by Eliphas Levi [1883]

Paradoxes of the Highest Science is one of the final works of Alphonse Louis Constant, better known by his pen name Eliphas Levi, the most influential figure in the nineteenth-century revival of Western ceremonial magic. Published posthumously, the work presents a series of seemingly contradictory propositions that Levi resolves through the lens of occult philosophy: that religion is not superstition, that there is a true and a false in the supernatural, that the human will can accomplish anything, and that suffering is the just consequence of sin.

Levi's influence on the Western esoteric tradition can scarcely be overstated. His earlier works, Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1856) and The History of Magic (1860), essentially created the modern conception of ceremonial magic and directly inspired the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. This later work shows Levi at his most philosophical and contemplative, wrestling with the ultimate questions of existence through the framework he had spent a lifetime constructing.

The text includes annotations by an anonymous editor, which provide additional context and occasionally challenge Levi's conclusions. Together, the text and commentary offer a window into the intellectual world of nineteenth-century occultism at its most sophisticated.

Paradox I.—Religion Is Magic Sanctioned

Footnotes 2:1 The Western Ideal of Good.—E. O.
3:1 In a Review of Wilson's "Chapters on Evolution" in Knowledge for February 23rd, 1883, the following passage occurs showing how Western science is slowly drifting into the position occupied for thousands of years by the Occultists:— "Quite early the tendency of the Theory of Evolution was seen to be towards the widest possible generality. It was recognised that man could not possibly be excluded from the Law of Evolution. Those who had believed in his nobler origin from the dust of the earth were pained. They objected to a doctrine according to which man, instead of having been made originally a little lower than the angels, had risen from only a little higher than the beasts of the fields—instead of being made in the likeness of God, must be regarded rather as having imagined God after his own likeness. It is true the new doctrine presented man as having risen—and likely therefore to rise still higher—while the old presented him as having fallen grievously, having, from being next door to an angel, and quite in the likeness of God (though, for a slight temptation, or none, held p. 4 out by an objectionable reptile, he so offended as to merit death—not, before, a part of the plan), become a wretched creature, I deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked'. So that, on the whole, the new teaching was a more cheerful one apart from religious hopes and fears,—which do not belong to our inquiry here."—Trans.

4:1 i.e., in which the bread and wine are not supposed to be really transmuted into Christ's flesh and blood, as is held by the Romish Church.—Trans.

7:1 That is to say when the Seventh Round men appear on the scene, then only shall there be a God for the sons of man.—E. O.

For the sons of men yes; that is to say cognisable and comprehensible by limited and conditioned intellects; but this is a different thing from the assertion that there is no God, though this latter is, no doubt, the view taken by E. O.—Trans.

8:1 Woman taken collectively is of course Mother of God—Humanity, but has Éliphas no other God? No, but he has an enemy—Rome. E. L. was an atheist and a poet. He was also a diplomatist; he seeks to win over and not to frighten away his public—E. O.

It is very questionable whether E. L. was an atheist; indeed it seems to me certain that he was not. His position was not that there was no God, (an assertion involving an assumption of omniscience), but simply that to the narrow and dim cognisance of man and even to that of far higher but still conditioned intelligences, God only manifests himself in Nature and Humanity. To say that the Infinite and Absolute is entirely outside the highest plane to which any limited and conditioned intellect can attain, and that hence we must content ourselves with dealing with the laws and manifestations of the conditioned Universe, which are more or less within our grasp or that of our perfected predecessors, is one thing; to assert that there is no power and intelligence outside the sphere of our possible cognisance, the source of these laws and manifestations, no God in fact, another, and one to which, to my mind, neither Éliphas Lévi, nor any other occultist of his school, would commit himself.—Trans.

9:1 But this is not the case in reality, though to a superficial observer it may often seem so. On the contrary, each and all inevitably pay to the last farthing their own debts (incurred in the current of previous lives) and these only, and pay them either in this or in future lives.—Trans.

9:2 And that is why E. L. left it—for the sake of a Paradox.—E. O.

9:3 A play upon words—Catholicity means with him Universality.—E. O.

9:4 Our doctrine: Space and Universal Swābhāvat—Matter: Force is within. Manifesting under this p. 10 Trinitarian form, a God, for the ignorant and the blind.—E. O.
13:1 "Now the Virgin returns, the golden age returns, Now a new offspring is sent down from high Heaven, O Chaste Lucina, favour the boy now being born, The serpent will die."—Virgil's 4th Eclogue.

Virgil died September 22nd, 19 B.C. Was he a Prophet?—E. O.

14:1 "Man is God and Son of God, and there is no other God but man." (The secret pledge of the Rosicrucians).—E. O.

14:2 "Humanity—Son of Eternity."—E. O.

15:1 Compare these expressions taken from the litanies of the R. C. Church with like sexual flatteries addressed to Durga's idol (the Yoni) by Hindu devotees and the litanies of the Vallabacharyas to the God of Love.—E. O.

Paradox II.—Liberty is Obedience to the Law

Footnotes 16:1 The Deity is semi-male (? Hermaphrodite.—Trans.) in the Hebrew philosophy. The body of man is the vehicle of the three pairs of spouses, viz., the 2nd and 3rd, the 4th and 5th, and the 6th and 7th principles.
Irenæus speaks of "Bathos and Sige, Mind and Aletheia," each of them male and female. The three pairs of principles are then treated as three only, and we have the Trinity. The Jewish Kabala gives Macroprosopus his spouse, and the Microprosopus his uxor. (Liber Mysteri, I, 35, 38.) "The anointed they call, male-female," says Cyril of Jerusalem, VI, xi. The SUN has the Pneuma for his spouse.

When Éliphas Lévi speaks of Christ and his church, he means the Monad and its vehicle, the 7th and 6th principles. The Egyptian older Hermetic books give the first Quaternation, Monotes (Proarche, Proanennoetos, Mysterious and not to be named says p. 17 Irenæus) and Henotes, the power that exists in union with "the Lord Ferho, the unknown, formless, unconscious Life" of the Codex Nazaræus.

