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THE DOCTRINE and RITUAL of HIGH MAGIC Eliphas Levi

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Gildan Media Companion PDF THE DOCTRINE AND RITUAL OF HIGH MAGIC by Eliphas Levi The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic What is a principle? It is a basis for speech, it is the raison d’être of the verb. The essence of the verb is in the principle: the principle is that which is; intelli- gence is a principle which speaks. What is the intellectual light? It is the word. What is revelation? It is the word; being is the principle, the word is the means, and plenitude, or development and the perfection of being, is the end; to speak is to create. But to say “I think, therefore I exist” is to assume the consequent of the prin- ciple, and recent objections raised by a great writer65 have sufficiently proven the philosophical imperfection of this method. “I am, therefore something exists,” seems to us a more primal and simple basis for experimental philosophy. I am, therefore being exists. 65 Lamennais. (Lévi’s note.) French Catholic priest and philosopher Hugues- Félicité Robert de Lamennais (1782–1854) wrote an extensive critique of rationalist philos- ophy. • 28 • 9780143111030_DoctrineAndR.indd 28 Job: 70591_HNH_1701 24176 DPI: -- PDF Page: 9780143111030_DoctrineAndR.p56.pdf1/12/17 4:17 PM 24176 Note: outside dashed line is bleed; solid line is trim and inside dashed line is safety margin. Output on: 2017-01-19 at: 19:49:54 The Columns of the Temple and below is the creative principle, it is the ideal phallus; and the principle having been created, is the formal cteïs. The insertion of the vertical phallus into the horizontal cteis81 forms the Gnostic stauros,82 or the philosophical cross of the masons. Thus the crossing of the two produces four, which when moving determines the circle with all its de- grees. is woman;83 1 is the principle; 2 is the Verb; A is the active; B is ב ;is man א the passive; the unity is Boaz; the duality is Jachin.84 In Fu Hsi’s trigrams, the unity is the yang; the duality is the yin.85 Boaz and Jachin are the names of the two symbolic columns which were in front of the main doorway of the Cabalistic temple of Solomon. In the Cabala, these two columns explain all the mysteries of antagonism, whether natural, political, or religious, and it explains the generative conflict be- tween man and woman: because, according to the law of nature, woman must resist man, and man must seduce her or subdue her. 81 Cteis is a Greek word for “vagina.” The sexual symbolism is quite deliberate, and appears throughout this book and Lévi’s other work. 82 Stauros is Greek for “cross.” The gnostics traditionally saw the cross as T- shaped. 83 These are, respectively, the first two Hebrew letters, aleph and beth. 84 Boaz and Jachin are the names of the two great bronze pillars of the Temple of Solomon. In Masonic symbolism, they relate to the numbers one and two. 85 Lévi is quite correct here; in Chinese lore, Fu Hsi is the traditional creator of the eight kua, or trigrams, that are the foundation of the I Ching, or Book of Changes, made of solid (yang) and broken (yin) lines. • 41 • 24176 9780143111030_DoctrineAndR.indd 41 Job: 70591_HNH_1701 24176 DPI: -- PDF Page: 9780143111030_DoctrineAndR.p69.pdf1/12/17 4:17 PM Note: outside dashed line is bleed; solid line is trim and inside dashed line is safety margin. Output on: 2017-01-19 at: 19:49:54 The Columns of the Temple The unity of the macrocosm is revealed by the two opposing points of the two triangles: The human unity is completed by the left and the right. Primitive man is an- drogynous. All the organs of the human body come in twos, except for the nose, the tongue, the umbilicus, and the Cabalistic yod. The divinity, one in his essence, has two essential conditions as the funda- mental basis for his being: necessity and liberty. The laws of supreme reason require God and regulate liberty, which is nec- essarily reasonable and wise. To render light visible, God has only to imagine shadow. To make truth manifest, he made doubt possible. Shadow is a foil for light, and the possibility of error is necessary for the tem- poral manifestation of the truth. If the shield of Satan did not stop Michael’s lance, the angel’s power would be lost in the abyss, and this would have resulted in infinite destruction, from the highest to the lowest. Satan is thus as necessary to Michael as the pedestal is to a statue, and Mi- chael is as necessary to Satan as a brake to a locomotive. In the analogical and universal dynamic, we can only lean on that which resists. The universe is balanced by two forces which maintain its equilibrium: the force which attracts and the force which repels. These two forces exist in physics, • 43 • 24176 9780143111030_DoctrineAndR.indd 43 Job: 70591_HNH_1701 24176 DPI: -- PDF