Читать книгу The Magic of Éliphas Lévi - Eliphas Levi - Страница 17

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That which adepts have distinguished as the Great Work is not only the transmutation of metals but also and above all the Universal Medicine—that is to say, the remedy for all ills, including death itself. Now, the process which produces the Universal Medicine is the moral regeneration of man. It is that second birth alluded to by ourSaviour in His discourse to Nicodemus, a doctor of the law. Nicodemus did not understand, and Jesus said: “Are you a master in Israel and know not these things?”—as if intending to intimate that they belonged to the fundamental principles of religious science, of which no professor could dare to be ignorant.1

The great mystery of life and its ordeals is represented in the celestial sphere and in the annual succession of the seasons. The four aspects of the sphinx correspond to these seasons and to the four elements. The symbolical figure on the shield of Achilles—according to the description of Homer—are analogous in their meaning to the Twelve Labours of Hercules. Like Hercules, Achilles must die, after having conquered the elements and even done battle with the gods. Hercules, on his part, triumpant over all the vices, represented by the monsters whom he fought, succumbs for a moment to love, the most dangerous of all. But he tears from his body the burning tunic of Dejanira, though the flesh comes with it from the bones; he leaves her guilty and vanquished, to die on his own part—but as one liberated and immortal.

Every thinking man is an dipus called to solve the enigma of the sphinx or, this failing, to die. Every initiate must become a Hercules, who, achieving the cycle of a great year of toil, shall, by sacrifices of heart and life, deserve the glory of apotheosis. Orpheus is not king of the lyre and of sacrifices till he has successively won and has learned how to lose Eurydice. Omphale and Dejanira are jealous of Hercules: one would debase him, the other yields to the counsels of an abandoned rival, and so is induced to poison him who has emancipated the world; but in the act she cures him of a far more fatal poison, which is her own unworthy love. The flame of the pyre purifies his too susceptible heart; he perishes in all his vigour and is seated victorious close to the throne of Jupiter. So also Jacob was not appointed the great patriarch of Israel till he had wrestled with an angel through the length of an entire night.

Ordeal is the great word of life, and life itself is a serpent which brings forth and devours unceasingly. We must escape from its folds; we must set our foot upon its head. Hermes duplicated the serpent, setting it against itself, and in an eternal equilibrium he converted it into the talisman of his power, into the glory of his caduceus.

The great ordeals of Memphis and Eleusis were designed to form kings and priests by entrusting science to strong and valiant men. The price of admission to such tests was the surrender of body, soul and life into the hands of the priesthood. The candidate descended thereafter through dark subterranean regions, wherein he traversed successively among flaming pyres, passed through deep and rapid floods, over bridges thrown across abysses, holding in his hand a lamp which must not be extinguished. He who trembled, he whom fear overcame, never returned to the light; but he who surmounted every obstacle intrepidly was received among the mystce, which meant initiation into the Lesser Mysteries. He had yet to vindicate his fidelity and silence; it was only at the end of several years that he became an epopt, being a title equivalent to that of adept.2

Philosophy, in competition with the priesthood, imitated these practices, and put its disciples to the proof. Pythagoras exacted silence and abstinence for five years. Plato opened his schools to none but geometricians and those skilled in music; furthermore, he reserved part of his instruction to initiates, so that his philosophy had its mysteries.3 He attributed the creation of the world to demons and represented man as the progenitor of all animals. But the demons of Plato signify the Elohim of Moses, being those powers by the combination and harmony of which the Supreme Principle created. When he represents beasts as begotten by humanity he'means that they are the analysis of that living form, the synthesis of which is man. It was Plato who first proclaimed the divinity of the Word, and he appeared to foresee the approaching incarnation of this creative Word on earth; he proclaimed the sufferings and execution of the perfect just man, condemned by the iniquity of the world.

This sublime philosophy of the Word is part of the pure Kabalah, whence Plato was in no wise its inventor.4 He makes no secret of this and he proclaims that in any science only that must be received which is in harmony with eternal truths and with the oracles of God. Dacier, from whom this quotation comes, adds that “by these eternal truths Plato signified an ancient tradition which he supposes primeval humanity to have received from God and transmitted to later generations”. It would be impossible to speak more clearly without actually naming the Kabalah: it is definition instead of name; in a sense, it is something more precise than the name itself.

Plato says otherwise that “the root-matter of this great knowledge is not to be found in books; we must seek in ourselves by means of deep meditation, discovering the sacred fire in its proper source…. This is why I have written nothing concerning these revelations and shall never even speak about them. Whosoever shall undertake to popularise them will find the attempt futile, for, except in the case of a very small number of men who have been endowed with understanding from God to discern these heavenly truths within themselves, it will render them contemptible to some, while filling others with vain and rash self-confidence, as if they were depositaries of marvels which they do not understand all the same.”5

To the younger Dionysius he wrote: “I must bear witness to Archedemus concerning that which is far more precious, more divine by far, and that which you desire earnestly to know, having sent him to me expressly. He gives me to understand that in your view I have not explained to you sufficiently what I hold as to the nature of the First Principle. I can only write in enigmas, so that if my letter be intercepted on land or water, he who may read it shall understand nothing: all things encompass their king, from whom they draw their being, he being the source of all good things—second for those which are second and third for those which are third.”

