Transcendental Magic II: The Ritual (Éliphas Lévi) · 53 of 123 · tr. A.E. Waite
11. The Triple Chain-b
Mystification combined with it after wards, and even educated and intelligent persons were so infatuated with the novelty that they hoaxed themselves, and became the dupes of their own absurdity.
The oracles of the tables were answers more or less voluntarily suggested extracted by chance: they resembled the conversations which we hold or hear in dreams.
Other and stranger phenomena may have been exteriorized products of imaginations at work in common.
We, however, by no means deny the possible intervention of elementary spirits in these occurrences, as in those of divination by cards or by dreams; but we do not believe that it has been in any sense proven, and we are therefore in no way obliged to admit it.
One of the most extraordinary powers of human imagination is the fulfilment of the desires of the will, or even of its apprehensions and fears.
We believe easily anything that we fear or desire, says a proverb; and it is true, because desire and fear impart to imagination a realizing power, the effects of which are incalculable.
How is one attacked, for example, by a disease about which one feels nervous?
We have cited already the opinions of Paracelsus on this point, and have established in our doctrinal part certain occult laws confirmed by experience; but in magnetic currents, and by mediation of the chain, the realizations are all the more strange because almost invariably unexpected, at least when the chain has not been formed by an intelligent, sympathetic and powerful leader.
In fact, they are the result of purely blind and fortuitous combinations.
The vulgar fear of superstitious guests when they find themselves thirteen at table, and their conviction that some misfortune threatens the youngest and weakest among them, like most superstitions, a remnant of magical science.
The duodenary, being a complete and cyclic number in the universal analogies of Nature, invariably attracts and absorbs the thirteenth, which is regarded as a sinister and superfluous number.
If the grindstone of a mill be represented by the number twelve, then thirteen is that of the grain which is to be ground.
On kindred considerations, the ancients established the distinctions between lucky and unlucky numbers, whence came the observance of days of good or evil augury.
It is over such matters above all that imagination is creative, so that both days and numbers seldom fail to be propitious or otherwise to those who believe in their influence.
Consequently, Christianity was right in proscribing the divinatory sciences, for in thus diminishing the number of blind chances it gave further scope and empire to liberty.
Printing is an admirable instrument for the formation of the magic chain by the extension of speech.
No book is lost; as a fact, writings go invariably precisely where they should go, and the aspirations of thought attract speech.
We have proved this a hundred times in the course of our magical initiation; the rarest books have offered themselves without seeking as soon as they became indispensable.
Thus have we recovered intact that universal science which so many learned persons have regarded as engulfed by a number of successive cataclysms; thus have we entered the great magical chain which began with Hermes or Enoch and will end only with the world.
Thus have we been able to evoke and come face to face with the spirits of Apollonius, Plotinus, Synesius, Paracelsus, Cardanus, Cornelius Agrippa and others less or more known, but too religiously celebrated to make it possible for them to be named lightly.
We continue their great work, which others will take up after us.
But unto whom shall it be given to complete it?
Ritual maintenance of relationship with the dead as ongoing presences whose favour is cultivated and whose offence is propitiated. Shinto uji-gami and obon, Norse disir and the alfablot, Celtic samhain and the feast for the deceased, Roman lares and parentalia, Chinese ancestor rites, Vedic śrāddha. Practice-coded rather than belief-coded: distinct from soul_migration (cosmological doctrine of soul-transmigration) and theosis_deification (deification trajectory); ancestor_veneration centres the living's ongoing ritual obligation to the dead.
The author claims to have evoked the spirits of past masters like Apollonius and Paracelsus to continue their work.
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 author references 'universal analogies of Nature' to explain the relationship between numbers and cosmic forces.
The Stoic and Plotinian doctrine that all parts of the cosmos are bound by hidden affinities, so that a movement in one part resonates through the whole; the metaphysical basis for astrology, magic, and divination.
The passage explicitly describes 'magnetic currents' and a 'chain' where 'aspirations of thought attract speech,' illustrating the hidden affinities binding parts of the cosmos.
Numbers, proportions, and mathematical relationships as the underlying structure of divine reality.
A significant portion of the text analyzes the metaphysical significance of numbers, specifically the duodenary (12) versus the thirteenth, and their influence on fortune.
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.
References to 'magical initiation' and the ability to 'evoke... spirits' align with ritual practices engaging spiritual entities.
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.
Printing is described as an instrument for the 'magic chain by the extension of speech,' implying the causal power of written and spoken word.