Transcendental Magic I: The Doctrine (Éliphas Lévi)

Lévi asserts that behind all ancient allegories, initiations, and sacred writings lies a single concealed doctrine. Occult philosophy reigned with the Magi in Persia, endowed India, civilized Greece through Orpheus, and informed Pythagoras. He reports the crowd's claims about the science's powers, then traces Magic from Zoroaster to Manes until Christianity anathematized it, forcing it into hiding. Rumors of Stryges, orgies, and diseases produced the cry "Magicians to the flames!" The eighteenth century derided both Christians and Magic. Lévi links Magic to the Three Magi and their gifts, notes the creation of alchemical jargon, and names two texts the Church does not expound—Ezekiel and the Apocalypse—plus a hidden book, older than Enoch, cited by Postel, Saint-Martin, and Swedenborg. He discusses the Church's war on Magic, the School of Alexandria, Ammonius Saccas, Plato, Dionysius, Synesius, Cardan, and Julian the Apostate. Lévi then addresses the reader directly, spreading a mantle for a journey to a Sabbath: a goat-headed prince mounts a throne, distributes gold and poisons, Druidesses immolate children, an orgy and monstrous dances ensue, then return home. He offers next the execution of Jacques de Molay and questions the Templars and Baphomet. He names alchemists Raymond Lully, Paracelsus, William Postel, and Cornelius Agrippa. Answering whether Magic exists with "an affirmation and a book," he identifies the secret as the Science of Good and Evil, figured by the Tree in Genesis. He quotes a Hebrew manuscript listing the Magus's powers under each letter Aleph to Tau. He describes the Great Work, the Universal Agent, and Baphomet, then the tablets of Hermes, the Golden Fleece, the Thebaid, the seven gates of Thebes paralleling the seven seals, and Oedipus slaying his father unknowingly.

The text describes the sphinx, then poses its riddles. Oedipus answers "Man," destroying the sphinx and becoming King of Thebes, but he has seen too much and will expiate through voluntary blindness. The two antagonistic brothers, Antigone's sacrifice, the brethren slaying one another, Capaneus, and Amphiaraus are named, with Aeschylus annotated by Ballanche. Homer's shield of Achilles is cited; Magic degenerates among the sorcerers of Thessaly, and hell is created. Lévi defines God as the AZOT of the sages. Returning to Oedipus, his crime was failing to understand the sphinx; he divulged half the Great Arcanum. Psyche, from Apuleius, is called Eve spiritualized; the Great Magical Secret equals Psyche's lamp, Eve's apple, Prometheus's fire, Lucifer's sceptre, and the Redeemer's Cross—a four-lettered word (Tetragram, Azot, Thot, Taro). After the Golden Ass, science hides under Christian veils (Ammonius, Synesius, Dionysius); aspirants seek the Great Work. The Kabalah, the Talmud, Postel's Genesis of Enoch, and study of Reuchlin, Zohar, and Sepher Yetzirah are recommended. Magic comprises science and force. The phoenix, Moses, St. Paul at Ephesus, and the French Revolution illustrate destruction of predecessors. Volney and Dupuis are faulted; like Julian, Lévi would rebuild the temple, explaining Christianity and uniting religion and philosophy. The work has two parts, Clavicle and Grimoire. "The Candidate" opens with Descartes, Moses's "I am that I am," and Mercurius Trismegistus's Emerald Table. Magic, the Sanctum Regnum, exists for kings and priests; the unfit should close the book. Magic is defined as the traditional science from the Magi; hierophants and sorcerers are named. Four words—To Know, To Dare, To Will, To Keep Silence—appear on the sphinx. The adept on the Book of Hermes' first page is described.

