Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi

p. 265In the intermediate world, it is intelligence and industry ; in the inferior world, it is labour ; in science it is sulphur, mercury, and salt, which, volatilised and fixed alternately, •compose the Azoth of the sages. Sulphur corresponds to the elementary form of fire, mercury to air and water, salt to -earth.

All the masters in alchemy who have written concerning the great work have employed symbolical and figurative expressions, and have rightly done so, as much to deter the profane from a work which would, for them, be dangerous, as to make themselves intelligible to adepts, by revealing the entire world of analogies which is ruled by the one and sovereign dogma of Hermes.

For such, gold and silver are the sun and moon, or the king and queen ; sulphur is the flying eagle ; mercury is the winged and bearded hermaphrodite, throned upon a cube and crowned with flames ; matter or salt is the winged dragon ; metals in the molten state are lions of various colours ; finally, the whole work is symbolised by the pelican and phoenix.

Hermetic -art is, therefore, at one and the same time, a religion, a philosophy, and a natural science. Considered as religion, it is that of the ancient magi and the initiates of all the ages ; as a philosophy, its principles may be found in the school of Alexandria and in the theories of Pythagoras ; as science, its principles must be sought from Paracelsus, ficholas Flamel, and Eaymund Lully.

The science is true mly for those who accept and understand the philosophy id religion, and its processes are successful only for the lept who has attained sovereign volition, and has thus jome the monarch of the elementary world, for the great of the solar work is that force described in the Herletic symbol of the Emerald Table ; it is universal magical )wer ; it is the igneous spiritual motor ; it is the Od of the [ebrews, and the astral light, according to the expression re have adopted in this work.

There is the secret, living, id philosophical fire, of which all Hermetic philosophers speak only with the most mysterious reservations ; there is universal sperm, the secret of which they guarded, re3p. 266presenting it only under the emblem of the caduceus of Hermes. Here then is the great Hermetic arcanum, and we reveal it for the first time clearly and devoid of mystical figures ; what the adepts term dead substances are bodies as found in nature ; living substances are those which have been assimilated and magnetised by the science and will of the operator. Therefore the great work is something more than a chemical operation ; it is an actual creation of the human Word initiated into the power of the Word of God himself.

pa K in J nnixm

:rvnwni m This Hebrew text which we transcribe in proof of the authenticity and reality of our discovery, is derived from the rabbinical Jew Abraham, the master of Nicholas Elamel,, and is found in his occult commentary on the Sepher Jetzirah, the sacred book of the Kabbalah. This commentary is extremely rare, but the sympathetic potencies of our chain led us to the discovery of a copy which has been preserved since the year 1643 in the Protestant church at Rouen. On its first page there is written : Ex dono, then an illegible name : Dei magni. The creation of gold in the great work takes place by transmutation and multiplication. Raymund Lully states that in order to make gold we must have gold and mercury, while in order to make silver we must have silver and mercury. Then he adds : " By mercury, I understand that mineral spirit which is so refined and purified that it gilds. the seed of gold, and silvers the seed of silver." Doubtless, he is here speaking of Od, or astral light. Salt and sulphur are serviceable in the work only for the preparation of mercury ; it is with mercury above all that the magnetic