Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual (Dogme et rituel de la haute magie)

deride both Christians and magic, while infatuated with the homilies of Eousseau and the illusions of Cagliostro. Science, notwithstanding, is at the basis of magic, as at the foundation of Christianity there is love, and in the Gospel symbols we see the Word incarnate adored in his cradle by three magi, led thither by a star (the triad and the sign of the microcosm), and receiving their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, a second mysterious triplicity, under which emblem the highest secrets of the Kabbalah are allegorically contained. Christianity owes, therefore, no hatred to magic, but human ignorance has ever stood in fear of the unknown. The science was driven into hiding to escape the impassioned assaults of a blind love ; it clothed itself with new hieroglyphics, dissimulated its labours, denied its hopes. Then it was that the jargon of alchemy was created, a permanent deception for the vulgar, a living language only for the true disciple of Hermes. Extraordinary fact ! Among the sacred books of the Christians there are two works which the infallible Church makes no claim to understand and has never attempted to explain ; these are the prophecy of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse, two Kabbalistic Keys assuredly reserved in heaven for the commentaries of magician Kings, books sealed with seven seals for faithful believers, yet perfectly plain to an initiated infidel of the occult sciences. There is also another book, but, although it is popular in a sense and may be found everywhere, this is of all most occult and unknown, because it has the key of all others ;

it is in public evidence without being known to the public ; no one dreams of seeking it where it actually is, and elsewhere it is lost labour to look for it. This book, possibly anterior to that of Enoch, has never been translated, but is still preserved unmutilated in primeval characters, on detached leaves, like the tablets of the ancients. A distinguished scholar has revealed, though no one has observed it, not indeed its secret, but its antiquity and singular preservation ; another scholar, but of a mind more fantastic than judicious, passed thirty years in the

study of this book, and has merely suspected its whole importance. It is, in fact, a monumental and extraordinary work, strong and simple as the architecture of the pyramids, and consequently enduring like those — a book which is the sum of all the sciences, which can resolve all problems by its infinite combinations, which speaks by evoking thought, is the inspirer and regulator of all possible conceptions, the masterpiece perhaps of the human mind, assuredly one of the finest things bequeathed to us by antiquity, an universal key, the name of which has been explained and comprehended only by the learned William Postel, an unique text, whereof the initial characters alone exalted the devout spirit of Saint Martin into ecstasy, and might have restored reason to the sublime and unfortunate Swedenborg. We shall speak of this book later on, and its mathematical and precise explanation will be the complement and crown of our conscientious undertaking. The original alliance of Christianity and the science of the magi, once it is thoroughly demonstrated, will be a discovery of no second-rate importance, and we question not that the serious study of magic and the Kabbalah will lead earnest minds to the reconciliation of science and dogma, of reason and faith, heretofore regarded as impossible.

We have said that the Church, whose special office is the custody of the Keys, does not pretend to possess those of the Apocalypse or of Ezekiel. In the opinion of Christians the scientific and magical clavicles of Solomon are lost ; yet, at the same time, it is certain that, in the domain of intelligence ruled by the Word, nothing which has been written can perish ; things which men cease to understand simply cease to exist for them, at least in the order of the Word, and they enter then into the domain of enigma and mystery. Furthermore, the antipathy, and even open war, of the official church against all that belongs to the realm of magic, which is a kind of personal and emancipated priesthood, is allied with necessary and even with inherent causes in the social and hierarchic constitution of Christian sacerdotalism. The Church ignores magic — for she must either ignore it or perish, as we shall prove later on ; yet she does not the less recognise that her mysterious founder was saluted in his cradle by the three magi — that is to say, by the hieratic ambassadors of the three parts of the known world and the three analogical worlds of occult philosophy. In the school of Alexandria, magic and Christianity almost joined hands under the auspices of Ammonius Saccas and of Plato ; the doctrine of Hermes is found almost in its entirety in the writings attributed to Denis the Areopagite ;

and Synesius sketched the plan of a treatise on dreams, which was later on to be annotated by Cardan, and composed hymns which might have served for the liturgy of the Church of Swedenborg, could a church of the illuminated possess a liturgy. With this period of fiery abstractions and impassioned warfare of words there must also be connected the philosophic reign of Julian, called the Apostate because in his youth he made an unwilling profession of Christianity. Everyone is aware that Julian was sufficiently wrongheaded to be an unseasonable hero of Plutarch, and was, if one may say so, the Don Quixote of Roman Chivalry ; but what most people do not know is that Julian was one of the illuminated and an initiate of the first order ; that he believed in the unity of God and in the universal doctrine of the Trinity ; that, in a word, he regretted nothing of the old world but its magnificent symbols and its exceedingly gracious images. Julian was not a pagan ; he was a Gnostic allured by the allegories of Greek polytheism, who had the misfortune to find the name of desus Christ less sonorous than that of Orpheus. The Emperor personally paid for the academical tastes of the philosopher and rhetorician, and after affording himself the spectacle and satisfaction of expiring like Epaminondas with the periods of Cato, he had in public opinion, already thoroughly Christianised, anathemas for his funeral oration and a scornful epithet for his ultimate celebrity.

Let us skip the little men and small matters of the Bas- Empire, and pass on to the Middle Ages. . . . Stay, take this book ! Glance at the seventh page, then seat yourself on the mantle I am spreading, and let each of us cover our eyes with one of its corners. . . . Your head swims, does it not, and the earth seems to fly beneath your feet ? Hold tightly, and do not look around. . . . The vertigo ceases ; we are here. Stand up and open your eyes, but take care before all things to make no Christian sign and to pronounce no Christian words. We are in a landscape of Salvator Kosa, a troubled wilderness which seems resting after a storm ; there is no moon in the sky, but you can distinguish little stars gleaming in the brushwood, and you can hear about you the slow flight of great birds, who seem to whisper strange oracles as they pass. Let us approach silently that cross-road among the rocks. A harsh, funereal trumpet winds suddenly, and black torches flare up on every side. A tumultuous throng is surging round a vacant throne'^ all look and wait. Suddenly they cast themselves on the ground. A goat-headed prince bounds forward among them; he ascends the throne, turns, and by assuming a stooping posture, presents to the assembly a human face, which, carrying black torches, every one comes forward to salute and to kiss.

With a hoarse laugh he recovers an upright position, and then distributes gold, secret instructions, occult medicines, and poisons to his faithful bondsmen. Meanwhile, fires are lighted of fern and alder, piled over with human bones and the fat of executed criminals. Druidesses crowned with wild parsley and vervain immolate unbaptised children with golden knives and prepare horrible love-feasts. Tables are spread, masked men seat themselves by half-nude females, and a Bacchanalian orgie begins ; there is nothing missing but salt, the symbol of wisdom and immortality. Wine flows in streams, leaving stains like blood ; obscene talk and fond caresses begin, and presently the whole assembly is drunk with wine, with pleasure, with crime, and singing. They rise, a disordered throng, and hasten to form infernal dances. . . .

Then come all legendary monsters, all phantoms of nightmare; enormous toads play inverted flutes and blow with their paws on their flanks ; limping scarabaei mingle in the dance ; crabs play the castanets ; crocodiles beat time on their scales ; elephants and mammoths appear habited like Cupids and foot it in the ring ; finally, the giddy circles break up and scatter on all sides. . . . Every yelling dancer drags away a dishevelled female. . . Lamps and candles formed of human fat go out smoking in the darkness. . . . Cries are heard here and there, mingled with peals of laughter, blasphemies, and rattlings of the throat. Come, rouse yourself, do not make the sign of the cross ! See, I have brought you home ; you are in your own bed, somewhat worn-out, possibly a trifle shattered, by your night’s journey and dissipation ; but you have witnessed something of which everyone talks without knowledge ; you have been initiated into secrets no less terrible than the grotto of Triphonius ; you have been present at the Sabbath. It remains for you now to preserve your reason, to have a wholesome dread of the law, and to keep at a respectful distance from the Church and her faggots.

Would you care, as a change, to behold something less fantastic, more real, and also more truly terrible ? You shall assist at the execution of Jacques de Molay and his accomplices or his brethren in martyrdom. ... Do not, however, be misled, confuse not the guilty and the innocent ! Did the Templars really adore Baphomet ? Did they ofier a shameful salutation to the buttocks of the goat of Mendes ? What was actually this secret and potent association which imperilled Church and State, and was thus destroyed unheard? Judge nothing lightly; they are guilty of a great crime ; they have allowed the sanctuary of antique initiation to be entered by the profane. By them for a second time have the fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil been gathered and shared, so that they might become the masters of the world. The sentence which condemns them has a higher and earlier origin than the tribunal of pope or king : “ On the day that then eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die,” said God Himself, as we see in the book of Genesis. What is taking place in the world, and why do priests and potentates tremble ? What secret power threatens tiaras and crowns ? A few madmen are roaming from land to land, concealing, as they say, the philosophical stone under their ragged vesture. They, can change earth into gold, and they are without food or lodging !

Their brows are encircled by an aureole of glory and by a shadow of ignominy ! One has discovered the universal science and goes vainly seeking death to escape the agonies of his triumph — he is the Majorcan Eaymond Lully. Another heals imaginary diseases by fantastic remedies, giving a formal denial in advance to the proverb which enforces the futility of a cautery on a wooden leg — he is the marvellous i^aracelsus, always drunk and always lucid, like the heroes of Eabelais. Here is William Postel writing naively to the fathers of the Council of Trent, informing them that he has discovered the absolute doctrine, hidden from the foundation of the world, and is longing to share it with them. The council does not concern itself with the maniac, does not condescend to condemn him, and proceeds to examine the weighty questions of efficacious grace and sufficing grace. He whom we see perishing poor and abandoned is Cornelius Agrippa, less of a magician than any, though the vulgar persist in regarding him as a more potent sorcerer than all because he was sometimes a cynic and mystifier. What secret do these men bear with them to their tomb ? Why are they wondered at without being understood ? Why are they condemned unheard ? Why are they initiates of those terrific secret sciences of which the Church and society are afraid ? Why are they acquainted with things of which others know nothing? Why do they conceal what all men burn to know ? Why are they invested with a dread and unknown power ? The occult sciences ! Magic ! These words will reveal all and give food for further thought ! Be omni re scibili et quibusdam aliis.