The text states the Magus's body forms the letter ALEPH and that he is the Microprosopus. It asserts knowledge of self is the first magical science, that Supreme Reason is imperishable, and that cleaving to it confers immortality; one must learn to suffer, forbear, and die. Man becomes king of the brutes by subduing them and must conquer air, water, earth, and fire, becoming heir of the sphinx. Lévi questions the seeker—whether learned as Faust, insensible as Job, able to resist feminine charms—and discusses cowardice, honour, and self-conquest. He cites Pythagoras, Egyptian trials by four elements, and Indian fakirs, then warns that the reader who perseveres becomes monarch or madman, the book helping the pure and torturing the wicked. The second section opens with revelation as the word, citing Trismegistus's maxim that the above is like the below. It describes imagination (the DIAPHANE), citing Paracelsus on invulnerability and distant cures. The one dogma of Magic is that the visible manifests the invisible; the Magus points to heaven and earth declaring immensity. It treats Aleph, catholicity as infallibility, faith, and science as Gnosis. Knowledge supposes the duad: Eve issues from Adam, Jehovah is formed, phallus and cteis produce the stauros. BOAZ and JAKIN are named as Solomon's Temple pillars. Man fathers Cain, woman mothers Abel; wisdom unites the two principles. Divinity holds necessity and liberty; Satan and Michael are mutually necessary; two forces balance the universe (Eros/Anteros, Jacob and the angel). Cain slays Abel; the Gospel's Prodigal Son replaces Cain. The Master says "I would thou wert cold or hot." The last secret of the duad, the Tree of Knowledge, must not be divulged. It closes citing the Tarot, Isis, Juno, and the two witnesses Elias and Enoch, leading toward the triad.

The text states that the perfect word is the triad, comprising intelligent, speaking, and spoken principles, and that the Absolute reveals itself by speech. The triad is figured in space as two triangles forming the six-pointed star, Solomon's Seal, the Star of the Macrocosm and grand pantacle. Grammar's three persons and the Trinity are traced to the triad, which is called the universal dogma, exemplified in Magic, alchemy, theology, the soul, and the family. Three intelligible worlds and a hierarchy of spirits follow. Unity must multiply; God is one yet triple. The text asks how to ascertain the true religion, then describes primeval sages perceiving good and evil, answering the disciples of Manes that the two principles are not contrary. Three, the odd number, is discussed with the trigrams of Fohi and their YANG and YIN, and the refusal to personify mother or Holy Ghost as woman. Julian's hymn, Swedenborg, and the Kabalists' doctrine of shells (cortices), bodies as prisons, and Hercules on Mount Oetna appear, with hell called eternal. The thirty-two paths, the shock of pronouncing the Tetragram, two fatalities, and the DIAPHANE follow. Christ revealed teaching secretly; the Apocalypse and an occult versicle of the Lord's Prayer, MALKUTH, GEBURAH, CHESED, JAKIN and BOAZ, Abel, Cain, Archimedes, and Hoene Wronski are named. Three degrees—ASSIAH, YETZIRAH, BRIAH; HYLE, PSYCHE, GNOSIS—are given. The Tetragram section derives the tetrad from triad plus unity: affirmation, negation, discussion, solution. God's four-letter name, the demon's name reversed, JODHEVA, the four cardinal points, and the Cross (Tau, Osiris, Stauros) follow. The Great Magical Agent manifests through four phenomena and many names; Hermes's sayings on sun, moon, and wind, attraction and projection, the Great Work, the Great Magical Arcanum, AZOTH, INRI, ROTA/Taro are given, warning that revealing it lets a disciple slay the master. Perpetual motion, Antichrist, fourfold prophecy, Ezekiel's pantacle, and immortality proved by analogy close.

The text states that being and nothingness are irreconcilable, that the world was not produced from nothing, and that all things change but nothing perishes; forms are preserved in the astral fluid and can be evoked. It lists the four magical elements as named in alchemy (Salt, Sulphur, Mercury, Azoth), Kabalah, hieroglyphics (Man, Eagle, Lion, Bull), and old physics, reducing them to one material element manifesting as a tetrad, and names the Sephiroth (KETHER, CHOKMAH, BINAH, etc.). Created spirits stand between four forces and must conquer their liberty; unemancipated ones are elementary daimons—sylphs, undines, gnomes, salamanders. The four ages recur; the golden age has passed and is to come. In the GEBURAH section, the Pentagram signifies domination over the elements. The text describes the soul's DIAPHANE, imagination, the seer, Swedenborg's imperfect lucidity, dreams, ecstasy, and the Temptation of St. Anthony. Napoleon asks Cardinal Fesch whether he sees a star; Fesch says no, Napoleon says "I see it." Animal Magnetism is defined as artificial sleep uniting two wills; Apollonius of Tyana is cited. The Pentagram governs the Astral Light, forces spirits to appear, and influences pregnant women. Goethe's Faust monologue is quoted. Éliphas Lévi records his evocation experiment of 24 July 1854, repeated thrice, inviting sceptics. Paracelsus reduces figures to Macrocosm and Microcosm. In the TIPHERETH section, the triad reason/necessity/liberty (KETHER, CHOKMAH, BINAH) corresponds to fatality, will, power. Moses smote the rock and revealed the spring by the divining rod. Occult laws oppose common ideas. Man is the Microcosm with three centres—brain, heart, genital organ. The Magus directs magnetic vibrations by the Magic Wand, slaying or reviving. The text discusses death, lethargy, cholera, human versus Astral Light, Swedenborg's atmospheres, Respiration, sympathy, and love.

