Читать книгу The History of Magic - Eliphas Levi - Страница 10

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We pass now to the period when the exact sciences of Magic assumed their natural external form, being that of beauty. We have seen in the Zohar how the human prototype rose in heaven and was reflected below in the waters of being. This ideal man, this shadow of the pantomorphic god, this virile phantom of perfect form, was not destined to dwell alone in the world of symbolism. There was given to him a companion under the beneficent sky of Hellas. The celestial Venus, the chaste and fruitful Venus, the triple mother of the three Graces, rose in her turn, no longer from the sleeping deeps of chaos, but from the living and flowing waves of that echoing archipelago of poetry, where islands embroidered with green trees and flowers seem as the vessels of gods.

The magical septenary of Chaldea passes into music on the seven strings of the Orphic lyre. It is harmony which transforms the woods and wildernesses of Greece. To the melody of the songs of Orpheus the rocks are smoothed, the oaks sway in measures and the wild beasts become subject to man. By such magic did Amphion raise up the walls of Thebes—that wisdom-city of Cadmus, the city of initiation, itself a pantacle like the seven wonders of the world. As Orpheus gave life to numbers, so Cadmus bound thought to the sigils of letters. The one established a nation dedicated to all things beautiful, and for that nation the other provided a native land, corresponding to its genius and its love.

In the ancient Greek traditions Orpheus is numbered among the heroes of the Golden Fleece, who were the primeval conquerors of the Great Work. The Golden Fleece is the vesture of the sun itself; it is light in application to the needs of man; it is the grand secret of magical works; it is, in fine, initiation as this should be understood essentially; and it was the quest of these or this which carried the allegorical heroes into a mystic Asia. On the other hand, Cadmus was a voluntary exile from the glorious Thebes of Egypt; he brought into Greece the knowledge of letters and that harmony of which they are images. The new Thebes, the typical city of wisdom, was built to the measures of that harmony, for science consists in the rhythmic correspondence between hieroglyphical, phonetic and numeral characters, the inherent motion of which follows the eternal laws of mathematics. Thebes is circular and its citadel is square; like the sky of Magic, it has seven gates, and its legend was destined to become the epic of occultism and the foreshadowed history of human genius.

All these mysterious allegories, all these inspired traditions, are the soul of Greek civilisation; but we must be dissuaded from seeking the real history of their poetic heroes otherwise than in the transformations of oriental history carried into Greece by unknown hierophants. It was only the history of ideas which was written by the great of those days, and they were at little pains to acquaint us with the human struggles belonging to the birth of empires. Homer followed in their path, marshalling the gods, who are the immortal types of thought; it was in this sense that a world's upheaval followed on the frown of Jupiter. If Greece carried fire and sword into Asia, it was to avenge the profanations of science and virtue in their sacrifice to lust; it was to restore the empire of the world to Minerva and Juno, in despite of that sensuous Venus who ruined her devoted lovers. Such is the sublime mission of poetry, which substitutes gods for men, or causes in places of effects and eternal concepts for the sorry incarnations of greatness on earth. Ideas raise up and they also cast down empires; a faith of some kind is at the root of all grandeur, and in order that faith may be poetry, or in other words creative, it must be founded on truth. The only history which is worthy to occupy the wise is that of the light which is victorious over darkness for ever. That which is called a civilisation is one great day of this sun.

The fable of the Golden Fleece connects Hermetic Magic with Greek initiations. The Golden Fleece of the solar ram, which must be obtained by those or by him who would possess universal sovereignty, is figurative of the Great Work. The Argonautic vessel, built of timber from the prophetic oaks of Dodona, the speaking vessel, is the ship of the mysteries of Isis, the ark of life-force and renewal, the coffer of Osiris, the egg of divine regeneration. The adventurer Jason is he who is prepared for initiation, but he is a hero in his valour only; he has all the inconstancy and all the weakness of humanity, but he takes with him the personifications of all power. Hercules, who signifies brute force, has no real part in the work, for he goes astray from the path in pursuit of his unworthy loves. The others arrive in the land of initiation, of Colchis, where the remnant of Zoroastrian secrets is still preserved. The question is how to obtain the key of these mysteries, and science is once again betrayed by a woman. Medea delivers to Jason the arcana of the Great Work, with the kingdom and the life of her father; for it is a fatal law of the occult sanctuary that the revelation of its secrets entails death upon him who has proved unable to preserve them. Medea informs Jason of the monsters with which he must do battle and of that which will ensure his victory. There is firstly the winged serpent of earth, the astral fluid which must be seized and fixed; its teeth must be drawn and sown in a waste place which has been previously ploughed by the bulls of Mars. The dragon's teeth are those acids1 which dissolve the metallic earth after its preparation by a double fire and by the earth's magnetic forces. A fermentation follows, comparable to a great battle; the impure is devoured by the impure, and the splendid Fleece is the reward of the adept.

