Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi
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p. 130also distinguished. Power attracts power, life attracts life, health attracts health; this is a law of nature. If two children live, above all, if they sleep together, and if one be weak while the other is strong, the strong will absorb the weak, and the latter will waste away. For this reason, it is important that children should always sleep alone.
In conventual seminaries certain pupils absorb the intelligence of the others, and in every given circle of men, an individual speedily appears who avails himself of the wills of the rest. Bewitchment by means of currents is exceedingly common, as we have already observed ; morally as well as physically, most of us are carried away by the crowd.
What, however, we have proposed to exhibit more especially in this chapter is the almost absolute power of the human will upon the determination of its acts and the influence of every outward demonstration upon outward things. Voluntary bewitchments are still frequent in our rural places because natural forces, among ignorant and isolated persons, operate without being diminished by any doubt or any diversion.
A frank, absolute hatred, unleavened by rejected passion or personal cupidity is, under certain given conditions, a death-sentence for its object. I say unmixed with amorous passion or cupidity, because a desire, being an attraction, counterbalances and annuls the power of projection.
For example, a jealous person will never efficaciously bewitch his rival, and a greedy heir will never by the mere fact of his will succeed in shortening the days of a miserly and long-lived uncle. Bewitchments attempted under such conditions reflect upon the operator and help rather than hurt their object, setting him free from a hostile action which destroys itself by excessive exaggeration.
The term enwâtement (bewitchment) so strong in its Gaelic simplicity, admirably expresses what it means, the act of enveloping some one, so to speak, in a formulated will. The instrument of bewitchments is the great magic agent which, under the influence of an evil will, becomes really and positively the demon. Witchcraft, properly so called, that is, p. 131ceremonial operation with intent to bewitch, acts only on the operator, and serves to fix and confirm his will, by formulating it with persistence and labour, the two conditions which make volition efficacious. The more difficult or horrible the operation, the greater is its power, because it acts more strongly on the imagination and confirms effort in direct ratio of resistance.
This explains the bizarre nature and even atrocious character of the operations in black magic, as practised by the ancients and in the middle ages, the diabolical masses, administration of sacraments to reptiles, effusions of blood, human sacrifices, and other monstrosities, which are the very essence and reality of goetia or nigromancy. Such are the practices which from all time have brought down upon sorcerers the just repression of the laws.
Black magic is really only a graduated combination of sacrileges and murders designed for the permanent perversion of a human will and for the realisation in a living man of the hideous phantom of the demon. It is, therefore, properly speaking, the religion of the devil, the cultus of darkness, hatred of good carried to the height of paroxysm ; it is the incarnation of death, and the persistent creation of hell.
The Kabbalist Bodin, who has been erroneously considered of a feeble and superstitious mind, had no other motive in writing his Demonomania than that of warning people against dangerous incredulity. Initiated by the study f the Kabbalah into the true secrets of magic, he trembled ,t the danger to which society was exposed by the abandonment of this power to the wickedness of men. Hence he attempted what at the present time M.
Eudes de Mirville is attempting amongst ourselves ; he gathered facts without interpreting them, and affirmed in the face of inattentive or pre-occupied science the existence of the occult influences and criminal operations of evil magic. In his own day Bodin received no more attention than will be given to M. Eudes de Mirville, because it is not enough to indicate phenomena and to prejudge their cause if we would influp. 132ence earnest men ; we must study, explain, and demonstrate such cause, and this is precisely what we are ourselves attempting. Will better success crown our own efforts ? It is possible to die through the love of certain people as by their hate ; there are absorbing passions, under the breath of which we feel ourselves depleted like the spouses of vampires.
Not only do the wicked torment the good, but unconsciously the good torture the wicked. The gentleness of Abel was a long and painful bewitchment for the ferocity of Cain. Among evil men, the hatred of good originates in the very instinct of self-preservation ; moreover, they deny that what torments them is good, and, for their own peace, are driven to deify and justify evil.
In the sight of Cain, Abel was a hypocrite and coward, who abused the pride of humanity by his scandalous submissions to divinity. How much must this first murderer have endured before making such a frightful attack upon his brother ? Had Abel understood, he would have been afraid. Antipathy is the presentiment of a possible bewitchment, either of love or hatred, for we find love frequently succeeding repulsion.
The astral light warns us of coming influences by its action on the more or less sensible, more or less active, nervous system. Instantaneous sympathies, electric loves, are explosions of the astral light, which are as exactly and mathematically demonstrable as the discharge of strong magnetic batteries.
Thereby we may see what unexpected dangers threaten an uninitiated person who is perpetually fooling with fire in the neighbourhood of invisible powder-mines. We are saturated with the astral light, and we project it unceasingly to make room for and to attract fresh supplies. The nervous instruments, which are specially designed either for attraction or projection, are the eyes and hands.
The polarity of the hands is resident in the thumb, and hence, according to the magical tradition which still lingers in rural places, whenever anyone is in suspicious company, he should keep the thumb doubled up and hidden in the hand, and while in the main avoiding a fixed glance at any one, still being the
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