The text states love is an instrument of magical power but forbidden to the Magus as passion, warning against the Samson of the Kabalah, Hercules, Omphale, Dejanira, and the coat of Nessus. Sexual love is called illusion, and the Astral Light the universal seducer, typified by the serpent of Genesis, equally called Lucifer and Lucifuge. To subdue the serpent one must isolate oneself; Apollonius of Tyana wrapped himself in a woollen mantle. The woollen mantle's use in sorcery and the Sabbath is described. The Astral Light directs animal instincts, preserves the impress of every logos, and is the book of consciences. Those abandoning reason suffer mania and melancholy; kabalistic terms appear in the Revolution of Souls. Practising rites from curiosity is called dangerous. Magical equilibrium, expressed by the senary, is discussed as God's will, liberty, and mathematical balance. The text then treats the septenary, composed of triad and tetrad, described through the Tarot's crowned warrior, JAKIN and BOAZ, the seven virtues and planets, and the angels Michael, Gabriel, Samael, Anael, Raphael, Zachariel and Orifiel. The ages of life, Trithemius's prophetic key, St. John's Apocalypse, the Mosaic cherub, ARARITA, and lists of seven animals, stones, metals, and kabalistic signs follow. Chapter 8 addresses realization: causes manifest by effects; the Tetragram; man saying "I am the finite God"; that what is not realized does not exist; the logos and word made flesh; Adam's disobedience and the Saviour's obedience effacing it; the Great Initiator of Christianity concentrating disciples on interior light against Satan. Magnetic breathing, the sidereal body of Paracelsus, apparitions, the two angels, Anacreon and Sappho, true and fantastic realization, St. Paul, and the emperor who felt uninjured are discussed, closing with Nadab, Abihu, Osa, Ananias, Sapphira, and Loudun.

The text states that had Urban Grandier not been immolated, the possessed nuns would have died or Grandier himself become hallucinated like Gaufridy. It cites the poet Gilbert dying raving mad, Marat assassinated by Charlotte Corday and afflicted by public execration, Charles IX's disease following the St. Bartholomew massacre, and Henry IV sustained by popularity from his astral life. It states unpopularity is mortal for statesmen, that injustice to an individual can ruin a nation (the cry of blood), and that Christianity recommends forgiveness; it names Althaea consuming Meleager, warning parents against cursing. Under JESOD, the Initiate possesses the lamp of Trismegistus, mantle of Apollonius, and staff of the patriarchs; the number nine is the number of initiation. He knows, dares, and is silent; examples given include Caesar's baldness, Napoleon and Ossian, Louis Philippe's umbrella, and the sufferings of Orpheus, Moses, Agrippa, Paracelsus, Raymond Lully, Swedenborg, Saint-Martin, Cagliostro, and Cazotte. Under MALKUTH, the text describes a primitive hieroglyphic book attributed to Enoch, Hermes, and Cadmus, called Kabalah, resting on equilibrium (GEBURAH and CHESED). It lists the ten Sephiroth, the Tetragram JOTCHAVAH, the twenty-four elders, and the devil as "God as understood by the wicked." It presents the Tarot's kabalistic key in verses, explains the Juggler, Pope Joan, and the winged woman, the four suits as the Tetragram, the Wheel of Postel, Theraphim, Gaffarel, and the thirty-two paths. Under MANUS, it names the Great Magical Agent (Astral Light, Azoth, Magnesia), requiring concentration by isolation and distribution by the magical chain, citing Archimedes, Khunrath's SOLVE/COAGULA, and the continence of Pythagoras, Apollonius, Caesar, Paracelsus, Lully, Cardan, and Agrippa.

