Transcendental Magic I: The Doctrine (Éliphas Lévi) · 9 of 96 · tr. A.E. Waite
Introduction-i
Oedipus 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 grave.
After the colossal fable of Oedipus 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 she is Eve spiritualized.
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 by Hercules and the other overcome 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 Redeemer.
To be acquainted with it sufficiently for its abuse or divulgation is to deserve all sufferings; to know as one should alone know it, namely, to make use of and conceal it, is to be master of the Absolute.
A single word comprehends all things, and this word 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 Kabalists.
This word, expressed after so many manners, means God for the profane, man for the philosophers, and imparts to the adepts the final term of human sciences and the key of divine power; but he only can use it who understands the necessity of never revealing it.
Had Oedipus, 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 postulates at once 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 necessary to exonerate miracles under the pretence of superstition and science by an unintelligible language.
Hieroglyphic writing was revived; pantacles and characters were invented to summarize 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?
The Gnostic myth of Wisdom's prolapse from the Pleroma — her unilateral desire or error producing the Demiurge and the entrapment of divine sparks in matter.
Eve and Psyche lose innocence for the honour of the ordeal, mirroring a fall narrative.
Transgressive knowing acquired against divine prohibition — the Watchers' teaching of metallurgy, sorcery, and cosmetics in 1 Enoch, the Gnostic Eve narratives, the Promethean mytheme; explicitly contrasted with gnosis_direct_knowledge, which is salvific.
Describes the Great Magical Secret as deserving all sufferings if abused or divulged, requiring concealment.
The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.
States the word means God for the profane and man for the philosophers, linking human and divine.
The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.
Describes Oedipus in exile and Psyche abandoned alone on a rock.
The doctrine and practice that spoken or sung word carries causal-magical force — that uttering names, formulas, songs, or incantations alters reality directly rather than merely communicating about it. Vainamoinen's runo-songs that move mountains and command iron, Norse galdr, Vedic mantra, Shinto kotodama, the magician's barbarous names in the Greek Magical Papyri, Iamblichean arcane signatures and inexplicable symbols, biblical creation-by-word. Distinct from sacred_names (the ontological power of names themselves) and prayer (address to the divine); word_power_incantation is the magical-causal efficacy of the spoken word as such.
Asserts that a single word comprehends all things and is the key of divine power for adepts.