Transcendental Magic I: The Doctrine (Éliphas Lévi) · 52 of 96 · tr. A.E. Waite
10. The Kabalah-b
MALKUTH.-The Kingdom, meaning the universe, entire creation, the work and mirror of God, the proof of supreme reason, the formal consequence which compels us to have recourse to virtual premises, the enigma which has God for its answer - that is to say, Supreme and Absolute Reason.
These ten primary notions attached to the ten first characters of the primitive alphabet, signifying both principles and numbers, are called the ten SEPHIROTH by the masters in Kabalah.
The Sacred Tetragram, drawn in the following manner, indicates the number, source and correspondence of Divine Names.
To this name of JOTCHAVAH, written by these four-and-twenty signs, crowned with a triple flower of light, must be referred the twenty-four thrones of heaven and the twenty-four crowned elders in the Apocalypse.
In the Kabalah the occult principle is called the Ancient, and this principle, multiplied and, as it were, reflected in secondary causes, creates images of itself - that is to say, so many Ancients as there are diverse conceptions of its unique essence.
These images, less perfect in proportion as they are removed farther from their source, project upon the darkness an ultimate reflection or glimmer, representing a horrible and deformed Ancient, who is termed vulgarly the devil.
Hence an initiate has been bold enough to say: “The devil is God, as understood by the wicked”; while another has added, in words more bizarre but no less energetic: “The devil is composed of God's ruins.” We may sum up and explain these strikingly novel definitions by remarking that in symbolism itself the demon is an angel cast out of heaven for having sought to usurp divinity.
This belongs to the allegorical language of prophets and makers of legends.
Philosophically speaking, the devil is a human idea of divinity, which has been surpassed and dispossessed of heaven by the progress of science and reason.
Among primitive Oriental peoples, Moloch, Adramelek, Baal, were personifications of the one God, dishonoured by barbarous attributes.
The god of the Jansenists, creating hell for the majority of human beings and delighting in the eternal tortures of those he was unwilling to save, is a conception even more barbarous than that of Moloch: hence the god of the Jansenists is already a veritable Satan, fallen from heaven, in the sight of every wise and enlightened Christian.
In the multiplication of the Divine Names the Kabalists have connected them all, either with the unity of the Tetragram, the figure of the triad, or the sephirotic scale of the decad.
They arrange the scale of the Divine Names and numbers in a triangle, which may be presented in Roman characters as follows: The sum of all these Divine Names formed from the one Tetragram, but outside the Tetragram itself, is a basis of the Hebrew Ritual and constitutes the occult force which the kabalistic rabbins invoke under the title of Shemhamphoras.
We have now to concern ourselves with the Tarot from the kabalistic point of view, and have already indicated the occult source of the name.
This hieroglyphic book is composed of a kabalistic alphabet and of a wheel or circle of four decades, distinguished by four symbolical and typical figures, each having for its radius a scale of four progressive figures, which represent Humanity: man, woman, youth, child - master, mistress, knight, esquire.
The twenty-two figures of the alphabet represent, in the first place, the thirteen dogmas, and secondly, the nine beliefs authorized by that Jewish religion which is so strong and so firmly established on highest reason.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The universe is described as the 'mirror of God' and Divine Names indicate correspondence, reflecting Hermetic principles.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
The text describes the occult principle multiplying and reflecting in secondary causes, with images becoming less perfect as they are removed from their source.
Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.
The devil is described as 'God's ruins' and a reflection less perfect in proportion as it is removed from the source, aligning with privation theory.
The ten attributes or emanations through which the Ein Sof (Infinite) reveals itself and creates the universe in Kabbalistic theology.
The passage explicitly defines the ten primary notions attached to the alphabet characters as the ten SEPHIROTH. [quarantine-w3: sephirot x western_esoteric — see rellm data/quarantine/dossiers.jsonl]
Iamblichean ritual practice that engages the gods directly through consecrated material symbols and actions, on the premise that divine power descends into properly prepared matter — distinct from philosophical contemplation alone.
The text describes invoking occult force through Divine Names and numbers, consistent with theurgical practice.
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.
The passage describes the occult force invoked by kabalistic rabbins under specific titles like Shemhamphoras.