The span opens by asking whether one must resemble exalted souls to know what they knew, affirming magic astonishes and subdues the world, and inviting reading without fear. Lévi defines the Magic Chain as a magnetic current strengthening with its extent, citing Mesmer's trough, circles of illuminati, Catholic priests, and the Exercises of St. Ignatius. Enthusiasm generates currents; Saul (Schol) is struck down by a magnetic flash, Alphonus of Ratisbon converts, and Jean Jacques Rousseau is drawn to desert his children. He discusses genius and eccentricity, quotes "the greatest of the initiators" ("When I shall be lifted up"), and names Chateaubriand, Julian, Voltaire, Trimalcyon, Dumas, Rothschild, Pius IX, Dupanloup, and Tartempion. He calls for a pope, king, or millionaire to sacrifice for humanity, and offers his knowledge as Archimedes' lever. He attributes table-turning, cholera, potato disease, and grape blight to the Astral Light, cites the shepherds of la Salette and convulsionaries of Saint Medard, and recounts his own experiences—a strangling hand, moving books, knocking—leading to an evocation reserved for chapter thirteen. Chapter twelve defines the Great Work as man's self-creation and power over Azoth. Flamel and Raymond Lully distributed riches; Agrippa perished. Lévi expounds the emerald tablet, Salt, Mercury, Sulphur, the Athanor, and Pentagram, naming Bernard Trevisan, Basil Valentine, Mary the Egyptian, Khunrath, and Minerva Mundi. He interprets the Tarot Hanged Man (misread by Court de Gebelin and Etteilla) as adept, Prometheus, and Judas, and relates the Sepher-Toldos-Jeshu parable where Jeshu, Simon-Barjona, and Judas dream, and Judas eats the gosling. Chapter thirteen states forms persist in the Astral Light; Eliphas Levi Zahed has evoked and seen. He describes three classes of souls, Lilith and Naemah, and two corpses after death—terrestrial and sidereal—the astral body evaporating or lingering, absorbed by stars until a second death; such aerial bodies are evoked by Necromancy.

The span opens with a discussion of communion with larvae and dead substances, stating that such beings communicate through nervous shock and reflect the operator's own thoughts. To behold these forms one must magnetize oneself into a waking somnambulism, after which Necromancy yields real results. The Astral Light preserves all images and produces dreams; a powerful will is needed to isolate reflections. The Sabbath orgies described by sorcerers arose in this manner. Lévi recounts his 1854 journey to London, where persons of eminence asked him to work wonders. He withdrew into Kabalah study until he received half a card bearing Solomon's seal and an appointment before Westminster Abbey. A veiled lady in black gave him the other half, exacted a pledge of silence, and showed him a magical cabinet. He prepared twenty-one days to evoke Apollonius of Tyana. Lévi describes the turret cabinet, mirrors, altar, pentagram, his vestments, and the evocation itself, during which a phantom appeared. When he pointed the sword, his arm became benumbed; the figure answered his questions inwardly—"Dead!" He repeated the experiment twice, gaining two kabalistic secrets, but declines to affirm he truly saw Apollonius. He notes the lady's later addiction to Necromancy and Goetia. Lévi discusses evocations, the Emperor Julian seeing decrepit gods, and Kabalists' distinction between apparent and real death, describing living-dead persons as vampires. The next chapter treats lycanthropy. Lévi cites St. Augustine on Apuleius, establishes facts about werewolves, and explains them as the sidereal body of a sleeping man. He discusses maternal imagination, the possessions at Loudun (Urban Grandier), Louvier, Gaufridi and Magdalen de la Palud, and Father Girard and la Cadiere. He explains sidereal transmutation in love, Circe, Apuleius, and closes on Cagliostro and his elixir of life.

The text opens under the heading SAMAEL AUXILIATOR, approaching the mystery of Black Magic and the goat of Mendes. It asks whether there is a devil and what the devil is, stating that in Black Magic the devil is the Great Magical Agent used for evil by a perverse will, identified with the Astral Light. It cites Grandier and Girard, and disputes M. Eudes de Mirville over the nature of this blind agent, affirming that nothing happens by chance. Under FONS OCULUS FULGUR, quoting the Great Master on unchaste gazing, the text lays down that persistent will confirmed by acts produces effects, and that bewitchment (envoutement) is possible, necessary, and a homicide. It distinguishes voluntary and involuntary bewitchment, notes children absorbing one another, and states jealous or greedy operators fail. It describes Black Magic's atrocities, discusses Bodin's Demonomania, the story of Cain and Abel, the eyes and hands as instruments, the thumb, and animals like the toad and basilisk against astral intoxication. Paracelsus opposed bewitchment by sympathetic remedies and magnetism. It recounts the demons sent into swine ("Our name is legion"), Brother Hilarion Tissot curing the insane, and quotes Galileo and the Saviour. It explains ceremonial bewitchment, obsession, Louis XIII and Richelieu, ruling defects, and remedies through folly. Under STELLA OS INFLEXUS, the text treats astrology as misunderstood, derived from the Kabalah's sephirotic decade, profaned by Greeks and Romans. It explains the Astral Light impressing the newborn child with stellar influences, the stars bound by networks of light, and the adept computing birth time, chances of estate, and human liberty. It concludes astrology is the magical calculus of probabilities, as ancient as astronomy, trusted by antiquity's seers.

