The history of magic

[41] Accepting this definition of the term of occult research, we can discern after what manner it differs from the mystic term. The one, by this hypothesis, is lucidity obtained in artificial sleep which stills the senses, and the other is Divine Realisation in the spirit after the images of material things and of the mind-world have been cast out, so that the sanctified man is alone with God in the stillness.

[42] This was La Magie Dévoilée, which was circulated in great secrecy. Later on, and probably after the decease of the author, it appeared in the ordinary way, and in 1886 an English translation was announced under the editorship of Mr. J. S. Farmer, but I believe that it was never published.

[43] Éliphas Lévi adds in a note that, according to Suidas, Cedrenus and the Chronicle of Alexandria it was Zoroaster himself who, seated in his palace, disappeared suddenly and by his own will, with all his secrets and all his riches, in a great peal of thunder. He explains that every king who exercised divine power passed for an incarnation of Zoroaster, and that Sardanapalus converted his pyre into an apotheosis.

[44] The analysis of Éliphas Lévi requires to be checked at all points. He followed the Latin version of Anquetil Duperron, made from a Persian text, and this is so rare as to be almost unobtainable. I shall therefore deserve well of my readers by furnishing the following extract from Deussen’s Religion and Philosophy of India, regarding the Oupnek’hat:

“A position apart from the 52 and the 108 Upanishads is occupied by that collection of 50 Upanishads which, under the name of Oupnek’hat, was translated from the Sanskrit into the Persian in the year 1656 at the instance of the Sultan Mohammed Dara Shakoh, and from the Persian into the Latin in 1801-2 by Anquetil Duperron. The Oupnek’hat professes to be a general collection of Upanishads. It contains under twelve divisions the Upanishads of the three older Vedas, and with them 26 Atharva Upanishads that are known from other sources. It further comprises eight treatises peculiar to itself, five of which have not up to the present time been proved to exist elsewhere, and of which therefore a rendering from the Persian-Latin of Anquetil is alone possible. Finally the Oupnek’hat contains four treatises from the Vaj. Samh. 16, 31, 32, 34, of which the first is met with in a shorter form in other collections also, as in the Nilarudra Upanishad, while the three last have nowhere else found admission. The reception of these treatises from the Samhita into the body of the Upanishads, as though there were danger of their falling otherwise into oblivion, makes us infer a comparatively later date for the Oupnek’hat collection itself, although as early as 1656 the Persian translators made no claim to be the original compilers, but took the collection over already complete.

Owing to the excessive literality with which Anquetil Duperron rendered these Upanishads word by word from the Persian into Latin, while preserving the syntax of the former language—a literality that stands in striking contrast to the freedom with which the Persian translators treated the Sanskrit text—the Oupnek’hat is a very difficult book to read; and an insight as keen as that of Schopenhauer was required in order to discover within this repellant husk a kernel of invaluable philosophical significance, and to turn it to account for his own system. An examination of the material placed at our disposal in the Oupnek’hat was first undertaken by A. Weber, Ind. Stud. I, II, ix., on the basis of the Sanskrit text. Meanwhile the original texts were published in the Bibliotheca Indica in part with elaborate commentaries, and again in the Anandas’rama series. The two longest, and some of the shorter treatises have appeared in a literal German rendering by O. Bohtlingk. Max Müller translated the twelve oldest Upanishads in Sacred Books of the East, vol. i. 15. And my own translation of the 60 Upanishads contains complete texts of this character which, upon the strength of their regular occurrence in the Indian collections and lists of the Upanishads, may lay claim to a certain canonicity. The prefixed introductions and the notes treat exhaustively of the matter and composition of the several treatises.”

[45] This forms the second book of the collection entitled Orthodoxie Maçonnique, which was published in 1853. The account of magical discs and the planets corresponding to them will be found on pp. 498-501. Ragon pretended that there was a system of Occult Masonry in three Degrees.

[46] The legend concerning the Emerald Tablet is that it was found by Alexander the Great in the tomb of Hermes, which was hidden by the priests of Egypt in the depths of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh. It was supposed to have been written by Hermes on a large plate of emerald by means of a pointed diamond. I believe that there is no Greek version extant, and it is referred by Louis Figuier to the seventh century of the Christian era, or thereabouts. See L’Alchimie et les Alchimistes, p. 42.

