Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi

THE TETRAGRAM 53 Azoth, Ether, Od, Magnetic Fluid, Soul of the Earth, Lucifer, &c. The great magic agent is the fourth emanation of the life-principle, of which the sun is the third form — see the initiates of the school of Alexandria and the dogma of Hermes Trismegistus.

In this way the eye of the world, as the ancients called it, is the mirage of the reflection of God, and the soul of the earth is a permanent glance of the sun which the earth conceives and guards by impregnation. The moon concurs in this impregnation of the earth by reflecting a solar image during the night, so that Hermes was right when he said of the great agent : " The sun is its father, the moon its mother.

Then he adds : " The wind has borne it in the belly thereof," because the atmosphere is the recipient, and, as it were, the crucible of the solar rays, by means of which there forms that living image of the sun which penetrates the whole earth, fructifies it, and determines all that is produced at its surface by its emanations and permanent currents, analogous to those of the sun itself.

This solar agent subsists by two contrary forces — one of attraction and one of projection, whence Hermes says that it ascends and descends eternally. The force of attraction is always fixed at the centre of bodies, that of projection in their outlines or at their surface. By this dual force all is created and all preserved.

Its motion is a rolling up and an unrolling which is successive and indefinite, or, rather, simultaneous and perpetual, by spirals of opposite movements which never meet. It is the same movement as that of the sun, which attracts and repels at once all the planets of its system.

To be acquainted with the movement of this terrestrial sun in such a manner as to be able to take advantage of its currents and direct them, is to have accomplished the great work and to be master of the world. Armed with such a force you may make yourself adored; the crowd will believe you are God. The absolute secret of this direction has been in the possession of certain men, and can yet be discovered.

It is the great magical arcanum, depending on an incommunicable axiom and on an instrument which is the great and unique

p. 54

THE DOCTRINE OF TRANSCENDENT MAGIC

athanor of the highest grade of Hermetists. The incommunicable axiom is kabbalistically enclosed in the four letters of the tetragram arranged in the following manner : — in the letters of the words AZOTH and INEl written kabbalistically ; and in the monogram of Christ as embroidered on the labarum, which the Kabbalist Postel interprets by the word EOTA, whence the adepts have formed their Taro or Tarot, by the repetition of the first letter, thus indicating the circle, and suggesting that the word is put backwards. All magical science is comprised in the knowledge of this secret. To know it and have the courage to use it is human omnipotence ; to reveal it to a profane person is to lose it ; to reveal it even to a disciple is to abdicate in favour of that disciple, who, henceforward, possesses the right of life and death over his master — I am speaking from the magical standpoint — and will certainly slay him for fear of dying himself. But this has nothing in common with deeds qualified as murder in criminal legislation ; the practical philosophy which is the basis and point of departure for our laws does not recognise the facts of bewitchment and of occult influences. We touch here upon extraordinary revelations, and are prepared

THE TETRACRAM 55 for the unbelief and derision of incredulous fanaticism ; voltairean religion has also its fanatics, pace the great shades who must now be lurking sullenly in the vaults of the Pantheon, while Catholicism, strong ever in its practices and prestige, chants the office overhead.

The perfect word, that which is adequate to the thought which it expresses, always virtually contains or supposes a tetrad: the idea, with its three necessary and correlated forms, then the image of the thing expressed, with the three terms of the judgment which qualifies it. When I say : " Being exists," I affirm implicitly that the void is nonexistent.

A height, a breadth which the height sub-divides longitudinally, a depth separated from the height by the intersection of the breadth, such is the natural tetrad composed of two lines at right angles one to another. Nature also has four motions produced by two forces which sustain each other by their tendency in an opposite direction.

Now, the law which rules bodies is analogous to that which governs minds, and that which governs minds is the very manifestation of God's secret — that is to say, of the mystery of the creation. Imagine a watch having two parallel springs, with an engagement which makes them work in an opposite direction so that the one in unwinding winds up the other. In this way, the watch will wind up itself, and you will have discovered perpetual motion.

The engagement should be at two ends and of extreme accuracy. Is this beyond attainment ? We think not. But when it is found out the inventor will understand by analogy all the secrets of nature — progress in direct proportion to the resistance. The absolute movement of life is thus the perpetual consequence of two contrary tendencies which are never opposed.

When one seems to yield to the other, it is a spring which is winding up, and you may expect a reaction, the moment and characteristics of which it is quite possible to foresee and determine. Hence at the period of the most extreme Christian fervour was the reign of ANTICHRIST known and predicted. But Antichrist will prepare and determine the