Bub what, as a fact, was this magic ? What was the power of these men who were at once so proud and so persecuted ? If they were really strong, why did they not overcome their enemies ? But if they were weak and foolish, why did people honour them by fearing them ? Does magic exist ? Is there an occult knowledge which is truly a power, which works wonders fit to be compared with the miracles of authorised religions? To these two palmary questions we make answer by an affirmation and a book. The book shall justify the affirmation, and the affirmation is this. Yes, there existed in the past, and there exists in the present, a potent and real magic ; yes, all that legends have said of it is true, but, in contrariety to what commonly happens, popular exaggerations are, in this case, not only beside but below the truth. There is indeed a formidable secret, the revelation of which has once already transformed the world, as testified in Egyptian religious tradition, symbolically summarised by Moses at the beginning of Genesis. This secret constitutes the fatal science of good and evil, and the consequence of its revelation is death. Moses depicts it under the figure of a tree which is in the centre of the Terrestrial Paradise, is in proximity to the tree of life and has a radical connection therewith ; at the foot of this tree is the source of the four mysterious rivers ;

it is guarded by the sword of fire and by the four figures of the Biblical sphinx, the Cherubim of Ezekiel. . . . Here I must pause, and I fear already that I have said too much. Yes, there is one sole, universal, and imperishable dogma, strong as the supreme reason ; simple, like all that is great ; intelligible, like all that is universally and absolutely true ; and this dogma has been the parent of all others. Yes, there is a science which confers on man powers apparently superhuman ; I find them enumerated as follows in a Hebrew manuscript of the sixteenth century : —

“ These are the powers and privileges of the man who holds in his right hand the clavicles of Solomon, and in his left the branch of the blossoming almond. K Aleph. — He beholds God face to face, without dying, and converses familiarly with the seven genii who command the entire celestial army. 3 Beth. — He is above all afflictions and all fears. J Ghiinel. — He reigns with all heaven and is served by all hell. T Baleth. — He disposes of his own health and life and can equally influence that of others, n He. — He can neither be surprised by misfortune, nor overwhelmed by disasters, nor conquered by his enemies. ^ Vau. — He knows the reason of the past, present, and future. T Dzain. — He possesses the secret of the resurrection of the dead and the key of immortality. “ Such are the seven chief privileges, and those which rank next are as follows : — “ n Cheth. — To find the philosophical stone. t3 Teth. — To enjoy the universal medicine. ^ lod. — To ^ acquainted with the laws of perpetual motion and in a position to demonstrate the quadrature of the circle. 3 Caph. — To change into gold not only all metals, but also the earth itself, and even the refuse of the earth. ^ Lamed. — To subdue the most ferocious animals and be able to pronounce the words which paralyse and charm serpents. D Mem. — To possess the Ars Notoria which gives the universal science. 3 Nun. — To speak learnedly on all subjects, without preparation and without study.

“ These, finally, are the seven least powers of the magus — “ D Bamech. — To know at first sight the deep things of the souls of men and the mysteries of the hearts of women, y Gnain. — To force nature to make him free at his pleasure, a — To foresee all future events which do not depend on a superior free will, or on an undiscernible cause, v Tsctde. — To give at once and to all the most efficacious consolations and the most wholesome counsels. P Gopih. — To triumph over adversities. 3 Resell. — ^To conquer love and hate. ^ Schin. — To have the secret of wealth, to be always its master and never its slave. To know how to enjoy even poverty and never become abject or miserable. ri Tau. — Let us add to these three septenaries that the wise man rules the elements, stills tempests, cures the diseased by his touch, and raises the dead ! “ At the same time, there are certain things which have been sealed by Solomon with his triple seal. It is enough that the initiates know, and as for others, whether they deride, doubt, or believe, whether they threaten or fear, what matters it to science or to us ? ”

Such are actually the issues of occult philosophy, and we are in a position to withstand an accusation of insanity or a suspicion of imposture when we affirm that all these privileges are real. To demonstrate this is the sole end of our work on occult philosophy. The philosophical stone, the universal medicine, the transmutation of metals, the quadrature of the circle, and the secret of perpetual motion, are thus neither mystifications of science nor dreams of madness. They are terms which must be understood in their veritable sense ; they are expressions of the different applications of one same secret, the several characteristics of one same operation, which is defined in a more comprehensive manner under the name of the great work. Furthermore, there exists in nature a force which is immeasurably more powerful than steam, and by means of which a single man, who knows how to adapt and direct it, might upset and alter the face of the world. This force was known to the ancients ; it consists in an universal agent having equilibrium for its supreme law, while its direction is concerned immediately with the great arcanum of transcendent magic. By the direction of this agent it is possible to change the very order of the seasons ; to produce at night the phenomena of day ; to correspond instantaneously between one extremity of the earth and the other ; to see, like Apollonius, what is taking place on the other side of the world ; to heal or injure at a distance ; to give speech an universal success and reverberation. This agent, which barely manifests under the uncertain methods of Mesmer’s followers, is precisely that which the adepts of the middle ages denominated the first matter of the great work. The

Gnostics represented it as the fiery body of the Holy Spirit ; it was the object of adoration in the secret rites of the Sabbath and the Temple, under the hieroglyphic figure of Baphomet or the Androgyne of Mendes. All this will be proved. Such are the secrets of occult philosophy, such is magic in history ; let us now glance at it as it appears in its books and its achievements, in its initiations and its rites. The key of all magical allegories is found in the tablets we have already mentioned, and these tablets we regard as the work of Hermes. About this book, which may be called the keystone of the whole edifice of occult science, are grouped innumerable legends which are either its partial translation or its commentary renewed endlessly under a thousand different forms. Sometimes these ingenious fables combine harmoniously into a great epic which characterises an epoch, though how or why is not clear to the uninitiated. Thus, the fabulous history of the Golden Fleece both resumes and veils the Hermetic and magical doctrines of Orpheus, and if we recur only to the mysterious poetry of Greece, it is because the sanctuaries of Egypt and India to some extent dismay us by their resources, and leave our choice embarrassed in the midst of such abundant wealth. We are eager, moreover, to reach the Thebaid at once, that dread synthesis of all doctrine, past, present, and future, that, so to speak, infinite fable, which comprehends, like the Deity of Orpheus, the two extremities of the cycle of human life.

Extraordinary fact ! The seven gates of Thebes, attacked and defended by seven chiefs who have sworn upon the blood of victims, possess the same significance as the seven seals of the sacred book interpreted by seven genii, and assailed by a monster with seven heads, after being opened by a living yet immolated lamb, in the allegorical work of St John. The mysterious origin of (Edipus, found suspended from the tree of Cytheron like a bleeding fruit, recalls the symbols of Moses and the narratives of Genesis. He makes war upon his father, whom he slays without knowing — alarming prophecy of

the blind emancipation of reason without science ; he then meets with the sphinx — the sphinx, that symbol of symbols, the eternal enigma of the vulgar, the granite pedestal of the science of the sages, the voracious and silent monster whose invariable form expresses the one dogma of the great universal mystery. How is the tetrad changed into the duad and explained by the triad ? In more common but more emblematic terms, what is that 'animal which in the morning has four feet, two at noon, and three in the evening ? Philosophically speaking, how does the doctrine of elementary forces produce the dualism of Zoroaster, while it is summed by the triad of Pythagoras and Plato ? What is the ultimate reason of allegories and numbers, the final message of all symbolisms ? CEdipus replies with a simple and terrible word which destroys the sphinx and makes the diviner King of Thebes ; the answer to the enigma is Man ! . . . Unfortunate ! He has seen too much, and yet with insufficient clearness ; he must presently expiate his calamitous and imperfect clairvoyance by a voluntary blindness, and then vanish in the midst of a storm, like all civilisations which may at any time divine the answer to the riddle of the sphinx without grasping its whole import and mystery. Everything is symbolical and transcendental in this titanic epic of human destinies. The two hostile brethren express the second part of the grand mystery divinely completed by the sacrifice of Antigone ;

then comes the last war ; the brethren slay one another, Capaneus is destroyed by the lightning which he defies, Amphiaraiis is swallowed by the earth, and all these are so many allegories which, by their truth and their grandeur, astonish those who can penetrate their triple hieratic sense. ZEschylus, annotated by Ballanche, gives only a weak notion concerning them, whatever the primeval sublimities of the Greek poet or the beauty of the French critic.

The secret book of antique initiation was not unknown to Homer, who outlines its plan and chief figures on the shield of Achilles, with minute precision. But the gracious fictions of Homer replaced speedily in the popular memory the simple and abstract truths of primeval revelation. Humanity clung to the form and allowed the idea to be forgotten ; signs lost power in their multiplication ; magic also at this period became corrupted, and degenerated with the sorcerers of Thessaly into the most profane enchantments. The crime of (Edipus brought forth its deadly fruits, and the science of good and evil erected evil into a sacrilegious divinity. Men, weary of the light, took refuge in the shadow of bodily substance ; the dream of the void, which is filled by God, soon appeared to be greater than God himself in their eyes, and thus hell was created. When, in the course of this work, we make use of the consecrated terms God, Heaven, and Hell, let it be thoroughly understood, once for all, that our meaning is as far removed from that which the profane attach to them as initiation is distant from vulgar thought. God, for us, is the Azot of the sages, the efficient and final principle of the great work.

Eeturning to the fable of (Edipus, the crime of the King of Thebes was that he failed to understand the sphinx, that he destroyed the scourge of Thebes without being pure enough to complete the expiation in the name of his people. The plague, in consequence, avenged speedily the death of the monster, and the King of Thebes, forced to abdicate, sacrificed himself to the terrible manes of the sphinx, more alive and voracious than ever when it had passed from the domain of form into that of idea. (Edipus divined what was man and he put out his own eyes because he did not see what was God. He divulged half of the great arcanum, and, to save his people, it was necessary for him to bear the remaining half of the terrible secret into exile and the tomb. After the colossal fable of (Edipus we find the gracious poem of Psyche, which was certainly not invented by Apuleius. The great magical arcanum reappears here under the figure of a mysterious union between a god and a weak mortal abandoned alone and naked on a rock. Psyche must remain in ignorance of the secret of her ideal royalty, and if she behold her husband she must lose him. Here Apuleius commentates and interprets Moses, but did not the Elohim of Israel and the gods of Apuleius both issue ' from the sanctuaries of Memphis and Thebes ? Psyche is the sister of Eve, or, rather, is Eve spiritualised.

Both desire to know and lose innocence for the honour of the ordeal. Both deserve to go down into hell, one to bring back the antique box of Pandora, the other to find and to crush the head of the old serpent, who is the symbol of time and of evil. Both are guilty of the crime which must be expiated by the Prometheus of ancient days and the Lucifer of the Christian legend, the one delivered, the other overcome, by Hercules and by the Saviour. The great magical secret is, therefore, the lamp and dagger of Psyche, the apple of Eve, the sacred fire of Prometheus, the burning sceptre of Lucifer, but it is also the holy cross of the Eedeemer. To be acquainted with it sufficiently to abuse or divulge it is to deserve all sufferings ; to know it as one should know it, namely, to make use of and conceal it, is to be master of the absolute.

Everything is contained in a single word, which consists of four letters ; it is the Tetragram of the Hebrews, the Azot of the alchemists, the Thot of the Bohemians, or the Taro of the Kabbalists. This word, expressed after so many manners, means God for the profane, man for the philosophers, and imparts to the adepts the final word of human sciences and the key of divine power ; but he only can use it who understands the necessity of never revealing it. Had CEdipus, instead of killing the sphinx, overcome it, harnessed it to his chariot, and thus entered Thebes, he would have been king without incest, without misfortunes, and without exile. Had Psyche, by meekness and affection, persuaded Love to reveal himself, she would never have lost Love. Now, Love is one of the mythological images of the great secret and the great agent, because it at once expresses an action and a passion, a void and a plenitude, a shaft and a wound. The initiates will understand me, and, on account of the profane, I must not speak more clearly. After the marvellous Golden Ass of Apuleius, we find no more magical epics. Science, conquered in Alexandria by the fanaticism of the murderers of Hypatia, became Christian, or, rather, concealed itself under Christian veils with Ammonius, Synesius, and the pseudonymous author of the books of Dionysius the Areopagite. In such times it was needful to excuse miracles by the garb of superstition and science by an unintelligible language.