So ends the magical romance of Jason and that of Medea follows, for Greek antiquity sought to include in this history the complete epic of occult science. Hermetic Magic is succeeded by göetia, parricide, fratricide, infanticide, sacrificing all to its passions but never enjoying the harvest of its crimes. Medea betrays her father like Ham and assassinates her brother like Cain. She stabs her children, poisons her rival and reaps the hatred of him whose love she has coveted. It may be surprising on the surface that Jason does not gain in wisdom by the mastery of the Golden Fleece, but it must be remembered that he owes the discovery of its secrets to treason only. He is a ravisher after the manner of Prometheus and not an adept like Orpheus; he is in search of wealth and power rather than of knowledge. Hence he perishes miserably, for the inspiring and sovereign virtues of the Golden Fleece will be never understood except by the disciples of Orpheus.

Prometheus, the Golden Fleece, the Thebaid, the Iliad and the Odyssey—these five great epics, full of the mysteries of Nature and human destinies, constitute the bible of ancient Greece, a cyclopean monument, a Pelion piled upon an Ossa, masterpiece over masterpiece, form on form, beautiful as light itself and throned upon eternal thoughts, sublime in truth. It was, however, at their proper risk and peril that the hierophants of poetry committed to the Greek people these marvellous fictions in which truth was shrined. Aeschylus, who dared to depict the Titanic struggles, superhuman woes and divine hopes of Prometheus—Aeschylus, the awe-inspiring poet of the family of Œdipus—was accused of betraying and profaning the mysteries and escaped with difficulty a severe condemnation. We are unable at this day to realise his whole intent, which was a dramatic trilogy embracing the entire symbolic history of Prometheus. It follows that he exhibited to the assembled people how Prometheus was delivered by Alcides and how Jupiter was cast from his throne. The omnipotence of genius in its suffering and the decisive victory of patience over power are fine, no doubt, but the crowd might see therein the future triumph of impiety and anarchy. Prometheus overcoming Jupiter might be understood as the people destined to be liberated one day from their priests and kings; and guilty hopes might count for much in the prodigal applause accorded to him who unveiled this prospect imprudently. To the leanings of dogma towards poetry we owe the masterpieces in question, and we are not therefore to be counted among the austere initiates who would wish, like Plato, to crown and then exile the poets; for the true poets are ambassadors of God on earth and those who cast them forth deserve no blessing from heaven.

The great Greek initiator and he who civilised it first was also its first poet, for, even in allowing that Orpheus was a mystical or fabulous personality, we must believe in the existence of Musaeus and attribute to him the verses which pass under the name of his master.2 It matters little to us otherwise whether one of the Argonauts was called Orpheus or not, for the poetic creator has done more than live; he lives in immortality for ever. The Orphic fable is a complete dogma, a revelation of priestly destinies, a new ideal form of the worship of beauty. The regeneration and redemption of love are indicated already therein. Orpheus descends into hell, seeking Eurydice, and must bring her back without seeing her; so must the pure man create his companion, raise her to himself by devotion and not by desire of her. It is in renouncing the object of passion that we deserve to possess the object of true love. We are already in the atmosphere of the pure dreams of Christian chivalry. But the hierophant is still a man; he falters, questions and looks. Ah miser or Eurydicem. She is lost, the error is committed, the expiation must now begin. Orpheus is widowed and remains as such in purity; the marriage with Eurydice had not attained consummation, and as the widower of one who was a virgin he rested himself in virginity. The poet is not two-hearted, and children of the race of gods love once and once alone. Paternal inspirations, yearnings for an ideal which shall be found beyond the tomb, widowhood made holy in its consecration to the sacred muse. What a revelation in advance of inspirations yet to come! Orpheus, bearing in his heart a wound that nothing but death shall heal, becomes a doctor of souls and bodies; he dies at length, the victim of his chastity—the death which he suffers is that of initiators and prophets. He perishes proclaiming the unity of God and the unity also of love: this at a later period was the root of the Orphic Mysteries.

Having shewn himself raised so far above his own epoch, Orpheus earned in due course the reputation of a sorcerer and enchanter. To him, as to Solomon, was attributed the knowledge of simples and minerals, of celestial medicine and the philosophical stone. With these he was doubtless acquainted, since he personifies primitive initiation, fall and reparation in his legend—the three divisions of the great work of humanity.

Orphic initiation may, according to Ballanche, be summarised in the following manner: “Made subject in the first place to the influence of the elements, man's own influence must afterwards govern these. Creation is the act of a divine magism which is continuous and eternal. True being resides for man in self-knowledge. Responsibility is for him a conquest and the very penalty of sin is another occasion for victory. All life is founded on death, and palingenesis is the law of reparation. Marriage is the reproduction in humanity of the great cosmogonical mystery. It should be one, as God and Nature are one. It is the unity of the Tree of Life, while debauch is division and death. Astrology is a synthesis, because the Tree of Life is a single tree and because its branches—spread through heaven and bearing flowers of stars—are in correspondence with its roots, which are hidden in earth. The knowledge of the medical and magical virtues resident in plants, metals and bodies endowed with varying degrees of life, is also a synthetic knowledge. The capacities for organisation in their various grades are revealed by a synthesis. The aggregations and affinities of metals, like the vegetative soul of plants and like all powers of assimilation, are also made known by a synthesis.”