Page: 9780143111030_DoctrineAndR.p71.pdf1/12/17 4:17 PM Note: outside dashed line is bleed; solid line is trim and inside dashed line is safety margin. Output on: 2017-01-19 at: 19:49:55 The Triangle of Solomon The principle of harmony is in the unity, and it is why magic finds so much power in odd numbers. But the most perfect of odd numbers is three, because it is the trilogy of the unity. In Fu Hsi’s trigrams, the superior ternary is composed of three yangs, or mas- culine figures, because in the idea of God, which is considered the principle of fer- tility in the three worlds, one cannot accept anything of the passive. It is for this reason also that the Christian trinity does not accept the person- ification of the mother, which is implied in the son. It is also for this reason that it is contrary to the laws of orthodox hieratic symbolism to personify the Holy Spirit as a woman.99 Woman comes from man just as nature comes from God: also the Christ raises himself to heaven and assumes the Virgin mother; we speak of the ascension of the Savior and the assumption of the mother of God. God, considered as the father, has nature for a daughter. God, as the son, has the Virgin for a mother and the Church as a spouse. As the Holy Spirit, he regenerates and fertilizes humanity. It is thus, in Fu Hsi’s trigrams, that the three superior yangs correspond to the three inferior yins, because Fu Hsi’s trigrams comprise a pentacle similar to the two triangles of Solomon but with a ternary explanation of the six brilliant points of the star. Dogma is not divine unless it is truly human, that is to say it summarizes the highest reason of humanity: also, the Master whom we call the Man- God called himself the Son of Man. Revelation is the expression of the belief in the human Verb as accepted and formulated by universal reason. 99 A point of Catholic doctrine with which many Christians, ancient and modern, have disagreed. • 51 • 24176 9780143111030_DoctrineAndR.indd 51 Job: 70591_HNH_1701 24176 DPI: -- PDF Page: 9780143111030_DoctrineAndR.p79.pdf1/12/17 4:17 PM Note: outside dashed line is bleed; solid line is trim and inside dashed line is safety margin. Output on: 2017-01-19 at: 19:49:55 The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic in the letters of the words AZOTH and INRI, written Cabalistically, and in the monogram of Christ as it was appended to the labarum,117 and which the Cabalist Postel interprets with the word ROTA, with which the adepts formed their taro or tarot, by repeating the first letter twice, to indicate the circle and have it under- stood that the word is inversed. All of magical science consists in the understanding of this secret. To have this knowledge and to dare to use it is omnipotence in human affairs; to reveal it to the profane is to lose it; to reveal it even to a disciple is to abdicate in favor of that disciple, who from that moment, would have the power of life and death over his initiator (I speak here from the magical point of view) and will cer- tainly kill him, out of fear of dying himself. (This has nothing to do with acts treated as murder in criminal law, which serve as a basis and starting point for our laws and ignore instances of murder through bewitchment and occult in- fluences.) We enter here into strange revelations, and we expect every ex- pression of disbelief and the shrugging shoulders of fanatic disbelievers, because the religion of Voltaire also has its fanatics— apologies to the great shades who must now be sulking in a pathetic manner within the vaults of the Pantheon, 117 The labarum was a Roman standard bearing the Chi- Rho, a symbol made of the Greek letters ΧP (chi and rho), the first two letters ofΧριστος , or Christ, which was used after the Christianization of the empire. The Chi- Rho still has a role in some Catholic uses. • 60 • 9780143111030_DoctrineAndR.indd 60 Job: 70591_HNH_1701 24176 DPI: -- PDF Page: 9780143111030_DoctrineAndR.p88.pdf1/12/17 4:17 PM 24176 Note: outside dashed line is bleed; solid line is trim and inside dashed line is safety margin. Output on: 2017-01-19 at: 19:49:56 The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic Thus Christian prophecy contains a quadruple revelation: first, the fall of the ancient world and the triumph of the Gospel under the first coming; second, the great apostasy and the arrival of the Antichrist; third, the fall of the Antichrist and the return of Christian ideas; fourth, the definitive triumph of the Gospel, or the Second Coming, designated by the name “the last judgment.” This quadruple prophecy contains, as we can see, two affirmations and two negations, the idea of two ruins or universal deaths and two rebirths; because for every idea which appears on the social horizon we can assign without fear an orient and an oc- cident, a zenith and a nadir.
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