Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi
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p. 71doubtedly contagious to breathe the same air as diseased persons, and to be within the circle of attraction and expansion which surrounds the wicked.
When the magnetic atmosphere of two persons is so equilibrated that the attractive faculty of one draws the expansive faculty of the other, a tendency is produced which is termed sympathy ; then imagination, calling up to it all the rays or reflections analogous to that which it experiences, makes a poem of the desires which captivate the will, and, if the persons differ in sex, it occasions in them, or more commonly in the weaker of the two, a complete intoxication of the astral light, which is termed passion par excellence, or love.
Love is one of the great instruments of magical power, but it is categorically forbidden to the magus, at least as an intoxication or passion. Woe to the Samson of the Kabbalah if he permit himself to be put asleep by Delilah !
The Hercules of science, who exchanges his royal sceptre for the distaff of Omphale, will soon experience the vengeance of Dejanira, and nothing will be left for him but the pyre of Mount (Eta*, in order to escape the devouring folds of the coat of Nessus. Sexual love is ever an illusion, for it is the result of an imaginary mirage. The astral light is the universal seducer, typified by the serpent of Genesis.
This subtle agent, ever active, ever abounding in sap, ever fruitful in alluring dreams and sensuous images ; this force, which by itself is blind and subordinated to every will, whether for good or evil ; this every renewing circulus of unbridled life, which produces vertigo in the imprudent ; this corporal spirit ; this fiery body ; this impalpable omnipresent ether; this monstrous seduction of nature — how shall we define it comprehensively and how characterise its action ?
To some extent indifferent in itself, it lends itself to good as to evil ; it transmits light and propagates darkness ; it may be called equally Lucifer and Lucifuge ; it is a serpent but it is also an aureole ; it is a fire, but it may belong equally to the torments of infernus, or to the sacrifice of incense offered up to heaven. To dispose of it, we
72 THE DOCTRINE OF TEANSCENDENT MAGIC must, like the predestined women, set our foot upon its head. In the elementary world water corresponds to the kabbalistic woman and fire to the serpent. To subdue the serpent, that is, to govern the circle of the astral light, we must place ourselves outside its currents, that is, we must isolate ourselves.
Tor this reason Apollonius of Tyana wrapped himself completely in a mantle of fine wool, setting his feet thereon and drawing it over his head. Then he bent his back in semi-circular fashion, and closed his eyes, after fulfilling certain rites, probably magnetic passes and sacramental words designed to fix the imagination and determine the action of the will.
The woollen mantle is of great use in magic, and was the common conveyance of sorcerers on their way to the Sabbath, which proves that the sorcerers did not really go to the Sabbath, but the Sabbath came to the sorcerers, when isolated in their mantle, and conducted to their translucid images analogous to their magical preoccupations, combined with reflections of all kindred acts previously accomplished in the world.
This torrent of universal life is also represented in religious doctrines by the expiatory fire of hell.
It is the instrument of initiation, the monster to be overcome, the enemy to subdue; it is this which brings to our evocations and to the conjurations of goe'tic magic such swarms of Iarva3 and phantoms ; therein are preserved all the forms which by their fantastic and fortuitous assemblage people our nightmares with such abominable deformities.
To allow ourselves to be sucked down by this whirling stream is to fall into the abysses of madness, more frightful than those of death ; to expel the darkness of this chaos and force it to give perfect forms to our thoughts — this is, to be a man of genius, it is to create, it is to be victorious over hell !
The astral light directs the instincts of animals and offers battle to the intelligence of man, which it strives to pervert by the enticements of its reflections, and the illusion of its images, a fatal and inevitable operation, directed and made still more p. 73calamitous by the elementary spirits and suffering souls, whose restless wills seek out sympathies in our weakness, and tempt us not so much to destroy us as to win friends for themselves. That book of consciences which, according to Christian doctrine, shall be opened at the last day, is no other than the astral light, which preserves the impress of every logos, that is to say, of all actions and all forms.
Our acts modify our magnetic respiration in such a way that a seer, meeting any person for the first time, can tell whether that person is innocent or criminal, and what are his virtues or his crimes. This faculty, which belongs to divination, was called by the Christian mystics of the early Church the discernment of spirits.
Those who abdicate the empire of reason and delight to let their wills wander in pursuit of the reflections in the astral light, are subject to alternations of mania and melancholy which have originated all the marvels of demoniacal possession, though it is true, at the same time, that by means of these reflections impure spirits can act upon similar souls, make ust of them as docile instruments, and even habitually torment their organism, wherein they enter and reside by obsession, or embryonically.
These kabbalistic terms are explained in the Hebrew book of the Eevolution of Souls, of which our thirteenth chapter will contain a succinct analysis. It is therefore extremely dangerous to make sport of the mysteries of magic ; it is, above all, excessively rash to practise its rites from curiosity, by experiment, and as if to exploit higher forces.
The inquisitive who, without being adepts, busy themselves with evocations or occult magnetism, are like children playing with fire in the neighbourhood of a cask of gunpowder ; sooner or later they will fall victims to some terrible explosion.
To be isolated from the astral light it is not enough to envelop one's self in a woollen fabric ; we must also, and above all, impose absolute tranquillity on mind and heart, we must have quitted the world of passions and be assured of
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