Hieroglyphic writing was revived ; pantacles and characters were invented to summarise an entire doctrine by a sign, a whole sequence of tendencies and revelations in a word. What was the end of the aspirants to knowledge ? They sought the secret of the great work, or the philosophical stone, or the perpetual motion, or the quadrature of the circle, or the universal medicine — formulas which often saved them from persecution and hatred by causing them to be taxed with madness, and all signifying one of the phases of the great magical secret, as we shall shew later on. This absence of epics continues till our Bomance of the Rose ; but the rose-symbol, which expresses also the mysterious and magical sense of Dante’s poem, is borrowed from the transcendent Kabbalah, and it is time that we should have recourse to this immense and concealed source of universal philosophy.

The Bible, with all its allegories, gives expression to the religious knowledge of the Hebrews in only an incomplete and veiled manner. The book which we have mentioned, the hieratic characters of which we shall explain subsequently, that book which William Postel names the Genesis of Enoch, certainly existed before Moses and the prophets, whose doctrine, fundamentally identical with that of the ancient Egyptians, had also its exotericism and its veils. When Moses spoke to the people, says the sacred book allegorically, he placed a veil over his face, and he removed it when addressing God; this accounts for the alleged Biblical absurdities which so exercised the satirical powers of Voltaire. The books were only written as memorials of tradition, and in symbols that were nnintelligible for the profane. The Pentateuch and the poems of the prophets were, moreover, elementary works, alike in doctrine, ethics, and liturgy ; the true secret and traditional philosophy was not committed to writing until a later period, and under veils even less transparent. ' Thus arose a second and unknown Bible, or rather one which was not comprehended by Christians, a storehouse, so they say, of monstrous absurdities, for, in this case, believers, confounded in the same ignorance, speak the language of sceptics; a monument, as we affirm, which comprises all that philosophical genius and religious genius have ever accomplished or imagined in the order of the sublime ; a treasure encompassed by thorns ;

a diamond concealed in a rude and opaque stone : our readers will have already guessed that we refer to the Talmud. How strange is the destiny of the Jews, those scapegoats, martyrs, and saviours of the world, a people full of vitality, a bold and hardy race, which persecutions have always preserved intact, because it has not yet accomplished its mission ! Do not our apostolical traditions declare that, after the decline of faith among the Gentiles, salvation shall again come forth out of the house of Jacob, and that then the crucified Jew who is adored by the Christians will give the empire of the world into the hands of God his Father ?

On penetrating into the sanctuary of the Kabbalah one is seized with admiration at the sight of a doctrine so logical, so simple, and, at the same time, so absolute. The essential union of ideas and signs ; the consecration of the most fundamental realities by primitive characters ; the trinity of words, letters, and numbers ; a philosophy simple as the alphabet, profound and infinite as the Word ; theorems more complete and luminous than those of Pythagoras ; a theology which may be summed up on the fingers ; an infinite which can be held in the hollow of an infant’s hand ; ten figures and twenty-two letters, a triangle. a square, and a circle ; these are the entire elements of the Kabbalah. These are the component principles of the written Word, reflection of that spoken Word which created the world ! All truly dogmatic religions have issued from the Kabbalah and return therein ; whatsoever is grand or scientific in the religious dreams of all the illuminated, Jacob Boehme, Swedenborg, Saint Martin, &c., is borrowed from the Kabbalah ; all masonic associations owe to it their secrets and their symbols. The Kabbalah alone consecrates the alliance of universal reason and the divine Word ; it establishes, by the counterpoise of two forces apparently opposed, the eternal balance of being ; it only reconciles reason with faith, power with liberty, science with mystery ; it has the keys of the present, past, and future !

To become initiated into the Kabbalah, it is insufficient to read and to meditate upon the writings of Eeuchlin, Galatinus, Kircher, or Picus de Mirandola ; it is necessary to study and to understand the Hebrew writers in the collection of Pistorius, the Septer Jetzirah above all ; it is necessary also to master the great book Zohar, read attentively in the collection of 1684, entitled Kabhala Denvdata, the treatise of Kabbalistic Pneumatics, and that of the Eevolution of Souls ; and afterwards to enter boldly into the luminous darkness of the whole dogmatic and allegorical body of the Talmud. Then we shall be in a position to understand William Postel, and can admit secretly that apart from his very premature and over-generous dreams about the emancipation of women, this celebrated, learned, illuminated man could not have been so mad as is pretended by those who have not read him. We have sketched rapidly the history of occult philosophy ; we have indicated its sources and analysed in a few words its principal books. This work refers only to the science, but magic, or, rather, magical power, is composed of two things, a science and a force ; without the force the science is nothing, or, rather, it is a danger. To give knowledge to power alone, such is the supreme law of initiations. Hence did the

Great Eevealer say : “ The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent only shall carry it away.” The door of truth is closed like the sanctuary of a virgin; he must be a man who would enter. All miracles are promised to faith, and what is faith except the audacity of a wil] which does not hesitate in the darkness, but advances towards the light in spite of all ordeals, and surmounting all obstacles ? It is unnecessary to repeat here the history of ancient initiations ; the more dangerous and terrible they were, the greater was their efficacy. Hence, in those days, the world had men to govern and instruct it. The sacerdotal art and the royal art consisted above all in ordeals of courage, discretion, and will. It was a novitiate similar to that of those priests who, under the name of Jesuits, are so unpopular at the present day, but would govern the world, notwithstanding, had they a truly wise and intelligent chief. After passing our life in the search after the absolute in religion, science, and justice ; after turning in the circle of Faust, we have reached the primal doctrine and the first book of humanity. There we pause, there we have discovered the secret of human omnipotence and indefinite progress, the key of all symbolisms, tlie first and final doctrine, and we have come to understand what was meant by that expression so often made use of in the Gospel — the Kingdom of God.

To provide a fixed point as a fulcrum for human activity is to solve the problem of Archimedes by realising the application of his famous lever. This it is which was accomplished by the great initiators who have electrified the world, and they could not have done so except by means of the great and incommunicable secret. However, as a guarantee of its renewed youth, the symbolical phoenix never reappeared before the eyes of the world without having solemnly consumed the remains and evidences of his previous life. It is thus that Moses caused all those to perish in the desert who could have known Egypt and her mysteries ; thus, at Ephesus, St Paul burnt all books which treated of the occult sciences ; thus, finally, the Trench Kevolution, daughter of the great Johannite Orient and the ashes of the Templars, spoliated the churches and blasphemed the allegories of the divine cultus. But all doctrines and all revivals proscribe magic, and condemn its mysteries to the flames and to oblivion. The reason is that each cultus or philosophy which comes into the world is a Benjamin of humanity which lives by the death of its mother ; it is because the symbolical serpent seems ever devouring its own tail ; it is because, as essential condition of existence, a void is necessary to every plenitude, space for every dimension, an affirmation for each negation ; it is the eternal realisation of the phoenix allegory.

Two illustrious scholars have already preceded me along the path I am travelling, but they have, so to speak, spent the dark night therein. I refer to Volney and Dupuis, to Dupuis above all, whose immense erudition has produced only a negative work, for in the origin of all religions he has seen nothing but astronomy, taking thus the symbolic cycle for doctrine and the calendar for legend. He was deficient in one branch of knowledge, that of true magic^ which comprises the secrets of the Kabbalah. Dupuis passed through the antique sanctuaries like the prophet Ezekiel over the plain strewn with bones, and only understood death, for want of that word which collects the virtue of the four winds, and can make a living people of all the vast ossuary, by crying to the ancient symbols : “ Arise ! Take up a new form and walk ! ” Hence the hour has come when we must have the boldness to attempt what no one has dared to perform previously. Like Julian, we would rebuild the temple, and in so doing we do not believe that we shall be belying a wisdom that we adore, which also Julian would himself have been worthy to adore, had the rancorous and fanatical doctors of his period permitted him to understand it. Eor us the temple has two pillars, on one of which Christianity has inscribed its name. We have, therefore, no wish to attack Christianity; far from it, we

seek to explain and accomplish it. Intelligence and will have alternately exercised their power in the world ; religion and philosophy are still at war in our own days, but they must end by agreeing. The provisional object of Christianity was to establish, by obedience and faith, a supernatural or religious equality among men, and to immobilise intelligence by faith, so as to provide a fulcrum for^ virtue which came for the destruction of the aristocracy of science, or, rather, to replace that aristocracy already destroyed. Philosophy, on the contrary, has laboured to bring back men by liberty and reason to natural inequality, and to substitute astuteness for virtue by inaugurating the reign of industry. Neither of the two operations has proved complete and adequate, neither has brought men to perfection and felicity. What is now dreamed, almost without daring to hope for it, is an alliance between these two forces so long regarded as contrary, and there is good ground for desiring their union, for these two great powers of the human soul are no more opposed to one another than the sex of man is opposed to that of woman ; undoubtedly they differ, but their apparently contrary dispositions come only from their aptitude to meet and unite.

“ There is no less proposed, therefore, than an universal solution of all problems ? ” No doubt, since we are concerned with explaining the philosophical stone, perpetual motion, the secret of the great work and of the universal medicine. We shall be accused of insanity, like the divine Paracelsus, or of charlatanism, like the great and unfortunate Agrippa. If the pyre of Urban Grandier be extinguished, the sullen proscriptions of silence and of calumny remain. We do not brave but are resigned to them. We have not sought ourselves the publication of this book, and we believe that if the time be come to produce speech, it will be produced by us or by others. We shall therefore remain calm and wait. Our work has two parts ; in the one we establish the Kabbalistic and magical doctrine in its entirety ; the other is consecrated to the cultus, that is, to ceremonial magic. The one is that which the ancient sages termed the clavicle, the other that which rural people still call the grimoire. The numbers and subjects of the chapters, which correspond in both parts, are in no sense arbitrary, and are all indicated in the great universal key, of which we give for the first time a complete and adeauate explanation. Let this Work now go its way where it wills, and become what Providence determines ; it is finished, and we believe it to be enduring, because it is strong, like all that is reasonable and conscientious.

When a philosopher adopted as the basis for a new apocalypse of human wisdom the axiom : “ I think, therefore I am,” in a measure he unconsciously altered, from the standpoint of Christian revelation, the old conception of the Supreme Being. I am that I am, said the Being of beings of Moses. I am he who thinks, says the man of Descartes, and to think being to speak inwardly, this man may affirm like the God of St John the Evangelist : I am he in whom and by whom the word manifests — In principio erat verbum. Now, what is a principle ? It is a groundwork of speech, it is a reason for the existence of the word. The essence of the word is in the principle ; the principle is that which is; intelligence is a principle which speaks. What, further, is intellectual light ? It is speech. What is revelation ? It is also speech ; being is the principle, speech is the means, and the plenitude or development and perfection of being is the end. To speak is to create. But to say : “ I think, therefore I exist,” is to argue from consequence to principle, and certain contradictions which have been adduced by a great writer, Lamennais, have abundantly proved the philosophical imperfection of this method. I am, therefore something exists — would appear to us a more primitive and

simple foundation for experimental philosophy. I am, THEREFORE BEING EXISTS. Ego sum qui suTYi — such is the first revelation of God in man and of man in the world, while it is also the first axiom of occult philosophy. sr'nK iTTis- Being is being. Hence this philosophy, having that which is for its principle, is in no sense hypothesis or guesswork. Mercurius Trismegistus begins his admirable symbol, known under the name of the Emerald Table, by this threefold affirmation : It is true, it is certain without error, it is of all truth. Thus, in physics, the true confirmed by experience ; in philosophy, certitude purged from any alloy of error ; in the domain of religion or the infinite, absolute truth indicated by analogy ; such are the first necessities of true science, and magic only can impart these to its adepts. But you, before all things, who are you, thus taking this work in your hands and proposing to read it ? On the pediment of a temple consecrated by antiquity to the God of Light was an inscription of two words : “ Know thyself.” I impress the same counsel on every man when he seeks to approach science. Magic, which the men of old denominated the sanctum regnum, the holy kingdom, or kingdom of God, regnum Dei, exists only for kings and for priests. Are you priests ? Are you kings ? The priesthood of magic is not a vulgar priesthood, and its royalty enters not into competition with the princes of this world. The monarchs of science are the priests of truth, and their sovereignty is hidden from the multitude like their prayers and sacrifices. The kings of science are men who know the truth and the truth has made free, according to the specific promise given by the most mighty of the initiators.

