Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi
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p. 192courage and enables us to face all the perils of this enterprise, possibly the most intrepid which it has been permitted the human mind to conceive and carry out. Magical operations are the exercise of a natural power, but one superior to the ordinary forces of nature. They are the result of a science and a practice which exalt human will beyond its normal limits.
The supernatural is only the natural in an extraordinary grade, or it is the exalted natural ; a miracle is a phenomenon which strikes the multitude because it is unexpected ; the astonishing is that which astonishes ; miracles are effects which surprise those who are ignorant of their causes, or assign them causes which are not in proportion to such effects.
Miracles exist only for the ignorant, but, as there is scarcely any absolute science among men, the supernatural can still obtain, and does so indeed for the whole world. Let us set out by saying that we believe in all miracles because we are convinced and certain, even from our own experience, of their entire possibility. There are some which we do not explain, though we regard them as no less explicable.
From the greater to the lesser, from the lesser to the greater, the consequences are identically related and the proportions progressively rigorous. But in order to work miracles we must be outside the ordinary conditions of humanity ; we must either be abstracted by wisdom or exalted by madness, either .superior to all passions or beyond them through ecstasy or frenzy. Such is the first and most indispensable preparation of the operator.
Hence, by a providential or fatal law, the magician can only exercise omnipotence in inverse proportion to his material interest ; the alchemist makes so much the more gold as he is the more resigned to privations, and the more esteems that poverty which protects the secrets of the magnum opus.
Only the adept whose heart is passionless will dispose of the love and hate of those whom he would make instruments of his science ; the myth of Genesis is eternally true, and God permits the tree of science to be approached only by those men who are p. 193sufficiently strong and self-denying not to covet its fruits. Ye, therefore, who seek in science a means to satisfy your passions, pause in this fatal way ; you will find nothing but madness or death. This is the meaning of the vulgar tradition that the devil ends sooner or later by strangling sorcerers.
The magus must hence be impassible, sober and chaste, disinterested, impenetrable, and inaccessible to any kind of prejudice or terror. He must be without bodily defects, and proof against all contradictions and all difficulties. The first and most important of magical operations is the attainment of this rare pre-eminence.
We have said that impassioned ecstasy may produce the same results as absolute superiority, and this is true as to the issue, but not as to the direction of magical operations.
Passion forcibly projects the astral light and impresses unforeseen movements on the universal agent, but it cannot check with the facility that it impels, and its destiny then resembles Hippolytus dragged by his own horses, or Phalaris himself victimised by the instrument of torture which he had invented for others. Human volition realised by action is like a cannon-ball, and recedes before no obstacle.
It either passes through it or is buried in it, but if it advance with patience and perseverance, it is never lost ; it is like the wave which returns incessantly and wears away iron in the end. Man can be modified by habit, which becomes, according to the proverb, his second nature. By means of persevering and graduated athletics, the powers and activity of the body can be developed to an astonishing extent.
It is the same with the powers of the soul. Would you reign over yourselves and others ? Learn how to will. How can one learn to will ? This is the first arcanum of magical initiation, and it was to make it understood fundamentally that the ancient depositaries of priestly art surrounded the approaches of the sanctuary with so many terrors and illusions. They did not believe in a will until it had produced its proofs, and they were right. Power is justified by
194* THE RITUAL OF TRANSCENDENT MAGIC victories. Indolence and forgetfulness are enemies of will, and for this reason all religions have multiplied their observances and made their worship minute and difficult. The more we restrain ourselves for an idea, the greater is the strength we acquire within the scope of that idea. Are not mothers more partial to the children who have caused them most suffering and cost them most anxieties ?
So does the power of religions reside exclusively in the inflexible will of those who practise them. So long as there is one faithful person to believe in the holy sacrifice of the Mass, there will be a priest to celebrate it for him ; and so long as there is a priest who daily recites his breviary, there will be a pope in the world.
Observances, apparently most insignificant and most foreign in themselves to the proposed end, lead, notwithstanding, to that end by education and exercise of will.
If a peasant rose up every morning at two or three o'clock, and went daily a long distance from home to gather a sprig of the same herb before the rising of the sun, he would be able to perform a great number of prodigies by merely carrying this herb upon his person, for it would be the sign of his will, and would become by his will itself all that he required it to become in the interest of his desires. /In order to do a thing we must believe in the possibility of our doing it, and this faith must forthwith be translated into acts.
When a child says : " I cannot," his mother answers : " Try. Faith does not even try ; it begins with the certitude of completing, and it proceeds calmly, as if omnipotence were at its disposal and eternity before it. What seek you, therefore, from the science of the magi ?
Dare to formulate your desire, then set to work at once, and do not cease acting after the same manner and for the same end ; what you will shall come to pass, and for you and by you it has indeed already begun. Sixtus V. said, while watching his flocks : " I desire to be pope. You are a beggar, and you desire to make gold ; set to work and never leave off. I promise you, in the name of science, all the treasures of Flamel and Eaymond Lully. " What is
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