This Monotes and Henotes, being the ONE, sent forth, not produced, but unconsciously emanated, a BEGINNING, as they call it (arche), before all things Intelligible, Unborn and Invisible, which arche is the MONAD (from the ONE).
In the West the religious philosophy of the Magi was first made famous under the name of Oriental Wisdom. Simon Magus teaches the doctrine of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (female), and says that this Trinity had appeared amongst the Jews as Son, amongst the Samaritans as Father, and to other nations as the Holy Spirit. The Christian Trinity was bodily taken from the Kabalistic Nazarenes, who existed ages before the Western Christ, and to whom Jeshu (the Jesus of Lud, 130 B.C.?) belonged during the period of Alexander Jannæus (a). "Life has built the house (body) in which you now stay," and the seven planets who dwell in it shall not ascend all into the land of Light.—" Codex Naz., II, 35. "Yes! the Chaldeans call the God. IAO, SABAOTH, he who is over the SEVEN Orbits (circles)—the Demiurge."—Lydus de Mens, IV, 38, 74.. The seven orbits are the seven principles, the three couples with the house of flesh. "Beam of the sun that hath shone the fairest light of all before the Seven-gated Thebes, thou hast at length gleamed forth, O eye of golden Day."—Sophocles, Antigone.—E. O. (a) Alexander Jannæus is generally reckoned as reigning from 106 or 104 B.C. to 79 B.C.—Trans.

18:1 But adds in so many words: "Provided that you do nothing contrary to the commandments of the Church."—E. O.

21:1 "Ergastule." I never before met the word in French, but I take it to be derived from ergastylos, the pillar to which a recusant slave was chained to work; also the beams to which slaves in galleys were chained to row.—Trans.

22:1 Or of a determined desire to obtain a supernatural power. To command nature it is necessary to be positive. She has no obedience for mixed magnetisms.—E. O.

22:2 True.—E. O.

22:3 Behold a Frenchman! cynical and witty, even in the midst of the arduous discussion of esoteric p. 23 philosophy. France has had several renowned Alchemists, she never had one true Adept.—E. O.

23:1 It is impossible to translate adequately the original word "gauloiserie," with its double meaning and wide reaching significations. It is what Humpty Dumpty would have called a "portmanteau word".—Trans.

24:1 In the Massoretic Kabala, the points read: "One God, only—the TRUTH,—and her only shalt thou obey." Having so much of the Jesuit in him. E. L. could never become an adept.—E. O.

24:2 God, or Good.—E. O.

24:3 In this and many other cases, the wording of the authorised English version differs. But the sense is generally the same.—Trans.

25:1 Or what Truth and Duty will.—E. O.

25:2 Will—the Ākāsic Force.—E. O.

27:1 Only a worthy son of Loyola!—E. O.

29:1 Instead of canonising, the Church of Rome unfrocked and persecuted to his death poor Éliphas, the Abbé Louis Constant. "It is dangerous to leave things half undone," confessed the man when dying.—E. O.

29:2 In the original "forces fatales," by which I take it he means not merely "fatal forces," but the blind, p. 30 unintelligent forces of the universe, that work on, slaves to the inherent laws of their being, and irresistible tyrants to all who have not pierced their secret.—Trans.

31:1 And not even then, for where would be the difference between the two?—E. O.

The difference would be that the one seeks to kill, in violation of his neighbour's right to live, aggressively., and not in defence of his own inherent right, whilst the other if he does also infringe his neighbour's right to kill, does so only defensively in vindication of his own inherent right to live. There is a broad distinction between the two cases that no sophistry can level; both may be wrong, but even so (a moot point with the highest moralists of all ages) there is a vast difference in the degree of criminality in the two cases. E. O. condemns suicide unconditionally, and rightly so, but to allow a man to kill you, when you can prevent this by killing him, is, it seems to me, suicide to all intents and purposes.—Trans.

32:1 Only whatever we do let us call things by their right names, "Pas de demi-inconnues."—E. O.

Paradox III.—Love is the Realisation of the Impossible

Footnotes 33:1 In other words Altruism is the highest form of Egoism.—Trans.

35:1 That is to say when love of self shall have given place to love of neighbour and of all neighbours—E. O.

There is a terrible apparent confusion in many passages of this discourse between that love which is of the spirit, and that which is of the flesh; the Divine and earthly, the love which is animal egoism, and that which is the highest form of altruism. But it is more apparent than real as will be seen later on.—Trans.

36:1 Here again I can find no translation for the word "fatal" which, as contrasted with "libre," means p. 37 the result of fate a thing that takes place without the option of intelligence-a blind result of blind, unintelligent, irresistible forces.—Trans.

37:1 Eggrégons, in the original.—Trans.

Paradox IV.—Knowledge is the Ignorance or Negation of Evil

Footnotes 41:1 They may be rare, but occultism knows and the world feels the malice of such unhappy beings.—Trans.

44:1 Nothing of the kind, when the Spirit is naturally stronger than and has mastered Flesh at the start. Besides, there is the will! But with the Spirit half slumbering and the Will but half awake, it is folly to try it at all.—E. O.

45:1 A great Paradox, but also a great truth, when rightly understood.—E. O.

46:1 What a ridiculous supernumerary, such a God before the jury of Sense and Logic. Nevertheless some of the most sensible men loathe the idea of parting with this fiction.—E. O.

Amongst our Fiji fellow subjects, the ships, the judges, the governors and other manifestations of our good Queen are received with respect and love; in her name justice is done between man and man, her name protects all from the assaults of foreign nations; she is only known to them by pictures (more or less fancy portraits) or by the effects accomplished by and in her name, and these Fijians can only serve herby good citizenship, dealing fairly and uprightly with their fellow subjects. Truly a ridiculous supernumerary is the actual Queen Victoria I and yet some of the most sensible Fijians would loathe to part with this fiction, nay—would think a man overhasty who denounced her as a myth.—Trans.

47:1 i.e., Occult Sciences.—E. O.

48:1 In one of the secret books of Merop—a book antedating Christianity, three Magi are shown as seeking the lost wisdom of Zoroaster in order to save mankind from maya,—ignorance. A star appears, a six-pointed star, and leads them to the cave where Zarathushtra's Book of Wisdom is buried.—E. O.

48:2 And other more important sects, associations and fraternities, whose names, even, have never been divulged to the world.—Trans.

51:1 By human ignorance and folly.—E. O.

51:2 I don't know that E. L. has any valid authority for this statement. It is usually stated that he died at a good old age, about 313 B.C., though some authorities speak of his being murdered a year later in the persecution of Arjasp.—Trans.

53:1 But he preached it a century before his birth.—E. O.