The man who is enslaved by his passions or worldly prejudices can in no wise be initiated ; he must alter or he will never attain ; hence he cannot be an adept, for the word signifies a person who has attained by will and by work. The man who loves his own opinions and fears to part with them, who suspects new truths, who is unprepared to doubt everything rather than admit anything on chance, should close this book ; for him it is useless and dangerous ; he will fail to understand it, and it will trouble him, while if he should divine its meaning, it will be a still greater source of disquietude. If you hold by anything in the world more than by reason, truth, and justice ; if your will be uncertain and vacillating, either in good or evil ; if logic alarm you, or the naked truth make you blush ; if you are hurt when accepted errors are assailed ; condemn this work straight away ; do not read it ; let it cease to exist for you ; but at the same time do not cry it down as dangerous. The secrets which it records will be understood by an elect few, and will be held back by those who understand them. Shew light to the birds of the night-time, and you hide their light ; it is the light which blinds them, and for them is more dark than the darkness. I shall therefore speak clearly and make known everything, with the firm conviction that initiates alone, or those who deserve initiation, will read all and understand in part.

There is a true and a false science, a divine magic and an infernal magic — in other words, one which is delusive and darksome ; it is our task to reveal the one and to unveil the other, to distinguish the magician from the sorcerer, and the adept from the charlatan. The magician avails himself of a force which he knows, the sorcerer seeks to abuse a force which he does not understand. If it be possible in a scientific work to employ a term so vulgar and so discredited, then the devil gives himself to the magician and the sorcerer gives himself to the devil. The magician is the sovereign pontiff of nature, the sorcerer is her profaner only. The sorcerer bears the same relation to the magician that a superstitious and fanatical person bears to a truly religious man. Before advancing further let us tersely define magic. Magic is the traditional science of the secrets of nature which has been transmitted to us from the magi. By means of this science the adept becomes invested with a species of relative omnipotence and can operate superhumanly— that is, after a manner which transcends the normal possibility of men. Thereby many celebrated hierophants, such as Mercurius Trismegistus, Osiris, Orpheus, Apollonius of Tyana, and others whom it might be dangerous or unwise to name, came after their death to be adored and invoked as gods. Thereby others also, according to that ebb-and-flow of opinion which is responsible for the caprices of success, became emissaries of infernus or suspected adventurers, like the emperor Julian, Apuleius, the enchanter Merlin, and that arch-sorcerer, as he was termed in his day, the illustrious and unfortunate Comehus Agrippa.

To attain the sanctum regnum, in other words, the knowledge and power of the magi, there are four indispensable conditions — an intelligence illuminated by study, an intrepidity which nothing can check, a will which nothing can break, and a discretion which nothing can corrupt and nothing intoxicate. To know, to dare, to will, to keep SILENCE — such are the four words of the magus, inscribed upon the four symbolical forms of the sphinx. These four words can be combined after four manners, and explained four times by one another.* On the first page of the Book of Hermes the adept is depicted with a large hat, which, if turned down, would conceal his entire head. One hand is extended towards heaven, which he seems to command with his rod, while the other is placed upon his breast ; before him are the chief symbols or instruments of science, and he has others hidden in a juggler’s wallet. His body and arms form the letter Aleph, the first of the alphabet which the Jews borrowed from the Egyptians ; to this symbol we shall have occasion to recur later on. The magus is truly what the Hebrew Kabbalists call the Microprosopus, that is, the creator of the little world. The first of all magical sciences being the knowledge of one’s self,

* See the Tarot cards. so is one’s own creation first of all works of science ; it contains the others, and is the principle of the great work. The term, however, requires explanation. Supreme reason being the sole invariable and consequently imperishable principle — what we term death being change — hence the intelligence which cleaves closely to this principle and, in a manner, identifies itself therewith, does hereby make itself unchangeable, and, as a result, immortal. To cleave invariably to reason, it will be understood that it is necessary to attain independence of all those forces which by their fatal and inevitable movement' produce the alternatives of life and death. To know how to suffer, to forbear, and to die — such are the first secrets which place us beyond reach of aflfliction, the desires of the flesh, and the fear of annihilation. The man who seeks and finds a glorious death has faith in immortality and universal humanity believes in it with him and for him, raising altars and statues to his memory in token of eternal life. Man becomes king of the brutes only by subduing or taming them ; otherwise he will be their victim or slave. Brutes are the type of our passions ; they are the instinctive forces of nature. The world is a field of battle where liberty struggles with inertia by the opposition of active force. Physical laws are millstones ;

if you cannot be the miller you must be the grain. You are called to be king of the air, water, earth, and fire ; but to reign over these four animals of symbolism, it is necessary to conquer and enchain them. He who aspires to be a sage and to know the great enigma of nature must be the heir and despoiler of the sphinx ; his the human head in order to possess speech, his the eagle’s wings in order to scale the heights, his the bull’s flanks in order to furrow the depths, his the lion’s talons to make a way on the right and the left, before and behind.

You, therefore, who seek initiation, are you learned as Faust ? Are you insensible as Job ? No, is it not so ? But you may become equal to both if you will. Have you overcome the vortices of vague thoughts ? Are you without indecision or capriciousness ? Do you consent to pleasure only when you will, and do you wish for it only when you should ? No, is it not so ? Not invariably at least, but it may become so if you choose. The sphinx has not only a man’s head, it has woman’s breasts ; do you know how to resist feminine charms ? No, is it not so ? And you laugh outright in replying, vaunting your moral weakness for the glorification of your physical and vital force. Be it so ; I allow you to render this homage to the ass of Sterne or Apuleius. The ass has its merit, I agree ; it was consecrated to Priapus as was the goat to the god of Mendes. But take it for what it is worth, and decide whether ass or man shall be master. He alone can possess truly the pleasure of love who has conquered the love of pleasure. To be able and to forbear is to be twice able. Woman enchains you by your desires ; master your desires and you will enchain her. The greatest injury that can be inflicted on a man is to call him a coward.

Now, what is a cowardly person ? One who neglects his moral dignity in order to obey blindly the instincts of nature. As a fact, in the presence of danger it is natural to be afraid and seek flight ; why, then, is it shameful ? Because honour has erected it into a law that we must prefer our duty to our inclinations or fears. What is honour from this point of view ? It is universal presentience of immortality and appreciation of the means which can lead to it. The last trophy which man can win from death is to triumph over the appetite for life, not by despair, but by a more exalted hope, which is contained in faith, for all that is noble and honest, by the undivided consent of the world. To learn self-conquest is therefore to learn life, and the austerities of stoicism were no vain parade of freedom ! To yield to the forces of nature is to follow the stream of collective life, and to be the slave of secondary causes. To resist and subdue nature is to make one’s self a personal and imperishable life ; it is to break free from the vicissitudes of life and death. Every

man who is prepared to die rather than renounce truth and justice is most truly living, for immortality abides in his soul. To find or to form such men was the end of all ancient initiations. Pythagoras disciplined his pupils by silence and all kinds of self-denial ; candidates in Egypt were tried by the four elements ; and we know the selfinflicted austerities of fakirs and brahmans in India for attaining the kingdom of free will and divine independence. All macerations of asceticism are borrowed from the initiations of ancient mysteries ; they have ceased because those qualified for initiation, no longer finding initiators, and the leaders of conscience becoming in the lapse of time as uninstructed as the vulgar, the blind have grown weary of following the blind, and no one has cared to pass through ordeals the end of which was now only in doubt and despair ; for the path of light was lost. To succeed in performing something we must know what it is proposed to do, or at least must have faith in some one who does know it. But shall I stake my life on a venture, or follow someone at chance who himself knows not where he is going ?

We must not set out rashly along the path of the transcendent sciences, but, once started, we must reach the end or perish. To doubt is to become a fool ; to pause is to fall ; to recoil is to cast one’s self into au abyss. You, therefore, who are undertaking the study of this book, if you persevere with it to the close and understand it, it will make you either a monarch or a madman. Do what you will with the volume, you will be unable to despise or to forget it. If you are pure, it will be your light ; if strong, your arm ; if holy, your religion ; if wise, the rule of your wisdom. But if you are wicked, for you it will be an infernal torch ; it will lacerate your breast like a poniard ; it will rankle in your memory like a remorse ; it will people your imagination with chimeras, and will drive you through foUy to despair. You will endeavour to laugh at it, and will only gnash your teeth ; this book will be the file in the fable which the serpent tried to bite, but it destroyed all his teeth.

Let US now enter on the series of initiations. I have said that revelation is the word. As a fact, the word, or speech, is the veil of being and the characteristic sign of life. Every form is the veil of a word, because the idea which is the mother of the word is the sole reason for the existence of forms. Every figure is a character, every character derives from and returns into a word. For this reason the ancient sages, of whom Trismegistus is the organ, formulated their sole dogma in these terms : — “ That which is above is like that which is below, and that which is below is like that which is above.” In other words, the form is proportional to the idea ; the shadow is the measure of the body calculated with its relation to the luminous ray ; the scabbard is as deep as the sword is long ; the negation is in proportion to the contrary affirmation ; production is equal to destruction in the movement which preserves life ; and there is no point in infinite space which may not be regarded as the centre of a circle having an extending circumference indefinitely receding into space. Every individuality is, therefore, indefinitely perfectible, since the moral order is analogous to the physical, and since we cannot conceive any point as unable to dilate, increase, and radiate in a philosophically infinite circle.

What can be affirmed of the soul in its totality may be affirmed of each faculty of the soul. The intelligence and will of man are instruments of incalculable power and capacity. But intelligence and will possess as their help-mate and instrument a faculty which is too imperfectly known, the omnipotence of which belongs exclusively to the domain of magic. I speak of the imagination, which the Kabbalists term the Diaphane, or the Transludd. Imagination, in effect, is like the soul’s eye ; therein forms are outlined and preserved ; thereby we behold the reflections of the invisible world ; it is the glass of visions and the apparatus of magical life ; by its intervention we heal diseases, modify the seasons, drive death away from the living, and raise the dead to life, because it is the imagination which exalts the will and gives

it a hold upon the universal agent. Imagination determines the shape of the child in its mother’s womb, and decides the destiny of men ; it lends wings to contagion, and directs the weapons of warfare. Are you exposed in battle ? Believe yourself to be invulnerable, like Achilles, and you will be so, says Paracelsus. Fear attracts bullets, but they are repelled by courage. It is well known that persons with amputated limbs feel pain in the very members which they possess no longer. Paracelsus operated upon living blood by medicating the product of a bleeding ; he cured headache at a distance by treating hair 'cut from the patient. By the science of the imaginary unity and solidarity of all parts of the body, he anticipated and outstripped all the theories, or rather all the experiences, of our most celebrated magnetisers. Hence his cures were miraculous, and to his name of Philip Theophrastus Bombast, he deserved the addition of Aureolus Paracelsus, with the further epithet of divine ! Imagination is the instrument of the adaptation of the word. Imagination applied to reason is genius. Eeason is one, as genius is one, in the multiplicity of its works. There is one principle, there is one truth, there is one reason, there is one absolute and universal philosophy. Whatsoever is subsists in unity considered as beginning, and returns into unity considered as end. One is in one ; that is to say, all is in aU.

