Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi

MAGICAL EQUILIBKIUM 201 Let physicists seek and find out ; ever will the kabbalists explain the discoveries of science ! The human body is subject, like the earth, to a dual law ; it attracts and it radiates ; it is magnetised by an androgyne magnetism, and reacts on the two powers of the soul, the intellectual and the sensitive, inversely, but in proportion to the alternating preponderances of the two sexes in their physical organism.

The art of the magnetiser consists wholly in the knowledge and use of this law.

To polarise the action and impart to the agent a bisexual and alternated force is the method still unknown and sought vainly for directing the phenomena of magnetism at will, but tact most experienced and great precision in the interior movements are required to prevent the confusion of the signs of magnetic aspiration with those of respiration ; we must also be perfectly acquainted with occult anatomy and the special temperament of the persons on whom we are operating.

Bad faith and bad will in subjects constitute the gravest hindrance to the direction of magnetism. Women above all — who are essentially and invariably actresses, who take pleasure in impressing others so that they may impress themselves, and are themselves the first to be deceived when playing their neurotic melodramas — are the true black magic of magnetism.

So is it for ever impossible that magnetisers who are uninitiated in the supreme secrets, and unassisted by the lights of the Kabbalah, should govern this refractory and fugitive element. To be master of woman, we must distract and deceive her skilfully by allowing her to suppose that it is she who is deceiving us. This advice, which we offer chiefly to magnetising physicians, might also find its place and application in conjugal polity.

Man can produce two breathings at his pleasure, one warm and the other cold ; he can also project either the active or passive light at will; but he must acquire the consciousness of this power by habitually dwelling thereon. The same manual gesture may alternately aspire and respire what we are accustomed to call the fluid, and the magnetiser 2p. 202will himself be warned of the result of his intention by an alternative sensation of warmth and cold in the hand, or in both hands when both are being used, which sensation the subject should experience at the same time, but in a contrary sense, that is, with a wholly opposed alternative.

The pentagram, or sign of the microcosmos, represents, among other magical mysteries, the double sympathy of the human extremities with each other and with the circulation of the astral light in the human body.

Thus, when a man is represented in the star of the pentagram, as may be seen in the " Occult Philosophy" of Agrippa, it should be observed that the head corresponds in masculine sympathy with the right foot and in feminine sympathy with the left foot ; that the right hand corresponds in the same way with the left hand and left foot, and reciprocally of the other hand.

This must be borne in mind when making magnetic passes, if we seek to govern the whole organism and bind all members by their proper chains of analogy and natural sympathy. The same knowledge is necessary for the use of the pentagram in the conjuration of spirits, and in the evocation of errant spirits in the astral light, vulgarly called necromancy, as we shall explain in the fifth chapter of this Kitual.

But it is well to observe here that every action promotes a reaction, and that in magnetising others, or influencing them magically, we establish between them and ourselves a current of contrary but analogous influence which may subject us to them instead of subjecting them to us, as happens frequently enough in those operations which have the sympathy of love for their object.

Hence it is highly essential to be on our defence while we are attacking, so as not to aspire on the left while we respire on the right. The magical androgyne depicted in the frontispiece of the Eitual has SOLVE inscribed upon the right and COGULA on the left arm, which corresponds to the symbolical figure of the architects of the second temple, who bore their sword in one hand and their trowel in the other. While building they had also to defend their work and disperse their enemies ; nature herself does 3p. 203likewise, destroying and regenerating at the same time. Now, according to the allegory of Duchentau's Magical Calendar, man, that is to say, the initiate, is the ape of nature, who confines him by a chain, but makes him act unceasingly, imitating the proceedings and works of his divine mistress and imperishable model.

The alternate use of contrary forces, warmth after cold, mildness after severity, love after anger, &c., is the secret of perpetual motion and the permanence of power ; coquettes feel this instinctively, and hence they make their admirers pass from hope to fear, from joy to despondency.

To operate always on the same side and in the same manner is to overweight one plate of the balance, and the complete destruction of equilibrium is the speedy result. Continual caressings beget satiety, disgust, and antipathy, just as constant coldness and severity in the long run alienate and discourage affection.

An unvarying and ardent fire in alchemy calcines the first matter and not seldom explodes the hermetic vessel ; the heat of lime and mineral manure must be substituted at regular intervals for the heat of flame.

And so also in magic ; the works of wrath or severity must be tempered by those of beneficence and love, and if the will of the operator be always at the same tension and directed along the same line, great weariness will ensue, together with a species of moral impotence. Thus, the magus should not live altogether in his laboratory, among his athanor, elixirs, and pantacles.

However devouring be the glance of that Circe who is called occult power, we must know how to confront her on occasion with the sword of Ulysses, and how to withdraw our lips for a time from the chalice which she offers us. A magical operation should always be followed by a rest of equal length and a distraction analogous but contrary in its object. To strive continually against nature in order to her rule and conquest is to risk reason and life.

Paracelsus dared to do so, but even in the warfare itself he employed equilibrated forces and opposed the intoxication of wine to that of intelligence.