I may explain that some of the most eminent occultists hold the Gospel Christ to be an ideal, based upon a Jesus who lived a considerable time before anno Domini. This Jesus, Jeshu Ben Panthera, lived from about 120 to 70 B.C., was a pupil of Rabbi Joachim Ben Perachia, his grand uncle, with whom, during the persecution of the Jews by Alexander Jannæus, he fled to Alexandria, and was initiated into the Egyptian mysteries, or magic. On his return to Palestine this Jeshu was charged with, and convicted of, heresy and sorcery (he was unquestionably an adept) and hung on the tree of infamy (the Roman Cross) outside the city of Lud or Lydda. This man was a historical character, and his life and death are indubitably established. Why they look upon the Gospel Christ as an ideal, based upon the Jesus, is that there is no contemporaneous or nearly contemporaneous record by reliable historians of the Gospel Christ. The only passage in Josephus referring to Jesus Christ is now admitted on all sides to be a pure forgery. Clearly Josephus never mentioned Christ, whereas had the gospel narratives been correct he must have done so. Again, "Philo Judæus, the most learned of the historians, contemporaneous to the Jesus of the Gospels, a man whose birth anteceded and whose death succeeded the birth and death of Jesus, respectively by ten or fifteen p. 54 years; who visited Jerusalem from Alexandria several times during his long career, and must have been at Jerusalem shortly after the crucifixion; who, in describing the various religious sects, societies and corporations of Palestine, takes the greatest care to omit none, noticing even the most insignificant, never apparently beard and (certainly never mentions) anything about Christ, the crucifixion or any other of the facts commemorated in the Gospels." Further, they ask if Christ really lived at the time alleged how is it that absolutely no reference to him is found in the Mishna. "The Mishna was founded by Hillel 40 B.C., and edited and amplified (till about the beginning of the third century of our era) at Tiberias by the sea of Galilee, the very focus of the doings of the Biblical apostles and Christ's miracles. The Mishna contains an unbroken record of all the Heresiarchs and rebels against the authority of the Jewish Sanhedrin, is in short a diary of the doings of the synagogue and a history of the Pharisees, those same men who are accused of having put Jesus to death." How is it possible, it is asked, that if the gospel narratives were true, and the events therein recorded really occurred at the time alleged, no reference whatsoever to these decidedly important (even though the Rabbis believed Jesus to be an impostor) transactions is to be found in this very elaborate chronicle, whose special object it was to record all heresies, schisms and matters generally affecting the orthodox Jewish religion?

It will now be understood what E. O. means when he says Jesus preached a hundred years before his birth.—Trans.
55:1 While the vulgar, the masses, were convinced of the influence of the Two Lights (Mar-oth, lights, Sun and Moon, from Mairo to shine; Maria—the Lord) of Heaven upon the living beings on earth, the initiates knew what these lights were. Osiris and Isis were named Apollo and Diana in the West, and when the Christian Bishops began their work of fitting in and accommodating things to their newly conceived doctrine, they rejected Apollo and Diana, Balder and Freia, and invented Christus and Maria. I. A. H. according to the Kabalists is, I [father] and A. H. [mother] composed of I the male and H the female. Jah is Adam, Evah is Eve, together the doubleman (male and female created he them) of Christ, of Genesis and the Kabala. "Through a Virgin, the Eva (h), came the death; it was necessary through a Virgin but more from a Virgin that the LIFE should appear," says the wily Cyril. Hiersol. XII, VI.

The Alchemists call akasa the Virgin. All life passes through akasa into earth.
Hence Christ's coming on earth through Mary (Mar) the Virgin. "Screaming Evoe Bakke (Bacchus), thou alone art worthy of the Virgin."—Æneid VII, 389.

It is on the soil of Asia sprung from the teachings of Oriental initiates that two conceptions were p. 56 evolved that have chiefly determined the Religious convictions of the Christians:

(1) The doctrine of ONE EXISTENCE, Parabrahm, our one Life, which is this primal and sole principle of the universe.

(2) That of LIGHT (akasa with its seven principles) which became the Logos of Christians; for "sound" emanates from akasa.

PRIMAL LIFE manifests itself by its intelligence, Logos or wisdom, seventh principle, considered as the primal male principle. In this stage of the conception, the wisdom is identical with spirit or Purusha, with the Hindu the primal divine male. The Old Testament uses the wisdom, spirit and word as synonymous expressions.

The two existences or lights were called, ages B.C., FATHER and SON.

Sabda, "sound" or "word," is constantly mentioned in our Mimānsa philosophy. Compare with the Greek Logos, the "eternity of sound" a dogma of Mimānsa, relating with us to the eternal verities of the occult truth. With the non-initiated Hindus, the eternity of Sabda shows the eternity of the Vedas.—E. O.

57:1 The "Eternal Wisdom" lia ckakama lia kadama of the Hebrew Kabala unites with the Soul of the Messias: "Sair anpin in truth is the Soul of the Messias joined with the eternal Logos."—Kabala III, 241 Jezira—E. O.

Paradox V.—Reason Is God

Footnotes 57:2 Our version reads In the beginning was the Word," etc., but neither reading adequately conveys the occult sense of the passage. The arche is the primordial evolute, which the ONE unconsciously emanates, the beginning of all things. The logos is the Law of Evolution, the reason of all things, itself the cause of their complex inter- relations, the Word, p. 58 the Force or Energy that everywhere and in all time, regulates, and is, at the same time, the mainspring of the universe.—Trans.

58:1 This is an instance of Éliphas Lévi's persistent habit of at one time using words in their occult senses, and at another, perhaps in the same sentence, in their popular senses, so as to lead the unwary to the conclusion that he is using them throughout in these latter. Of course there is no alogos, no such thing as "déraison," if raison is to be construed in its occult sense. All through his writings he grasps at any apparently neat antithesis, no matter how false it may be, or how much he thereby risks misleading the most worthy student as to his real meaning. Unreason acting as a background to show up reason is nonsense, if reason be taken in its occult sense in which he has been using it in the previous lines, viz., of the force or law or impulse or design, or all put together, without which nothing can have come into being, and which accounts for all that exists, because Unreason has no occult sense, and in its popular sense is as much an evolute of the logos, as is Reason, in the ordinary signification of the word; but E. L. p. 59 could not resist the jingle of Reason and Unreason, and so without warning in the middle of the sentence he uses "Reason," for the first time in the discourse, in its restricted exoteric meaning. Moreover having laid down some law or truth in words bearing, and intended by him to bear, some broad occult sense, he constantly goes on to argue on or play with these in their restricted commonplace significations, introducing thus a confusion of ideas, utterly bewildering to the reader, even if the writer did not, as I suspect, frequently himself lose touch with the Higher Doctrine. If these weaknesses of our author be kept in mind, many apparent difficulties in all his works will disappear.—Trans.