Unity is the principle of numbers ; it is also the principle of motion, and, consequently, of life. The entire human body is summed up in the unity of a single organ, which is the brain. All religions are summed up in the unity of a single dogma, which is the affirmation of being and its equality with itself, which constitutes its mathematical value. There is only one dogma in magic, and it is this : — The visible is the manifestation of the invisible, or, in other terms, the perfect word, in things appreciable and visible, bears an exact proportion to the things which are inappreciable by our senses and unseen by our eyes. The magus uplifts one hand towards heaven and points down the other to earth, and he says : “ Above, immensity : Below,

immensity still ! Immensity equals immensity.” — This is true in things seen as in things unseen. The first letter in the alphabet of the sacred language, Aleph, X, represents a man extending one hand towards heaven and the other to earth. It is an expression of the active principle in everything ; it is creation in heaven corresponding to the omnipotence of the word below. This letter is a pantacle in itself, that is, a character expressing the universal science. It is supplementary to the sacred signs of the Macrocosm and the Microcosm ; it explains the masonic double-triangle and the five-pointed blazing star ; for the word is one and revelation is one. By endowing man with reason, God gave him speech ; and revelation, manifold in its forms but one in its principle-, consists entirely in the universal word, the interpreter of the absolute reason. This is the significance of that term so much misconstrued, catholicity, which, in modern hieratic language, means infallibility. The universal in reason is the absolute, and the absolute is the infallible. If absolute reason impelled universal society to believe irresistibly the utterance of a child, that child would be infallible by the ordination of God and of all humanity. Faith is nothing else but reasonable confidence in this unity of reason and in this universality of the word. To believe is to place confidence in that which we as yet do not know when reason assures us beforehand of ultimately knowing or at least recognising it. Absurd are the so-caUed philosophers who cry, “ I will never believe in a thing which I do not know ! ” Shallow reasoners ! If you knew, would you need to believe ?

But must I believe on chance, and apart from reason ? Certainly not. Blind and haphazard belief is superstition and folly. We may believe in causes which reason compels us to admit on the evidence of effects known and appreciated by science. Science ! Great word and great problem ! What is science ? We shall answer in the second chapter of this book. Science is the absolute and complete possession of truth. Hence have the sages of all the centuries trembled before such an absolute and terrible word ; they have hesitated to arrogate to themselves the first privilege of divinity by assuming the possession of science, and have been contented, instead of the verb to know, with that which expresses cognisance, while, instead of the word science, they have adopted that of gnosis, which represents simply the notion of learning by intuition. What, in fact, does man know ? Nothing, and at the same time he is allowed to ignore nothing. Devoid of knowledge, he is called upon to know all. Now, knowledge supposes the duad — a being who knows and an object known. The duad is the generator of society and of law ; it is also the number of the gnosis. The duad is unity multiplying itself in order to create, and hence in sacred symbolism Eve issues from the inmost bosom of Adam. Adam is the human tetragram, summed up in the mysterious Jod, type of the Kabbalistic phallus.

By adding to this Jod the triadic name of Eve, the name of Jehova is formed, which is eminently the Kabbalistic and magical word, mri', which the high-priest in the temple pronounced Jodcheva. So unity complete in the fruitfulness of the triad forms therewith the tetrad, which is the key of all numbers, of all movements, and of all forms. By a revolution about its own centre, the square produces a circle equal to itself, and this is the quadrature of the circle, the circular movement of four equal angles around the same point.

“ That which is above equals that which is below,” says Hermes. Here then is the duad serving as the measure of unity, and the relation of equality between above and below forms with these the triad. The created principle is the ideal phallus ; the created principle is the formal cte'is. The insertion of the vertical phallus into the horizontal cteis forms the stauros of the Gnostics, or the philosophical cross of masons. Thus, the intersection of two produces four, which, by its movement, defines the circle with all degrees thereof. N is man ; 3 is woman ; 1 is the principle ; 2 is the word ; A is the active ; B is the passive ; the monad is Bohas ; the duad is Jakin. In the trigrams of Bohi, unity is the yang and the duad is the yin. Bohas and J akin are the names of the two symbolical pillars without the chief door of Solomon’s KabbaUstic temple. In the Kabbalah these pillars explain all mysteries of antagonism, whether natural, political, or religious, and they explain also the procreative struggle between the man and the woman, for, according to the law of nature, the woman must resist the man, and he must entice or overcome her. The active principle seeks the passive principle, the plenum desires the void, the serpent’s jaw attracts the serpent’s tail, and in turning upon himself, he, at the same time, flies and pursues himself. Woman is the creation of man, and universal creation is the bride of the First Principle.

When the Supreme Being became a creator, he erected a jod or a phallus, and to provide a place in the fulness of the uncreated light, it was necessary to hollow out a cteis or trench of shadow equivalent to the dimension determined by his creative desire, and attributed by him to the ideal jod of the radiating light. Such is the mysterious language of the Kabbalists in the Talmud, and on account of vulgar ignorance and malignity, it is impossible for us to explain or simplify it further. What then, is the creation ? It is the mansion of the creative Word. What is the cteis ? It is the mansion of the phallus. What is the nature of the active principle ? To diffuse. What is that of the passive ? To gather in and to fructify. What is man ? He who initiates, who bruises, who labours, who sows. What is woman ? She who forms, reunites, irrigates, and harvests. Man wages war, woman brings peace about ; man destroys to create, woman builds up to preserve ; man is revolution, woman is conciliation ; man is the father of Cain, woman the mother of Abel. What, moreover, is wisdom ? It is the agreement and union of two principles, the mildness of Abel directing the activity of Cain, man guided by the sweet inspirations of woman, debauchery conquered by lawful marriage, revolutionary energy softened and subdued by the gentleness of order and peace, pride subjugated by love, science acknowledging the inspirations of faith. Then human science becomes wise, and submits itself to the infallibility of universal reason, instructed by love or universal charity. Then it can take the name of gnosis, because it knows at least that as yet it cannot boast of knowing perfectly.

The monad can only manifest by the duad ; unity itself and the notion of unity at once constitute two. The unity of the Macrocosm reveals itself by the two opposite points of two triangles. Human unity fulfils itself to right and left. Primitive man is androgynous. All organs of the human body are disposed in pairs, excepting the nose, the tongue, the umbilicus, and the Kabbalistic jod. Divinity, one in its essence, has two essential conditions as the fundamental grounds of its being — necessity and liberty. TJie laws of supreme reason necessitate and rule liberty in God, who is of necessity wise and reasonable. To make light visible God has merely hypotheticated the shadow. To manifest the truth he has permitted the possibility of doubt. The shadow bodies forth the light, and the possibility of error is requisite for the temporal manifestation of truth. If the buckler of Satan did not intercept the spear of Michael, the might of the angel would be lost in the void or manifested by infinite destruction launched below from above. Did not the heel of Michael restrain Satan in his ascent, Satan would dethrone God, or rather he would lose himself in the abysses of the altitude. Hence Satan is needful to Michael as the pedestal to the statue, and Michael is necessary to Satan as the brake to the locomotive. In analogical and universal dynamics one leans only on that which resists. Furthermore, the universe is balanced by two forces which maintain it in equilibrium, the force which attracts and that which repels. They exist alike in physics, in philosophy, and in religion ; in physics they produce equilibrium, in philosophy criticism, in religion progressive revelation. The ancients represented this mystery in the conflict between Eros and Anteros, the struggle between Jacob and the angel, and by the equilibrium of the golden mountain, which gods on the one side and demons

on the other hold bound by the symbolic serpent of India. It is also typified by the caduceus of Hermanubis, by the two cherubim of the ark, by the twofold sphinx of the chariot of Osiris, and by the two seraphim, respectively black and white. Its scientific reality is demonstrated by the phenomena of polarity, and by the universal law of sympathies or antipathies. The undiscerning disciples of Zoroaster divided the duad without referring it to unity, thus separating the pillars of the temple, and endeavouring to halve God. Conceive the absolute as two, and you must immediately conceive it as three to recover the unity principle. For this reason, the material elements, analogous to the divine elements, are understood firstly as four, explained as two, and exist ultimately as three. Eevelation is the duad ; every word is double, and supposes two. The ethic which results from revelation is founded on antagonism, which results from the duad. Spirit and form attract and repel one another, like sign and idea, fiction and truth. Supreme reason necessitates dogma when communicating to finite intelligences, and dogma, by its passage from the domain of ideas to that of forms, participates in two worlds, and has inevitably two senses speaking in succession or simultaneously, that is, to the spirit and the flesh. So are there two forces in the moral region, one which assaults and one which curbs and expiates. They are represented in the mythos of Genesis by the typical personalities of Cain and Abel. Abel oppresses Cain by reason of his moral superiority ; Cain to get free immortalises his brother by slaying him, and becomes the victim of his own crime. Cain could not suffer the life of Abel, and the blood of Abel suffers not the sleep of Cain. In the Gospel the type of Cain is replaced by that of the Prodigal Son, whom his father fully forgives because he returns after having endured much.

There is mercy and there is justice in God ; to the just He dispenses justice and to sinners mercy. In the soul of the world, which is the universal agent, there is a current of love and a current of wrath. This ambient and allpenetrating fluid ; this ray loosened from the sun’s splendour, and fixed by the weight of the atmosphere and the power of central attraction ; this body of the Holy Spirit, which we term the universal agent, while it was typified by the ancients under the symbol of a serpent devouring his tail ; this electro-magnetic ether, this vital and luminous caloric, is depicted in archaic monuments by the girdle of Isis, twicefolded in a love-knot round two poles, as well as by the serpent devouring his own tail, emblematic of prudence and of Saturn. Motion and life consist in the extreme tension of two forces. “ I would thou wert cold or hot,” said the Master. As a fact, a great sinner is more really alive than is a tepid, effeminate man, and the fulness of his return to virtue will be in proportion to the extent of his errors. She who is destined to crush the serpent’s head is intelligence, which ever rises above the stream of blind forces. The Kabbalists call her the virgin of the sea, whose dripping feet the infernal dragon, stupefied by delight, crawls forward to lick with his fiery tongues.

