Читать книгу The Magic of Éliphas Lévi - Eliphas Levi - Страница 24

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By its clear formulation of concepts respecting the Divine, Christianity leads us to the understanding of God as the most absolute and the most purest love, while it defines, not less clearly, the spirit which is opposed to God, the spirit of revolt and hatred : hereof is Satan. But this spirit is not a personality and is not to be regarded as a kind of black god: it is a perversity which is common to all extralineal intelligences. “My name is legion,” says Satan in the Gospel, “for we are many.” The birth of intelligence may be eompared to the Star of the Morning, and. after it has shone for an instant, if it fall of its own accord into the void of darkness we may apply to it that apostrophe which was uttered by Isaiah to the king of Babylon: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, Son of the Morning?” But does this mean that the celestial Lucifer, the Morning Star of intelligence, has been changed into a brand of hell? Can the name of “Light-bearer” be applied justly to the angel of trespass and of darkness? We think not, more especially if it be understood, as we understand, who have the magical tradition behind us, that the hell personified by Satan, and symbolised by the old serpent, is that central fire which encompasses the earth, consuming all that it produces and devouring its own tail, like the serpent of Kronos—in a word, that Astral Light of which the Almighty spoke to Cain when He said, “If thou doest evil, sin shall be straightway at thy gates”—that is to say, disorder will take possession of all thy senses; “yet unto thee I have made subject the lust of death, and it is for thee to rule it.”1

The royal and almost divine personification of Satan is a blunder which goes back to the false Zoroaster or, otherwise, to the sophisticated doctrine of the later and materialistic Magi of Persia; it was they who represented the two poles of the intellectual world as deities, making a divinity out of passive force in contradistinction to that force which is active. We have indicated that the same grave error was made by Indian mythology. Ahriman, or Siva, is the father of the demon, as the latter is understood by superstitious makers of legend, and hence it was said by our Saviour, “The devil is a liar like his father.” On this question the Church rests satisfied with the Gospel texts and has published no dogmatic decisions, having the definition of the devil as their object. Good Christians avoid even naming him, while religious moralists recommend the faithful to take no concern regarding him, seeking to resist his arts by thinking only of God. We cannot but admire this wise reserve on the part of priestly teaching. Why indeed should the light of doctrine be reflected on him who is intellectual obscurity and darkest night of the heart? Let the spirit which would distract us from the knowledge of God remain unknown by us. It is assuredly not of our intention to perform what the Church has omitted; we certify on such a subject only as to the secret instruction of initiates in the occult sciences. They have said that the Great Magical Agent—accurately termed Lucifer because it is the vehicle of light and the receptacle of all forms—is a mediating force diffused throughout creation; that it serves for creation and destruction; that the fall of Adam was an erotic intoxication which made his race subject to that fatal light; that all amorous passion which invades the senses is a whirlpool of this light, seeking to draw us down into the gulf of death; that madness, hallucinations, visions, ecstasies, constitute an exceedingly dangerous exaltation of this interior phosphorus; finally, that the light in question is of the nature of fire, that it is warming and vivifying in its prudent use, but that it burns, dissolves and destroys in its excess. Over this light man is called, on the one hand, to assume a sovereign empire, so earning his immortality, but, on the other, he is menaced by the intoxication, absorption and eternal destruction thereof. In its devouring, avenging and fatal aspect the Astral Light may be called the fire of hell, the serpent of legend, while the tormented sin which abounds therein, the tears and the gnashing of teeth on the part of the abortions that it consumes, the phantom of life which escapes them and seems to insult their misery—all this may be termed the devil or Satan. Among the pomps and works of hell may be included, in fine, those actions, those illusionary images of pleasure, wealth and glory which are misdirected by the vertigo of this light.