The text states Paracelsus was perhaps the last great practical astrologer, curing by talismans and reading each body's dominant star, the natural science of Solomon preserved in the Kabalah. Reading stars requires the kabalistic domification and Gaffarel's planisphere, wherein constellations form Hebrew letters and mythological figures become Tarot symbols; Gaffarel traces patriarchal writing there, and Postel divined the Tarot as Enoch's work. Astral signs mark men's foreheads and hands, animals, plants, minerals. Chiromancy and physiognomy read these signs; wrinkles reveal the past to the Magus. Phrenology's final word lies in astrology. Ptolemy and the Kabalists are cited; the Zohar's serpent, son of the Sun, is subdued by the Sea, daughter of the moon; Venus, Diana, Mary, and the woman crushing the serpent follow. Jerome Cardan's calculus uses years 4, 8, 12, 19, 30, which Lévi applies to his own life for 1855. Trithemius computed years for empires. Comets, planets, and fixed stars influence heroes, collectives, individuals; at death the soul follows its star. Dupuis is deemed mistaken; astronomy sprang from astrology. The seventeenth Tarot page depicts a naked woman pouring fire and water, the Venus star, Psyche's butterfly, the Glittering/Blazing Star. Section 18 warns against venomous Magic. Magical associations struck revealers with Aqua Toffana and the shirt of Nessus. Cazotte's supper, described by Laharpe, condemned profaning initiates; Villars, Grandier, Cagliostro, Schroepffer, Kotzebue (stabbed by Carl Sand) are named. Dumas's Monte Christo, Canidia, Sagana, and Locusta illustrate poisons; the Grand Grimoire's "Making Gold" and Porta's toad recipe yield two poisons. Sorcerers, human toads, sold Sabbath powders. Jettatura, horns, Pythagoras's symbols, superstition as survival, pantacles, ADDA-NARI, Ezekiel, St. Paul at Ephesus, Omar's library, and Ragon's archives close the span.

The ancients adored the Sun as a black stone named Elagabalus. Lévi asks what this stone signifies, linking it to the Philosophical Stone sought by the disciples of Hermes and to the cornerstone named by the Great Initiator of the Christians, who tells Peter the church will be built on the rock. The masters in Alchemy call this Stone the true Salt of the Philosophers, third ingredient of Azoth, figured as a cubic stone in Basil Valentine's Twelve Keys and the allegories of Trevisan. Lévi identifies it with absolute reason and true certitude, citing Hermes' Emerald Table on separating the subtle from the fixed, and distinguishing science from faith. He describes the two Pillars of Solomon's Porch, Jakin and Boaz, notes Gregory VII ruined the Papacy, and cites St. Thomas and Voltaire on God and reason. He references the Sieur de Nuisement's book, the spirit of the earth on a cube, the Azoth of the sages, and the Baphomet of the Templars. In the resurrection chapter, Lévi states moral diseases cause physical ones: Alexander died of pride, Francis I of adultery, Louis XV of his Parc-aux-Cerfs, Marat perishing of rage and envy. He quotes the great Master on eating His flesh, discusses making gold potable, death as gradual, embalming as against Nature, lethargy, magnetic sleep, chloroform, and premature burial, saying great sages are never buried alive. In the divination chapter, Lévi cites the serpent's words and defines divination as exercising divinity. He discusses prophecy and miracles, the sibyls burning their books before Tarquin, Agrippa, gold-making, Raymund Lully, Nicholas Flamel and the book Aesh Mezareph, Joseph interpreting visions, the Astral Light, divinatory instruments, the Tarot, and Etteilla (Alliette).

Lévi summarizes the science by its principles: analogy is the final word of science and first word of faith; harmony rests in equilibrium of contraries; absolute unity is the supreme reason. He states reason and faith exclude one another but unite by analogy, that dogma is hypothesis, and that man makes God by analogy. He describes allegory as mother of dogmas and the initiator as one who veils afresh. He names Dupuis and Volney, who saw only plagiarism. Analogy yields all forces to the Magus and is the Great Arcanum. He describes the Tarot figure of a naked girl, comparing her to the cherub of Jekeskiel and ADDA-NARI. He calls for restoring initiation to priests and kings, and closes describing the demon as death masquerading in life.