59:1 The original is, Quand je raisonne mal, je n'ai point raison, a play on words which can only be approximated in English as above.

60:1 The original play upon the words, "un Dieu défini est un Dieu fini" cannot be exactly reproduced in English.—Trans.

61:1 Within that Substance, within every atom of it, but not outside of it. There is no extra-cosmic Deity. All matter is God, and God is Matter, or there is no God,—E. O.

This seems to me begging the question. Has any one been outside the Cosmos to look? E. O. may reply Cosmos is infinite, there can be nothing outside what is infinite, forgetting, it seems tome, that what may be infinite to all conditioned in it, may yet leave room for a beyond to the Unconditioned. He admits a fourth dimension of space, and asserts further on, as will be seen, and as I believe with good reason, that there are yet fifth, sixth and seventh dimensions of space to be discovered, yet he desires to insist that the conceptions of intelligences (I give him in the planetary spirits and all) conditioned in p. 62 the Cosmos, which we can only think of as infinite, are absolute; whereas I submit, that they are necessarily relative, and that the fact that the highest intelligences conditioned in the universe believe it to be infinite and can trace in it nothing but laws, by no means proves that to a still higher and unconditioned intelligence there may not be something outside that infinity, and in that something the intelligence whose will the discoverable Laws represent. Nay, further, I submit that intelligence may be inside and pervading the Cosmos, and yet be incognisable for its own good reasons by all its emanated intelligences. To me therefore: the assertion that either "God is matter" (in the sense of unconscious unintelligent substance) "or there is no God," appears equally rash and unphilosophical. I fully understand the refusal to acknowledge or believe in that, of which no knowledge exists, and of which no evidence can be obtained, but this seems to me wholly different from denying its existence, which involves the assumption of omniscience. —Trans.

64:1 And I must say he puts this precept into practice admirably; while laughing at the fools with one corner of the mouth, he strengthens their folly with the other.—E. O.

68:1 But when or where has such Unity ever existed?—Trans.

68:2 it is scarcely necessary to tell most readers that all this is elaborate chaff. Still our author's p. 70 persistent habit of saying, apparently seriously, what he does not believe and what he does not mean any one but "les fous" to believe, is likely too often to become seriously misleading to this latter large and respectable class.—Trans.

70:1 This is true, but only half the Truth. Per contra remember that the longer you let the weeds stand, the wider will their seeds be disseminated, and the larger and stubborner the growth you will have to deal with.—Trans.

71:1 He seems to draw but a feeble line between "the Occult" and "the Jesuitical".—E. O.

Doubtless because he himself, like many other occultists, was avowedly somewhat Jesuitical in his dealings with non-initiates.—Trans.

71:2 Éliphas, as usual, is here poking fun at his Public. He is perfectly aware that all these pretended traits of madness have an occult signification.—Trans.

72:1 I am glad he admits the principle.—E. O.

The principle "de dissimuler"? I fear it is a principle all are only too ready to admit.—Trans.

72:2 He means here of course Occult Science.—Trans.

73:1 Very right.—E. O.

73:2 All this is true, in one sense, but, as E. L. well knew, it is not the whole truth.—Trans.

74:1 Darkness, bad or evil, as given in the Codex Nazaræus, are merely a gradual waning of the Pleroma or akasic light. (Caligo ubi exstiterat etiam exstitisse decrementum et detrimentum.) The Sorcerer uses the grosser, the physically more potential principles of akasa. The Pleroma of the Greek authors of Christianity is our akasa. "Air, the ether, is the Pleroma, the space held from Eternity by the ONE existence." (Onomasticon, 13) "To Pan Pleroma tōn aionōn—universum pleroma aconum." (Irenaeus, I, i., p. 15.) "In him dwells all the Pleroma carnally." (Engl. vers.) "For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily."—(Coloss., 2, 9.) E. O.

Paradox VI.—The Imagination Realises What It Invents

Footnotes 76:1 In the original "les gémonies," that is the Roman place of execution—The Tyburn of Rome.—Trans.

78:1 One of our author's characteristic "grimaces," which he must have thought witty, as they could impose on no one, but which exasperate the ordinary readers as in equally bad faith and bad taste.—Trans.

80:1 This is not the occult meaning of the Legend referred to, and this E. L. of course knew. He seems constantly to fear that he may have somewhere spoken too plainly and to feel it a duty to set his readers off on a wrong scent.—Trans.

81:1 Only partially on this account. There are many other reasons. The terrestrial magnetic conditions differ widely during the day and the night. The physical energy is at its lowest ebb during the night, and the more vigorous the physical powers the less scope p. 82 for the psychical perceptions, and there are many other factors—Trans.

82:1 E. L. apparently knew very little of this branch of the subject. He apparently fancied that all phenomena were subjective—Trans.

82:2 All this of course is a hasty generalisation, founded on insufficient data. All this may happen, or it may not; it will depend on the relative magnetic (I use the word for lack of a better) powers p. 83 of the circle and the intruder, including in the circle the influences that have been attracted to it. Plenty of such intruders, utterly sceptical and thoroughly hostile to the supposed dupers and dupes, have found their presence, and even wills, wholly inadequate to check the progress of the phenomena.—Trans.

84:1 All this, though literally true, is grossly dishonest. As a Kabalist Éliphas Lévi knew all about elementals and elementaries. Of course these are not supernatural, as they belong to nature, so that what he says is true in the letter, but it is false in spirit, because he knew that all his readers considered such beings supernatural, and would hence understand that he denied their existence. So with miracles; of course these are but the results of unknown natural laws, so that here too what he says is true to the letter but false to the spirit, as leading the reader to infer that he denied the occurrence of what people call miracles.—Trans.

84:2 Fallacy and assumption, and he knew it.—E. O.

85:1 London wine merchants could tell him a different story.—Trans.

85:2 That is Blind Faith.—E. O.

86:1 They know nothing of the kind; some may be so; some are probably very fairly accurate traditions of occult phenomena, but E. L. knew apparently very little of the physics of occultism.—Trans.