[47] In his Lexicon Alchemiæ Rulandus reminds us that “the old astronomers dedicated the Emerald to Mercury,” and Berthelot says that this was in conformity with Egyptian ideas, which classed the Emerald and Sapphire in their list of metals. See Collection des Anciens Alchimistes Grecs, première livraison, p. 269. The planet Mercury was the planet Hermes and it may be that some mystical connection was supposed between quicksilver and the precious stone. This would have been in Græco-Alexandrian times, if ever, as ancient Egypt does not seem to have been acquainted with quicksilver.

[48] The text says: le triple binaire ou le mirage du triangle, but it is obvious that the reflected triad cannot be termed binary. The expression is confused, but the meaning is that the first triangle equals unity, or the number 1; the second triad corresponds to the duad, or number 2; the third triad to the number 3, and so onward.

[49] The reference is to Athanasius Kircher’s Œdipus Ægyptiacus, 3 vols. in folio, bound usually in four, published at Rome, 1652-1654. The Mensa Isiaca, being the Bembine Tablet, so called because its discovery is connected with the name of Cardinal Bembo, is in the third volume—a folding plate beautifully produced. The original is exceedingly late and is roughly termed a forgery. In 1669 the Tablet was reproduced on a larger scale by means of a number of folding plates in the Mensa Isiaca of Laurentius Pignorius. Both works are exceedingly rare. I suppose that these are the only records of the Tablet now extant, with the exception of a large copy in my possession made from the above sources.

[50] Mr. G. R. S. Mead tells us that Iynx in its root-meaning, according to Proclus, signifies the “power of transmission” which is said in the Chaldæan Oracles “to sustain the fountains.” Mr. Mead thinks that the Iyinges were reproduced (a) as Living Spheres and (b) as Winged Globes. He thinks, also, that (a) the Mind on the plane of reality put forth (b) the one Iyinx, (c) after this three Iyinges, called paternal and ineffable, and finally (d) there may have been hosts of subordinate Iyinges. They were “free intelligences.” It seems to follow that the Iynx was not “an emblem of universal being,” but a product of the Eternal Mind.

[51] It may be mentioned that the Hebrew alphabet was divided into (a) Three Mother Letters, namely, Aleph, Mem and Shin; (b) Seven Double Letters, being Beth, Gimel, Daleth, Kaph, Pe, Resh, Tau; and (c) Twelve Simple Letters, or He, Vau, Zain, Heth, Teth, Yod, Lamed, Nun, Samech, Ayin, Tsade, Quoph.

[52] The Sepher Yetzirah was first made known to Latin reading Europe by William Postel. Publication took place at Bâle in 1547. It is said to have been reissued at Amsterdam in 1646. The collection of Pistorius, entitled Artis Cabalisticæ Scriptores, belongs to 1587. Later and modern editions of the Book of Formation are fairly numerous. It was translated into French, together with the Arabic commentary of R. Saadya Gaon, by Mayor Lambert, in 1891. An English version by Dr. W. Wynn Westcott will serve the purpose of the general reader.

[53] The Tarots of this period belong to the year 1393, and it has been suggested recently in France that the artist Charles Gringonneur was really their inventor. It is useful to note this opinion, but I do not think that any importance attaches to it. The extant Gringonneur examples in the Bibliothèque Nationale have also been said to be of Italian origin and not therefore his work. The Venetian Tarots have been sometimes regarded as the oldest known form. The historical question is obscure beyond all extrication at present.

[54] In face of existing evidence, the description of the Tarot Trumps Major as a Kabalistic alphabet has as much and as little to support it as the claim that they constitute an Egyptian Book of Thoth. It has been reported to me, however, that there is an unknown Jewish Tarot, and it may interest students of the subject to know that before long I hope to be able to give some account at first hand concerning it. There is little reason to suppose that it will prove (a) ancient or (b) Kabalistic; but as one never knows what is at one’s threshold, I put the fact on record for whatever it may be worth in the future. Meanwhile, it is quite idle to say that our popular fortune-telling Tarots are of Jewish origin.