These few words are a complete summary of sephirotic theology.6 The King is Ensoph—Supreme and Absolute Being. All radiates from this centre, which centre is everywhere, but we regard it after three especial manners and in three distinct spheres. In the Divine world, which is that of the First Cause, the King is one and first. In the world of science, which is that of secondary causes, the influence of the First Principle is felt, but is conceived only as first of the said causes. Therein the King manifests by the duad, which is the passive creating principle. Finally, in the third world, which is that of forms, he is revealed as perfect form, the incarnate Word, supreme goodness and beauty, created perfection. The King is therefore, at one and the same time, the first, second and third, seeing that He is all in all, centre and cause of all. Let us be silent on the genius of Plato, recognising only the exact knowledge of the initiate.

Let it therefore be said no longer that our great apostle St. John borrowed from the philosophy of Plato the proœmium of his gospel. It is Plato, on the contrary, who drew from the same sources as St. John; but he had not received that spirit which makes alive. The philosophy of him who expounded the greatest of human revelations might aspire towards the Word made man, but the gospel alone could give that Word to the world.

The Kabalah taught by Plato to the Greeks assumed at a later period the name of Theosophy and ended by embracing the whole of magical doctrine.7 It is to this sum total of secret doctrine that all discoveries of research gravited successively. The ambition was to pass from theory to practice and to find the realisation of words in works. The dangerous experiences of divination taught science how it might dispense with the priesthood; the sanctuary was betrayed, and men who had no mission dared to make the gods speak. It is for this reason that theurgy shared in the anathemas pronounced against Black Magic and was suspected of imitating its crimes because it could not exculpate itself from a share in its impiety. The evil of Isis is not lifted with impunity, and curiosity blasphemes faith when Divine things are concerned. “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed,” says the Great Master.

The experiments of theurgy and necromancy are always fatal for those who are abandoned to their practice. To set foot upon the threshold of the other world spells death, and it follows often in a strange and terrible manner. Vertigo supervenes, catalepsy and madness finish the work. It is unquestionable that in the presence of certain persons a disturbance takes place in the air, wainscots split, doors shake and creak. Fantastic signs and even stains, as of blood, seem to impress themselves on virgin-parchment or on linen. The nature of these signatures is always the same and they are classified by experts under the name of diabolical writings. The mere sight of such characters sends sufferers from magnetic hysteria into convulsions or ecstasy; they believe that they behold spirits, and Satan, or the genius of error, is transfigured for them into an angel of light. The pretended spirits require, as the condition of their manifestation, some kind of contact between the sexes, the putting of hand in hand, foot to foot, breathing face to face and even immodest embraces. Devotees are besotted by this kind of intoxication; they think that they are elected by God, that they are interpreters of heaven, and they regard obedience to the hierarchy in the light of fanaticism. They are the successors of the Indian race of Cain, victims of hasheesh and fakirs. They profit by no warnings, and they perish by their own act and will.

To restore sufferers of this kind the Greek priests resorted to a species of homœopathy; they terrified the patients by exaggerating the disease itself, and for this purpose they put them to sleep in the cave of Trophonius.8 The preparation for this experience was by fastings, lustrations and vigils; the patients were then taken down into the vault and shut up in total darkness. Intoxicating gases, like those in the Grotto of the Dog near Naples, filled the cavern, and the visionary was overcome speedily. Incipient asphyxia induced frightful dreams, from which the victim was rescued in time and carried forth palpitating all over, pale and with hair on end. In this condition he or she was seated on a tripod and prophetic utterances preceded complete awakening. Experiences of this sort so distracted the nervous system that their subjects never recalled them without trembling and in future did not dare to mention evocations or phantoms. Some of them never smiled again or felt the impulse of gaiety; the general impression was so melancholy that it passed into a proverb, and it was said of anyone who did not unbend: “He has slept in the cave of Trophonius.”9