86:2 All this is pure sophistry. Of course the two things are utterly distinct; in the one case there is clearly the use of metaphor, in the others, previously referred to, there is equally clearly an assertion of fact; the latter may be a fiction, but it can neither be rejected nor discredited on the score that elsewhere tropes and metaphors are employed.—Trans.

87:1 This of course is a fair argument against the Roman Catholic Dogma of Transubstantiation.—Trans.
87:2 ". . . worth is the Ocean, Fame is but the bruit that roars along the shallows." —Trans.

88:1 The conviction of the especial fitness of each to know best his own peculiar nature and powers. Power has its illusion. Let every one accomplish his mission.—E. O.

Paradox VII.—The Will Accomplishes Everything, Which It Does Not Desire

Footnotes 89:1 I beg to demur to this latter. "Le Mage" wants nothing of the kind—unless, indeed, he be a Frenchman.—E. O.

90:1 In the original "aleatoires," a word I never met with in French and can find in no dictionary, but manifestly derived from "aleatores," pertaining to a gamester—Trans.

91:1 He knows nothing of the kind; what he knows he tells, viz., that Good and Evil are both eternal, because both are fictions of the Human imagination, and Humanity, or God in Nature, is eternal.—E. O.

I venture to submit that this is liable to misconstruction. In the absolute, in the highest transcendental sense, Good and Evil may be both fictions, but relatively to, and quoad conditioned existences of all degrees, Good and Evil are real.—Trans.

94:1 This is a good old Scandinavian word, and more nearly translates the original "ricanner" that either "giggle" or "sneer," the usual translations.—Trans.

Magic and Magism

Footnotes 99:1 His incessant struggles with the "idea" rooted in him by his unhappy Catholico-Romanism, having occupied and wasted all his time.—E. O.

99:2 It is at least questionable whether this be not the best, wisest, and safest position. Admitting that by a devotion to Occult Physics, two supreme gifts are attainable,—one, the preservation of the individual memory right through all the further lives on this and the other planets of our cycle, throughout a complete circuit-in other words the quasi-immortalisation of the personality; and second, the power of controlling and directing our own future after death instead of being drawn into the vortex and being there disposed of while still in a passive state under the laws of affinities; yet it is at any rate questionable whether even these, the highest gifts, which not one per cent of adepts even attain to, really profit a man in the long run. Most certainly to attain them, an utterly self-regarding life is needed in the case of men of our race. A sublime selfishness it may be, but none the less selfishness, is essential to the attainment of these highest gifts. It is at least open to doubt whether an active life of unselfishness and benevolence amongst our fellows is not more conducive to happiness in the long run. In a universe governed by a mathematical justice, we may be content to leave our future in the hands of the Eternal Laws and the immortalisation of a necessarily imperfect personality is a doubtful good. As for all other powers dependent on a manipulation of the Astral Essence, though doubtless susceptible of beneficial exercise on rare occasions, they hardly appear to me aims worthy of the Man-Divine. A p. 100 certain theoretical knowledge of the Physics of Occultism grows in the mind in its progress in the Metaphysics of the "Highest Science," but in my humble notion it is to a thorough comprehension and grasp of these latter that our best efforts should be directed. We should not waste time, seeking powers or power; we should lift no longing gaze even to the two supreme accomplishments, but we should strive so to purify our natures and permeate ourselves with an active love for the ALL, as to ensure at the recast, the evolution of a higher personality, and so to make the cognisance of the infinite unity, and all that thereby hangs a part of ourselves, as to render it a necessary intuition of the new personality. This is to be "un vrai magiste qui ne pratique point la magie," and to my mind this is, perhaps, the nobler, though, doubtless, the less attractive path.—Trans.

100:1 And above all in the Ancient Sacred Literature of India. But E. Lévi had never studied the Bhagavad-Gita and other like incarnations of the spiritual life in the flesh of the latter, or he would have been a far truer "Magiste".—Trans.

102:1 "Keep silence all who enter here," has from time immemorial been graved above the Portals of Occultism, "Gopaniyum Prayatnena," "to be kept secret with the greatest care" is the refrain of all the ancient Aryan writers on Psychism. But valid as this insistence on secrecy has been in the past, it must not be forgotten that evolution never sleeps, and that the wheel is ever turning. A new and higher race is scintillating on the dim horizon, and what are the highest secrets of one race, and intolerable to its mass, become the intuitions, if not the palpable verities, of the next.—Trans.

103:1 This entire paragraph is sophistical and insincere to a degree. It savours not of "the things which are of God but of the things which are of man"; not of occultism, but of Éliphas Leviism.—Trans.

106:1 Which leaves the question where it was, since even the highest adept can never have such an exhaustive knowledge of those laws or that Reason, as to be able to assert of anything that it is absolutely contrary to them, or hence to predicate impossibility of anything outside, as Arago said, of pure mathematics.—Trans.

106:2 The wretched Isiacs wound their breasts and imitate the grief of "the INFELICISSIMA MATER Isis" (Min. Felip. c 2 r). The return of Isis with the body of p. 107 Osiris is dated December 15th, and the search lasts seven days. (Plutarch).—E. O.

107:1 In this and many other cases it is impossible to reproduce in English that antithesis of sound (mielfiel), which, not unfrequently at some little sacrifice of sense, intensifies, so often, the epigrammatic character of our author's dicta.—Trans.

108:1 Correct.—E. O.

109:1 Here he alludes to the voluntary trance condition or Samadhi induced according to the rules of occult science. Mediumistic trance is a mode of epilepsy—E. O.

So, for that matter, I venture to submit, if words are used in their strict sense, is Samādhi. The real difference consists in the fact that a mediumistic trance is generally the result of an abnormal and quasi-defective organisation, undertaken or fallen into suddenly without the preparations essential to render it innocuous to the health, and without the mental preparations necessary to the retention of the free exercise of the mind and will, and is only partially, often not at all, under control, while Samādhi results from a long and careful series of exercises developing abnormal capacities in a normal organisation, and is preceded by a gradual training that protects the physical frame and habituates the mind and will to free exercise under p. 110 conditions that would normally cripple or wholly stupefy them, and is wholly under control.

Add that from its nature the former cannot continue many days without producing death, while the latter can continue for months without the slightest injury, unless we reckon as an injury the grave disgust for earthly fleshly life that haunts the adept for a longer or shorter period after revival.

