Читать книгу The Magic of Éliphas Lévi - Eliphas Levi - Страница 18

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Forms are the product of ideas, and they in their turn reflect and reproduce ideas. So far as sentiments are concerned, these are multiplied by association in the union of those who share them, so that all are charged with the enthusiasm common to all. It comes about in this manner that if one or another individual be deceived easily on questions of the just and the beautiful, the people at large will, this notwithstanding, continue to exalt in their minds whatsoever things are sublime, and they will do it with a longing which is itself sublime. These two great laws of Nature were known to the ancient Magi and led them to see the necessity of a public worship which should be one in its nature, imposed on all, hierarchic and symbolic in character, like all religion, splendid as truth, rich and varied as Nature, starry as heaven, odoriferous as earth—a worship in fact of the kind established afterwards by Moses, realised in all its glory by Solomon, and, once again transfigured, centralised today in the great metropolis of St. Peter at Rome.

Humanity as a fact has never known more than one religion and one worship. This universal light has had its uncertain reflections and its shadows, but ever after the dark night of error we behold it emerge, one and pure like the sun.

The magnificence of the cultus is the life of religion, and if Christ chose poor ministers, His sovereign divinity did not demand poor altars. Protestants have failed to understand that ritual constitutes an instruction and that a sordid or negligible god must not be created in the imagination of the multitude. The English, who lavish so much wealth on their own homes, who also affect to prize the Bible highly, would find their particular churches exceedingly cold and bare if they remembered the unparalleled pomp of Solomon's Temple. But that which withers their forms of worship is the dryness of their own hearts; and with a cultus devoid of magic, splendour and pathos, how shall their hearts be ever informed with life? Look at their meeting-houses, which resemble town-halls, and look at those honest ministers—dressed like ushers or clerks—and who can do otherwise in their presence than regard religion as formalism and God as a justice of the peace?

Orthodoxy is the absolute character of Transcendental Magic. When truth is born into the world the star of science announces the fact to the Magi, and they come to adore the infant creator of futurity. Initiation is obtained by understanding in respect of the hierarchy, as also by the practice of obedience, and he who is initiated truly will never turn sectarian. The orthodox traditions were carried from Chaldea by Abraham; in combination with the knowledge of the true God, they reigned in Egypt at the period of Joseph. Koung-Tseu sought to establish them in China, but the imbecile mysticism of India, under the idolatrous form of the Fo cultus, was destined to prevail in that great empire. As by Abraham out of Chaldea, so was orthodoxy taken out of Egypt by Moses, and in the secret traditions of the Kabalah we find a theology at once complete, perfect, unique and comparable to our own at its grandest, when seen under the light of its interpretation by the fathers and doctors of the Church—a perfect whole, including lights which it is not given to the world yet to understand. The Zohar, which is the head and crown of the Kabalistic sacred books, unveils furthermore all depths and enlightens all obscurities of ancient mythologies and of sciences concealed in the sanctuaries of eld. It is true that we must know the secret of its meaning in order to make use of it, and it is further true that the keenest intellects which are not acquainted with the secret will find the Zohar beyond all understanding and even unreadable. It is to be hoped that careful students of our works on Magic will attain the secret for themselves, that they will come in their turn to decode and thus be able to read the book which explains so many mysteries.1

Initiation being the necessary consequence of that hierarchic principle which is the basis of realisation in Magic, it follows that the profane, after striving vainly to force the doors of the sanctuary, have been driven to raise altar against altar and to oppose ignorant disclosures of schism to the reticence of orthodoxy. Horrible histories were circulated concerning the Magi; sorcerers and vampires cast upon them the responsibility of their own crimes; they were represented as feasting on infants and drinking human blood. Such attacks of presumptuous ignorance against the prudence of science have invariably met with success sufficient to perpetuate their use. Has not some miserable creature set forth, in I know not what pamphlet, how he has heard with his own ears, and within the precincts of a club, the author of this book demanding the blood of the wealthy to make it into puddings for the nourishment of starving people? The more monstrous the calumny, the greater the impression that it produces in the minds of fools.

Those who slandered the Magi committed themselves the enormities of which they accused them and were abandoned to all the excesses of shameless sorcery. There was everywhere the rumour of apparitions and prodigies, and the gods themselves came down in visible forms to authorise orgies. The maniacal circles of pretended illuminati go back to the bacchantes who murdered Orpheus. Since the days of those fanatical and clandestine circles where promiscuity and assassination were combined with ecstasies and prayeys, a luxuiious and mystical pantheism increased continually. But the fatal destinies of this consuming and destroying dogma are recorded in one of the finest fables of Greek mythology. Certain pirates of Tyre surprised Bacchus in his sleep and carried him on board their vessel, thinking that the god of inspiration had so become their slave; but on a sudden, in the open sea, their ship was transfigured, the masts became vine-stocks, the rigging branches; satyrs were seen everywhere, dancing with lynxes and panthers; the crew were seized with frenzy, they felt themselves changed into goats and cast themselves into the sea. Bacchus subsequently landed in Bœotia and repaired to Thebes, the city of initiation, where he found that Pentheus had usurped the supreme power. The latter in his turn attempted to imprison the god, but the dungeon opened of itself and the captive came forth triumphant. Pentheus was enraged and the daughters of Cadmus, transformed into Bacchantes, tore him in pieces, thinking that they were immolating a young bull.2

