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1X BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE Inri, and Tetragrammaton, which are the vestures of the occult philosopher, are like the " cloth of Bruges and hogsheads of Guienne, Florence gold cloth, and Ypres napery " of the poet. In both cases it is the year 1850 ct seq., in a mask of high fantasy. Moreover, " the idle singer of an empty day " is paralleled fairly enough by " the poor and obscure scholar who has recovered the lever of Archimedes. The comparison is intentionally grotesque, but it obtains notwithstanding, and even admits of development, for as Mr Morris in a sense voided the raison d'etre of his poetry, and, in express contradiction to his own mournful question, has endeavoured to " set the crooked straight " by betaking himself to Socialism, so filiphas LeVi surrendered the rod of miracles and voided his Doctrine of Magic by devising a one-sided and insincere concordat with orthodox religion, and expiring in the arms of " my venerable masters in theology," the descendants, and decadent at that, of the " imbecile theologians of the middle ages. But the one is, as the other was, a man of sufficient ability to make a paradoxical defence of a position which remains untenable. Students of ICliphas LeVi will be acquainted with the qualifications and stealthy retractations by which the somewhat uncompromising position of initiated superiority in the " Doctrine and Eitual," had its real significance read out of it by the later works of the magus. I have dealt with this point exhaustively in another place,* and there is no call to pass over the same ground a second time. I propose rather to indicate as briefly as possible some new considerations which will help us to understand why there were grave discrepancies between the " Doctrine and Ritual of Transcendent Magic" and the volumes which followed these. In the first place, the earlier books were written more expressly from the standpoint of initiation, and in the language thereof ; they obviously contain much which it would be mere folly to construe after a literal fashion, and * See the Critical Essay prefixed to " The Mysteries of Magic : a Digest of the Writings of Eliphas Levi. London : George Redway. 1886.
2BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE XI what filiphas LeVi wrote at a later period is not so much discrepant with his earlier instruction — though it is this also — as the qualifications placed by a modern transcendentalist on the technical exaggerations of the secret sciences. For the proof we need travel no further than the introduction to " The Doctrine of Magic," and to the Hebrew manuscript cited therein, as to the powers and privileges of the magus. Here the literal interpretation would be insanity ; these claims conceal a secret meaning, and are trickery in their verbal sense. They are what filiphas LeVi himself terms "hyperbolic," adding: "If the sage do not materially and actually perform these things, he accomplishes others which are much greater and more admirable" (p. 223). But this consideration is not in itself sufficient to take account of the issues that are involved ; it will not explain, for example, why filiphas Levi, who consistently teaches in the " Doctrine and Ritual " that the dogmas of so-called revealed religion are nurse-tales for children, should subsequently have insisted on their acceptation in the sense of the orthodox Church by the grown men of science, and it becomes necessary here to touch upon a matter which, by its nature, and obviously, does not admit of complete elucidation. The precise period of study which produced the " Doctrine and Eitual of Transcendent Magic" as its first literary result is not indicated with any certainty, as we have seen, in the life of the author, nor do I regard filiphas LeVi as constitutionally capable of profound or extensive book study. Intensely suggestive, he is at the same time without much evidence of depth ; splendid in generalisation, he is without accuracy in detail, and it would be difficult to cite a worse guide over mere matters of fact. His "History of Magic" is a case in point ; as a philosophical survey it is admirable, and there is nothing in occult literature to approach it for literary excellence, but it swarms with historical inaccuracies ; it is in all respects an accomplished and in no way an erudite performance, nor do I think that the writer much concerned himself with any real reading of the b
3Xll BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE authorities whom he cites. The French verb parcourir represents his method of study, and not the verb approfondir. Let us take one typical case. There is no occult writer whom he cites with more satisfaction, and towards whom he exhibits more reverence, than William Postel, and of all Postel's books there is none which he mentions so often as the Clavis Absconditorum a Constitutione Mundi ; yet he had read this minute treatise so carelessly that he missed a vital point concerning it, and apparently died unaware that the symbolic key prefixed to it was the work of the editor and not the work of Postel. It does not therefore seem unreasonable to affirm that had LeVi been left to himself, he would not have got far in occult science, because his Gallic vivacity would have been blunted too quickly by the horrors of mere research ; but he did somehow fall within a circle of initiation which curtailed the necessity for such research, and put him in the right path, making visits to the Bibliotheque Rationale and the Arsenal of only subsidiary importance. This, therefore, constitutes the importance of the " Doctrine and Eitual " ; disguised indubitably, it is still the voice of initiation ; of what school does not matter, for in this connection nothing can be spoken plainly, and I can ask only the lenience of deferred judgment from my readers for my honourable assurance that I am not speaking idly. The grades of that initiation had been only partly ascended by filiphas Levi when he published the " Doctrine and Ritual," and its publication closed the path of his progress : as he was expelled by Saint Sulpice for the exercise of private judgment in matters of doctrinal belief, so he was expelled by his occult chiefs for the undue exercise of personal discretion in the matter of the revelation of the mysteries. Now, these facts explain in the first place the importance, as I have said, of the " Doctrine and Eitual," because it represents a knowledge which cannot be derived from books ; they explain, secondly, the shortcomings of that work, because it is not the result of a full knowledge ; why, thirdly, the later writings contain