Both are epileptic in character, the one only semi-voluntary, the other wholly voluntary; the one without, and the other with, the preliminary physical training necessary to enable the tissues and the mind to bear, unimpaired, subjection to the abnormal conditions.—Trans.

This, though true, is a quibble. No doubt elementaries and elementals belong to the Kāmaloka, and are, therefore, not strictly speaking apparitions of the other world, but the public thinks and talks of all such comparatively immaterial existences as belonging to the other world, and so here again the plain sense of the passage is at variance with what the writer knew to be true.—Trans.

111:1 This word scarcely as yet in use in English, though thoroughly Gallicised, is from the Latin, Larva, a ghost or spectre.—Trans.

111:2 Sophistry.—E. O.

I quite agree, but if for "Religion" we substitute "Occultism" my friend E. O. apparently considers that the Sophistry disappears.—Trans.

112:1 And of the fourfold nature of man; the three pairs and the outer fleshy case and analogous universal quaternions.—Trans.

117:1 "Convenablentent," the right word, most assuredly: respectably.—E. O.

117:2 Rather it signifies that which binds together the soul,—or if you will the highest couple, the 6th principle, and the spirit, (or 7th principle or monad), and the absolute, of which this is a ray.—Trans.

117:3 In other words we are by silence to consent to and add currency and vitality to what we think a falsehood. p. 118 There is a vast difference between tolerance for and gentleness with what we believe to be the errors of others, and the ease-loving timidity which shrinks from showing by its own example that it does believe them to be errors. E. Lévi looks forward to a reign of truth, but if men follow his advice, and for the sake of respectability persistently bow to falsehood, how is the usurper to be dethroned, how is the wrong to be conquered, and the right to triumph?—Trans.

120:1 These poetical illustrations are misleading. Science, real science, and religion are one; at most two faces of the Eternal Truth; allotropic forms of the same everlasting verity.—Trans.

120:2 There is no such thing; it is only nothing that has no extension; the extension of what we call immaterial things may be beyond our cognisance, but all things have extension, and extension is the essence of substance, which both is and fills space.—Trans.

120:3 Of course this is all a muddle; indivisible atoms do exist. You may say that the mind can divide them in conception, but if you could put the division into practice, the molecule would return into the unmanifested. Then he confuses matter, which is transitory, concrete and manifested, with substance, its eternal, abstract, unmanifested base.—Trans.

121:1 The Septenary is sacred. not for one, but for a thousand reasons. Take any seven coins or discs of precisely the same size. Place one in the centre and you will find that the remaining six, when arranged round it as a belt, will exactly occupy the whole circumscribing space, each touching its neighbours and the original central one. Add, with other precisely similar discs, a similar second belt outside the first, a third outside the second, a fourth outside the third, and so on. Increase it, as you may, each belt will only contain six more pieces than the preceding one, with the one central piece as the seventh. The belts will contain 6, 12, 18, 24, 30 pieces and so on, the numbers being terms of an arithmetical progression of which the increment is 6. You may continue enlarging the circumference till it covers the whole Gobi desert, but you will he unable to add more than 6 for each belt to the number of its predecessor. This may seem childish, but we invite all the western mathematicians to explain the why of it, and on this principle the Universe both in its concrete and abstract manifestations is built up.

Pythagoras speaks of the Dodekahedron as being the "Divine"—for the first circle of one and six is the central circle, the abstract, the one of nature in abscondito, and the most Occult. It is composed of the ONE, the central point, and of the six, the "number of perfection" of the Kabalists, having this perfection in itself, shared by no other, that by, the assemblage of its half, its third part, and its sixth part (one, two and three) it is made perfect. Therefore it is called "the sign of the world," for in six rounds the group of worlds attains its perfection, and during the seventh enjoys felicity, and neither nature nor beings labour or toil any more, but prepare in their perfection for Nirvana. With the Christian and Jewish Kabalists, it is the six days of creation and their Sabbath.

And seven is called by Pythagoras "the vehicle of Life," etc. Seven in short is the symbol of this Yug, and Time.

The Sabæans worshipped the seven sons of Sabus. The seven "spirits of God" in Revelation mean simply the perfect man; so with its seven stars, lamps, etc.; and the Chaldean "stages" of the seven spheres and the Birs Nimrud with its seven stories, symbolical of the concentric circles of the seven spheres.

You moderns, who laugh at the ignorance of the ancients, who knew but of seven planets, you have never understood what was really meant by this limited number; nor have you given one thought to the fact that men who presented Callisthenes (over 2,000 years ago) with records of celestial observations extending back from their time 1,900 years, could not have been ignorant of the existence of other planets. p. 123 And what (not who) is SABAOTH, and why should have been regarded as a creator? How many Christians are there who suspect that SABAOTH was the Demiurgic number, seven with the Phœnicians, who became later the Israelites? (Read Lydus de Mens. IV, 38, 74, 98, p. 112.) Seek for SABAOTH. ADONAIOS in the "Sibylline Books," Gallacus, 278. The Demiurge is Iao presiding over the seven circles of the seven Ghebers, the seven spirits of fire, astral light, Fohat, the seven Gabborim, or kabiri, the seven wandering stars, and it is those wanderers who under their collective name of Kabar Ziv (or Mighty Life or Light) as a Central Point emanates and allows to cluster round itself the seven Dæmons.

Compare—

The names of the seven Impostor Daemons in the Codex Nazaræus.

Sol.

Spiritus (Holy Spirit), Astro (Venus)or Lebbat Amamet.

Nebu (Mercury).

Sin Luna, called also Shuril and Siro.

Kiun (Kivan) Saturn.

Bel, Jupiter (life supporter).

Nerig, Mars—the son of man who despoils the other sons of man; called also "Excoriatores".

The names of the seven Skandhas or Principles.

Spirit, the reflection of the ONE Life.

The spiritual soul (Female).

The Animal Soul (Manas).

The Kama Rupa—the most dangerous and treacherous of the Principles.

The Life-soul, Linga sarira.

The Vital principle.

The Gross body or material form—per se an animal and a very ferocious and wild one.

—E. O.

127:1 There is no English equivalent for "fatale," in the sense in which it is here used, and which is not p. 128"fatal," but that has become a thing of Fate, operating therefore in a blind, unintelligent, irresponsible manner under blind laws.—Trans.

