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Transcendental Magic II: The Ritual (Éliphas Lévi) · 82 of 123 · tr. A.E. Waite

16. Witchcraft And Spells-d

For bewitchment by the waxen figure, a more perfect figure must be made, and set about as far as possible with things belonging to the person; seven talismans must be hung round the neck; it must be placed in the middle of a great Pantacle representing the Pentagram, and each day must be rubbed slightly with a mixture of oil and balm, after reciting the Conjuration of the Four to turn aside the influence of elementary spirits. At the end of seven days the image must be burnt in consecrated fire, and one may rest assured that the figure fabricated by that sorcerer will at such moment lose all its virtue. We have mentioned already the Sympathetic Medicine of Paracelsus, who medicated waxen limbs and operated upon discharges of blood from wounds for the cure of wounds themselves. This system permitted the employment of more than usually violent remedies, and the chief specifics were sublimate and vitriol. We believe that homoeopathy is a reminiscence of the theories of Paracelsus and a return to his wise practices. But we shall follow up this subject in a special treatise consecrated to occult medicine. Contracts by parents forestalling the future of their children are bewitchments which cannot be condemned too strongly; children dedicated in white, for example, scarcely ever prosper; those who were formerly devoted to celibacy fell commonly into debauch, or ended in despair and madness. Man is not permitted to do violence to destiny, still less to impose bonds upon the lawful use of liberty. As a supplement or appendix to this chapter, we will add a few words about mandragores and androids which several writers on Magic confound with waxen images serving the purposes of bewitchment. The natural mandragore is a filamentous root which presents more or less as a whole either the figure of a man, or that of the virile members. It is slightly narcotic and an aphrodisiacal virtue was ascribed to it by the ancients, who represented it as being sought by Thessalian sorcerers for the composition of philtres. Is this root the umbilical vestige of our terrestrial origin, as a certain magical mysticism has suggested? We dare not affirm it seriously, but it is true all the same that man issued from the slime of earth and his first appearance must have been in the form of a rough sketch. The analogies of Nature compel us to admit the notion, at least as a possibility. The first men were, in this case, a family of gigantic, sensitive mandragores, animated by the sun, who rooted themselves up from the earth. Such an assumption not only does not exclude, but on the contrary positively supposes, creative will and the providential co-operation of a First Cause, which we have REASON to call God. Some alchemists, impressed by this idea, indulged in reveries on the culture of the mandragore and experimented in the artificial reproduction of a soil sufficiently fruitful and a sun sufficiently active to humanize the said root, and thus create men without the concurrence of the female. Others, who regarded humanity as the synthesis of animals, despaired about vitalizing the mandragore, but they crossed monstrous pairs and projected human seed into animal earth, only for the production of shameful crimes and barren deformities. The third method of making the android was by galvanic machinery. One of these almost intelligent automata was attributed to Albertus Magnus, and it is said that St. Thomas destroyed it with one blow from a stick because he was perplexed by its answers. This story is an allegory: the android was primitive scholasticism, which was broken by the SUMMA of St.
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Themes
Animismcosmology

The doctrine and worldview that natural phenomena, places, and objects possess inherent spirit, soul, or personality — and that the cosmos is populated by countless local, plural, embodied divine agents: kami in mountain and tree, sidhe in cairn and well, landwights in field and stone, nymphs in spring and grove, haltija in forest and lake, lares and penates in household and threshold, Iamblichean daemons in element and place. Distinct from monotheism (single transcendent God), pantheism (one underlying substance), and emanation_hierarchy (cascading single source); animism's signature is the plurality, locality, and embodied-in-landscape character of the divine.

The passage mentions 'elementary spirits' whose influence must be turned aside, implying spirits inhabit the elements.

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Cosmic Sympathycosmology

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 text explicitly references 'Sympathetic Medicine' and describes how actions on an image affect the original subject.

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Cosmogonycosmology

Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.

The passage speculates on human origins, suggesting man issued from the slime of earth and first appeared as mandragores.

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Divine Providencetheology

Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.

The text affirms the 'providential co-operation of a First Cause' in the context of creation and destiny.

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Nature Preservationpraxis

The ethical imperative to live in accordance with one's innate nature and avoid artificial social constraints that harm it.

The text states 'Man is not permitted to do violence to destiny', implying an ethical alignment with natural order.

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Ritual Firepraxis

Fire as medium of divine presence.

The waxen image must be burnt in 'consecrated fire' to complete the ritual and destroy the sorcerer's virtue. [quarantine-w3: ritual_fire x western_esoteric — see rellm data/quarantine/dossiers.jsonl]

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Theurgypraxis

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 passage describes ritual practices using consecrated material symbols (waxen figures, talismans) to engage spiritual forces.

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Word Power Incantationpraxis

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.

Reciting the Conjuration is described as a method to actively turn aside the influence of spirits, demonstrating magical efficacy of speech.

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Related passages · 9 parallels
shinto|The Kojiki: The Beginning of Heaven and Earth|Section 1
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“They are never erring, perpetually recurring numbers, unveiling, to him who studies the secrets of Nature, a truly divine System, an intelligent plan in Cosmogony, which results in natural cosmic divisions of times, seasons, invisible influ…”
Shared concept: Animism — The doctrine and worldview that natural phenomena, places, and objects possess inherent spirit, soul, or personality — and that the cosmos is populated by countless local, plural, embodied divine agents: kami in mountain and tree, sidhe in cairn and well, landwights in field and stone, nymphs in spring and grove, haltija in forest and lake, lares and penates in household and threshold, Iamblichean daemons in element and place. (derived)
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christian_mysticism|Pseudo-Dionysius: The Divine Names|Chapter 4, Section 1y
“(which are not in their essential nature evil, although alleged to be so), the lion, having lost its savage wildness, will be a lion no longer; and the dog, if it become gentle to all, will cease to be a dog, since the virtue of a dog is to…”
Shared concept: Nature Preservation — The ethical imperative to live in accordance with one's innate nature and avoid artificial social constraints that harm it. (derived)
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Shared concept: Nature Preservation — The ethical imperative to live in accordance with one's innate nature and avoid artificial social constraints that harm it. (derived)