Читать книгу Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual - Eliphas Levi - Страница 19

Table of Contents

CHOKMAH DOMUS GNOSIS

CAUSES manifest by effects, and effects are proportioned to causes. The Divine Word, the One Word, the Tetragram, is self-affirmed by tetradic creation. Human fecundity proves divine fecundity; the JOD of the Divine Name is the eternal viril-ity of the First Principle. Man understands that he was made in the image of God when he attains comprehension of God by increasing to infinity the idea which he forms of himself. When realizing God as the infinite man, man says unto himself: I am the finite God. Magic differs from mysticism because it judges nothing a priori until after it has established a posteriori the actual base of its judgements, that is to say, after having apprehended the cause by the effects contained in the energy of the cause itself, by means of the universal law of analogy. Hence in the occult sciences all is real, and theories are established only on the foundations of experience. Realities alone constitute the proportions of the ideal, and the Magus admits nothing as certain in the domain of ideas save that which is demonstrated by realization. In other words, what is true in the cause manifests in the effect. What is not realized does not exist.

The realization of speech is the logos properly so called. A thought is realized in becoming speech; it is realized also by signs, sounds and representations of signs: here is the first degree of realization. Then it is imprinted on the Astral Light by means of the signs of writing or speech; it influences other minds by reflections upon them; it is refracted by crossing the DIAPHANE of other men; it assumes new forms and proportions; it is translated into acts and modifies the world: this is the last degree of realization. Men who are born into a world modified by an idea bear away with them the mark thereof, and it is thus that the word is made flesh. The mark of the disobedience of Adam, preserved in the Astral Light, could be effaced only by the stronger mark of the obedience of the Saviour, and thus the original sin and redemption of the world can be explained in a natural and magical sense.

The Astral Light, or Soul of the World, was the instrument of Adam's omnipotence; it became afterwards that of his punishment, being corrupted and troubled by his sin, which intermingled an impure reflection with those primitive images which composed the Book of Universal Science for his still virgin imagination.

The Astral Light, depicted in ancient symbols by the serpent devouring its tail, represents alternately malice and prudence, time and eternity, tempter and Redeemer; for this light, being the vehicle of life, is an auxiliary alike of good and evil, and may be taken not only for the fiery form ofSatan but for the body of the Holy Ghost. It is the instrument of warfare in angelic battles, and feeds indifferently both the flames of hell and the lightnings of St. Michael. It may be compared to a horse having a nature analogous to the chameleon, ever reflecting the armour of his rider. The Astral Light is the realization or form of intellectual light, as the latter is the realization or form of the Divine Light.

The Great Initiator of Christianity, seeing that the Astral Light was over-charged with the impure reflections of Roman debauchery, sought to separate His disciples from the circumambient sphere of reflections and to concentrate them only on the interior light, so that, through the medium of a common faith and enthusiasm, they might communicate together by new magnetic chains, which He termed grace, and thus overcome the dissolute currents, to which He gave the names of the devil and Satan, signifying their putrefaction. To oppose current to current is to renew the power of fluidic life. The revealers have therefore done scarcely more than divine, by the accuracy of their calculations, the appropriate moment for moral reactions. The law of realization produces what we call magnetic breathing; places and objects become impregnated therewith, and this imparts to them an influence in conformity with our dominant desires, with those above all which are confirmed and realized by acts. As a fact, the Universal Agent, or latent Astral Light, ever seeks equilibrium; it fills the void and draws in the plenitude, which makes vice contagious, like certain physical maladies, and works powerfully in the proselytism of virtue. Hence it is that cohabitation with antipathetic beings is a torment; hence it is that relics, whether of saints or of great criminals, produce extraordinary results in sudden conversion and perversion; hence it is that sexual love is often awakened by a breath or a touch, and this not only by means of contact with the person himself, but with objects which he has unconsciously touched or magnetized.

There is an outbreathing and inbreathing of the soul, exactly like that of the body. Whatsoever it regards as felicity, that it inhales, and it breathes forth ideas which result from its inner sensations. Diseased souls have an evil breath and vitiate their moralatmosphere – that is, they combine impure reflections with the Astral Light which permeates them and establish unwholesome currents therein.

We are often assailed, to our astonishment, in society by evil thoughts which would have seemed antecedently impossible and are not aware that they are due to some morbid proximity. This secret is of high importance, for it leads to the unveiling of consciences, one of the most incontestible and terrible powers of Magical Art. Magnetic respiration produces about the soul a radiation of which it is the centre, and thus surrounds it with the reflection of its own works, creating for it a heaven or hell. There are no isolated acts, and it is impossible that there should be secret acts; whatsoever we will truly, that is, everything which we confirm by our acts, remains registeredin the Astral Light, where our reflections are preserved. These reflections influence our thought continually by the mediation of the DIAPHANE, and it is in this sense that we become and remain the children of our works.

The Astral Light, transformed at the moment of conception into human light, is the soul's first envelope, and, in combination with extremely subtle fluids, it forms the Ethereal Body or Sidereal Phantom, of which Paracelsus discourses in his philosophy of intuition – philosophia sagax.

This sidereal body, being liberated at death, attracts and for a long time preserves, through the sympathy of things homogeneous, the reflections of the past life; if drawn into a special current by a will which is powerfully sympathetic, it manifests naturally, for there is nothing more natural than prodigies. It is thus apparitions are produced. But we shall develop this point more fully in a chapter devoted to Necromancy. The fluidic body, subject, like the mass of the Astral Light, to two contrary movements, attracting on the left and repelling on the right, or reciprocally, between the two sexes, begets various impulses within us, and contributes to solicitudes of conscience; it is influenced frequently by reflections of other minds, and thus temptations are produced on the one hand, and on the other profound and unexpected graces. The traditional doctrine of two angels who sustain and tempt us is explained in this manner. The two forces of the Astral Light may be represented by a balance wherein are weighed our good intentions for the triumph of justice and the emancipation of our liberty.

