Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi

p. 282comrades of Ulysses, transformed into swine by Circe. In vulgar opinion, transmutations and metamorphoses have always been the very essence of magic. Now, the crowd, being the echo of opinion, which is queen of the world, is never perfectly right nor entirely wrong.

Magic really changes the nature of things, or, rather, modifies their appearances at pleasure, according to the strength of the operator's will and the fascination of ambitious adepts. Speech creates its form, and when a person, held infallible, confers a name upon a given thing, he really transforms that thing into the substance signified by the name.

The masterpiece of speech and of faith, in this order, is the real transmutation of a substance without change in its appearances.

Had Apollonius offered a cup of wine to his disciples, and said to them : " This is my blood, of which ye shall drink henceforth to perpetuate my life within you ; " and had his disciples through centuries believed that they continued the transformation by repeating the same words ; had they taken the wine, despite its odour and taste, for the real, human, and living blood of Apollonius, we should have to acknowledge this master in theurgy as the most accomplished of enchanters and most potent of all the magi.

It would remain for us then to adore him.

Now, it is well known that mesmerists impart for their somnambulists any taste that they choose to plain water, and if we assume a magus having sufficient command over the astral fluid to magnetize at the same moment a whole assembly of persons, otherwise prepared for magnetism by adequate over-excitement, we shall be in a position to explain readily, not indeed the Gospel miracle of Cana, but works of the same class.

Are not the fascinations of love, which result from the universal magic of nature, truly prodigious, and do they not actually transform persons and things ? Love is a dream of enchantments that transfigures the world ; all becomes music and fragrance, all intoxication and felicity. The beloved being is beautiful, is good, is sublime, is infallible, is radiant, beams with health and 2p. 283happiness. When the dream ends we seem to have fallen from the clouds ; we are inspired with disgust for the brazen sorceress who took the place of the lovely Melusine, for the Thersites whom we deemed was Achilles or Nereus. What is there we cannot cause the person who loves us to believe ? But also what reason or justice can we instil into those who no longer love us ? Love begins magician and ends sorcerer.

After creating the illusions of heaven on earth, it realises those of hell ; its hatred is absurd like its ardour, because it is passional, that is, subject to influences which are fatal for it. For this cause it has been proscribed by sages, who declare it to be the enemy of reason. Are they to be envied or commiserated for thus condemning, doubtless without understanding, the most alluring of ill-doers ?

All that can be said is that when they spoke thus, they either had not yet loved or they loved no longer. Things that are external are for us what our word internal makes them. To believe that we are happy is to be happy ; what we esteem becomes precious in proportion to the estimation itself : this is the sense in which we can say that magic changes the nature of things.

The " Metamorphoses " of Ovid are true, but they are allegorical, like the " Golden Ass " of rare Apuleius. The life of beings is a progressive transformation, and its forms can be determined, renewed, prolonged further, or destroyed sooner.

If the doctrine of metempsychosis were true, might one not say that the debauch represented by Circe really and materially changes men into swine ; for, on this hypothesis, the retribution of vices would be a relapse into animal forms that correspond to them ?

Now, metempsychosis, which has frequently been misinterpreted, has a perfectly true side ; animal forms communicate their sympathetic impressions to the astral body of man, which speedily reacts on his aptitudes according to the force of his habits. A man of intelligent and passive mildness assumes the inert physiognomy and ways of a sheep, but in somnambulism it is a 3p. 284sheep that is seen, and not a man with a sheepish countenance, as the ecstatic and learned Swedenborg experienced a thousand times. In the kabbalistic book of Daniel the seer, this mystery is represented by the legend of Nabuchodonsor changed into a beast, which, after the common fate of magical allegories, has been mistaken for an actual history.

In this way, we can really transform men into animals and animals into men ; we can metamorphose plants and alter their virtue ; we can endow minerals with ideal properties ; it is all a question of willing. We can equally render ourselves visible or invisible at will, and this helps us to explain the mysteries of the ring of G-yges.

In the first place, let us remove from the mind of our readers all supposition of the absurd ; that is, of an effect devoid of cause or contradicting its cause. To become invisible one of three things is necessary — the interposition of some opaque medium between the light and our body, or between our body and the eyes of the spectators, or the fascination of the eyes of the spectators in such a manner that they cannot make use of their sight.

Of these methods, the third only is magical. Have we not all of us observed that under the government of a strong preoccupation we look without seeing and hurt ourselves against objects in front of us ? " So do, that seeing they may not see," said the great Initiator, and the history of this grand master tells us that one day, finding himself on the point of being stoned in the temple, he made himself invisible and went out.

There is no need to repeat here the mystifications of popular grimoires about the ring of invisibility. Some ordain that it shall be composed of fixed mercury, enriched by a small stone which it is indispensable to find in a pewit's nest, and kept in a box of the same metal.

The author of the " Little Albert " ordains that this ring should be composed of hairs torn from the head of a raging hyena, which recalls the history of the bell of Eodilard. The only writers who have discoursed seriously of the ring of Gyges are Jamblichus, Porphyry, and Peter of Apono. What they say is evidently