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1BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE xiii no evidences of further knowledge ; and, lastly, I think that they materially assist us to understand why there are retractations, qualifications, and subterfuges in the said later works. Having gone too far, he naturally attempted to go back, and just as he strove to patch up a species of modus vivendi with the church of his childhood, so he endeavoured, by throwing dust in the eyes of his readers, to make his peace with that initiation, the first law of which he had indubitably violated. In both cases, and quite naturally, he failed. It remains for me to state what I feel personally to be the chief limitation of LeVi, namely, that he was a transcendentalist but not a mystic, and, indeed, he was scarcely a transcendentalist in the accepted sense, for he was fundamentally a materialist — a materialist, moreover, who at times approached perilously towards atheism, as when he states that God is a hypothesis which is "very probably necessary " ; he was, moreover, a disbeliever in any real communication with the world of spirits. He defines mysticism as the shadow and the buffer of intellectual light, and loses no opportunity to enlarge upon its false illuminism, its excesses, and fatuities. There is, therefore, no way from man to God in his system, while the sole avenues of influx from God to man are sacramentally, and in virtue merely of a tolerable hypothesis. Thus man must remain in simple intellectualism if he would rest in reason ; the sphere of material experience is that of his knowledge ; and as to all beyond it, there are only the presumptions of analogy. I submit that this is not the doctrine of occult science, nor the summum "bonum of the greater initiation ; that transcendental pneumatology is more by its own; hypothesis than an alphabetical system argued kabbalistically ; and that more than mere memories can on the same assumption be evoked in the astral light. The hierarchic order of the visible world has its complement in the invisible hierarchy, which analogy leads us to discern, being at the same time a process of our perception rather than a rigid law governing the modes of manifestation in all things seen
2XIV BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE and unseen ; initiation takes us to the bottom step of the ladder of the invisible hierarchy and instructs us in the principles of ascent, but the ascent rests personally with ourselves; the voices of some who have preceded can be heard above us, but they are of those who are still upon the way, and they die as they rise into the silence, towards which we also must ascend alone, where initiation can no longer help us, unto that bourne from whence no traveller returns, and the influxes are sacramental only to those who are below. An annotated translation exceeded the scope of the present undertaking, but there is much in the text which follows that offers scope for detailed criticism, and there are points also where further elucidation would be useful. One of the most obvious defects, the result of mere carelessness or undue haste in writing, is the promise to explain or to prove given points later on, which are forgotten subsequently by the author. Instances will be found on p. 65, concerning the method of determining the appearance of unborn children by means of the pentagram ; on p. 83, concerning the rules for the recognition of sex in the astral body; on p. 9*7, concerning the notary art ; on p. 100, concerning the magical side of the Exercises of St Ignatius; on p. 123, concerning the alleged sorcery of Grandier and Girard ; on p. 125, concerning Schroepffer's secrets and formulas for evocation ; on p. 134, concerning the occult iconography of Gaffarel. In some cases the promised elucidations appear in other places than those indicated, but they are mostly wanting altogether. There are other perplexities with which the reader must deal according to his judgment. The explanation of the quadrature of the circle on p. 37 is a childish folly ; the illustration of perpetual motion on p. 55 involves a mechanical absurdity ; the doctrine of the perpetuation of the same physiognomies from generation to generation is not less absurd in heredity ; the cause assigned to cholera and other ravaging epidemics, more especially the reference to bacteria, seems equally outrageous in physics. There is one other matter to which attention should be directed ; the Hebrew
3BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE XV quotations in the original — and the observation applies generally to all the works of Le'vi — swarm with typographical and other errors, some of which it is impossible to correct, as, for example, the passage cited from Eabbi Abraham on p. 266. So also the Greek conjuration, pp. 277 and 278, is simply untranslatable as it stands, and the version given is not only highly conjectural, but omits an entire passage owing to insuperable difficulties. Lastly, after careful consideration, I have judged it the wiser course to leave out the preliminary essay which was prefixed to the second edition of the " Doctrine and Ritual " ; its prophetic utterances upon the mission of Napoleon III. have been stultified by subsequent events ; it is devoid of any connection with the work which it precedes, and, representing as it does the later views of Levi, it would be a source of confusion to the reader. The present translation represents, therefore, the first edition of the Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, omitting nothing but a few unimportant citations from old French grimoires in an unnecessary appendix at the end. The portrait of Le'vi is from a carte-de-visite in the possession of Mr Edward Maitland, and was issued with his " Life of Anna Kingsford," a few months ago. LONDON, September 1896. TABLE OF CONTENTS PACK BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE ...... v EXPLANATION OF THE FIGURES CONTAINED IN THIS WORK . xxi
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.
1BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE xiii no evidences of further knowledge ; and, lastly, I think that they materially assist us to understand why there are retractations, qualifications, and subterfuges in the said later works. Having gone too far, he naturally attempted to go back, and just as he strove to patch up a species of modus vivendi with the church of his childhood, so he endeavoured, by throwing dust in the eyes of his readers, to make his peace with that initiation, the first law of which he had indubitably violated. In both cases, and quite naturally, he failed. It remains for me to state what I feel personally to be the chief limitation of LeVi, namely, that he was a transcendentalist but not a mystic, and, indeed, he was scarcely a transcendentalist in the accepted sense, for he was fundamentally a materialist — a materialist, moreover, who at times approached perilously towards atheism, as when he states that God is a hypothesis which is "very probably necessary " ; he was, moreover, a disbeliever in any real communication with the world of spirits. He defines mysticism as the shadow and the buffer of intellectual light, and loses no opportunity to enlarge upon its false illuminism, its excesses, and fatuities. There is, therefore, no way from man to God in his system, while the sole avenues of influx from God to man are sacramentally, and in virtue merely of a tolerable hypothesis. Thus man must remain in simple intellectualism if he would rest in reason ; the sphere of material experience is that of his knowledge ; and as to all beyond it, there are only the presumptions of analogy. I submit that this is not the doctrine of occult science, nor the summum "bonum of the greater initiation ; that transcendental pneumatology is more by its own; hypothesis than an alphabetical system argued kabbalistically ; and that more than mere memories can on the same assumption be evoked in the astral light. The hierarchic order of the visible world has its complement in the invisible hierarchy, which analogy leads us to discern, being at the same time a process of our perception rather than a rigid law governing the modes of manifestation in all things seen
2XIV BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE and unseen ; initiation takes us to the bottom step of the ladder of the invisible hierarchy and instructs us in the principles of ascent, but the ascent rests personally with ourselves; the voices of some who have preceded can be heard above us, but they are of those who are still upon the way, and they die as they rise into the silence, towards which we also must ascend alone, where initiation can no longer help us, unto that bourne from whence no traveller returns, and the influxes are sacramental only to those who are below. An annotated translation exceeded the scope of the present undertaking, but there is much in the text which follows that offers scope for detailed criticism, and there are points also where further elucidation would be useful. One of the most obvious defects, the result of mere carelessness or undue haste in writing, is the promise to explain or to prove given points later on, which are forgotten subsequently by the author. Instances will be found on p. 65, concerning the method of determining the appearance of unborn children by means of the pentagram ; on p. 83, concerning the rules for the recognition of sex in the astral body; on p. 9*7, concerning the notary art ; on p. 100, concerning the magical side of the Exercises of St Ignatius; on p. 123, concerning the alleged sorcery of Grandier and Girard ; on p. 125, concerning Schroepffer's secrets and formulas for evocation ; on p. 134, concerning the occult iconography of Gaffarel. In some cases the promised elucidations appear in other places than those indicated, but they are mostly wanting altogether. There are other perplexities with which the reader must deal according to his judgment. The explanation of the quadrature of the circle on p. 37 is a childish folly ; the illustration of perpetual motion on p. 55 involves a mechanical absurdity ; the doctrine of the perpetuation of the same physiognomies from generation to generation is not less absurd in heredity ; the cause assigned to cholera and other ravaging epidemics, more especially the reference to bacteria, seems equally outrageous in physics. There is one other matter to which attention should be directed ; the Hebrew
3BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE XV quotations in the original — and the observation applies generally to all the works of Le'vi — swarm with typographical and other errors, some of which it is impossible to correct, as, for example, the passage cited from Eabbi Abraham on p. 266. So also the Greek conjuration, pp. 277 and 278, is simply untranslatable as it stands, and the version given is not only highly conjectural, but omits an entire passage owing to insuperable difficulties. Lastly, after careful consideration, I have judged it the wiser course to leave out the preliminary essay which was prefixed to the second edition of the " Doctrine and Ritual " ; its prophetic utterances upon the mission of Napoleon III. have been stultified by subsequent events ; it is devoid of any connection with the work which it precedes, and, representing as it does the later views of Levi, it would be a source of confusion to the reader. The present translation represents, therefore, the first edition of the Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, omitting nothing but a few unimportant citations from old French grimoires in an unnecessary appendix at the end. The portrait of Le'vi is from a carte-de-visite in the possession of Mr Edward Maitland, and was issued with his " Life of Anna Kingsford," a few months ago. LONDON, September 1896. TABLE OF CONTENTS PACK BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE ...... v EXPLANATION OF THE FIGURES CONTAINED IN THIS WORK . xxi
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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