Pantheism can never form a synthesis, but must be disintegrated by the sciences, which the daughters of Cadmus typify. After Orpheus, Cadmus, Œdipus and Amphiaraüs, the great fabulous symbols of magical priesthood in Greece are Tiresias and Calchas; but the first of these was an undiscerning or faithless hierophant. Meeting on a day with two interlaced serpents, he thought that they were fighting and separated them by a stroke of his wand. He did not understand the emblem of the caduceus, and hence sought to divide the forces of Nature, to separate science from faith, intelligence from love, man from woman. He mistook their union for warfare, wounded them in the act of separation, and so lost his own equilibrium. He became alternately male and female, but neither in a perfect way, for the consummation of marriage was forbidden him.3 The mysteries of universal equilibrium and creative law are revealed fully herein. Generation is in fact a work of the human androgyne; in their division man and woman remain sterile, as religion without science, and, conversely, as mildness without force and force apart from mildness, justice in the absence of mercy and mercy divorced from justice. Harmony results from the analogy of things in opposition; they must be distinguished with a view to unite them and not separate, so that we may choose between them. It is said that man shifts incessantly from black to white in his opinions and ever deceives himself. It is so of necessity, for visible and real form is black and white; it manifests itself by an alliance of light and shadow which does not confuse them together. So are all contraries in Nature married, and he who would part them risks the punishment of Tiresias. Others say that he was smitten with blindness because he had surprised Minerva naked—that is to say, he had profaned the Mysteries. This is another allegory, but it is always the same thing symbolised.

Bearing, no doubt, this profanation in mind, Homer depicts the shade of Tiresias wandering in Cymmerian darkness and seeking amidst other hapless shades and larvae to quench his thirst with blood when Ulysses consulted spirits, using a ceremonial which was magical and terrific after another manner than the contortions of our own mediums, or the harmless precipitated missives of our modern necromancers.

The priesthood, is almost silent in Homer, for Calchas the diviner is neither a sovereign pontiff nor a great hierophant. He seems to be in the service of kings, with an eye to their possible wrath, and he dares not speak unwelcome truths to Agamemnon till he has besought the protection of Achilles. Thus he sows division between these chiefs and brings disasters on the army. All the narratives of Homer contain important and profound lessons, and he sought in the present case to impress upon Greece the need for divine ministry to be independent of temporal influences. The priestly caste should be responsible only to the supreme pontificate, and the high priest is incapacitated if one crown be wanting in his tiara. That he may be on equality with earthly sovereigns he must be himself a temporal king; he must be king in understanding and science, king also by his divine mission. Homer seems to tell us in his wisdom that failing such a priesthood there is something wanting to the equilibrium of empires.

Theoclymenes, another diviner, who appears in the Odyssey, fills almost the part of a parasite, purchasing a not too friendly hospitality from the suitors of Penelope by a useless warning and prudently withdrawing before the disturbance which he foresees.

There is a gulf between these good and bad fortune-tellers and the sibyls dwelling unseen in their sanctuaries, which are approached in fear and trembling. This notwithstanding, the successors of Circe yield only to daring; force or subtlety must be used to enter their retreat; they must be seized by the hair, threatened with the sword and dragged to the fatal tripod. Then, crimsoning and whitening by turn, shuddering and with hair on end, they utter disconnected words, escape in a fury, scribble on the leaves of trees detached sentences forming prophetic verses when collected, and casting these leaves to the wind, they shut themselves up in their refuge and ignore any further calls. The oracle thus produced had as many meanings as the modes of its possible combination varied. Had the leaves borne hieroglyphical signs instead of words the interpretations would have been multiplied further, while destiny could have been also consulted by their chance combination, a method followed subsequently in the divinations of geomancers by means of numbers and geometrical figures.4 It is followed also at this day by adepts of cartomancy, who make use of the great magical Tarot alphabets, for the most part, without being acquainted with their values. In such operations accident only chooses the signs on which the interpreter depends for inspiration, and in the absence of exceptional intuition and second sight, the phrases indicated by the combinations of sacred letters or the revelations of the combined figures prophesy according to chance. It is insufficient to combine letters; one must know how to read. Cartomancy in its proper understanding is a literal consultation of spirits, without necromancy or sacrifices: but it postulates a good medium; it is otherwise dangerous and we do not recommend it to anyone. Is the memory of our bygone misfortunes not enough to embitter the sufferings of today, and must we then overload them with all the anxiety of the future, by partaking in advance of the catastrophes which it is impossible to avoid?

1 I have intimated elsewhere that the Zohar is in several respects a work of high entertainment, and that its reading is much more diverting than Arabian or Ambrosial Nights. But Éliphas Lévi is right in saying that it calis for some preliminary training. He does not quite mean, however, what I mean in making the suggestion. On the serious side the Zohar is assuredly a work of initiation and one of the great books of the world, though Sir John Lubbock and others of kindred enterprise did not happen to know of it. Lévi is substantially right also in saying that it requires a key, though his meaning is not expressed rightly. The explanation is that it is not a methodical system and presupposes throughout, on the part of its readers, an acquaintance with the tradition which it embodies in allusive form.

2 It is difficult to say what authority was followed in producing this account. Pentheus was the second King of Thebes, succeeding Cadmus, who built the city. Bacchus was the son of Semele, the daughter of Cadmus, by Jupiter, but he was never a candidate for the Theban throne. The offence of Pentheus was not one of usurpation but of refusal to recognise the divinity of Bacchus. He was not torn to pieces by the daughters of Cadmus, but by a crowd of Bacchanals, among whom was his own mother. It is impossible to turn this story into an allegory of pantheism, as Lévi proceeds to do.

3 The classical story is the very contrary of this. The effect of his experiments with the serpents was like that of passing through the foot of the rainbow; Tiresias was changed into a girl. He married in this form; but having met a second time with some other interlaced serpents, he again smote them and recovered his original sex. So far from being unable to consummate marriage in either case, he became an authority with the gods on the comparative extent of satisfaction attained by the two sexes in the act of sex.

4 The term “geometrical” scarcely applies to the figures of geomancy.