4. The Tetragramd

Being and nothingness are two absolutely irreconcilable ideas, with this difference, that the idea of nothingness, which is altogether negative, issues from the very idea of being, whence even nothingness cannot be understood as an absolute negation, whilst the notion of being can never be put in comparison with 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 without destroying one another. 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'etre, which is the combination of light with the aggregated potencies 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 also to the Great Magical Agent in the fourth chapter of the Ritual, 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 a few words on the four magical elements and elementary spirits. The magical elements are: in alchemy, Salt, Sulphur, Mercury and Azoth; in Kabalah, 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, etc. 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 thus only one material element, which manifests always by the tetrad in its forms. We shall therefore preserve the wise distinction of elementary appearances admitted by the ancients, and shall recognize air, fire, earth and water as the four positive and visible elements of Magic. The subtle and the gross, the swift and slow solvent, 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 affirmed already, 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, Rest. As a fact, all science is comprised in the understanding of these four things, which alchemy has reduced to three - the Absolute, the Fixed and the Volatile - referred by the Kabalah 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, CHOKMAH and BlNAH for the Divine World; of TIPHERETH, CHESED and GEBURAH in the moral world, and of JESOD, Hod and NETSAH in the physical world, which, together with the moral, is contained in the idea of the Kingdom or MALKUTH, we shall explain in the tenth chapter this theogony as rational as it is sublime.