It has been said that the beautiful is the splendour of the true, and it is therefore to this great light of Orpheus that we must ascribe the perfection of form which was manifested for the first time in Greece. To him also—as to a source—is referable the school of divine Plato, that pagan father of all high Christian philosophy. From him did Pythagoras and the illuminati of Alexandria alike derive their mysteries. Initiation does not suffer vicissitude; it is one and the same, wheresoever we meet it through the ages. The last disciples of Martines de Pasqually are still the children of Orpheus; but they adore the Realiser of antique philosophy, Who is the incarnate Word of Christians.

We have said that the first part of the fable concerning the Golden Fleece embodies the secrets of Orphic Magic and that the second part is dedicated to judicious warnings against the abuses of Göetia or the Magic of darkness. False or Göetic Magic, known at the present day under the name of sorcery, can never rank as a science: it is the empiricism of fatality. All excessive passion produces a factitious force of which will cannot be the master, but that force is obedient to the tyranny of passion. This is why Albertus Magnus counsels us to curse no one in our wrath. It is the story of the malediction of Hippolytus by Theseus. Excessive passion is real madness, and the latter in its turn is an intoxication or congestion of Astral Light. This is why madness is contagious and why passions in general operate as a veritable witchcraft. Women are superior to men in sorcery because they are more easily transported by excess of passion. The word “sorcerer” clearly designates victims of chance and, so to speak, the poisonous mushrooms of fatality.

Greek sorcerers, but especially those of Thessaly, put horrible precepts to the proof and were given over to abominable rites. They were mostly women wasted by desires which they could no longer satisfy, antiquated courtesans, monsters of immorality and ugliness. Jealous of love and life, those wretched creatures found lovers only in the tombs, or rather they violated sepulchres to devour with foul caresses the icy bodies of young men. They stole children and stifled their cries by pressing them to their dangling breasts. They were known as lamiæ, stryges, empusæ; children were the objects of their envy and thus of their hatred, and they sacrificed them for this reason. Some, like that Canidia who is mentioned by Horace, buried them as far as the head and left them to die of hunger, surrounded with food which they could not reach; others cut off the heads, hands and feet, boiled their fat and grease, in copper basins, to the consistence of an ointment, which they afterwards mixed with the juice of henbane, belladonna and black poppies. With this unguent they anointed the organ which was irritated unceasingly by their detestable desires; they rubbed also their temples and arm-pits, and then fell into a lethargy full of unbridled and luxurious dreams. There is need to speak plainly—these are the origins and this is the traditional practice of Black Magic; these are the secrets which were handed down to the middle ages; and such in time are the pretended innocent vicims whom public execration, far more than the sentence of inquisitors, condemned to the flames. It was in Spain and in Italy above all that the race of stryges, lamiæ and empusæ abounded, even at a late period; those who doubt should consult the most experienced criminologists of these countries, digested by Franciscus Torreblanca,3 Roual Advocate of the Chancelry of Granada, in his Epitome Delictorum.

Medea and Circe are the types of Malefic Magic among the Greeks. Circe is the vicious female who bewitches and debases her lovers; Medea is the brazen poisoner who dares everything and makes Nature itself the abettor of her crimes. There are actually creatures who enchant like Circe and whose proximity defiles. They can inspire nothing but brutal passions; they exhaust and then disdain you. They must be treated according to the policy of Ulysses, by compelling them to obedience through fear and by being able to leave them in the end without regret. They are beautiful, heartless monsters and their vanity is their whole life. They were depicted by antiquity in the form of syrens.

As to Medea, she is perversity incarnate, willing and working evil. She is capable of love and does not yield to fear, but her love is more terrible than her hate. She is a bad mother and the destroyer of children; she loves the night and under the rays of the moon she gathers noxious herbs for the brewing of poisons. She magnetises the air, brings dole to earth, infects water and makes even the fire venomous. Reptiles provide her with their skins; she mutters frightful words; the track of blood follows her; and mutilated limbs fall from her hands. Her counsels madden, her caresses beget horror.

Such is the woman who has sought to rise beyond the duties of her sex by familiarity with foi bidden sciences. Men avoid her, children hide when she passes. She is devoid of reason, devoid of true love, and the stratagems of Nature in revolt against her are the ever-renewing torment of her pride.

1 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. 437-94.

2 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.

3 Almost any of the demonologists will serve at need. The Jesuit Martinus Delrio who wrote Disquisitionum Magìcarum Libri Sex has plenty to say about Lamiæ and Stryges. There is also Joannes Wieras, 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.