Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi
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p. 80sion of God by increasing to infinity the idea which he forms of himself. When realising God as the infinite man, man says unto himself : I am the finite God.
Magic differs from mysticism because it judges nothing & priori until after it has established CL posteriori the base itself of its judgments, that is to say, after having understood the cause by the effects contained in the very energy of the cause, by means of the universal law of analogy. Hence in the occult sciences all is real, and theories are established only on the foundations of experience.
Eealities alone constitute the proportions of the ideal, and the magus admits nothing as certain in the domain of ideas save that which is demonstrated by realisation. In other words, what is true in the cause manifests in the effect. What is not realised does not exist. The realisation of speech is the logos properly so called.
A thought realises itself in becoming speech ; it realises itself also by signs, sounds, and representations of signs : this is the first degree of realisation.
Then it is imprinted on the astral light by means of the signs of writing or speech ; it influences other minds by reflection upon them ; it is refracted by crossing the diaphane of other men ; it assumes new forms and proportions ; it is then translated into acts and modifies the world : this is the last degree of realisation.
Men who are born into a world modified by an idea bear away with them the impression thereof, and it is thus that the word is made flesh. The impression of the disobedience of Adam, preserved in the astral light, could only be effaced by the stronger impression of the obedience of the Saviour, and thus the original sin and redemption of the world can be explained in a natural and magical sense.
The astral light, or soul of the world, was the instrument of Adam's omnipotence ; it became afterwards the instrument of his punishment, being corrupted and troubled by his sin, which intermingled an impure reflection with those primitive images which composed the book of universal science for his still virgin imagination. The astral light, depicted in ancient symbols by the p. 81serpent devouring his tail, represents alternately malice and prudence, time and eternity, tempter and Redeemer ; for this light, being the vehicle of life, is an auxiliary alike of good and evil, and may be taken for the fiery form of Satan as for the body of the Holy Ghost. It is the instrument of warfare in angelic battles, and indifferently feeds the flames of hell and the lightnings of St Michael.
It may be compared to a horse having a nature analogous to the chameleon, and ever reflecting the armour of his rider. The astral light is the realisation or form of the intellectual light, as the latter is the realisation or form of the divine light.
The great initiator of Christianity, divining that the astral light was overcharged with the impure reflections of Roman debauchery, sought to separate his disciples from the ambient sphere of reflections, and to make them attentive only to the interior light, so that, through the medium of a common faith and enthusiasm, they might communicate together by new magnetic chains, which he termed grace, and thus overcome the dissolute currents, to which he gave the names of the devil and Satan, signifying their putrefaction.
To oppose current to current is to renew the power of fluidic life. The revealers have, therefore, scarcely done more than divine, by the accuracy of their calculations, the appropriate moment for moral reactions.
The law of realisation produces what we call magnetic breathing ; places and objects become impregnated therewith, and this communicates to them an influence in conformity with our dominant desires, with those, above all, which are confirmed and realised by acts.
As a fact, the universal agent, or latent astral light, ever seeks equilibrium ; it fills the void and sucks up the plenitude, which makes vice contagious, like certain physical maladies, and works powerfully in the proselytism of virtue. Hence it is that cohabitation with antipathetic beings is a torment ; hence it is that relics, whether of saints or of great criminals, produce the extraordinary results of sudden conversion and F p. 82perversion ; hence it is that sexual love is often awakened by a breath or a touch, and this, not only by means of the contact of the person himself, but of objects which he has unconsciously touched or magnetised. There is an outbreathing and inbreathing of the soul, exactly like that of the body.
It breathes in the felicity which it believes, and it breathes forth ideas which result from its inner sensations. Diseased souls have an evil breath, and vitiate their moral atmosphere — that is, they combine impure reflections with the astral light which permeates them, and establish unwholesome currents therein.
We are often invaded, to our astonishment, in society by evil thoughts which would have seemed impossible, and are not aware that they are due to some morbid proximity. This secret is of high importance, for it leads to the opening of consciences, one of the most incontestible and terrible powers of magical art.
Magnetic respiration produces about the soul a radiation of which it is the centre, and surrounds it with the reflection of its works, creating for it a heaven or a hell. There are no isolated acts, and it is impossible that there should be secret acts; whatsoever we truly will — that is, everything which we confirm by our acts — remains registered in the astral light, where our reflections are preserved.
These reflections continually influence our thought by the mediation of the diaphane, and it is in this sense that we become and remain the children of our works. The astral light, transformed at the moment of conception into human light, is the soul's first envelope, and, in combination with extremely subtle fluids, it forms the ethereal body or sidereal phantom, of which Paracelsus discourses in his philosophy of intuition — philosophia sagax.
This sidereal body, setting itself free at death, attracts, and for a long time preserves, through the sympathy of things homogeneous, the reflections of the past life; if drawn along a special current by a will which is powerfully sympathetic, it manifests naturally, for there is nothing more natural than
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