The Astral Body is not always of the same sex as the terrestrial, that is, the proportions of the two forces, varying from right to left, seem frequently to belie the visible organization, producing seeming aberrations of human passion and explaining, while in no wise morally justifying, the amorous peculiarities of Anacreon or Sappho. A skilful magnetizer should take all these subtle distinctions into account, and we shall provide in our “Ritual” the rulesfor their recognition.

There are two kinds of realization, the true and the fantastic. The first is the exclusive secret of magicians, the other belongs to enchanters and sorcerers.

Mythologies are fantastic realizations of religious dogma; superstitions are the sorcery of mistaken piety; but even mythologies and superstitions are more efficacious on human will than a purely speculative philosophy apart from any practice. Hence St. Paul opposes the conquests of the folly of the Cross to the inertness of human wisdom. Religion realizes philosophy by adapting it to the weaknesses of the vulgar; such is for Kabalists the secret reason and occult explanation of the doctrines of incarnation and redemption.

Thoughts untranslated into speech are thoughts lost for humanity; words unconfirmed by acts are idle words, and the idle word is not far removed from falsehood. Thought formulated by speech and confirmed by acts constitutes a good work or a crime. Hence, whether in vice or virtue, there is no utterance for which we are not responsible; above all, there are no indifferent acts. Curses and blessings produce their consequence invariably, and every action, whatsoever its nature, whether inspired by love or hate, has effects analogous to its motive, its extent and its direction. When that emperor whose images had been mutilated, raising his hand to his face, exclaimed, “I do not feel that I am injured,” he was mistaken in his valuation and detracted thereby from the merit of his clemency.

What man of honour could behold undisturbed an insult offered to his portrait?

And did such insults, inflicted even unknown to ourselves, react on us by a fatal influence, were the effects of bewitchment actual, as indeed an adept cannot doubt, how much more imprudent and ill-advised would seem this utterance of the good emperor!

There are persons whom we can never offend with impunity, and if the injury we have done them is mortal, we begin forthwith to die. There are those also whom we never meet in vain, whose mere glance alters the direction of our life.

The basilisk who slays by a look is no fable; it is a magical allegory. Generally speaking, it is bad for health to have enemies, and we can never brave with impunity the reprobation of anyone. Before opposing ourselves to a given force or current, we must be well assured that we possess the contrary force, or are with the stream of the contrary current; otherwise, we shall be crushed or struck down, and many sudden deaths have no other cause than this. The terrible visitations of Nadab and Abihu, of Osa, of Ananias and Sapphira, were occasioned by electric currents of outraged convictions; the sufferings of the Ursulines of Loudun, the nuns of Louviers and the convulsionaries of Jansenism, were identical in principle and are explicable by the same occult natural laws. Had not Urban Grandier been immolated, one of two things would have occurred: either the possessed nuns would have died in frightful convulsions or the phenomena of diabolical frenzy would have so gained in strength and influence, epidemically, that Grandier, notwithstanding his knowledge and his reason, would also have become hallucinated, and to such a degree that he would have denounced himself, like the unhappy Gaufridy, or would otherwise have perished suddenly, with all the appalling characteristics of poisoning or of divine vengeance. In the eighteenth century the unfortunate poet Gilbert fell a victim to his audacity in braving the current of opinion and even of philosophical fanaticism which characterized his epoch.

Guilty of philosophical treason, he died raving mad, possessed by the most incredible terrors, as if God Himself had punished him for defending His cause out of season. As a fact, he perished by reason of a law of Nature of which assuredly he knew nothing; he set himself against an electric current and was struck down as by lightning. Had Marat not been assassinated by Charlotte Corday, he would have been destroyed infallibly by a reaction of public feeling. It was the execration of decent people which afflicted him with leprosy, and he would have had to succumb thereto. The reprobation excited by the massacre of St. Bartholomew was the sole cause of the atrocious disease and death of Charles IX, while, had not Henry IV been sustained by an immense popularity, which he owed to the projecting power of sympathetic force of his astral life, he would scarcely have outlived his conversion, but would have perished under the contempt of Protestants, combined with the suspicion and ill-will of Catholics. Unpopularity may be a proof of integrity and courage, but never of policy or prudence: the wounds inflicted by opinion are mortal for statesmen. We may recall the premature and violent end of many illustrious persons whom it would be inexpedient to mention here. The brandings of public opinion may be often great injustices, but none the less they condemn their victims to failure and are often a death-sentence. On the other hand, acts of injustice done to a single individual can and should, if unatoned, cause the ruin of an entire nation or of a whole society: this is what is called the cry of blood, for at the root of every injustice there is the germ of homicide. By reason of these terrible laws of solidarity, Christianity recommends so strongly the forgiveness of injuries and reconciliation. He who dies unforgiving casts himself dagger-armed into eternity and condemns himself to the horrors of an eternal murder. The efficacy of paternal or maternal blessings or curses is an invincible popular tradition and belief. As a fact, the closer the bonds which unite two persons, the more terrible are the consequences of hatred between them. The brand of Althaea consuming the life of Meleager is the mythological symbol of this terrible power. Let parents be ever on their guard, for no one can kindle hell in his own blood, or devote his own issue to misfortune, without being himself burnt and made wretched. To pardon is never a crime, but to curse is always a danger and an evil action.