Читать книгу The Magic of Éliphas Lévi - Eliphas Levi - Страница 19

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The Roman Empire was but the Greek in transfiguration. Italy was a Greater Greece, and when Hellenism had perfected its dogmas and mysteries, the education of the children of the wolf was the next task before it: Rome was already on the scene.

The particular feature of the initiation conferred on the Romans by Numa was the typical importance ascribed to woman, following the lead of Egypt, which worshipped the Supreme Divinity under the name of Isis. The Greek god of initiation is Iacchos, the conqueror of India, the splendid androgynous being wearing the horns of Ammon,1 the Pantheus holding the sacrificial cup and pouring therefrom the wine of universal life—Iacchos, the son of thunder, the conqueror of tigers and lions. When the bacchantes dismembered Orpheus, the Mysteries of Iacchos were profaned; and under the Roman name of Bacchus he was only the god of intoxication. It was from Egeria, goddess of mystery and solitude, a sage and discreet divinity, that Numa sought his inspiration.

His devotion was rewarded; he was instructed by Egeria as to the honour which should be paid to the mother of the gods. Under this dedication he erected a circular temple beneath a cupola, and a fire was burnt therein which was never suffered to go out. It was maintained by four virgins, who were termed vestals, and so long as they were faithful to their trust they were surrounded with strange honours, while, on the other hand, their failure was punished with exceptional rigour. The maid's honour is that also of the mother, and the sanctity of every family depends on the recognition of virginal purity as a possible and glorious thing. Herein already woman is emancipated from the old bondage; she is no more an oriental slave, but a domestic divinity, guardian of the hearth, the honour of father and spouse. Rome in this manner became a sanctuary of morality, and on such condition was also queen of the nations and metropolis of the world.

The magical tradition of all ages attributes a certain supernatural and divine quality to the virgin state. Prophetic inspirations adorn it, while it is the hatred of innocence and virginity which prompted Göetic Magic to sacrifice children, whose blood was regarded notwithstanding as having a sacred and expiatory virtue. To withstand the allurement of generation is to graduate in the conquest of death, and supreme chastity was the most glorious crown set before hierophants.2 To expend life in human embraces is to strike roots in the grave. Chastity is a flower which is so loosely bound to earth that, when the sun's caresses draw it upwards, it is detached without effort and takes flight like a bird.

The sacred fire of the vestals was a symbol of faith and of pure love. It was an emblem also of that universal agent the terrible and electric nature of which Numa could produce and direct. If by culpable negligence the vestals allowed their fire to die out, it could only be rekindled by the sun's rays or by lightning. It was renewed and consecrated at the beginning of each year, a custom perpetuated and observed among us on Easter Eve.

Christianity has been wrongly accused of taking over all that was beautiful in anterior forms of worship; it is the last transfiguration of universal orthodoxy, and as such it has preserved whatsoever belonged to it, while rejecting dangerous practices and idle superstitions.

Furthermore, the sacred fire represented love of country and the religion of the hearth. To this religion, and to the inviolability of the conjugal sanctuary, Lucretia offered herself in sacrifice. Lucretia personifies all the majesty of ancient Rome; she could doubtless have escaped outrage by abandoning her memory to slander, but good repute is a noblesse qui oblige. In the matter of honour a scandal is more deplorable than an indiscretion. Lucretia raised her dignity as a virtuous woman to the height of the priesthood by suffering an assault so that she might expiate and avenge it afterwards. It was in memory of this illustrious Roman lady that high initiation in the cultus of the fatherland and the hearth was entrusted to women, men being excluded. It was for them to learn in this manner that true love is that which inspires the most heroic sacrifices. They were taught that the real beauty of man is heroism and grandeur; that the woman capable of betraying or forsaking her husband blasts both her past and future and is branded on the forehead with the ineffaceable stain of a retrospective prostitution, aggravated further by perjury. To cease loving him to whom the flower of her youth has been given is the greatest woe which can afflict the heart of a virtuous woman; but to publish it abroad is to falsify past innocence, to renounce probity of heart and integrity of honour; it is the last and most irreparable shame.

Such was the religion of Rome; to the magic of such a moral code she owed all her greatness, and when marriage ceased to be sacred in her eyes her decadence was at hand. In the days of Juvenal the mysteries of the Bona Dea are said to have been mysteries of impurity, which it may perhaps be possible to question, seeing that as women alone were admitted to these pretended orgies they must have betrayed themselves; but on the assumption that the charge is true, because anything seems possible after the reigns of Nero and Domitian, we can only conclude that the clean reign of the mother of the gods was over and was giving place to the popular, universal and purer worship of Mary, the Mother of God.