These are the hieratic mysteries of the duad. But there is one, and the last of all, which must not be made known, the reason, according to Hermes Trismegistus, being the malcomprehension of the vulgar, who would ascribe to the necessities of science the immoral aspect of blind fatality. “ By the fear of the unknown must the crowd be restrained,” he observes in another place, and Christ also said : “ Cast not your pearls before swine, lest, trampling them under their feet, they turn and rend you.” The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, of which the fruits are death, is the type of this hieratic secret of the duad, which could only be misconstrued if divulged, and would lead commonly to the unholy denial of free will, which is the principle of moral life. It is hence in the essence of things that the revelation of this secret means death, and it is not at the same time the great secret of magic ; but the arcanum of the duad leads up to that

of the tetrad, or more correctly proceeds therefrom, and is resolved by the triad, which contains the word of the enigma propounded by the sphinx, as it was required to have been found in order to save the life, atone for the unconscious crime, and establish the Kingdom of (Edipus. In the hieroglyphic work of Hermes, the Tarot, called also the book of Thoth, the duad is represented either by the horns of Isis, having her head veiled and an open book partially concealed under her ^mantle, or otherwise by a sovereign lady, Juno, the Greek goddess, having one hand uplifted towards heaven and the other pointed to earth, as if formulating by this gesture the one and twofold dogma which is the foundation of magic, and begins the marvellous symbols of the Emerald Table of Hermes. In the Apocalypse of St John there is a reference to two witnesses or martyrs on whom prophetic tradition confers the names of Elias and Enoch — Elias, man of faith, enthusiasm, miracle ; Enoch one with him who is called Hermes by the Egyptians, honoured by the Phoenicians as Cadmus, author of the sacred alphabet, and the universal key to the initiations of the Logos, father of the Kabbalah, he who, according to the sacred allegories, did not die like other men, but was transported to heaven, to return at the end of time. Much the same statement is made of St John himself, who recovered and explained in his Apocalypse the symbolism of the word of Enoch. This resurrection of St John and Enoch, expected at the close of the ages of ignorance, will be the restitution of their doctrine by the comprehension of the Kabbalistic keys which unlock the temple of unity and universal philosophy, too long occult, and reserved solely for the elect, who perish at the hands of the world.

But we have said that the reproduction of the monad by the duad leads of necessity to the conception and dogma of the triad, so we come now to this great number, which is the fulness and perfect word of unity. The perfect word is the triad, because it supposes an intelligent principle, a speaking principle, and a principle spoken. The absolute, revealing itself by speech, endows this speech with a sense equivalent to itself, and in the understanding thereof creates itself a third time. Thus, also, the sun manifests itself by its light, and proves or makes this manifestation efficacious by heat. The triad is traced in space by the heavenly zenith, the infinite height, connected with east and west by two straight diverging lines. With this visible triangle reason compares another which is invisible, but is assumed to be equal in dimension ; the abyss is its apex and its reversed base is parallel to the horizontal line stretching from east to west. These two triangles, combined in a single figure, which is the six-pointed star, form the sacred symbol of Solomon’s seal, the resplendent star of the Macrocosm. The notion of the infinite and the absolute is expressed by this sign, which is the grand pantacle — that is to say, the most simple and complete abridgment of the science of all things.

Grammar itself attributes three persons to the verb. The first is that which speaks, the second that which is spoken to, and the third the object. In creating, the Infinite Prince speaks to himself of himself. Such is the explanation of the triad and the origin of the dogma of the Trinity. The magical dogma is also one in three and three in one. That which is above is like or equal to that which is below. Thus, two things which resemble one another and the word which signifies their resemblance make three. The triad is the universal dogma. In magic — principle, realisation, adaptation ; in alchemy — azoth, incorporation, transmutation ; in theology — God, incarnation, redemption ; in the human soul — thought, love, and action ; in the family — father, mother, and child. The triad is the end and supreme expression of love ; we seek one another as two only to become three. There are three intelligible worlds which correspond one with another by hierarchic analogy ; the natural or physical, the spiritual or metaphysical, and the divine or religious worlds. From this principle follows the hierarchy of spirits, divided into three orders, and again subdivided by the triad in each of these three orders.

All these revelations are logical deductions from the first mathematical notions of being and number. Unity must multiply itself in order to become active. An indivisible, motionless, and sterile principle would be unity dead and incomprehensible. Were God only one He would never be creator or father. Were he two there would be antagonism or division in the infinite, which would mean the division also or death of all possible things. He is therefore three for the creation by Himself and in His image of the infinite multitude of beings and numbers. So is He truly one in Himself and triple in our conception, which also brings us to behold him as triple in Himself and one in our intelligence and our love. This is a mystery for the faithful, and a logical necessity for the initiate into the absolute and real sciences. The Word manifested by life is realisation or incarnation. The life of the Word accomplishing its cyclic movement is adaptation or redemption. This triple dogma was known in all sanctuaries illuminated by the tradition of the sages. Do you wish to ascertain which is the true religion ? Seek that which realises most in the divine order, which humanises God and makes man divine, which preserves the triadic dogma intact, which clothes the Word with flesh by making God manifest to the hands and eyes of the most ignorant, which finally is by its doctrine suitable to all and can adapt

itself to all — the religion which is hierarchic and cyclic, having allegories and images for children, an exalted philosophy for grown men, sublime hopes and sweet consolations for the old. The primeval sages, when seeking the First of Causes, beheld good and evil in the world; they considered the shadow and the light ; they compared winter with spring, age with youth, life with death, and their conclusion was this : The First Cause is beneficent and severe ; it gives and takes away life. Then are there two contrary principles, the one good and the other evil, exclaimed the disciples of Manes. No, the two principles of universal equilibrium are not contrary, although contrasted in appearance, for a singular wisdom opposes one to another. Good is on the right, evil on the left, but the supreme excellence is above both, applying evil to the victory of good and good to the amendment of evil. The principle of harmony is in unity, and it is this which imparts such power to the uneven number in magic. Now, the most perfect of the odd numbers is three, because it is the trilogy of unity. In the trigrams of Fohi, the superior triad is composed of three yang, or masculine figures, because nothing passive can be admitted into the idea of God, considered as the principle of production in the three worlds. For the same reason, the Christian trinity by no means permits the personification of the mother, who is implicitly included in that of the son.

For the same reason, also, it is contrary to the laws of hieratic and orthodox symbology to personify the Holy Ghost under the form of a woman. Woman comes forth from man as nature comes forth from God ; so Christ ascends Himself to heaven, and assumes the Virgin Mother : we speak of the ascension of the Saviour, and the assumption of the Mother of God. God, considered as Father, has nature for his daughter ; as Son, He has the Virgin for His mother and the Church for His bride; as Holy Spirit, He regenerates and fructifies humanity. Hence, in the trigrams of Fohi, the three inferior yin correspond

to the three superior for these trigrams constitute a pantacle like that of the two triangles of Solomon, but with a triadic interpretation of the six points of the blazing star. Dogma is only divine inasmuch as it is truly human — that is to say, in so far as it sums up the highest reason of humanity ; so also the Master, whom we term the ManGod, called Himself the Son of Man. Eevelation is the expression of belief accepted and formulated by universal reason in the human word, on which account it is said that the divinity is human and the humanity divine in the ManGod. We affirm all this philosophically, not theologically, without infringing in any way on the teaching of the Church, which condemns, and must always condemn, magic. Paracelsus and Agrippa did not set up altar against altar, but bowed to the ruling religion of their time ; to the elect of science, the things of science ; to the faithful, the things of faith. In his hymn to the royal Sun, the Emperor Julian gives a theory of the triad which is almost identical with that of the illuminated Swedenborg. The sun of the divine world is the infinite, spiritual, and uncreated light, which is verbalised, so to speak, in the philosophical world, and becomes the fountain of souls and of truth ; then it incorporates and becomes visible light in the sun of the third world, the central sun of our suns, of which the fixed stars are the ever-living sparkles. The Kabbalists compare the spirit to a substance which remains fluid in the divine medium, and under the influence of the essential light, its exterior, however, becoming solidified, like wax, when exposed to the air in the colder realms of reasoning or of visible forms. These shells, envelopes petrified or carnified, were such an expression possible, are the source of

errors or of evil which connect with the heaviness and hardness of the animal envelopes. In the book “ Zohar,” and in that of the “ Eevolution of Souls,” perverse spirits or evil demons are never named otherwise than as shells — cortices. The cortices of the world of spirits are transparent, while those of the material world are opaque. Bodies are only temporary shells, whence souls have to be liberated ; but those which in this life obey the body compose for themselves an interior body or fluidic shell, which, after death, becomes their prison-house and torment, until the time arrives when they succeed in dissolving it in the warmth of the divine light, towards which, however, the burden of their grossness hinders them from ascending. Indeed, they can do so only after infinite struggles, and by the mediation of the just, who stretch forth their hands towards them. During the whole period of the process they are devoured by the interior activity of the captive spirit, as in a burning furnace. Those who attain the pyre of expiation burn themselves thereon, like Hercules upon Mount Etna, and so are delivered from their sufferings, but the courage of the majority fails before this ordeal, which seems to them a second death more appalling than the first, and so they remain in hell, which is, rightly and actually, eternal ; but therein souls are never precipitated, nor are they ever retained despite themselves.

The three worlds correspond together by means of the thirty-two paths of light which are the steps of the sacred ladder ; every true thought corresponds to a divine grace in heaven and a good work on earth ; every grace of God manifests a truth, and produces one or many acts ; reciprocally, every act affects a truth or falsehood in the heavens, a grace or a punishment. When a man pronounces the tetragram — say, the Kabbalists — the nine heavens sustain a shock, and then all spirits cry out one upon another: “ Who is it thus disturbing the kingdom of heaven ? ” Then does the earth communicate unto the first heaven the sins of the rash being who takes the Eternal Name in vain, and the accusing word is transmitted from circle to circle, from star to star, and from hierarchy to hierarchy. Every speech possesses three senses, every act has a triple bearing, every form a triple idea, for the absolute corresponds from world to world by its forms. Every determination of human will modifies nature, affects philosophy, and is written in heaven. There are therefore two fatalities, the one resulting from the Uncreated Will in its accord with wisdom, the other from created wills according with the necessity of secondary causes in their correspondence with the Eirst Cause. There is hence nothing indifferent in life, and our apparently most simple resolutions frequently 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 Kabbalah, 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 kabbalist, and he a great kabbalist, among the apostles. So is the apocalypse the book of the gnosis or secret doctrine of the first Christians, the key of which 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 kabbalistic, is found in the text of the Gospel according to St Matthew, and in several Hebrew copies. The sacred word Malchuth substituted for Kether, which is its kabbalistic correspondent, and the balance of Geburah and Chesed, repeating itself in the circles or heavens called eons by the Gnostics, provide the keystone of the whole Christian temple in this occult versicle. It has been retained by Protestants in their New Testament, without their

recovering its lofty and wonderful meaning, which would have unveiled to them all the mysteries of the apocalypse. But it is a tradition in the Church that the manifestation of these mysteries is held over to the last times. Malchuth, based upon Geburah and Chesed, is the temple of Solomon having Jakin and Bohas for its pillars ; it is the adamic doctrine founded, for the one part, on the resignation of Abel and, for the other, on the labours and selfreproach 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 whole talents were employed in being obscure, who died without seeking to be understood, resolved this supreme equation, discovered by him in the Kabbalah, 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 suggestion that his master was a Kabbalist, but we can state notwithstanding, to the glory of the same learned man, that his researches have appreciably shortened our work in the occult sciences, and that the key of the transcendent Kabbalah above all, indicated in the arcane versicle recently cited, has been skilfully applied to an absolute reform of all the sciences in the books of Hoen4 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, Asiah, Jetzirah, and Briah. The Gnostics, who were Christian Kabbalists, called them Hyl6, 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 copulation; taken at the end, it expresses 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 takes us to the great and supreme mystery of magic, embodied in the tetrad. 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 brought 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 ground of all truth. According to the consecrated dogma, there are three persons in God, and these three constitute only one 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. Being is declared, nothing is not. The affirmation as Word produces affirmation as realisation or incarnation of the Word, and each of these affirmations corresponds to the denial of its opposite. Thus, in the opinion of the kahbalists, 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 last reflection or imperfect mirage of light in shadow. But all which exists, whether of good or evil, in 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 already observed, is explained by the duad and resolved by the tetrad, which is the squared unity of even numbers and the quadrangular base of the cube, unity of construction, of solidity, and of measure. The kabbalistic 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 already said, according to the sole dogma of the Kabbalah, 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 invariably revealed by the cross — that unity made up of two, 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.