For the remanents of science and the recovery of its mysteries we must have recourse to the religious symbolism of antiquity rather than to the works of its philosophers. The priests of Egypt were better acquainted than ourselves with the laws of motion and of life. They could temper or promote action by reaction, and they foresaw without difficulty the realisation of effects the cause of which they had postulated. The pillars of Seth, Hermes, Solomon, Hercules symbolised in magical traditions this universal law of equilibrium, while the science of equilibrium led the initiates to that of universal gravitation about centres of life, heat and light. So in the Egyptian sacred calendars, where it is known that each month was placed under the protection of three decani or genii of ten days, the first decanate in the sign of Leo is represented by a human head with seven rays; the body has a scorpio-tail and the sign of Sagittarius is under the chin. Beneath the head is the name of IAO, and the figure was called Khnoubis, an Egyptian word which signifies gold and light. Thaïes and Pythagoras learned in the Egyptian sanctuaries that the earth gravitated round the sun, but they did not seek to publish the fact generally because it would have involved the revelation of a great temple-secret, being the dual law of attraction and radiation, of fixity and movement, which is the principle ol creation and the unfailing cause of life.10 So also the Christian writer Lactantius, who had heard of this magical tradition, but as an effect in the absence of a cause, scoffed loudly at theurgical dreamers who believed in the motion of the earth and in antipodes, the result of which would be the fact that we walked on our heads with the feet upwards, though our heads appeared to be erect. Furthermore, as he added, with the logic of children, in such case we should infallibly fall head downwards through the heaven below us. So philosophers reasoned, while priests, without answering or even smiling at their blunders, continued to write in creative hieroglyphics concerning all dogmas, all forms of poetry and all secrets of truth.

In their allegorical description of Hades, the Greek hierophants concealed the palmary secrets of Magic. We find four rivers therein, even as in the Earthly Paradise, plus a fifth, which wound seven times round the others. There was a river of sorrows, and silence called Cocytus; there was a river of forgetfulness, or Lethe; and then there was a swift and irresistible river which carried all before it, flowing in an opposite course to yet another river of fire. The two last were named Acheron and Phlegethon, one being the negative and one the positive fluid, flowing eternally each in each. The black and icy waters of Acheron smoked with the warmth of Phlegethon, while the liquid flames of the latter were covered with thick vapours by the former. Larvœ and lemur es, shadowy images of bodies which have lived and of those which have yet to come, issued from these vapours by myriads; but whether they drank or not from the flood of sorrows, all desired the waters of oblivion, to bring them youth and peace. The wise alone do not seek to forget, for memory is their reward already; so also they only are truly deathless, since they only are conscious of their immortality. The tortures of Tenarus are truly divine pictures of the vices and their eternal chastisement. The greed of Tantalus, the ambition of Sisyphus, will never be expiated, since they can never be satisfied. Tantalus is athirst in the water, Sisyphus rolls a stone towards the top of a mountain, hoping to take his seat thereon, but it falls back continually and drags him down into the abyss. Ixion, unbridled in licence, would have violated the queen of heaven and was scourged by infernal furies. He did not consummate his crime, for he embraced only a phantom. The phantom may have condescended in appearance to his love and may have ministered to his passion, but when he disowned duty, when his satisfaction was at the price of sacrilege, that which he thought was love proved hatred in a mask of flowers.

It is not from beyond the tomb, it is rather in life itself, that we must seek the mysteries of death. Salvation or condemnation begin here below, and this earth has also its heaven and hell. Virtue is ever rewarded, vice is ever punished; if the wealth of the wicked incline us at times to think that they enjoy impunity, that instrument of good and evil seeming to be given them by chance, there is woe notwithstanding to the unjust; they may possess the key of gold, but for them it opens only the gate of the tomb and hell.

All true initiates have recognised the immense value of toil and suffering. A German poet tells us that sorrow is the dog of that unknown shepherd which leads the flock of humanity. Learn how to suffer and learn also to die—such are the gymnastics of eternity and such is the immortal novitiate. This is the moral lesson of Dante's Divine Comedy, and it was outlined in the allegorical Table of Cebes, which belongs to the time of Plato. An account of it has been preserved and many painters of the middle ages reconstructed the picture therefrom. It is at once a philosophical and magical monument, a perfect moral synthesis, and moreover the most audacious demonstration ever attempted of that Great Arcanum or Secret, the revelation of which must subvert heaven and earth. Our readers will unquestionably expect us to furnish its explanation, but he who has solved this enigma knows that it is inexplicable by its nature and is a sentence of death to those who take it by surprise, even as to those who reveal it.11

This secret is the royalty of the age and the crown of that initiates who is represented coming down as a victor from the mount of ordeal in the beautiful allegory of Cebes. The Great Arcanum has made him master of gold and light, which fundamentally are one thing; he has solved the quadrature of the circle; he directs perpetual motion; and he possesses the Philosophical Stone. Those who are adepts will understand me. There is neither interruption in the process of Nature nor a blank space in its work. The harmonies of heaven are in correspondence with those of earth, and eternal life fulfils its evolutions in accordance with the same laws which rule in the life of a day. The Bible says that God disposes all things according to weight, number and measure, and this luminous doctrine was also that of Plato. In the Phœdon he represents Socrates as discoursing on the destinies of the soul in a manner which is quite in conformity with Kabalistical traditions. Spirits purified by trial are emancipated from the laws of weight, and they soar above the atmosphere of tears; others grovel in darkness and are those who manifest to the weak or criminal. All who are liberated from the miseries of material life come back no more to contemplate its crimes or share its errors: once is truly enough.