Initiate of magical laws, and knowing the magnetic influences of communal life, Numa instituted colleges of priests and augurs, living under prescribed rules. This was the first idea of conventional institutions, which are one of the great powers of religion. Long anterior to this, the Jewish prophets were joined in sympathetic bonds, having prayer and inspiration in common. It would seem that Numa was acquainted with the traditions of Judea; his famines and salii worked themselves into a state of exaltation by evolutions and dances recalling the performance of David before the ark. Numa did not establish new oracles intended to rival those of Delphos, but he instructed his priests especially in the art of auguries, which means that he acquainted them with a certain theory of presentiments and second sight, determined by secret laws of Nature. We despise nowadays the art of soothsaying and portents, because we have lost the profound science of light and the universal analogies of its reflections. In his charming tale of Zadig, Voltaire delineates, with light and unserious touch, a purely natural science of divination, but it is not for that less wonderful, presupposing as it does an exceptional fineness of observation and that power, of deduction which escapes habitually the limited logic of the vulgar. It is said that Parmenides, the master of Pythagoras, having tasted the water of a certain spring, predicted an approaching earthquake. The circumstance is not extraordinary, for the presence of a bituminous and sulphureous flavour in water may well have advised the philosopher of subterranean activities in the district. Even the water itself may have been unusually disturbed. However this may be, the flight of birds is still considered premonitory of severe winters, and it may be possible to foresee some atmospheric influences by inspecting the digestive and respiratory apparatus of animals. Now, physical disturbances of the air have not infrequently a moral cause. Revolutions are translated therein by the phenomena of great storms; the deep breathing of nations moves heaven itself. Success proceeds coincidently with electric currents, and the hues of the living light reflect the motions of thunder. “There is something in the air,” says the crowd, with its particular prophetic instinct. Soothsayers and augurs knew how to read the characters which the light inscribes everywhere and how to interpret the sigils of astral currents and revolutions. They knew why birds wing their flight in isolation or in flocks, under what influences they turn to North or South, to East or West, which is just what we cannot explain, though we scoff now at the augurs. It is so very easy to scoff and it is so difficult to learn thoroughly.

It was owing to such predetermined disparagement and to denial of what is not understood that men of parts, like Fontenelle, and men of learning, as Kircher, have written such intemperate things concerning the ancient oracles. Everything is craft and jugglery for strong minds of this order. They suppose automatic statues, concealed speaking-trumpets and artificial echoes in the vaults of every temple. Why this eternal slander of the sanctuary? Has there been nothing but roguery in the priesthoods? Would it have been impossible to find men of uprightness and conviction among the hierophants of Ceres or Apollo? Or were these deceived like the rest? And in such case how did it happen that the impostors continued their traffic for centuries without ever betraying themselves, individual rogues not being gifted with immortality? Recent experiments have shewn us that thoughts can be transferred, translated into writing and printed by the unaided force of the Astral Light. Mysterious hands still write on our walls, as at the feast of Belshazzar. Let us not forget the wise observation of a scholar who assuredly cannot be accused either of fanaticism or credulity: “Outside pure mathematics,” said Arago, “he who pronounces the word ‘impossible' is wanting in caution.”

The religious calendar of Numa is based upon that of the Magi; it is a sequence of feasts and mysteries, recalling throughout the secret doctrine of initiates and perfectly adapting the public enactments of the cultus to the universal laws of Nature. Its arrangement of months and days has been preserved by the conservative influence of Christian regeneration Even as the Romans under Numa, we still hallow by abstinence the days consecrated to the commemoration of birth and death; but for us the day of Venus is sanctified by the expiations of Calvary. The gloomy day of Saturn is that during which our incarnate God sleeps in His tomb, but He will rise up, and the life which He promises will blunt the scythe of Kronos. That month which Romans dedicated to Mala, the nymph of youth and flowers, the young mother who smiles upon the year's first-fruits, is consecrated by us to Mary, the mystical rose, the lily of purity, the heavenly mother of the Saviour. So are our religious observances ancient as the world, our feasts are like those of our forefathers, for the Redeemer of Christendom came to suppress none of the symbolic and sacred beauties of old initiation. He came, as He said Himself, in reference to the figurative Law of Israel, to realise and fulfil all things.

1 The Bacchus who was depicted with horns was the son of Jupiter and Proserpine. As regards the androgynous nature of Iacchos, I do not know Lévi's authority, but such a characteristic was ascribed to several deities, though sometimes against general likelihood. It was even said of Jupiter that he was a man but also an immortal maid.

2 Lévi affirms elsewhere that the satisfaction of all the calls of sense is required for the work of philosophy. In the present place he confuses the issue by implying that chastity means either celibacy or the virgin state. Yet he did not fail to understand that the nuptial life is also a life of chastity; he speaks eloquently of the home and its sanctity, and he alludes elsewhere to the chaste and conjugal Venus.