Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi
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270 THE RITUAL OF TRANSCENDENT MAGIC CHAPTEE XIII NECROMANCY WE have boldly declared our opinion, or rather our conviction, as to the possibility of resurrection in certain cases ; it remains for us now to complete the revelation of this arcanum and to expose its practice.
Death is a phantom of ignorance ; it does not exist ; everything in nature is living, and it is because it is alive that everything is in motion and undergoes incessant change of form. Old age is the beginning of regeneration, it is the labour of renewing life, and the ancients represented the mystery we term death by the Fountain of Youth, which was entered in decrepitude and left in new childhood. The body is a garment of the soul.
When this garment is completely worn out, or seriously and irreparably rent, it is abandoned and never reassumed. But when this garment is removed by some accident without being worn out or destroyed, it can, in certain cases, be put on again, either by our own efforts or by the assistance of a stronger and more active will than ours.
Death is neither the end of life nor the beginning of immortality ; it is the continuation and transformation of life. Now, a transformation being always a progress, few of those who are apparently dead will consent to return to life, that is, to reassume the vestment which they have left behind.
It is this which makes resurrection one of the hardest works of the highest initiation, and hence its success is never infallible, but must be regarded almost invariably as accidental and unexpected. To raise up a dead person we must suddenly and energetically rebind the most powerful chains of attraction which connect it with the body that it has just quitted.
It is, therefore, necessary to be previously acquainted with this chain, then to seize thereon, finally to produce an effort of will sufficiently powerful to instantaneously and irresistibly relink it. All this, as we say, is extremely difficult, p. 271but is in no sense absolutely impossible. The prejudices of materialistic science exclude resurrection at present from the natural order, and hence there is a disposition to explain all phenomena of this class by lethargies more or less complicated with signs of death, and more or less long in duration.
If Lazarus rose again before our doctors, they would simply record in their memorials to recognised academies a strange case of lethargy accompanied by an apparent beginning of putrefaction and a strong corpse-like odour ; the exceptional occurrence would be labelled with a becoming name, and the matter would be at an end.
We have no wish to frighten anyone, and if, out of respect for the men with diplomas who represent science officially, it is requisite to term our theories concerning resurrection the art of curing exceptional and aggravated trances, nothing, I hope, will hinder us from making such a concession. But if ever a resurrection has taken place in the world, it is incontestable that resurrection is possible.
Now, constituted bodies protect religion, and religion positively asserts the fact of resurrections ; therefore resurrections are possible. From this escape is difficult. To say that they are possible outside the laws of nature, and by an influence contrary to universal harmony, is to affirm that the spirit of disorder, darkness, and death, can be the sovereign arbiter of life. Let us not dispute with the worshippers of the devil, but pass on.
It is not religion alone which attests the facts of resurrection ; we have collected a number of cases. An occurrence which impressed the imagination of Greuze, the painter, has been reproduced by him in one of his most remarkable pictures. An unworthy son, present at his father's deathbed, seizes and destroys a will unfavourable to himself ; the father rallies, leaps up, curses his son, and then drops back dead a second time.
An analogous and more recent fact has been certified to ourselves by ocular witnesses : a friend, betraying the confidence of one who had just died, tore up a trust-deed he had signed, whereupon the dead person rose up, and lived to defend the rights p. 272of his chosen heirs, which his false friend sought to set aside ; the guilty person went mad, and the risen man compassionately allowed him a pension. When the Saviour raised up the daughter of Jairus, He was alone with three faithful and favoured disciples ; He dismissed the noisy and the loud mourners, saying, " The girl is not dead but sleeping.
Then, in the presence only of the father, the mother, and the three disciples, that is to say, in a perfect circle of confidence and desire, He took the child's hand, drew her abruptly up, and cried to her, " Young girl, I say to thee, arise !
" The undecided soul, doubtless in the immediate vicinity of the body, and possibly regretting its extreme youth and beauty, was surprised by the accents of that voice, which was heard by her father and mother trembling with hope, and on their knees ; it returned into the body ; the maiden opened her eyes, rose up, and the Master commanded immediately that food should be given her, so that the functions of life might begin a new cycle of absorption and regeneration.
The history of Eliseus, raising up the daughter of the Shunamite, and St Paul raising Eutychus, are facts of the same order ; the resurrection of Dorcas by St Peter, narrated so simply in the Acts of the Apostles, is also a history the truth of which can scarcely be reasonably questioned.
Apollonius of Tyana seems also to have accomplished similar miracles, and we ourselves have been the witness of facts which are not wanting in analogy with these, but the spirit of the century in which we live imposes in this respect the most careful reserve upon us, the thaumaturge being liable to a very indifferent reception at the hands of a discerning public — all which does not hinder the earth from revolving, or Galileo from having been a great man.
The resurrection of a dead person is the masterpiece of magnetism, because it needs for its accomplishment the exercise of a kind of sympathetic omnipotence. It is possible in the case of death by congestion, by suffocation, by exhaustion, or by hysteria. Eutychus, who was resuscitated by St Paul, after falling from a third storey, was doubtless
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