Eliphas Levi - Transcendental Magic - Its Doctrine and Ritual

Every utterance possesses three senses, every act has a triple range, every form a triple idea, for the Absolute corresponds from world to world by its forms. Every determination of human will modifies Nature, concerns philosophy and is written in heaven. There are consequently two fatalities, one resulting from the Uncreated Will in harmony with its proper wisdom, the other from created wills in accordance with the necessity of secondary causes in their correspondence with the First Cause. There is hence nothing indifferent in life, and our seeming most simple resolutions do often determine an incalculable series of benefits or evils, above all in the affinities of our DIAPHANE with the Great Magical Agent, as we shall explain elsewhere.

The triad, being the fundamental principle of the whole Kabalah, or Sacred Tradition of our fathers, was necessarily the fundamental dogma of Christianity, the apparent dualism of which it explains by the intervention of a harmonious and all-powerful unity. Christ did not put His teaching into writing, and only revealed it in secret to His favoured disciple, the one Kabalist, and he a great Kabalist, among the apostles. So is the Apocalypse the book of the Gnosis or Secret Doctrine of the first Christians, and the key of this doctrine is indicated by an occult versicle of the Lord's Prayer, which the Vulgate leaves untranslated, while in the Greek Rite, which preserves the traditions of St. John, the priests only are permitted to pronounce it. This versicle, completely kabalistic, is found in the Greek text of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, and in several Hebrew copies, as follows:

“The sacred word MALKUTH substituted for KETHER, which is its kabalistic correspondent, and the equipoise of GEBURAH and CHESED, repeating itself in the circles of heavens called eons by the Gnostics, provided the keystone of the whole Christian Temple in this occult versicle. It has been retained by Protestants in their New Testament, but they have failed to discern its lofty and wonderful meaning, which would have unveiled to them all the Mysteries of the Apocalypse.

There is, however, a tradition in the Church that the manifestation of these mysteries is reserved till the last times.

MALKUTH, based upon GEBURAH and CHESED, is the Temple of Solomon having JAKIN and BOAZ for its Pillars; it is Adamite dogma, founded, for the one part on the resignation of Abel and, for the other, on the labours and self reproach of Cain; it is the equilibrium of being established on necessity and liberty, stability and motion; it is the demonstration of the universal lever sought in vain by Archimedes. A scholar whose talents were employed in the culture of obscurity, who died without seeking to be understood, resolved this supreme equation, discovered by him in the Kabalah, and was in dread of its source transpiring if he expressed himself more clearly. We have seen one of his disciples and admirers most indignant, perhaps in good faith, at the suggestionthat his master was a Kabalist; but we can state notwithstanding, to the glory of the same learned man, that his researches have shortened appreciably our work on the occult sciences, and that the key of the transcendent Kabalah above all, indicated in the arcane versicle cited above, has been applied skillfully to an absolute reform of all sciences in the books of Hoene Wronski.

The secret virtue of the gospels is therefore contained in three words, and these three words have established three dogmas and three hierarchies. All science reposes upon three principles, as the syllogism upon three terms. There are also three distinct classes, or three original and natural ranks, among men, who are called to advance from the lower to the higher. The Jews term these three series or degrees in the progress of spirits, ASSIAH, YETZIRAH and BRIAH. The Gnostics, who were Christian Kabalists, called them HYLE, PSYCHE and GNOSIS; by the Jews the supreme circle was named ATZILUTH, and by the Gnostics PLEROMA. In the Tetragram, the triad, taken at the beginning of the word, expresses the divine copula-tion; taken at the end, it expressed the female and maternity. Eve has a name of three letters, but the primitive Adam is signified simply by the letter JOD, whence Jehovah should be pronounced Jeva, and this point leads us to the great and supreme mystery of Magic, embodied in the tetrad.

IV D

Table of Contents

CHOKMAH DOMUS GNOSIS

IN Nature there are two forces producing equilibrium, and these three constitute a single law. Here, then, is the triad resumed in unity, and by adding the conception of unity to that of the triad we are bought to the tetrad, the first square and perfect number, the source of all numerical combinations and the principle of all forms. Affirmation, negation, discussion, solution: such are the four philosophical operations of the human mind. Discussion conciliates negation with affirmation by rendering them necessary to each other. In the same way, the philosophical triad, emanating from the antagonism of the duad, is completed by the tetrad, the four-square basis of all truth. According to consecrated dogma, there are Three Persons in God, and these Three constitute one only Deity. Three and one provide the conception of four, because unity is required to explain the three. Hence, in almost all languages, the name of God consists of four letters, and in Hebrew these four are really three, one of them being repeated twice, that which expresses the Word and the creation of the Word.

Two affirmations make two corresponding denials either possible or necessary. The fact of being is affirmed, and that of nothingness is denied. Affirmation as Word produces affirmation as realization or incarnation of the Word, and each of these affirmations corresponds to the denial of its opposite. Thus, in the opinion of the Kabalists, the name of the demon or of evil is composed of the same letters as the Name of God or goodness, but spelt backwards. This evil is the lost reflection or imperfect mirage of light in shadow. But all which exists, whether of good or evil, of light or darkness, exists and manifests by the tetrad. The affirmation of unity supposes the number four, unless it turns in unity itself as in a vicious circle. So also the triad, as we have observed already, is explained by the duad and resolved by the tetrad, which is the squared unity of even numbers and the qua-drangular base of the cube, regarded as unity of construction, solidity and measure.

The Kabalistic Tetragram, JODHEVA, expresses God in humanity and humanity in God. The four astronomical cardinal points are, relatively to us, the yea and the nay of light – East and West – and the yea and nay of warmth – South and North. As we have said already, according to the sole dogma of the Kabalah, that which is in visible Nature reveals that which is in the domain of invisible Nature, or secondary causes are in strict proportion and analogous to the manifestations of the First Cause. So is this First Cause revealed invariably by the Cross – that unity made up of two, divided one by the other in order to produce four; that key to the mysteries of India and Egypt, The Tau of the patriarchs, the divine sign of Osiris, the Stauros of the Gnostics, the keystone of the temple, the symbol of Occult Masonry; the Cross, central point of the junction of the right angles of two infinite triangles; the Cross, which in the French language seems to be the first root and fundamental substantive of the verb to believe and the verb to grow, thus combining the conceptions of science, religion and progress.