquire knowledge, and dispute the possession of lands and dwellings. It was also the epoch of the foundation of towns and the limitation of empires ; its consequences were civilisation and war.

The need for commerce began, furthermore, to be felt, at which time — namely, the 24th of February, A.M. 1063 — was inaugurated the reign of Eaphael, angel of Mercury, angel of science and of the word, of intelligence and industry.

Then letters were invented, the first language being hieroglyphic and universal, a monument of which has been preserved in the book of Enoch, Cadmus, Thoth, and Palamedes ; the kabbalistic clavicle adopted later on by Solomon, the mystical book of the Theraphim, Urim, and Thumrnim, the primeval Genesis of the Zohar, and of William Postel, the mystical wheel of Ezekiel, the rota of the Kabbalists, the Tarot of the Magi and the Bohemians.

Then were arts invented, and navigation was attempted for the first time; relations extended, wants multiplied, and there followed speedily an epoch of general corruption, preceding the universal deluge, under the reign of Samael, angel of Mars, which was inaugurated on the 26th of June, A.M. 1417. After long stupefaction, the world strove towards a new birth under Gabriel, the angel of the moon, whose reign began on the 28th of March, A.M.

1771, when the family of Noah became multiplied, and re-peopled the whole earth, after the confusion of Babel, until the reign of Michael, angel of the sun, which commenced on the 24th of February, A.M. 2126, to which epoch must be referred the z