130:1 Although in a certain sense this is true, it is very misleading. Faith, in the ordinary sense of the word, viz., a belief in that for which there is no evidence, direct or indirect, has no place in true Occultism which is an exact science, and accepts nothing which cannot either be demonstrated or at any rate proved to accord with, or follow, necessarily or with a high degree of probability, from what can be demonstrated. Of course, like all sciences, Occultism has its methods, and a man must understand these before be can understand its demonstrations; just, for instance, as a man must understand the methods of mathematical physics, before he can understand the proof that the poles of the moon describe in space a certain very complicated curve. But this latter is none the less an exactly demonstrated fact, and so too are the teachings of Occultism, although to one ignorant of the methods of this latter science they may seem absolute mysteries and matters of Faith.—Trans.

131:1 And thus proves again that Human Folly is limitless as space itself.—E. O.

131:2 It will be seen that by Faith he means the acceptance of the teachings of Authority (i.e., of those who p. 132 presumably know more of the matter than ourselves) on those subjects or points on which we do not possess or are unable to obtain knowledge—a constantly varying quantity altering from moment to moment with the progress of the world and the individual, and disappearing in the sanctuary of occultism where all mysteries, at any rate of the conditioned universe, are explained.—Trans.

133:1 And the Mage has not even need to believe in one.—E. O.

Quite so, he has no need. Occultism only deals with the conditioned universe, which to all conditioned in it is infinite. Admittedly, in that Universe only Laws, and no God, i.e., no conscious, intelligent will, the source of those laws, can be traced. So the Mage may justifiably say, "I content myself with the manifested and conditioned universe and believe in no God who, whether he exists somewhere abscondite or not, has not seen fit to indicate himself anywhere in manifestation, and cannot therefore, (if such a being exists) want men to believe in Him."

But there are Mages and Mages, and there are some who say, granting all this, we yet know by a higher intuition that the infinite to all conditioned existence is yet not ALL, and that there is a conscious and intelligent will, the origin of those manifested laws which alone we creatures of manifestation can cognise. But this of course is a matter of Faith and pertains not to occultism proper, which is either atheistic or agnostic, but to transcendental occultism.—Trans.

134:1 It never rises, but as race follows race, and circuit succeeds to circuit, it etherialises more and more, destined to vanish wholly before the veil of the p. 135 cosmic night, that shrouds a higher mystery and an inner sanctuary, is drawn around us.—Trans.

135:1 Very feeble! who is to be the judge? What you consider useful, I hold to be noxious, and vice versa.—Trans.

135:2 Our author, borrowing Pythagorean ideas, often speaks of pure mathematics, as if they were a kind of superhuman existence, things, as he says existing by themselves, or self-existent. But what are they really? Simply rigidly logical deductions from rigidly limited and defined hypotheses. To say their results are certain is merely to repeat with Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Logic is logic, that's all I say." Given certain accurately and exhaustively defined premises, then logical deductions therefrom must be true. Mathematics are the creation of the Human mind, and depend on meanings and values and limitations of these, which it assigns to certain symbols. There is nothing mysterious or superhuman in them. Change your scale of notation from the decimal to the duodecimal, and various "eternal laws" of the former disappear from the latter. Pass on to the differential calculus or the calculus of Infinity in which you introduce hypotheses not rigidly limited, and you at once get, along with the true ones, crowds of utterly irrelevant solutions. To say that no will creates them and no power limits them is absurd; they were created by the will that originated their fundamental hypotheses, and by these are rigidly limited.—Trans.

137:1 Nothing is above common sense, but a thing may be too ill-defined for common sense to grasp it. All our author's sententious aphorism means, is that if the nature, or our knowledge, of a thing is such that we are unable rigorously and exhaustively to define its premises and then argue logically from these, look, to our imperfect vision, as our conclusions may—they may nevertheless be true-we are in no position to decide; whereas, if we can rigorously and exhaustively define the premises and we then argue strictly logically from these, our conclusions must be correct, and no one but a fool can doubt the fact.—Trans.

137:2 This seems quibbling. Of course the usual sign for infinity in mathematics is ∞—Trans.

138:1 Hence the Tibetan cross on the Dalai Lama's headgear.—E. O.

138:2 At last the cat is out of the bag.—E. O.

141:1 It is only in a very far-fetched or else transcendental sense that this is true. Every soul p. 142 pays its own debts, be it or they great or small. This is the true and eternal basis alike of justice and morality.—Trans.

143:1 It is neither certain nor incontestable, and the whole paragraph deals in an unsatisfactory and sophistical manner with the "eternal riddle"—the origin of evil. Evil may in one sense be said to be the darkness necessary to make good apparent, but darkness is real for us, all the same, and so is evil.

The occultist's explanation is that evil is merely the result of the infringement of natural laws. The universe is the outcome of unaltering laws. One of these laws is evolution; at one stage of this, sentient beings are developed, and then commences, from their ignorant transgression of the physical laws of the universe, physical evil, bodily pain and suffering. At a later stage of evolution, intelligence and moral responsibility are developed, and then, with the transgression of the moral laws of the universe by evolutes who have developed a will and moral sense of their own, moral evil commences. There is no attempt to deny the reality—quoad us—of evil; but it is the inevitable result of the transgression of the unchanging laws of nature. It is quite admitted that the recuperative energies (the law of the reconstruction of the efficient out of the effete) of p. 144 nature often (perhaps always in the long run) bring good out of evil, just as the putrefying corpse is made a source of fertilisation: but the evil is as real as is, to our senses, the loathsome odour of putrefaction.

It is, probably, mainly the reality of evil that leads one section of occultists not merely to say "we can find no God in the universe," but to affirm that there is no God outside this, no intelligent conscious will as a source of the cognisable Laws. For, they argue, if there were, he would be responsible for all the evil, and if so he cannot be God—which means Good.

But another section argue that, conditioned as we are in the universe, we cannot draw any conclusions in regard to, or by any possibility realise or conceive, anything outside that universe, but that at the same time they have a spiritual intuition, through which, though unable to conceive Him, they know that there is such an intelligent conscious will, the essence of all perfection. And they add that why the adepts of the first class have no such intuition is simply because their peculiar psychical self-evolution, their psycho-physical training, renders them as incapable of spiritual intuition as the materio-physical training of ordinary athletes render these incapable of psychical intuition. The man, they say, who trains and develops what, for want of a more exact terminology, I call his psychical powers, so as to guide the laws of nature, control the elementals, and manipulate the astral light, as effectually closes the doors on his highest spiritual perceptions, as the man p. 145 who so trains and develops his physical powers as to win the silver sculls on the Thames. or the champion's belt, closes the doors on his psychical as well as his spiritual perceptions. We students can only sit at the feet of our respective masters and listen. We cannot form any conception of who is right; and one thing is certain, that, who ever be right as to these highest transcendental mysteries, real adepts of either class are almost as superior to ordinary men as these are to monkeys.—Trans.