[55] The interpretation of Lévi seems to hesitate between several fields of symbolism, and what follows at this point suggests that the Golden Fleece is an allegory of metallic transmutation by means of alchemy. It was so regarded by many of the later disciples of this art. According to Antoine Joseph Pernety, the Golden Fleece is the symbol of the matter of the Great Work; the labours of Jason are an allegory concerning the operations therein and of the signs of progress towards perfection. The attainment of this Fleece signifies that of the Powder of Projection and the Universal Medicine. See Dictionnaire Mytho-Hermétique and Les Fables Egyptiennes et Grecques, both by Pernety, and in particular vol. i. of the latter work, pp. 437-494.

[56] Among several bearers of this name, I suppose that the reference is to him who, by tradition, was either the disciple or son of Orpheus, commemorated by Virgil. None of his poems are extant, so that the argument seems to fail. The antiquity of the Orphic poems—Argonautica, Hymns, etc.—is another question, and the conclusions of criticism on the subject are well known.

[57] Almost any of the demonologists will serve at need. The Jesuit Martinus Delrio, who wrote Disquisitionum Magicarum Libri Sex has plenty to say about Lamiæ and Stryges. There is also Joannes Wierus, the pupil of Cornelius Agrippa, whose famous work on the Illusions and Impostures of Sorcery—Histoires, Disputes et Discours—was rendered from Latin into French, in 1885.

[58] I do not know how this fable originated and the question is not worth the pains which would be necessary to elucidate it. It is narrated by Éliphas Lévi as matter of historical fact; but there is no question that M. Edouard Schuré, who owes so much to the occultist who preceded him, would have been glad to include it in his romantic biography of Pythagoras, if it had not been too mythical even for his purpose. He is content as it is to suggest that the sage of Samos had studied Jewish monotheism during a stay of twelve years at Babylon.

[59] The authorship of the Golden Verses is of course a debated point; and it is an old suggestion that their real writer was Lysis, the preceptor of Epaminondas and an exponent of Pythagorean philosophy about 388 B.C., his master being referred to the beginning of the sixth century B.C. I should add that Éliphas Lévi has presented the Verses in a metrical form of his own, which reflects the originals at a very far distance. I have not followed this rendering but have had recourse to that of Mr. G. R. S. Mead.

[60] Among the appendices to the second part of the Zohar there is a short section on physiognomy, and it embodies some very curious materials. We learn, for example, that if a man who has certain specified characteristics of colour and feature should turn to God, a white blemish will form on the pupil of his right eye. He who has three semi-circular wrinkles on his forehead and whose eyes are shining will behold the downfall of his enemies. A man who has committed an adultery and has not repented is recognisable by a growth beneath the navel, and thereon will be found two hairs. Should he do penance, the hairs will disappear but the swelling will remain. A man who has a beauty-spot on his ear will be a great master of the Law and will die young. Two long hairs between the shoulders indicate a person who is given to swearing incessantly in an objectless manner. It will be seen that these details belong to a neglected part of the science, and I am a little at a loss to know how Éliphas Lévi would have pressed them into his service, if he had been fully acquainted with the work which he quotes so often.

[61] It happens that the hypothesis of reincarnation was personally unwelcome to Éliphas Lévi, and he did not know enough of Zoharic Kabalism to realise that it is of some importance therein. The traditions concerning the teaching of Pythagoras must be taken at their proper value, but there is no question that, according to these, he was an important champion of what used to be called the doctrine of metempsychosis, understood as the soul’s transmigration into successive bodies. He himself had been (a) Æthalides, a son of Mercury; (b) Euphorbus, son of Panthus, who perished at the hands of Menelaus in the Trojan war; (c) Hermotimus, a prophet of Clazomenæ, a city of Ionia; (d) a humble fisherman, and finally (e) the philosopher of Samos.

[62]In memoria æterna erit justus.

[63] Éliphas Lévi has forgotten that the word “ineffable” means something which cannot be expressed; he intended to say that, according to the Kabalists, the efficacious name was hidden.

