Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi

p. 7sacerdotalism. The Church ignores magic — for she must either ignore it or perish, as we shall prove later on ; yet she does not the less recognise that her mysterious founder was saluted in his cradle by the three magi — that is to say, by the hieratic ambassadors of the three parts of the known world and the three analogical worlds of occult philosophy.

In the school of Alexandria, magic and Christianity almost joined hands under the auspices of Ammonius Saccas and of Plato ; the doctrine of Hermes is found almost in its entirety in the writings attributed to Denis the Areopagite; and Synesius sketched the plan of a treatise on dreams, which was later on to be annotated by Cardan, and composed hymns which might have served for the liturgy of the Church of Swedenborg, could a church of the illuminated possess a liturgy.

With this period of fiery abstractions and impassioned warfare of words there must also be connected the philosophic reign of Julian, called the Apostate because in his youth he made an unwilling profession of Christianity.

Everyone is aware that Julian was sufficiently wrongheaded to be an unseasonable hero of Plutarch, and was, if one may say so, the Don Quixote of Roman Chivalry ; but what most people do not know is that Julian was one of the illuminated and an initiate of the first order ; that he believed in the unity of God and in the universal doctrine of the Trinity ; that, in a word, he regretted nothing of the old world but its magnificent symbols and its exceedingly gracious images.

Julian was not a pagan ; he was a Gnostic allured by the allegories of Greek polytheism, who had the misfortune to find the name of Jesus Christ less sonorous than that of Orpheus.

The Emperor personally paid for the academical tastes of the philosopher and rhetorician, and after affording himself the spectacle and satisfaction of expiring like Epaminondas with the periods of Cato, he had in public opinion, already thoroughly Christianised, anathemas for his funeral oration and a scornful epithet for his ultimate celebrity. Let us skip the little men and small matters of the Bas-

p. 8Empire, and pass on to the Middle Ages. . . . Stay, take this book ! Glance at the seventh page, then seat yourself on the mantle I am spreading, and let each of us cover our eyes with one of its corners. . . . Your head swims, does it not, and the earth seems to fly beneath your feet ? Hold tightly, and do not look around. . . . The vertigo ceases ; we are here.

Stand up and open your eyes, but take care before all things to make no Christian sign and to pronounce no Christian words. We are in a landscape of Salvator Rosa, a troubled wilderness which seems resting after a storm ; there is no moon in the sky, but you can distinguish little stars gleaming in the brushwood, and you can hear about you the slow flight of great birds, who seem to whisper strange oracles as they pass.

Let us approach silently that cross-road among the rocks. A harsh, funereal trumpet winds suddenly, and black torches flare up on every side. A tumultuous throng is surging round a vacant throne; all look and wait. Suddenly they cast themselves on the ground.

A goat-headed prince bounds forward among them ; he ascends the throne, turns, and by assuming a stooping posture, presents to the assembly a human face, which, carrying black torches, every one comes forward to salute and to kiss. With a hoarse laugh he recovers an upright position, and then distributes gold, secret instructions, occult medicines, and poisons to his faithful bondsmen.

Meanwhile, fires are lighted of fern and alder, piled over with human bones and the fat of executed criminals. Druidesses crowned with wild parsley and vervain immolate unbaptised children with golden knives and prepare horrible love-feasts. Tables are spread, masked men seat themselves by half-nude females, and a Bacchanalian orgie begins ; there is nothing missing but salt, the symbol of wisdom and immortality.

Wine flows in streams, leaving stains like blood ; obscene talk and fond caresses begin, and presently the whole assembly is drunk with wine, with pleasure, with crime, and singing. They rise, a disordered throng, and hasten to form infernal dances. . . .

p. 9Then come all legendary monsters, all phantoms of nightmare ; enormous toads play inverted flutes and blow with their paws on their flanks ; limping scarabaei mingle in the dance ; crabs play the castanets ; crocodiles beat time on their scales ; elephants and mammoths appear habited like Cupids and foot it in the ring ; finally, the giddy circles break up and scatter on all sides. . . .

Every yelling dancer drags away a dishevelled female. . . . Lamps and candles formed of human fat go out smoking in the darkness. . . . Cries are heard here and there, mingled with peals of laughter, blasphemies, and rattlings of the throat. Come, rouse yourself, do not make the sign of the cross !

See, I have brought you home ; you are in your own bed, somewhat worn-out, possibly a trifle shattered, by your night's journey and dissipation ; but you have witnessed something of which everyone talks without knowledge ; you have been initiated into secrets no less terrible than the grotto of Triphonius ; you have been present at the Sabbath.

It remains for you now to preserve your reason, to have a wholesome dread of the law, and to keep at a respectful distance from the Church and her faggots. Would you care, as a change, to behold something less fantastic, more real, and also more truly terrible ? You shall assist at the execution of Jacques de Molay and his accomplices or his brethren in martyrdom. . . . Do not, however, be misled, confuse not the guilty and the innocent !

Did the Templars really adore Baphomet ? Did they offer a shameful salutation to the buttocks of the goat of Mendes ? What was actually this secret and potent association which imperilled Church and State, and was thus destroyed unheard ? Judge nothing lightly ; they are guilty of a great crime ; they have allowed the sanctuary of antique initiation to be entered by the profane.

By them for a second time have the fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil been gathered and shared, so that they might become the masters of the world. The sentence which condemns them has a higher and earlier origin than the tribunal of