Eliphas Levi - Transcendental Magic - Its Doctrine and Ritual

VI F

Table of Contents

CHOKMAH DOMUS GNOSIS

SUPREME intelligence is necessarily reasonable. God, in philosophy, may be only a hypothesis, but He is a hypothesis imposed by good sense on human reason. To personify the Absolute Reason is to determine the Divine Ideal. Necessity, liberty and reason – these are the great and supreme triangle of the Kabalists, who name reason KETHER, necessity CHOKMAH, and liberty BINAH, in their first or Divine Triad. Fatality, will and power, such is the magical triad, which corresponds in things human to the Divine Triad. Fatality is the inevitable sequence of effects and causes in a determined order. Will is the directing faculty of intelligent forces for the conciliation of the liberty of persons with the necessity of things.

Power is the wise application of will which enlists fatality itself in the accomplishment of the desires of the sage. When Moses smote the rock, he did not create the spring of water; he revealed it to the people, because occult science had made it known to himself by means of the divining rod. It is in like manner with all miracles of Magic; a law exists, which is ignored by the vulgar and made use of by the initiate. Occult laws are often opposed diametrically to common ideas. For example, the crowd believes in the sympathy of things which are alike and in the hostil-ity of things contrary, but it is the opposite which is the true law. It used to be affirmed that Nature abhors the void, but it should be said that Nature desires it, were the void not, in physics, the most irrational of fictions. In all things the vulgar mind habitually takes shadow for reality, turns its back upon light and is reflected in the obscurity which it projects itself. The forces of Nature are at the disposal of one who knows how to resist them. Are you master sufficiently of yourself to be never intoxicated? Then will you direct the terrible and fatal power of intoxication. If you would make others drunk, possess them with the desire of drink, but do not partake of it yourself. That man will dispose of the love of others who is master of his own. If you would possess, do not give. The world is magnetized by the light of the sun, and we are magnetized by the Astral Light of the world. That which operates in the body of the planet repeats itself in us. Within us there are three analogical and hierarchic worlds, as in all Nature.

Man is the Microcosm or little world, and, according to the doctrine of analogies, whatsoever is in the great world is reproduced in the small. Hence we have three centres of fluidic attraction and projection – the brain, the heart, or epigas-tric region, and the genital organ. Each of these instruments is one and twofold –

in other words, we find the suggestion of the triad therein. Each attracts on one side and repels on the other. It is by means of such apparatus that we place ourselves in communication with the universal fluid supplied to us by the nervous system. These three centres are, moreover, the seat of a triple magnetic operation, as we shall explain elsewhere. When the Magus has attained lucidity, whether through the mediation of a pythoness or by his own development, he communicates and directs at will the magnetic vibrations in the whole mass of the Astral Light, the currents of which he divines by means of the Magic Wand, which is a perfected divining rod. By the aid of these vibrations he influences the nervous system of persons made subject to his action, accelerates or suspends the currents of life, soothes or tortures, heals or hurts – in fine, slays or brings to life. …Here, however, we pause in presence of the smile of incredulity. Let us permit it to enjoy the easy triumph of denying what it does not know.

We shall demonstrate later on that death is preceded always by a lethargic sleep, and hence takes place gradually; that resurrection is possible in certain cases; that lethargy is a real but uncompleted death; and that the final paroxysm is in many cases subsequent to inhumation. This, however, is not the subject of the present chapter. We affirm now that a lucid will can act upon the mass of the Astral Light, and in concurrence with other wills, which it absorbs and draws along, can determine great and irresistible currents. We say also that the Astral Light condenses or rarefies in proportion as currents accumulate, more or less, at certain Centres. When it is deficient in the energy required for the support of life, diseases accompanied by sudden decomposition follow, of a kind which baffle physicians. There is no other cause, for example, in the case of cholera-morbus, and the swarms of animalculae observed or supposed by some specialists may be the effect rather than the cause.

Cholera should be treated therefore by insufflation, did not the operator thereby run the chance of an exchange with the patient which would be very formidable for himself. Every intelligent effort of will is a projection of the human fluid or light, and here it is needful to distinguish the human from the Astral Light, and Animal from Universal Magnetism. In making use of the word fluid, we employ an accepted expression, and seek to be understood in this manner, but we are far from deciding that the latent light is a fluid. Everything prompts us, on the contrary, to prefer the system of vibrations in the explanation of this phenomenal subject. However it may be, the light in question, being the instrument of life, cleaves naturally to all living centres, attaches itself to the nucleus of planets, even as to the heart of man – and by the heart we understand magically the great sympathetic – identifying itself with the individual life of the being which it animates, and it is by this quality of sympathetic assimilation that it is distributed without confusion. Hence it is terrestrial in its affinity with the sphere of the earth and human exclusively in its affinity with men.

It is for this reason that electricity, caloric, light and magnetism, produced by ordinary physical means, not only do not originate, but tend rather to neutralize

MAGICAL EQUILIBRIUM

31

the effects of Animal Magnetism. The Astral Light, subordinated to a blind mechanism, and proceeding from arbitrary automatic centres, is a dead light and works mathematically, following given impulsions or fatal laws. The human light is fatal only to the ignorant, performing chance experiments; in the seer it is subjected to intelligence, submitted to imagination and dependent on will. This light, continually projected by the will, constitutes the personal atmospheres of Swedenborg. The body absorbs what environs it and radiates perpetually by projecting its influences and invisible molecules; it is the same with the spirit, so that this phenomenon, by some mystics termed Respiration, has really the influence, both physical and moral, which is assigned to it. It is undoubtedly contagious to breathe the same air as diseased persons, and to be within the circle of attraction and expansion which surrounds the wicked.

When the magnetic atmosphere of two persons is so equilibrated that the attractive faculty of one draws the expansive faculty of the other, a tendency is produced which is termed sympathy; then imagination, calling up to it all the rays or reflections analogous to that which it experiences, makes a poem of the desires which captivate will, and if the persons differ in sex, it occasions in them, or more commonly in the weaker of the two, a complete intoxication of the Astral Light, which is termed passion par excellence, or love. Love is one of the great instruments of magical power, but it is categorically forbidden to the Magus, at least as an intoxication or passion. Woe to the Samson of the Kabalah if he permit himself to be put asleep by Delilah! The Hercules of science, who exchanges his royal sceptre for the distaff of Omphale, will soon experience the vengeance of Dejanira, and nothing will be left for him but the pyre of Mount Oetna, in order to escape the devouring folds of the coat of Nessus. Sexual love is ever an illusion, for it is the result of an imaginary mirage. The Astral Light is the universal seducer, typified by the serpent of Genesis.' This subtle agent, ever active, ever vigorous, ever fruitful in alluring dreams and sensuous images; this force, which of itself is blind and subordinated to every will, whether for good or evil; this ever-renewing circu-lus of unbridled life, which produces vertigo in the imprudent; this corporeal spirit; this fierybody; this impalpable omnipresent ether; this monstrous seduction of Nature – how shall we define it comprehensively and how characterize its action? To some extent indifferent in itself, it lends itself to good as to evil; it transmits light and propagates darkness; it may be called equally Lucifer and Lucifuge; it is a serpent but it is also an aureole; it is a fire, but it may belong equally to the torments of infernus or the sacrifice of incense offered up to heaven.