[64] All later Kabalists agree that Tetragrammaton is the root and foundation of the Divine Names. In the Sephirotic system one of the allocations makes Chokmah, or Supernal Wisdom, to correspond with the Yod of Tetragrammaton. Kether, which is the Crown, is said to have no letter attributed thereto, because the mystery of Ain Soph, the hidden abyss of the Godhead, is implied therein. However, the apex of Yod does in a sense intimate concerning Kether. He is the second letter in the Divine Tetrad, and it is ascribed to Binah, or Supernal Understanding, wherein is all life comprehended. This is the abode of the Shekinah in transcendence. The third letter is Vau, and it is said to contain the six Sephiroth from Chesed to Yesod. The second He is the fourth and last letter; it corresponds to Malkuth, or the Kingdom, wherein is the mystery of the unity of God. This is the abode of the Shekinah in manifestation. Thus, Yod, He, Vau, He, which we render Jehovah, contains all the ten Sephiroth. There are, however, other allocations.

[65] Éliphas Lévi must have meant to say seven letters, but the point does not signify. According to Rosenroth, the Tetragrammaton with vowel-points is the eighth Divine Name— יֱהֹוִה. The points are those of Elohim and it is read as that Name. This signifies the concealment of the “Ineffable” Name, on account of the exile of Israel.

[66] This is the Divine Name which is most in proximity to created things. See the excursus thereon in Kabbala Denudata, vol. i. pp. 32-41.

[67] Cf. the Zohar, Part i. folio 15a, on Exodus iii. 14: “And God said unto Moses: I am that I am”— אהיה אשר אהיה

[68] According to the Rabbinical Lexicon of Buxtorf, Agla is formed from the initial letters of the sentence אדני לצלם נכור אהה = Tu potens es in sæculum, Domine. There seems to be no Kabalistic authority for its explanation by Lévi, and the word occurs very seldom in the Zohar.

[69] According to Petrus Galatinus, in De Arcanis Catholicæ Veritatis, the word Agla expresses the infinite power of the Divine Trinity. Like Éliphas Lévi, he gives us the separate significance of each letter and, like Buxtorf, he makes them the initials of the sentence already quoted, his rendering being: Tu potens in æternum Dominus. He terms Agla Nomen Dei, for which there seems to be as much and as little authority as there is for the suggestion that the Divina potentia is that of the Trinity.

[70] A very full exposition of this Name will be found in the section entitled De Cabale Hebræorum, forming part of Kircher’s magnum opus, the Œdipus Ægyptiacus. It is curious that a tract so important as this, within its own measures, and written with the uttermost simplicity, does not appear to have been translated, even into the French language.

[71] I must admit that this reference escapes me. The Tarot consists of four suits of 14 cards each and there are 22 Trumps Major, making 78 cards in all.

[72] The axiom has rather a convincing air, but the analogy is wrong, and the word “return” is a blunder of popular speech. The possibility of communication with those who have left this life is a question of the interpenetration of worlds. To say that the human spirit departs or comes back is a symbolic expression, like the statement that heaven is above us.

[73] The analogy is again wrong and the creation of a materialistic mind. The return of the soul to God is not annihilation but life for evermore, and it is union with all life.

[74] The soul sheds one envelope, in which it has prepared another.

[75] This expression may tend to confusion. The consciousness and activity of the soul are manifested by means of that vehicle in which it happens to reside. It is not they that belong to the vehicle, but it is the vehicle that is used by them.

[76] There is no Kabalistic authority for the sun as the abode of souls.

[77] Kabalism is silent on the question of communication with those who have left this life, though tacitly it must admit the possibility on the evidence of the case of Samuel. The axiom that the spirit clothes itself to come down and unclothes itself to go up is one of the so-called conclusiones Kabbalisticæ of Picus de Mirandula, but it is found substantially in the Zohar, and as regards the descent, this is just what occurs ex hypothesi in the phenomena of spiritistic materialisations. As regards the parable of the rich man, it has nothing to do with the question of so-called spirit-return; those who were in the bosom of Abraham had as much left this life as those who were in Sheol.

[78] It depends on those who have left us. What of the earthly and the evil? Why should the bond between them and us—supposing that there is a bond—be that of our highest feelings?