Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi
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THE UNIV THE UNIVERSAL MEDICINE 159 Must we deny evidence or renounce reason ? It e absurd to say so. We should simply infer that wrong in supposing resurrection to be impossible. ad posse valet consecutio. is now make bold to affirm that resurrection is posid occurs oftener than might be thought.
Many whose deaths have been legally and scientifically ,y of ouria. have been subsequently found in their coffins dead ;es, accor(d:'but having evidently come to life and having bitten on of thy i their clenched hands so as to open the arteries and ibandon from their horrible agonies. A doctor would tell us store foryich persons were in a lethargy, and not dead. But cally an<ps lethargy ?
It is the name which we give to an unof prid( <ited death, a death which is falsified by return to life, •ide tha^gjasy by words to escape from a difficulty when it is 3?ran(esible to explain facts. The soul is joined to the body er .partisans of sensibility, and when sensibility ceases it is a of rag^hign that the soul is departing. The magnetic sleep is 3ved b targy or factitious death which is curable at will.
The evere sation or torpor produced by chloroform is a real lethargy •ariestei ends sometimes in absolute death, when the soul, ebru1 ied by its temporary liberation, makes an effort of will to a tetfieae free altogether, which is possible for those who have •ock^ tiered hell, that is to say, whose moral strength is to that of astral attraction.
Hence resurrection is ie g.'e. .ble only for elementary souls, and it is these above all „ \id run the risk of involuntary revival in the tomb. Great (:esl: and true sages are never buried alive.
The theory and k 'hetice of resurrection will be given in our Ritual ; to those, )rolnwhile, who may ask me whether I have raised the dead, in(ipir)uld say that if I replied in the affirmative they would ^ ittt believe me. a^andt now remains for us to examine whether the abolition 0 ingpain is possible, and whether it is wholesome to employ in oroform or magnetism for surgical operations.
We think, Md science will acknowledge it later on, that by diminishing ,; musibility we diminish life, and what we subtract from pain p. 160under such circumstances turns to the profit of death. Pain bears witness to the struggle for life, and hence we observe that the dressing of the wound is excessively painful in the case of persons who are operated on under anasthetics. Now, if chloroform were resorted to at each dressing, one of two things would happen — either the patient would die, or the pain would return and continue between the dressings. Nature is not violated with impunity.
21 & X DIVINATION DENTES FURCA AMENS THE author of this book has dared many things in his life, and never has any fear retained his thought a prisoner. It is not at the same time without legitimate dread that he approaches the end of the magical doctrine. It is a question now of revealing, or rather reveiling, the Great Secret, the terrible secret, the secret of life and death, expressed in the Bible by those formidable and symbolical words of the serpent, who was himself symbolical : I. NEQUAQUAM MORIEMINI ; II. SED ERITIS ; III. SICUT Dn ; IV. SCIENTES BONUM ET MALUM. One of the privileges which belong to the initiate of the Great Arcanum, and that which sums them all, is Divination. According to the vulgar comprehension of the term, to divine signifies to conjecture what is unknown, but its true sense is ineffable to the point of sublimity. To divine (divinari) is to exercise divinity. The word divinus, in Latin, signifies something far different from divus, which is equivalent to the mangod. Devin, in French, contains the four letters of the word DiEU
DIVINATION 161 (God), plus the letter N, which corresponds in its form to the Hebrew alepJi N, and kabbalistically and hieroglyphically expresses the Great Arcanum, of which the Tarot symbol is the figure of the Juggler.
Whosoever understands perfectly the absolute numeral value of N multiplied by N final in words which signify science, art, or force, who subsequently adds the five letters of the word DEVIN, in such a way as to make five go into four, four into three, three into two, and two into one, such a person, by translating the resultant number into primitive Hebrew characters, will write the occult name of the Great Arcanum, and will possess a word of which the sacred Tetragram itself is only the equivalent and the image.
To be a diviner, according to the force of the term, is hence to be divine, and something more mysterious still. Now, the two signs of human divinity, or of divine humanity, are prophecies and miracles. To be a prophet is to see beforehand the effects which exist in causes, to read in the astral light ; to work miracles is to act upon the universal agent, and subject it to our will.
The author of this book will be asked whether he is a prophet and thaumaturge. Let inquirers recur to all that he wrote before certain events took place in the world ; and as to anything else that he may have said or done, would anyone believe his mere word if he made any unusual statement? Furthermore, one of the essential conditions of divination is to be never constrained, never suffer temptation — in other words, being put to the test.
Never have the masters of science yielded to the curiosity of anyone. The sibyls burned their books when Tarquin refused to appraise them at their proper value ; the great Master was silent when He was asked for a sign of His divine mission ; Agrippa perished of want rather than obey those who demanded a horoscope.
To furnish proofs of science to those who suspect the very existence of the science is to initiate the unworthy, to profane the gold of the sanctuary, to deserve the excommunication of sages, and the fate of betrayers. L
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