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1X BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE Inri, and Tetragrammaton, which are the vestures of the occult philosopher, are like the " cloth of Bruges and hogsheads of Guienne, Florence gold cloth, and Ypres napery " of the poet. In both cases it is the year 1850 ct seq., in a mask of high fantasy. Moreover, " the idle singer of an empty day " is paralleled fairly enough by " the poor and obscure scholar who has recovered the lever of Archimedes. The comparison is intentionally grotesque, but it obtains notwithstanding, and even admits of development, for as Mr Morris in a sense voided the raison d'etre of his poetry, and, in express contradiction to his own mournful question, has endeavoured to " set the crooked straight " by betaking himself to Socialism, so filiphas LeVi surrendered the rod of miracles and voided his Doctrine of Magic by devising a one-sided and insincere concordat with orthodox religion, and expiring in the arms of " my venerable masters in theology," the descendants, and decadent at that, of the " imbecile theologians of the middle ages. But the one is, as the other was, a man of sufficient ability to make a paradoxical defence of a position which remains untenable. Students of ICliphas LeVi will be acquainted with the qualifications and stealthy retractations by which the somewhat uncompromising position of initiated superiority in the " Doctrine and Eitual," had its real significance read out of it by the later works of the magus. I have dealt with this point exhaustively in another place,* and there is no call to pass over the same ground a second time. I propose rather to indicate as briefly as possible some new considerations which will help us to understand why there were grave discrepancies between the " Doctrine and Ritual of Transcendent Magic" and the volumes which followed these. In the first place, the earlier books were written more expressly from the standpoint of initiation, and in the language thereof ; they obviously contain much which it would be mere folly to construe after a literal fashion, and * See the Critical Essay prefixed to " The Mysteries of Magic : a Digest of the Writings of Eliphas Levi. London : George Redway. 1886.
2BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE XI what filiphas LeVi wrote at a later period is not so much discrepant with his earlier instruction — though it is this also — as the qualifications placed by a modern transcendentalist on the technical exaggerations of the secret sciences. For the proof we need travel no further than the introduction to " The Doctrine of Magic," and to the Hebrew manuscript cited therein, as to the powers and privileges of the magus. Here the literal interpretation would be insanity ; these claims conceal a secret meaning, and are trickery in their verbal sense. They are what filiphas LeVi himself terms "hyperbolic," adding: "If the sage do not materially and actually perform these things, he accomplishes others which are much greater and more admirable" (p. 223). But this consideration is not in itself sufficient to take account of the issues that are involved ; it will not explain, for example, why filiphas Levi, who consistently teaches in the " Doctrine and Ritual " that the dogmas of so-called revealed religion are nurse-tales for children, should subsequently have insisted on their acceptation in the sense of the orthodox Church by the grown men of science, and it becomes necessary here to touch upon a matter which, by its nature, and obviously, does not admit of complete elucidation. The precise period of study which produced the " Doctrine and Eitual of Transcendent Magic" as its first literary result is not indicated with any certainty, as we have seen, in the life of the author, nor do I regard filiphas LeVi as constitutionally capable of profound or extensive book study. Intensely suggestive, he is at the same time without much evidence of depth ; splendid in generalisation, he is without accuracy in detail, and it would be difficult to cite a worse guide over mere matters of fact. His "History of Magic" is a case in point ; as a philosophical survey it is admirable, and there is nothing in occult literature to approach it for literary excellence, but it swarms with historical inaccuracies ; it is in all respects an accomplished and in no way an erudite performance, nor do I think that the writer much concerned himself with any real reading of the b
3Xll BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE authorities whom he cites. The French verb parcourir represents his method of study, and not the verb approfondir. Let us take one typical case. There is no occult writer whom he cites with more satisfaction, and towards whom he exhibits more reverence, than William Postel, and of all Postel's books there is none which he mentions so often as the Clavis Absconditorum a Constitutione Mundi ; yet he had read this minute treatise so carelessly that he missed a vital point concerning it, and apparently died unaware that the symbolic key prefixed to it was the work of the editor and not the work of Postel. It does not therefore seem unreasonable to affirm that had LeVi been left to himself, he would not have got far in occult science, because his Gallic vivacity would have been blunted too quickly by the horrors of mere research ; but he did somehow fall within a circle of initiation which curtailed the necessity for such research, and put him in the right path, making visits to the Bibliotheque Rationale and the Arsenal of only subsidiary importance. This, therefore, constitutes the importance of the " Doctrine and Eitual " ; disguised indubitably, it is still the voice of initiation ; of what school does not matter, for in this connection nothing can be spoken plainly, and I can ask only the lenience of deferred judgment from my readers for my honourable assurance that I am not speaking idly. The grades of that initiation had been only partly ascended by filiphas Levi when he published the " Doctrine and Ritual," and its publication closed the path of his progress : as he was expelled by Saint Sulpice for the exercise of private judgment in matters of doctrinal belief, so he was expelled by his occult chiefs for the undue exercise of personal discretion in the matter of the revelation of the mysteries. Now, these facts explain in the first place the importance, as I have said, of the " Doctrine and Eitual," because it represents a knowledge which cannot be derived from books ; they explain, secondly, the shortcomings of that work, because it is not the result of a full knowledge ; why, thirdly, the later writings contain
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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