The care taken by the ancients over the burial of the dead protested strongly against necromancy, and those who disturbed the sleep of the grave were always regarded as impious. To call back the dead would condemn them to a second death, and the dread of earnest people, belonging to old religions, lest they should remain without burial after death, was in view of the possibility that the corpse might be profaned by stryges and used in witchcraft. After death the soul belongs to God and the body to the common mother, which is earth. Woe to those who dare to invade these asylums. When the sanctuary of the tomb was disturbed, the ancients offered sacrifices to the angry manes and a holy thought lay at the root of this practice. As a fact, were it permitted anyone to attract, by means of conjurations, the souls floating in darkness but aspiring towards the light, such a person would be begetting retrograde and posthumous children, whom he must nourish with his own blood and with his own soul. Necromancers are makers of vampires, and they deserve no pity if they die devoured by the dead.

1 There is no need to say that the Second Birth, to which allusion is made by Christ, is not comprehended by any notion of a moral change, though such change is involved. Morality is the gate of spiritual life but is not its sanctuary.

2 The point which escapes in this synopsis of Egyptian initiation is that which distinguishes the official mysteries—like Masonry—from vital initiation, and I mention it here because there are memorials of Egyptian mysteries which suggest that they were no mere symbolical pageants but did communicate—to those who could receive—the life which is behind such symbolism.

3 The analogy here instituted assumes in respect of the Greek mysteries that which has been implied previously regarding those of Egypt. The laws and by-laws of the schools of philosophy, whatever they exacted from pupils, were not imitations of the grades of initiation and advancement communicated in priestly sanctuaries, if there was mystic life in those sanctuaries. Even if they were merely pageants, the comparison does not obtain; for it is obvious that Pythagoras and Plato did not confer degrees by way of ritual. Matriculation and “the little go” are not ceremonial observances in the path of symbolism.

4 The truth is that in so far as the Jewish Kabalah contains a Logos philosophy, so far it embodies confused reminiscences of Alexandrian schools of thought. Éliphas Lévi reminds one of Jacob Bryant, Davies and the respectable Mr. Faber, who explained the whole universe of history by the help of Shem, Ham and Japhet, the deluge and the Ark of Noah. He saw the Kabalah everywhere; had he spoken of a secret tradition subsisting in all times, of which Kabalism is a part in reflection, he would have been less confused and confusing; but he applied to the whole a term which is peculiar to a part. It is said in the Zohar that the Word which discovers unto us the supreme mysteries is generated by the union of light and darkness. Part I, fol. 32a. It is said also that the Word dwells in the superior heavens. Fol. 33. And there are other references

5 Dacier was a translator in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and his study on the Doctrine ot Plato appeared in the third volume of a collection entitled Bibliothèque des Anciens Philosophes, which began publication in 1771.

6 Those who may wish to be acquainted with the sources from which Lévi drew somit of his materials may consult Cœlum Sephiroticum, by J. C. Steebius, an old folio which appeared in 1679, as well as Reuchlin and Rosenroth. They will see how things change in his hands. According to the Zohar, Ain Soph reflects immediately into Kether on the path of manifestation. It is not correct to say that the king is Ain Soph in Kabalism and the letter of Plato is devoid of sephirotic analogies.

7 It must be said that the Greek word θεοσοφια did not pass into Latin in classical times and was unknown throughout the middle ages. As an illustration of its occult prevalence, I cannot trace that it was used by Paracelsus. In so far as it can be said to have become prevalent, it was in a mystic sense only, as in the proper use of words it could alone be. It was made familiar by Jacob Böhme

8 The classical authorities for the visitation of the cave of Trophonius include Pausanias of Cæsarea—who wrote the history of Greece—Cicero Pliny and Philostratus, not to mention the allusion found in the Clouds of Aristophanes. The account of Éliphas Lévi must be taken with certain reservations, but it is not a matter in which accuracy or its opposite is of any consequence outside scholarly research. There were various sacrifices and other ceremonies prior to the visitation, and the candidate for the experience usually descended alone. It is not, I think, on record that the effect of the visit was lasting.

9 The actual formula seems to have been: “He has consulted the oracle of Trophonius.”

10 There is no question that, according to the Zohar, the sun is the centre of the planetary system, of which planets the earth is one.

11 There is extraordinary confusion, at the least by way of expression, in this paragraph, which will inevitably create in the reader a notion that the work of Cebus was a picture. As a fact, it is a description of human life contained in a dialogue, to which the title of Tabula was given. It has been printed several times, and once, I believe, at Glasgow, in 1747