The great magic agent manifests by four kinds of phenomena, and has been subjected to the experiments of profane science under four names — caloric, light, electricity, magnetism. It has also received the names of Tetragram, Inri, Azoth, Ether, Od, Magnetic Eluid, Soul of the Earth, Lucifer, &c. The great magic agent is the fourth emanation of the life-principle, of which the sun is the third form — see the initiates of the school of Alexandria and the dogma of Hermes Trismegistus. In this way the eye of the world, as the ancients called it, is the mirage of the reflection of God, and the soul of the earth is a permanent glance of the sun which the earth conceives and guards by impregnation. The moon concurs in this impregnation of the earth by reflecting a solar image during the night' so that Hermes was right when he said of the great agent : “ The sun is its father, the moon its mother.” Then he adds ; “ The wind has borne it in the belly thereof,” because the atmosphere is the recipient, and, as it were, the crucible of the solar rays, by means of which there forms that living image of the sun which penetrates the whole earth, fructifles it, and determines all that is produced at its surface by its emanations and permanent currents, analogous to those of the sun itself. This solar agent subsists by two contrary forces — one of attraction and one of projection, whence Hermes says that it ascends and descends eternally.

The force of attraction is always fixed at the centre of bodies, that of projection in their outlines or at their surface. By this dual force all is created and all preserved. Its motion is a rolling up and an unrolling which is successive and indefinite, or, rather, simultaneous and perpetual, by spirals of opposite movements which never meet. It is the same movement as that of the sun, which attracts and repels at once all the planets of its system. To be acquainted with the movement of this terrestrial sun in such a manner as to be able to take advantage of its currents and direct them, is to have accomplished the great work and to be master of the world. Armed with such a force you may make yourself adored; the crowd will believe you are God.

The absolute secret of this direction has been in the possession of certain men, and can yet be discovered. It is the great magical arcanum, depending on an incommunicable axiom and on an instrument which is the great and unique athanor of the highest grade of Hermetists. The incommuni-. cable axiom is kabbalistically enclosed in the four letters of the tetragram arranged in the following manner : — in the letters of the words AZOTH and INEI written kabbalistically ; and in the monogram of Christ as embroidered on the labarum, which the Kabbalist Postel interprets by the word EOTA, whence the adepts have formed their Taro or Tarot, by the repetition of the first letter, thus indicating the circle, and suggesting that the word is put backwards. All magical science is comprised in the knowledge of this secret. To know it and have the courage to use it is human omnipotence ; to reveal it to a profane person is to lose it ; to reveal it even to a disciple is to abdicate in favour of that disciple, who, henceforward, possesses the right of life and death over his master — I am speaking from the magical standpoint — and will certainly slay him for fear of dying himself. But this has nothing in common with deeds qualified as murder in criminal legislation ; the practical philosophy which is the basis and point of departure for our laws does not recognise the facts of bewitchment and of occult influences. We touch here upon extraordinary revelations, and are prepared

for the unbelief and derision of incredulous fanaticism ; voltairean religion has also its fanatics, ^ace the great shades who must now be lurking sullenly in the vaults of the Pantheon, while Catholicism, strong ever in its practices and prestige, chants the office overhead. The perfect word, that which is adequate to the thought which it expresses, always virtually contains or supposes a tetrad ; the idea, with its three necessary and correlated forms, then the image of the thing expressed, with the three terms of the judgment which qualifies it. When I say : “Being exists,” I affirm implicitly that the void is nonexistent. A height, a breadth which the height sub-divides longitudinally, a depth separated from the height by the intersection of the breadth, such is the natural tetrad composed of two lines at right angles one to another. Nature also has four motions produced by two forces which sustain each other by their tendency in an opposite direction. Now, the law which rules bodies is analogous to that which governs minds, and that which governs minds is the very manifestation of God’s secret — that is to say, of the mystery of the creation. Imagine a watch having two parallel springs, with an engagement which makes them work in an opposite direction so that the one in unwinding winds up the other. In this way, the watch will wind up itself, and you will have discovered perpetual motion.

The engagement should be at two ends and of extreme accuracy. Is this beyond attainment ? We think not. But when it is found out the inventor will understand by analogy all the secrets of nature — progress in direct proportion to the resistance. The absolute movement of life is thus the perpetual consequence of two contrary tendencies which are never opposed. When one seems to yield to the other, it is a spring which is winding up, and you may expect a reaction, the moment and characteristics of which it is quite possible to foresee and determine. Hence at the period of the most extreme Christian fervour was the reign of Antichrist known and predicted. But Antichrist will prepare and determine the

second advent and final triumph of the Man-God. This again is a vigorous and kabbalistical conclusion contained in the Gospel premises. Hence the Christian prophecy comprises a fourfold revelation : 1. Fall of the old world and triumph of the Gospel under the first advent ; 2. Great apostasy and coming of Antichrist; 3. Fall of Antichrist and recurrence to Christian ideas ; 4. Definitive triumph of the Gospel, or Second Advent, designated under the name of the Last Judgment. This fourfold prophecy contains, as will be seen, two afl&rmations and two negations, the idea of two ruins or universal deaths and of two resurrections ; for to every conception which appears upon the social horizon an east and a west, a zenith and a nadir, may be ascribed without fear of error. Thus is the philosophical cross the key of prophecy, and all gates of science may be opened with the pantacle of Ezekiel, the centre of which is a star formed by the interlacement of two crosses. Does not human life present itself also under these four phases or successive transformations — birth, life, death, immortality ? And remark here that the immortality of the soul, necessitated as a complement of the tetrad, is kabbalistically proved by analogy, which is the sole dogma of truly universal religion, as it is the key of science and the universal law of nature. As a fact, death can be no more an absolute end than birth is a real beginning. Birth proves the pre-existence of the human being, since nothing is produced from nothing, and death proves immortality, since being can no more cease to be being than nothingness can cease to be nothingness. Being and nothingness are

two absolutely irreconcileable -ideas, with this difference, that the idea of nothingness, which is altogether negative, issues from the idea itself of being, whence nothingness cannot even be understood as an absolute negation, whilst the notion of being can never be referred to that of nothingness, and still less can it come forth therefrom. To say that the world has been produced out of nothing is to advance a monstrous absurdity. All that is proceeds from what has been, and consequently nothing that is can ever more cease to be. The succession of forms is produced by the alternatives of movement ; they are the phenomena of life which replace one another without destroying themselves. All things change ; nothing perishes. The sun does not die when it vanishes from the horizon ; even the most fluidic forms are immortal, subsisting always in the permanence of their raison d’Stre, which is the combination of the light with the aggregated potences of the molecules of the first substance. Hence they are preserved in the astral fluid, and can be evoked and reproduced according to the will of the sage, as we shall see when treating of second sight and the evocation of memories in necromancy or other magical works. We shall return to the great magical agent in the fourth chapter of the Eitual, where we shall complete our indications of the^ characteristics of the great arcanum, and of the means of recovering this tremendous power.

Here let us add some words about the four magical elements and elementary spirits. The magical elements are : in alchemy, salt, sulphur, mercury, and azoth ; in Kabbalah, the macroprosopus, the microprosopus, and the two mothers ; in hieroglyphics, the man, eagle, lion, and bull ; in old physics, according to vulgar names and notions, air, water, earth, and fire. But in magical science we know that water is not ordinary water, fire is not simply fire, &c. These expressions conceal a more recondite meaning. Modern science has decomposed the four elements of the ancients, and reduced them to a number of so-called simple bodies. That which is simple, however, is the primitive substance properly so-called ; there is therefore only one material element, which always manifests by the tetrad in its forms. We shall therefore preserve the wise distinction of elementary appearances admitted by the ancients, and shall recognise air, fire, earth, and water as the four positive and visible elements of magic. The subtle and the gross, the swift and slow dissolvent, or the instruments of heat and cold, constitute, in occult physics, the two positive and negative principles of the tetrad, and should be thus tabulated : —

Thus, air and earth represent the male principle ; fire and water are referable to the female principle, since the philosophical cross of pantacles, as already affirmed, is a primitive and elementary hieroglyph of the lingam of the gymnosophists. To these four elementary forms correspond the four following philosophical ideas — Spirit, Matter, Motion, Eest. As a fact, all science is comprised in the understanding of these four things, which alchemy has reduced to three — the Absolute, the Tixed, and the Volatile — referred by the Kabbalah to the essential idea of God, who is absolute reason, necessity, and liberty, a threefold notion expressed in the occult books of the Hebrews. Under the names of Kether, Chochmah, and Binah for the divine world ; of Tiphereth, Chesed, and Geburah in the moral world ; and of Jesod, Hod, and Hetsah in the physical world, which, together with the moral, is contained in the idea of the Kingdom or Malchuth, we shall explain in the tenth chapter this theogony as rational as it is sublime. Now, created spirits, being called to emancipation by ordeal, are placed from their birth between these four forces, two positive and two negative, and have it in their power to affirm or deny ^ood, to choose life or death. To discover the fixed point, that is, the fixed centre of the cross, is the first problem which is given them to resolve ; their initial conquest must be that of their own liberty.

They begin by being drawn, some to the north, others to the eouth ; some to the right, others to the left ; and in so far as they are not free, they cannot have the use of reason, nor can they take flesh otherwise than in animal forms. These unemancipated spirits, slaves of the four elements, are those which the kabbalists call elementary daimons, and they people the elements which correspond to their state of servitude. Sylphs, undines, gnomes, and salamanders therefore really exist, some wandering and seeking incarnation, others incarnate and living on this earth. These are vicious and imperfect men. We shall return to this subject in the fifteenth chapter, which treats of enchantments and demons.

That is also an occult tradition by which the ancients were led to admit the existence of four ages in the world, only it was not made known to the vulgar that these ages were successive and were renewed, like the four seasons of the year. Thus, the golden age has passed, and it is yet to come. This, however, belongs to the spirit of prophecy, and we shall speak of it in the ninth chapter, which is concerned with the initiate and the seer. If we now add the idea of unity to the tetrad, we shall have, together and separately, the conceptions of the divine synthesis and analysis, the god of the initiates and that of the profane. Here the doctrine becomes more popular, and passes from the domain of the abstract ; the grand hierophant intervenes. Hereunto we have exposed the magical dogma in its more arid and abstract phases ; now enchantments begin ; now we can proclaim wonders and reveal the most secret things. The pentagram signifies the domination of the mind over the elements, and by this sign are enchained the demons of the air, the spirits of fire, the phantoms of the water, and ghosts of earth. Equipped with this sign, and suitably disposed, you may behold the infinite through the medium of that faculty which is like the soul’s eye, and you will be ministered unto by legions of angels and hosts of fiends.