Father Hilarión Tissot regards certain nervous diseases which are accompanied by hallucinations and delirium as diabolical possessions, and, understood in the sense of the Kabalists, he is right assuredly. Whatsoever delivers our soul to the fatality of vertigo is truly infernal, since heaven is the eternal reign of order, intelligence and liberty. The possessed people of the Gospel fled away from Jesus Christ; the oracles were silenced in the presence of the apostles; while those who are prey to the disease of hallucination have ever manifested an invincible repugnance for initiates and sages. The suspension of oracles and obsessions proved the triumph of human liberty over fatality. When astral diseases reappear, it is an ominous sign of spiritual enervation, and manifestations of this kind are followed invariably by fatal disorders. The disturbances here referred to continued till the French Revolution, and the fanatics of Saint-Médard were the prophets of its sanguinary calamities. The famous criminologist Torreblanca, who had gone to the root of Diabolical Magic, described accurately all the phenomena of astral disturbance when classifying the works of the daemon. Here are some extracts from the 15th chapter of his work on Operative Magic:2 (1) The demon is endeavouring continually to lead us into error. (2) He deludes the senses by disturbing the imagination, though he cannot change its nature. (3) When things abnormal are manifested to the eye of man, an imaginary body assumes shape in the mind, and so long as that phantom remains therein the phenomena continue. (4) The demon destroys equilibrium in the imagination by a disturbance of the vital functions, whether by irregularity in health or actual disease. (5) When some morbid cause has destroyed this equilibrium, and that also of reason, waking dream becomes possible and that which has no existence assumes the semblance of reality. (6) The mental perception of images in this manner makes sight unworthy of trust. (7) Visions are bodied forth, but they are merely thought-forms. (8) The ancients distinguished two orders of disease, one of them being the perception of imaginary forms, which was termed frenzy, and the other corybantism, or the hearing of voices and other sounds which have no existence.

It follows from these statements, which are curious in several respects, that disease is attributed by Torreblanca to the demon, who indeed is disease itself, with which we should agree entirely—if permitted by dogmatic authority. The recurring efforts of the Astral Light to disintegrate and absorb entities are part of its nature; its ceaseless currents have a wearing effect like water and it consumes even as fire, for it is the very essence and dissolving force of fire. The spirit of perversity and the love of destruction which chai at.cerise those whom it governs are instincts of this force. They are further consequent on the suffering of the soul, which is conscious of incomplete life and feels torn in opposite directions. The soul yearns to make an end of itself, yet fears to die alone, and therefore would include all creation in its destruction. Such astral perversity assumes frequently the form of the hatred of children; an unknown power impels certain subjects to kill them, and imperious voices seem to demand their death. Dr. Brierre de Boismont cites terrible examples of this mania, recalling the crimes of Papavoine and Henriette Cornier.

Sufferers from astral perversion are malevolent, and they are jealous at the joy of others; they are especially inimical to hope, and even when offering consolation they choose the most desperate and heartrending figures of speech. The explanation is that their life is synonymous with suffering and that they have been whirled into the dance of death. It is, moreover, astral perversion and the lust of death which abuses the act of generation, leading to its perversion or dishonour by sacrilegious mockeries and shameful pleasantries. Obscenity is a blasphemy against Ufe. Each of these vices is personified by a black idol or by a demon, which is the negative and distorted reflection of the divinity who communicates life; these are idols of death. Moloch is the fatality which devours infants. Satan and Nisroch are gods of hatred, fatality and despair. Astarte, Lilith, Nehamah, Ashtaroth are idols of debauchery and abortion. Adramelech is the god of murder, while Belial is that of eternal revolt and anarchy. Such are the monstrous conceptions of reason, when it pauses on the verge of extinction and slavishly worships its destroyer, so that it may reach the end of its torment by the destroyer absorbing it. According to the Kabalists, the true name of Satan is that of Jehovah reversed, for Satan is not a black god but the negation of Deity. He is the personification of atheism and idolatry. The devil is not a personality for initiates but a force created with a good object, though it can be applied to evil: it is really the instrument of liberty. They represented this force, which presides over physical generation, under the mythological figure of the horned god Pan, and hence comes the goat of the Sabbath, brother of the old serpent, the light-bearer or phosphorus, converted by poets into the false Lucifer of legend.

1 I have given Lévi's version literally without pretending to account for it. In the authorised version the passage reads: “If thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.” Genesis iv, 7

2 I suppose that reference is intended to Epitome Delie tor urn, sive de Magia, in qua aperta vel occulta invocatio Damonum, etc., to. I have no record of the first edition, but it was reprinted at Leyden in 1679.