Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi
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p. 133first to look at those whom we have reason to fear, so as to escape unexpected fluidic projections and fascinating regards. There are certain animals which have the power of breaking the currents of astral light by an absorption peculiar to themselves. They are violently antipathetic to us, and possess a certain sorcery of the eye : the toad, the basilisk, and the tard are instances.
These animals, when tamed and carried alive on the person, or kept in occupied rooms, are a guarantee against the hallucinations and trickeries of ASTRAL INTOXICATION, a term we make use of here for the first time, one which explains all the phenomena of unbridled passions, mental exaltations, and folly. Tame toads and tards, my dear sir, the disciple of Voltaire will say to me; carry them about with you, and write no more.
To which I may answer, that I shall seriously think of doing so as soon as ever I feel tempted to laugh at anything I do not understand, and to treat those whose knowledge and wisdom I fail to understand, as fools or as madmen. Paracelsus, the greatest of the Christian magi, opposed bewitchment by the practices of a contrary bewitchment.
He composed sympathetic remedies, and applied them, not to the suffering members, but to representations of those members, formed and consecrated according to magical ceremonial. His successes were incredible, and never has any physician approached Paracelsus in his marvels of healing.
But Paracelsus had discovered magnetism long before Mesmer, and had carried to its final consequences this luminous discovery, or rather this initiation into the magic of the ancients, who better than us understood the great magical agent, and did not regard the astral light, azoth, the universal magnesia of the sages, as an animal and a special fluid emanating only from particular creatures.
In his occult philosophy, Paracelsus opposes ceremonial magic, the terrible power of which he certainly did not ignore, but he sought to decry its practices so as to discredit black magic. He locates the omnipotence of the magus in the p. 134interior and occult magnes, and the most skilful magnetisers of our own day could not express themselves better. At the same time he counselled the employment of magical symbols, talismans above all, in the cure of diseases. In our eighteenth chapter we shall have occasion to return to the talismans of Paracelsus, while following Gaffarel upon the great question of occult iconography and numismatics.
Bewitchment may also be cured by substitution, when that is possible, and by the rupture or deflection of the astral current. The rural traditions on all these points are admirable, and undoubtedly of remote antiquity ; they are remnants of the instruction of the Druids, who were initiated in the mysteries of Egypt and India by wandering hierophants.
Now, it is well known in vulgar magic that a bewitchment — that is, a will persistently confirmed in ill doing, invariably has its result, and cannot draw back without risk of death. The sorcerer who liberates any one from a charm must have another object for his malevolence, or it is certain that he himself will be smitten, and will perish as the victim of his own spells.
The astral movement being circular, every azotic or magnetic emission which does not encounter its medium returns with force to its point of departure, thus explaining one of the strangest histories in a sacred book, that of the demons sent into the swine, which thereupon cast themselves into the sea. This act of high initiation was nothing else but the rupture of a magnetic current infected by evil wills.
Our name is legion, for we are many, said the instinctive voice of the possessed sufferer. Possessions by the demon are bewitchments, and such cases are innumerable at the present day. A holy monk who has devoted himself to the service of the insane, Brother Hilarion Tissot, has succeeded, by long experience and incessant practice, in curing a number of patients, by unconsciously using the magnetism of Paracelsus.
He attributes most of his cases either to disorder of the will or to the perverse influence of external wills ; he regards all crimes as acts of madness, and would treat the wicked as diseased, p. 135instead of exasperating and making them incurable, under the pretence of punishing them. What space of time must still elapse ere poor Brother Hilarion Tissot shall be hailed as a man of genius !
And how many serious men, when they read this chapter, will say that Tissot and myself should treat one another according to our common ideas, but should refrain from publishing our theories, if we do not wish to be reckoned as physicians worthy of a hospital for incurables ! It revolves, notwithstanding, said Galileo, stamping his foot upon the earth. Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free, said the Saviour of men.
It might also be added : Ye shall love justice, and justice shall make you whole men. A vice is a poison, even for the body ; true virtue is a pledge of longevity. The method of ceremonial bewitchments varies with times and persons ; all subtle and domineering people find its secrets and its practice within themselves, without even actually calculating about them or reasoning on their sequence.
Herein they follow instinctive inspirations of the great agent, which, as we have already said, accommodates itself marvellously to our vices and our virtues; it may, however, be generally laid down that we are subjected to the wills of others by the analogies of our tendencies, and above all, of our faults.
To pamper the weaknesses of an individuality is to possess ourselves of that individuality and convert it into an instrument in the order of the same errors or depravities. Now, when two natures whose defects are analogous become subordinated one to another, the result is a sort of substitution of the stronger for the weaker, an actual obsession of one mind by the other.
Very often the weaker may struggle and seek to revolt, but it only falls deeper in servitude. So did Louis XIII. conspire against Richelieu, and subsequently, so to speak, sought his pardon by abandoning his accomplices. We have all a ruling defect, which is for our soul as the umbilical cord of its sinful birth, and it is by this the enemy can always seize us — for some vanity, for others idleness, for the majority egotism. Let a
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