Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi
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p. 198other occupations and other researches, such as chemical experiments for industrial purposes, hygienic prescriptions, the investigation of some natural secrets, and so on ; but the forbidden name of magic must never be pronounced.
The magus must be isolated at the beginning and difficult to approach, so that he may concentrate his power and select his points of contact, but in proportion as he is austere and inaccessible at first, so will he be popular and sought after when he shall have magnetised his chain and chosen his place in a current of ideas and of light.
A laborious and poor existence is so favourable to practical initiation that the greatest masters have preferred it, even when the wealth of the world was at their disposal. Then it is that Satan, that is, the spirit of ignorance, who scorns, suspects, and detests science because at heart he fears it, comes to tempt the future master of the world by saying to him : " If thou art the Son of God, command these stones to become bread.
Then it is that mercenary men seek to humiliate the prince of knowledge by perplexing, depreciating, or sordidly exploiting his labour ; the slice of bread that he deigns to need is broken into ten fragments, so that he may ten times stretch forth his hand. But the magus does not even smile at the absurdity, and calmly pursues his work.
So far as may be possible, we must avoid the sight of hideous objects and uncomely persons, must decline eating with those whom we do not esteem, and must live in the most uniform and studied manner. We must hold ourselves in the highest respect, and must consider that we are dethroned sovereigns who consent to existence in order to reconquer our crowns.
We must be mild and considerate to all, but in social relations must never permit ourselves to be absorbed, and must withdraw from circles in which we cannot acquire some initiative. Finally, we may and should fulfil the duties and practise the rites of the cultus to which we belong.
Now, of all forms of worship the most magical is that which most realises the miraculous, which bases the most inconceivable mysteries upon the highest reasons, which p. 199has lights equivalent to its shadows, which popularises miracles, and incarnates God in all mankind by faith. This religion has existed always in the world, and under many names has been ever the one and ruling religion. It has now among the nations of the earth three apparently hostile forms, which are, however, destined to unite before long for the constitution of one universal Church.
I refer to the Greek orthodoxy, Eoman Catholicism, and a final transfiguration of the religion of Buddha.
We have now made it plain, as we believe, that our magic is opposed to the goetic and necromantic kinds ; it is at once an absolute science and religion, which should not indeed destroy and absorb all opinions and all forms of worship, but should regenerate and direct them by reconstituting the circle of initiates, and thus providing the blind masses with wise and clear-seeing leaders.
We are living at a period when nothing remains to destroy and everything to remake. " Eemake what ? The past ? " No one can remake the past. " What, then, shall we reconstruct ? Temples and thrones ? " To what purpose, since the former ones have been cast down ? " You might as well say : my house has collapsed from age, of what use is it to build another ? " But will the house that you contemplate erecting be like that which has fallen?
No, for the one was old and the other will be new. " Notwithstanding, it will be always a house. What more can you wish ?
200 THE RITUAL OF TRANSCENDENT MAGIC CHAPTER II MAGICAL EQUILIBRIUM EQUILIBRIUM is the consequence of two forces. If two forces are absolutely and invariably equal, the equilibrium will be immobility, and therefore the negation of life. Movement is the result of an alternate preponderance. The impulsion given to one of the sides of a balance necessarily determines the motion of the other.
Thus contraries act on one another, throughout all nature, by correspondence and analogical connection. All life is composed of an aspiration and a respiration ; creation is the assumption of a shadow to serve as a bound to light, of a void to serve as space for the plenitude, of a passive fructified principle to sustain and realise the power of the active generating principle.
All nature is bisexual, and the movement which produces the appearances of death and life is a continual generation.
God loves the void which he made in order to fill it ; science loves the ignorance which it enlightens ; strength loves the weakness which it supports ; good loves the apparent evil which glorifies it ; day is desirous of night, and pursues it unceasingly round the world ; love is at once a thirst and a plenitude which must diffuse itself. He who gives receives, and he who receives gives; movement is a continual interchange.
To know the law of this change, to be acquainted with the alternative or simultaneous proportion of these forces, is to possess the first principles of the great magical arcanum, which constitutes true human divinity. Scientifically, we can appreciate the various manifestations of the universal movement through electric or magnetic phenomena.
Electrical apparatuses above all materially and positively reveal the affinities and antipathies of certain substances. The marriage of copper with zinc, the action of all metals in the galvanic pile, are perpetual and unmistakable revelations.
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