Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi
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SUMMARY AND KEY OF THE FOUR SECRET SCIENCES 169 the occult sciences. Readers of my book must already understand it philosophically if they are at all familiar with the symbolism of the Kabbalah. It remains for us now to realise what is the second and more important operation of the great work. It is something undoubtedly to find the philosophical stone, but how is it to be ground into the powder of projection ?
What are the uses of the magical rod ? What is the real power of the divine names in the Kabbalah ? The initiates know, and those who are deserving of initiation will know in turn if they discover the great arcanum by means of the very numerous and precise indications which we have given them. Why are these simple and pure truths for ever and of necessity concealed ?
Because the elect of the understanding are always few on earth, and are encompassed by the foolish and wicked like Daniel in the den of lions. Moreover, analogy instructs us in the laws of the hierarchy, and absolute science, being an omnipotence, must be the exclusive possession of the most worthy.
The confusion of the hierarchy is the actual destruction of societies, for then the blind become leaders of the blind, according to the word of the Master. Give back initiation to priests and kings and order will come forth anew.
So, in my appeal to the most worthy, and in exposing myself to all the dangers and anathemas which threaten revealers, I believe myself to have done a great and useful thing, directing the breath of God living in humanity upon the social chaos, and creating priests and kings for the world to come. A thing is not just because God wills it, but God wills it because it is just, said the angel of the schools.
It is as if he said : The absolute is reason. Reason is self -existent ; it is because it is, and not because we suppose it ; it is or nothing is ; could you wish anything to exist without reason ? Madness itself does not occur without it. Reason is necessity, is law, is the rule of all liberty and the direction of all initiative. If God exists, it is by reason. The conception of an absolute God outside or independent of reason p. 170is the idol of black magic and the phantom of the fiend. The demon is death masquerading in the cast-off garments of life, the spectre of Hirrenkesept throned upon the rubbish of ruined civilisations, and concealing a loathsome nakedness by the rejected salvage of the incarnations of Vishnu.
HERE ENDS THE DOCTRINE OF TRANSCENDENT MAGIC.
THE EITUAL OF TRANSCENDENT MAGIC
INTRODUCTION KNOWEST thou that old queen of the world who is on the march always and wearies never ? Every uncurbed passion, every selfish pleasure, every licentious energy of humanity, and all its tyrannous weakness, go before the sordid mistress of our tearful valley, and, scythe in hand, these indefatigable labourers reap their eternal harvest.
That queen is old as time, but her skeleton is concealed in the wreckage of women's beauty, which she abstracts from their youth and their love. Her skull is adorned with dead tresses that are not her own. Spoliator of crowned heads, she is embellished with the plunder of queens, from the star-begemmed hair of Berenice to that, white without age, which the executioner sheared from the brow of Marie Antoinette.
Her livid and frozen body is clothed in polluted garments and tattered winding-sheets. Her bony hands, covered with rings, hold diadems and chains, sceptres and crossbones, jewels and ashes.
When she goes by, doors open of themselves; she passes through walls; she penetrates to the cabinets of kings ; she surprises the extortioners of the poor in their most secret orgies ; she sits down at their board, pours out their wine, grins at their songs with her gumless teeth, takes the place of the lecherous courtesan hidden behind their curtains.
She delights in the vicinity of sleeping voluptuaries ; she seeks their caresses as if she hoped to grow warm in their embrace, but she freezes all those whom she touches and herself never kindles. At times, notwithstanding, one would think her seized with frenzy ; she no longer stalks slowly ; she runs ; if her feet are too slow, she spurs a pale horse, and charges all breathless through multitudes. Murder rides with her on a red charger ; shaking his mane of smoke, fire flies before her with wings of scarlet and 175
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