Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi
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p. 50recovering its lofty and wonderful meaning, which would have unveiled to them all the mysteries of the apocalypse. But it is a tradition in the Church that the manifestation of these mysteries is held over to the last times.
Malchuth, based upon Geburah and Chesed, is the temple of Solomon having Jakin and Bohas for its pillars ; it is the adamic doctrine founded, for the one part, on the resignation of Abel and, for the other, on the labours and selfreproach of Cain ; it is the equilibrium of being established on necessity and liberty, stability and motion ; it is the demonstration of the universal lever sought in vain by Archimedes.
A scholar whose whole talents were employed in being obscure, who died without seeking to be understood, resolved this supreme equation, discovered by him in the Kabbalah, and was in dread of its source transpiring if he expressed himself more clearly.
We have seen one of his disciples and admirers most indignant, perhaps in good faith, at the suggestion that his master was a Kabbalist, but we can state notwithstanding, to the glory of the same learned man, that his researches have appreciably shortened our work in the occult sciences, and that the key of the transcendent Kabbalah above all, indicated in the arcane versicle recently cited, has been skilfully applied to an absolute reform of all the sciences in the books of Hoan^ Wronski.
The secret virtue of the gospels is therefore contained in three words, and these three words have established three dogmas and three hierarchies. All science reposes upon three principles, as the syllogism upon three terms. There are also three distinct classes, or three original and natural ranks, among men, who are called to advance from the lower to the higher.
The Jews term these three series or degrees in the progress of spirits, Asiah, Jetzirah, and Briah. The Gnostics, who were Christian Kabbalists, called them Hyle, Psyche, and Gnosis; by the Jews the supreme circle was named Atziluth, and by the Gnostics Pleroma. In the tetragram, the triad, taken at the beginning of the Word, expresses the divine copulation ;
THE TETRAGRAM 51 taken at the end, it expresses the female and maternity. Eve has a name of three letters, but the primitive Adam is signified simply by the letter Jod, whence Jehovah should be pronounced Jeva, and this point takes us to the great and supreme mystery of magic, embodied in the tetrad.
4 n D THE TETRAGEAM GEBURAH CHESED PORTA LIBRORUM ELEMENTA IN nature there are two forces producing equilibrium, and these three constitute a single law. Here, then, is the triad resumed in unity, and by adding the conception of unity to that of the triad we are brought to the tetrad, the first square and perfect number, the source of all numerical combinations and the principle of all forms. Affirmation, negation, discussion, solution, such are the four philosophical operations of the human mind. Discussion conciliates negation with affirmation by rendering them necessary to each other. In the same way, the philosophical triad, emanating from the antagonism of the duad, is completed by the tetrad, the four-square ground of all truth. According to the consecrated dogma, there are three persons in God, and these three constitute only one Deity. Three and one provide the conception of four, because unity is required to explain the three. Hence, in almost all languages, the name of God consists of four letters, and in Hebrew these four are really three, one of them being repeated twice, that which expresses the Word and the creation of the Word. Two affirmations make two corresponding denials either possible or necessary. Being is declared, nothing is not. The affirmation as Word produces affirmation as realisation p. 52or incarnation of the Word, and each of these affirmations corresponds to the denial of its opposite. Thus, in the opinion of the kabbalists, the name of the demon or of evil is composed of the same letters as the name of God or goodness, but spelt backwards. This evil is the last reflection or imperfect mirage of light in shadow.
But all which exists, whether of good or evil, in light or darkness, exists and manifests by the tetrad. The affirmation of unity supposes the number four, unless it turns in unity itself as in a vicious circle. So also the triad, as we have already observed, is explained by the duad and resolved by the tetrad, which is the squared unity of even numbers and the quadrangular base of the cube, unity of construction, of solidity, and of measure.
The kabbalistic tetragram, Jodheva, expresses God in humanity and humanity in God. The four astronomical cardinal points are, relatively to us, the yea and the nay of light — east and west — and the yea and nay of warmth — south and north.
As we have already said, according to the sole dogma of the Kabbalah, that which is in visible nature reveals that which is in the domain of invisible nature, or secondary causes are in strict proportion and analogous to the manifestations of the First Cause.
So is this First Cause invariably revealed by the cross — that unity made up of two, that key to the mysteries of India and Egypt, the Tau of the patriarchs, the divine sign of Osiris, the Stauros of the Gnostics, the keystone of the temple, the symbol of occult masonry ; the cross, central point of the junction of the right angles of two infinite triangles ; the cross, which in the French language seems to be the first root and fundamental substantive of the verb to believe and the verb to grow, thus combining the conceptions of science, religion, and progress.
The great magic agent manifests by four kinds of phenomena, and has been subjected to the experiments of profane science under four names — caloric, light, electricity, magnetism. It has also received the names of Tetragram, Inri,.
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