Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi

p. 112terrestrial and elementary, the other aerial and sidereal, one already inert, the other still animated by the universal movement of the soul of the world, yet destined to die slowly, absorbed by the astral forces which produced it.

The terrestrial body is visible ; the other is unseen by the eyes of earthly and living bodies, nor can it be beheld except by the application of the astral light to the translucid, which conveys its impressions to the nervous system, and thus influences the organ of sight so as to make it perceive the forms which are preserved and the words which are written in the book of vital light.

When a man has lived well the astral body evaporates like a pure incense ascending towards the upper regions ; but should he have lived in sin, his astral body, which holds him prisoner, still seeks the objects of its passions, and wishes to return to life.

It torments the dreams of young girls, bathes in the steam of spilt blood, and floats about the places where the pleasures of its life elapsed ; it still watches over treasures which it possessed and buried; it expends itself in painful efforts to make fresh material organs and so live again. But the stars draw it up and absorb it ; its feels its intelligence weaken, its memory gradually vanishes, all its being dissolves. . . .

Its former vices rise up before it, assume monstrous shapes, and pursue it ; they attack and devour it. ... The unfortunate creature thus successively loses all the members which have ministered to his iniquities ; then he dies a second time and for ever, because he loses his personality and his memory.

Souls which are destined to live, but are not yet completely purified, remain captive for a longer or shorter period in the astral body, wherein they are burned by the odic light, which seeks to absorb and dissolve them. It is in order to escape from this body that suffering souls sometimes enter the bodies of the living and therein dwell in that state which Kabbalists term embryonic. Now, it is these aerial bodies which are evoked by necromancy. We enter into connection with larvae, with dead or perishing substances, 2p. 113by this operation. The beings in question, for the most part, cannot speak except by the tingling of our ears produced by the nervous shock to which I have referred, and commonly they can only reason by reflecting our thoughts and our reveries.

To behold these strange forms, we must put ourselves in abnormal condition akin to sleep or death, in other words, we must magnetise ourselves and enter into a kind of lucid and waking somnambulism. Then necromancy has real results, and then the evocations of magic can produce actual visions.

We have said that in the great magical agent, which is the astral light, there are preserved all impressions of things, all images formed either by rays or reflections ; in this same light our visions come to us, and it is this which intoxicates the insane, and leads away their dormant judgment in pursuit of the most bizarre phantoms.

To insure vision without illusion in this light, a powerful will must be with us to isolate reflections and attract rays only. To dream awake is to see in the astral light, and the orgies of the Sabbath, described by so many sorcerers in their criminal trials, came to them solely in this manner.

The preparations and the substances used to obtain this result were often horrible, as we shall see in the Ritual, but the result itself was never doubtful. They beheld, they heard, they handled the most abominable, most fantastic, most impossible things. We shall return to this subject in our fifteenth chapter ; at the present moment we are concerned only with the evocations of the dead.

In the spring of the year 1854 I had undertaken a rney to London, that I might escape from internal disquietude, and devote myself, without interruption, to science. I had letters of introduction to persons of eminence, who were anxious for revelations from the supernatural world. I made the acquaintance of several, and discovered in them, amidst much that was courteous, a depth of indifference or trifling.

They asked me forthwith to work wonders, as if I were a charlatan, and I was somewhat discouraged, for, to speak frankly, far from being inclined to initiate others into H 3p. 114the mysteries of ceremonial magic, I had myself shrunk all along from its illusions and weariness ; moreover, such ceremonies necessitated an equipment which would be expensive and hard to collect. I buried myself, therefore, in the study of the transcendent Kabbalah, and concerned myself no further with English adepts, when, returning one day to my hotel, I found a note awaiting me.

This note contained half of a card, divided transversely, on which I immediately recognised the seal of Solomon. It was accompanied by a small sheet of paper, on which these words were pencilled : — " To-morrow, at three o'clock, in front of Westminster Abbey, the second half of this card will be given you.". I kept this curious assignation.

At the appointed spot I found a carriage drawn up, and as I held unaffectedly the morsel of card in my hand, a footman approached, making a sign as he did so, and then opened the door of the equipage. It contained a lady in black, wearing a thick veil ; she motioned to me to take a seat beside her, shewing me at the same time the other half of the card.

The door closed, the carriage drove off, and, the lady raising her veil, I saw that my appointment was with an elderly person, with grey eyebrows and black eyes of unusual brilliance, and strangely fixed in expression.

" Sir," she began, with a strongly marked English accent, " I am aware that the law of secrecy is rigorous amongst adepts ; a friend of Sir B L , who has seen you, knows that you have been asked for phenomena, and that you have refused to gratify such curiosity. You are possibly without the materials ; I should like to shew you a complete magical cabinet, but I must exact beforehand the most inviolable silence.

If you will not give me this pledge upon your honour, I shall give orders for you to be driven to your home. I made the required promise, and faithfully keep it by divulging neither the name, position, nor abode of this lady, whom I soon recognised as an initiate, not exactly of the first order, but still of a most exalted grade. We had a number of long conversations, in the course of which she