And now, in the first place, let us establish certain principles. There is no invisible world ; there are, however, many degrees of perfection in organs. The body is the coarse and, as it were, the perishable cortex of the soul. The soul can perceive of itself, and independently of the mediation of the physical organs, by means of its sensibility' and its diaphane, the things, both spiritual and corporal, which are existent in the universe. Spiritual and corporal are simply terms which express the degrees of tenuity or density in substance. What is called the imagination within us is only the soul’s inherent faculty of assimilating the images and reflections contained in the living light, which is the great magnetic -agent. These images and reflections are revelations when science intervenes to reveal us their body or light. The man of genius differs from the dreamer and the fool in this only, that his creations are analogous to truth, while those of the fool and the dreamer are lost reflections and bewrayed images. Hence, for the wise man, to imagine is to see, as, for the magician, to speak is to create. Therefore, by means of the imagination, demons and spirits can be beheld really and in truth ; but the imagination of the adept is diaphanous, whilst that of the crowd is opaque ; the light of truth traverses the one as ordinary light passes through a transparent casement, and is refracted by the other as when the ordinary light falls upon a vitreous block full of scoria and foreign matter. That which most contributes to the errors of the vulgar is the reflection of depraved imaginations one in the other. But the seer, by a positive science, knows that what he imagines is true, and the event invariably conflrms his vision. We shall state in the Eitual after what manner this lucidity can be acquired.

It is by means of this light that static visionaries place themselves in communication with all worlds, as so frequently occurred to Swedenborg, who, notwithstanding, was imperfectly lucid, seeing that he did not distinguish reflections from rays, and often intermingled chimerical fancies with his most admirable dreams. We say dreams, because dream is the consequence of a natural and periodical ecstasy, which we term sleep ; to be in ecstasy is to sleep ; magnetic somnambulism is a production and direction of sleep. The errors which occur therein are occasioned by reflections from the diaphane of waking persons, and, above all, of the magnetiser. Dream is vision produced by the refraction of a ray of truth. The chimerical fantasy is hallucination occasioned by a reflection. The temptation of St Anthony, with its nightmares and its monsters, represents the confusion of reflections with direct rays. So long as the soul struggles it is reasonable ; when it yields to this specie, of invading intoxication it becomes mad. To disentangle the direct ray, and separate it from the reflection — such is the work of the initiate. Here let us state distinctly that this work is through all times accomplished in the world by some of the flower of mankind, that there is hence a permanent revelation by intuition, and that there is no insuperable barrier which separates souls, because there are no sudden interruptions, and no abrupt walls in nature by which minds can be -divided from one another.

All is transition and blending, and, assuming the perfectibility, if not infinite, at least indefinite, of human faculties, it will be seen that every person can attain to see all, and therefore to know all. There is no void in nature ; all is peopled. There is no true death in nature ; all is alive. “ Seest thou that star ? ” asked Napoleon of Cardinal Fesch. “ No, Sire.” “ I see it,” said the Emperor, and he most certainly did. When great men are accused of having been superstitious, it is because they beheld what remains unseen by the crowd. Men of genius difl’er from simple seers by their faculty of sensibly communicating to other men what they themselves perceive, and of making themselves believed by the force of enthusiasm and sympathy. Such persons are the medium of the Divine Word.

Let us now state the manner in which visions operate. All forms correspond to ideas, and there is no idea which has not its proper and peculiar form. The primordial light, which is the vehicle of all ideas, is the mother of all forms, and transmits them from emanation to emanation, merely ■diminished or modified according to the density of the media. Secondary forms are reflections which return to the font of the emanated light. The forms of objects, being a modification of light, remain in the light where the reflection consigns them. Hence the astral light, or terrestrial fluid, which we call the great magnetic agent, is saturated with all kinds of images or reflections. Now, our soul can evoke these, and refer them to its diaphane, as the kabbalists term it. Such images are always present to us, and are only effaced by the more powerful impressions of reality during waking hours, or by preoccupation of the mind, which makes our imagination inattentive to the fluidic panorama of the astral light. When we sleep, this spectacle presents itself spontaneously before us, and in this way dreams are produced — dreams vague and incoherent if some governing will do not remain active during the sleep, giving, even unconsciously to our intelligence, a direction to the dream, which then transforms into vision. Animal magnetism is nothing else but an artificial sleep produced by the voluntary or enforced union of two wills, one of which is awake while the other slumbers — that is, one of which directs the other in the choice of reflections for the transformation of dreams into visions, and the attainment of truth by means of images.

Thus, somnambulists do not actually travel to the place where they are sent by the magnetiser ; they evoke its images in the astral light, and can behold nothing which does not exist in that light. The astral light has a direct action on the nerves, which are its conductors in the animal economy, transmitting it to the brain, whence also, in the state of somnambulism, it is possible to see by means of the nerves, without being dependent on radiant light, the astral fluid being a latent light, in the same way that physics recognise the existence of a latent caloric.

Magnetism between two persons is certainly a wonderful discovery, but the magnetising of a person by himself, accomplishing his own lucidity and directing himself at will, is the perfection of magical art. The secret of this great work does not rest for discovery ; it has been known and practised by a great number of initiates, above all by the celebrated Apollonius of Tyana, who has left a theory concerning it, as we shall see in the Eitual. The secret of magnetic lucidity, and the direction of the phenomena of magnetism depend on two things — the agreement of minds and the complete union of wills, in a direction which is possible and determined by science. This is for the operation of magnetism between two or more persons. Solitary magnetism requires preparations of which we have spoken in our initial chapter, when enumerating and establishing in all their difficulty the essential qualities of a veritable adept. In the following chapters we shall further elucidate this important and fundamental point. The empire of the will over the astral light, which is the physical soul of the four elements, is represented in magic by the pentagram, which we have set at the head of this chapter. The elementary spirits are subservient to this sign when employed with understanding, and, by placing it in the circle or on the table of evocations, they can be rendered tractable, which is magically called to imprison them.

Let us briefly explain this marvel. All created beings communicate with one another by signs, and all adhere to a certain number of truths expressed by determinate forms. The perfection of forms increases in proportion to the detachment of spirits, and those that are not overweighted by the chains of matter, recognise by intuition out of hand whether a sign is the expression of a real power or of a precipitate will. The intelligence of the wise man therefore gives value to his pantacle, as science gives weight to his will, and spirits comprehend this power immediately. Thus, by means of the pentagram, spirits can be forced to appear in vision, whether in the waking or sleeping state, hy themselves leading before our diaphane their reflection, which exists in the astral light, if they have lived, or a reflection analogous to their spiritual logos if they have not lived on earth. This explains all visions, and accounts for the dead invariably

appearing to seers, either such as they were upon earth, or such as they are in the grave, never as they subsist in a condition which escapes the perceptions of our actual organism. Pregnant women are influenced more than others by the astral light, which concurs in the formation of the child, and perpetually ofiers them reminiscences of the forms which abound therein. This explains how it is that women of the highest virtue deceive the^ malignity of observers by equivocal resemblances. On the fruit of their marriage they impress frequently an image which has struck them in dream, and it is thus that the same physiognomies are perpetuated from generation to generation. The Kabbalistic usage of the pentagram can therefore determine the appearance of unborn children, and an initiated woman might endow her son with the characteristics of Nero or Achilles as much as with those of Louis XIV. or Napoleon. We shall indicate the method in our Eitual. The pentagram is called in Kabbalah the sign of the microcosm, that sign so exalted by Goethe in the beautiful monologue of Faust : “ Ah, how do all my senses leap at this sight ! I feel the young and sacred pleasure of life bubbling in my nerves and veins. Was it a God who traced this sign whieh stills the vertigo of my soul, fills my poor heart with joy, and, in a mysterious rapture, unveils the forces of nature around me.

Am I myself a God ! All is so clear to me ; I behold in these simple lines the revelation of active nature to my soul. I realise for the first time the truth of the wise man’s words : The world of spirits is not closed ! Thy sense is obtuse, thy heart is dead ! Arise ! Bathe, 0 adept of science, thy breast, still enveloped by an earthly veil, in the splendours of the dawning day ! ” {Faust, Part i. sc. 1).

On the 24th of July in the year 1854, the author of this book, filiphas L6vi, made experiments of evocation with the pentagram, after due preparation by all the ceremonies which are indicated in the thirteenth chapter of the Eitual. The success of this experiment, details of which, as regards its principles, will be found in the corresponding chapter of this our doctrinal part, establishes a new pathological fact, which men of true science will admit without difficulty. The repeated experience, in all three times, gave results truly extraordinary, but positive and unmixed with hallucination. We invite sceptics to make a conscientious and intelligent attempt before shrugging their shoulders and smiling. The figure of the pentagram, perfected in accordance with science, and used by the author in his experiment, is that which is found at the head of this chapter, and it is more perfect than any in the keys of Solomon, or in the magical calendars of Tycho Brahe and Duchentau. We must, however, remark that the use of the pentagram is most dangerous for operators who are not in possession of its complete and perfect understanding. The direction of the points of the star is in no sense arbitrary, and may change the entire character of the operation, as we shall explain in the Kitual.

Paracelsus, that innovator in magic, who surpassed all other initiates in liis unaided practical success, affirms that every magical figure and every kabbalistic sign of the pantacles which compel spirits, may be reduced to two, which are the synthesis of all the others ; these are the sign of the Macrocosm or the seal of Solomon, the form of which we have already given, and now reproduce here, and that of the Microcosm, more potent even than the first — that is to say, the pentagram, of which he provides a most minute description in his occult philosophy. If it be asked how a sign can exercise so much power over spirits, we inquire in return why the whole Christian world bows down before the sign of the cross ? The sign is nothing by itself, and has no force apart from the doctrine of which it is the summary and the logos. Now, a sign which sums, by their expression, all the occult forces of nature, a sign which has ever exhibited to elementary spirits and others a power greater than their own, naturally fills them with respect and fear, and enforces their obedience by the empire of science and of will over ignorance and weakness. By the pentagram also is measured the exact proportions of the great and unique athanor necessary to the confection of the philosophical stone and the accomplishment of the great work. The most perfect alembic in which the quintessence can be elaborated is conformable to this figure, and the quintessence itself is represented by the sign of the pentagram.

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 Kabbalists, who name reason Kether, necessity Chochmah, and liberty Binah, in their first 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 diametrically opposed to common ideas. For example, the crowd believes in the sympathy of things which are alike and in the hostility of things contrary, but it is the opposite which is the true law. It used to be affirmed that nature detests 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 magnetised by the light of the sun, and we are magnetised 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 epigastric region, and the genital organ. Each of these instruments is double — in other words, we find the suggestion of the triad therein. Each attracts on one side and repels on another. It is by means of these apparatuses that we place ourselves in communication with the universal fluid transmitted into us by the nervous system. These three centres are, moreover, the seat of the threefold 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 rod, which is a perfected divining rod. By the aid of these vibrations he influences the nervous system of persons surrendered 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 cheap triumph of denying what it does not know.

We shall demonstrate later on that death is always preceded by a lethargic sleep, and only 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 now afiirm 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 the kind which baffle physicians. There is no other cause, by example, in the case of cholera-morbus, and the swarms of animalculee observed or supposed by some specialists may be the effect rather than the cause. Cholera should therefore be treated 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 would make ourselves 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 distributes itself 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 rather tend to neutralise 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 in 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 re^iration, has really the influence, both physical and moral, which is assigned to it. It is un- doubtedlj 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 the 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.