Transcendental Magic II: The Ritual (Éliphas Lévi) · 65 of 123 · tr. A.E. Waite
14. Transmutationsa
St.
Augustus speculates, as we have said, whether Apuleius could have been changed into an ass and then have resumed his human shape.
The same doctor might have concerned himself equally with the adventure of the comrades of Ulysses, transformed into swine by Circe.
In vulgar opinion, transmutations and metamorphoses have always been the very essence of Magic.
Now, the crowd, being the echo of opinion, which is queen of the world, is never perfectly right or entirely wrong.
Magic does change the nature of things, or rather modifies their appearances at pleasure, according to the strength of the operator's will and the fascination of ambitious adepts.
The spoken word creates its form, and when a person held infallible confers a name upon a given thing, the latter is really transformed into the substance signified by the name.
The masterpiece of speech and of faith in this order is the real transmutation of a substance without change in its externals.
Had Apollonius offered a cup of wine to his disciples, and said to them: “This is my blood, of which ye shall drink hence-forth to perpetuate my life within you”; and had his disciples through centuries believed that they effected transformation by repeating the same words; had they taken the wine, despite its odor and taste, for the real, human and living blood of Apollonius, we should have to acknowledge this master in theurgy as the most accomplished of enchanters and most potent of all the Magi.
It would remain for us then to adore him.
Now, it is well known that mesmerists impart for their somnambulists any taste that they chose to plain water; and if we assume a Magus with sufficient command over the astral fluid to magnetize at the same moment a whole assembly of persons, otherwise prepared for magnetism by extreme super-excitement, we shall be in a position to explain readily, not indeed the Gospel miracle of Cana but works of the same class.
Are not the fascinations of love, which result from the universal Magic of Nature, truly prodigious, and do they not actually transform persons and things?
Love is a dream of enchantments that transfigures the world; all becomes music and fragrance, all intoxication and felicity.
The beloved being is beautiful, is good, is sublime, is infallible, is radiant, glows with health and happiness.
When the dream ends we seem to have fallen from the clouds; we are inspired with disgust for the brazen sorceress who took the place of the lovely Melusine, for the Thersites whom we deemed was Achilles or Nereus.
What faith is that which we cannot inspire in those who love us?
But also what reason or justice can we instill into those who have finished with such love?
Love begins magician and ends sorcerer.
After creating the illusions of heaven on earth, it realizes those of hell.
Its hatred is absurd like its ardour, because it is passional, that is, subject to the fatalities of its own influences.
For this cause it has been proscribed by sages, who declare it the enemy of reason.
Are they to be envied or commiserated for thus condemning, doubtless without understanding, the most alluring of miscreants?
All that can be said is that when they spoke thus, either they had not yet loved or else they loved no longer.
Things that are external are for us what our word internal makes them.
To believe that we are happy is to be happy; whatsoever we esteem becomes precious in proportion to the estimation itself: this is the sense in which we can say that Magic changes the nature of things.
The METAMORPHOSES of Ovid are true, but they are allegorical, like the GOLDEN ASS of rare Apuleius.
Themes
◆Emotional Epistemologysoteriology
The doctrine that emotions constitute a valid and necessary mode of knowing reality, complementing or surpassing intellectual cognition.
It argues that love and faith transfigure the world and that belief determines reality ('To believe that we are happy is to be happy').
Form-mutability as a constitutional property of divine and preternatural beings — gods, heroes, spirits, and their human practitioners possessing inherent capacity to alter form across human, animal, plant, or elemental states. Loki and Odin's transformations in Norse, Math's pigs and Blodeuwedd's owl-shape and Pwyll's exchange with Arawn in the Mabinogion, the Greek Proteus, the Indian dasavatara, Vainamoinen's bird-flight in the Kalevala, Ovid's metamorphoses, the shamanic and witch's capacity for ritual form-change. Distinct from anthropomorphism (divine taking specific human form, single embodiment) in that anthropomorphism establishes a stable form whereas this concept establishes form's plurality and instability.
The passage centers on transmutations and metamorphoses (Apuleius, Ulysses, Ovid) as the essence of magic.
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.
It explicitly states that the spoken word creates form and naming transforms substance.