Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi
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p. 39trench of shadow equivalent to the dimension determined by his creative desire, and attributed by him to the ideal jod of the radiating light. Such is the mysterious language of the Kabbalists in the Talmud, and on account of vulgar ignorance and malignity, it is impossible for us to explain or simplify it further. What then, is the creation ? It is the mansion of the creative Word. What is the cte'is ?
It is the mansion of the phallus. What is the nature of the active principle ? To diffuse. What is that of the passive ? To gather in and to fructify. What is man ? He who initiates, who bruises, who labours, who sows. What is woman ? She who forms, reunites, irrigates, and harvests.
Man wages war, woman brings peace about ; man destroys to create, woman builds up to preserve ; man is revolution, woman is conciliation ; man is the father of Cain, woman the mother of Abel. What, moreover, is wisdom ?
It is the agreement and union of two principles, the mildness of Abel directing the activity of Cain, man guided by the sweet inspirations of woman, debauchery conquered by lawful marriage, revolutionary energy softened and subdued by the gentleness of order and peace, pride subjugated by love, science acknowledging the inspirations of faith.
Then human science becomes wise, and submits itself to the infallibility of universal reason, instructed by love or universal charity. Then it can take the name of gnosis, because it knows at least that as yet it cannot boast of knowing perfectly. The monad can only manifest by the duad ; unity itself and the notion of unity at once constitute two. The unity of the Macrocosm reveals itself by the two opposite points of two triangles.
Human unity fulfils itself to right and left. Primitive man is androgynous. All organs of the human body are disposed in pairs, excepting the nose, the tongue, the umbilicus, and the Kabbalistic jod. Divinity, one in its essence, has two essential conditions as the fundamental grounds of its being — necessity and liberty. The laws of supreme p. 40reason necessitate and rule liberty in God, who is of necessity wise and reasonable.
To make light visible God has merely hypotheticated the shadow. To manifest the truth he has permitted the possibility of doubt. The shadow bodies forth the light, and the possibility of error is requisite for the temporal manifestation of truth. If the buckler of Satan did not intercept the spear of Michael, the might of the angel would be lost in the void or manifested by infinite destruction launched below from above. Did not the heel of Michael restrain Satan in his ascent, Satan would dethrone God, or rather he would lose himself in the abysses of the altitude. Hence Satan is needful to Michael as the pedestal to the statue, and Michael is necessary to Satan as the brake to the locomotive. In analogical and universal dynamics one leans only on that which resists. Furthermore, the universe is balanced by two forces which maintain it in equilibrium, the force which attracts and that which repels. They exist alike in physics, in philosophy, and in religion ; in physics they produce equilibrium, in philosophy criticism, in religion progressive revelation. The ancients represented this mystery in the conflict between Eros and Anteros, the struggle between Jacob and the angel, and by the equilibrium of the golden mountain, which gods on the one side and demons
THE PILLAKS OF THE TEMPLE 41 on the other hold bound by the symbolic serpent of India. It is also typified by the caduceus of Hermanubis, by the two cherubim of the ark, by the twofold sphinx of the chariot of Osiris, and by the two seraphim, respectively black and white. Its scientific reality is demonstrated by the phenomena of polarity, and by the universal law of sympathies or antipathies.
The undiscerning disciples of Zoroaster divided the duad without referring it to unity, thus separating the pillars of the temple, and endeavouring to halve God. Conceive the absolute as two, and you must immediately conceive it as three to recover the unity principle. For this reason, the material elements, analogous to the divine elements, are understood firstly as four, explained as two, and exist ultimately as three.
Eevelation is the duad ; every word is double, and supposes two. The ethic which results from revelation is founded on antagonism, which results from the duad. Spirit and form attract and repel one another, like sign and idea, fiction and truth.
Supreme reason necessitates dogma when communicating to finite intelligences, and dogma, by its passage from the domain of ideas to that of forms, participates in two worlds, and has inevitably two senses speaking in succession or simultaneously, that is, to the spirit and the flesh. So are there two forces in the moral region, one which assaults and one which curbs and expiates.
They are represented in the mythos of Genesis by the typical personalities of Cain and Abel. Abel oppresses Cain by reason of his moral superiority ; Cain to get free immortalises his brother by slaying him, and becomes the victim of his own crime. Cain could not suffer the life of Abel, and the blood of Abel suffers not the sleep of Cain.
In the Gospel the type of Cain is replaced by that of the Prodigal Son, whom his father fully forgives because he returns after having endured much. There is mercy and there is justice in God ; to the just He dispenses justice and to sinners mercy. In the soul of
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