145:1 It is difficult to understand what is meant here. Surely the laws of mathematics demonstrate that two do not equal and cannot take the place of one. Yet without any conjuring, the occultist doubles or reduplicates things, and that though your observation may have been perfect, and though you have been neither duped nor hallucinated.—Trans.

146:1 This, though reasonable enough a score of years ago, has now become obsolete: plenty of men of learning have of late years witnessed and attested them.—Trans.

147:1 Astral Light, the storehouse of Occult Electricity; the vehicle of the Primeval Chaos.—E. O.

150:1 Of course the six days represent inter alia the six working cycles or circuits of man—the seventh being the cycle of rest.—Trans.

150:2 The correct interpretation. There was no more of a personal God to be found in John's ideas than in our own heads.—E. O.

150:3 We must go back a good deal further than St. Vincent for the "quod semper ubique et ab omnibus."—Trans.

153:1 Or rather of cycles of development either from zero to the monkey-man, or from the monkey-man to Nirvana.—Trans.

153:2 Ingenious but———- —Trans.

154:1 These ever recurring "yets" and "buts" sound odious! He is more than humouring public superstition. He becomes a literary flunkey in his double dealings.—E. O.

1 think my revered friend judges our author not only harshly, in this case, but wrongly. The shield has two sides for the non-believer and the believer. The cause of truth demands that both sides should he seen and understood. Were there not to the believer something inexpressibly sweet and comforting in this sacrament, would billions of men have derived from it their greatest happiness in life, their chief consolation in death? Such consolation, such happiness, may not be for us, but it might almost be said "Væ victis" for those whom TRUTH has conquered. But, be this as it may, the very cause of Truth demands that the court should prove its familiarity with both sides of the case, and its verdict would carry little weight with impartial inquirers, were this not shown. As it is, the powerful rationalistic enunciation of the monstrous character of the real conception, is only brought into stronger relief by the frank admission of the ideal beauty with which Faith is able to veil it for believers.—Trans.

156:1 Quite so, when the priests, as Éliphas always repeats that they should be, are all adepts of the highest occult mysteries, and the doctrines are those of the eternal wisdom religion.—Trans.

156:2 Quite so, when authority really means superiority in spiritual knowledge; but, when leaping down at a -bound from this Utopian church and priesthood of his hopes, into the arena of the Catholic Church as it is, he assails the so-called Old Catholics for their schism, which after all is a step, if a small one, towards Reason and Truth, it is he who becomes the child and disciple of error.—Trans.

157:1 Very consistent this with what he has said above. Is this his charity?—E. O.

157:2 Perhaps it might be said that the foregoing neither wholly coincides with nor exhausts our conception of the Ideal Church of the Future. But, be this as it may, one thing is certain, viz., that on pain of losing all vitality, it must have nothing to do with "Catholicism," or any other name already bristling with pre-existing conceptions and constituting a cluster of fully developed ideas, prejudices and superstitions.

What destroyed the vitality of Christ's teachings, turned his love and blessing into hatred and curses for mankind, and now makes it necessary to preach anew what he really taught? Simply the disregard of his warning not to put new wine into old bottles. When the fathers of the Christian Church took in p. 158 and to disguise and dress up the occult verities of true Christism in the cast off and tattered garbs of other dead or moribund faiths, they burked the new born child as effectually as though they had buried it with the corpses they despoiled, to furnish it with swaddling clothes.

Theosophy may not be absolutely irreproachable as a name for the Religion of the Future because to scholars it is associated with doctrines and ideas not wholly true, though having affinities with the truth. But, to the mass of mankind the word is a blank without associations, and scholars, unless wilfully, are not to be thus misled. Anyhow it is preferable to any of the names Éliphas Lévi suggests, redolent as all these are of a tyrannical and effete dogmatism.—Trans.

The Great Secret

Paradoxes of the Highest Science: Synthetic Recapitulation: The Great Secret Eliphas Levi The Great Secret NOT to succumb to the unchangeable forces of nature, but to direct them; not to allow ourselves to be enslaved by them, but to make use of them to the benefit of immortal liberty; this is the great Secret of Magic.

Nature is intelligent, but she is not free. The Heavenly bodies have instinctive souls like animals, and impregnate each other; the planets are the seraglio of the sun, and the suns are the docile flock of God.

The earth has a soul which obeys the sun, under the decrees of Fate, and obeys man, instinctively.
But, for man to command the soul of the earth demands great knowledge and great wisdom, or great exaltation. 1 Folly has its prodigies, and these more abundantly than wisdom, because wisdom does not seek prodigies, but tends naturally towards preventing their occurrence. It is said that the Devil performs miracles, and there is hardly any one but him who does perform them, in the sense which the ignorant masses attribute to the word. Everything that tends to estrange man from Science and Reason is assuredly the work of an evil Principle.
The sun has intelligence, but the earth is mindless; 1 without the Sun and the labour of man she would produce nothing. The sun is her impregnator and man her accoucheur, and reluctantly and with a bad grace does she yield to the caresses of her spouse and the attendance of her physician. Animals, ill-organised ferocious beasts, noxious insects, parasitical and poisonous plants, abortions, monsters and plagues, are the fruits of her clumsiness. She resists as much as she can, and her resistance is not a crime; she is but the creature of Law, and serves as a counterpoise to the activity of the sun. According to the hieratic tradition, man, the only son of God, ought to command the earth, but man, having infringed the law of God, has ceased to be free, and slaves are equals before slavery. The soul of the earth 2 is hostile to man, because she feels that he has no longer the right to command her; she resists him and deceives him; it is she who produces dreams, nightmares, visions and hallucinations, favoured in this by fanaticism, drunkenness, debauchery and all nervous disorders; madmen, hysterical women, cataleptics and somnambulists are all under her direct influence. They call her also the astral light, and it is she who produces all the phantasmagoria of spiritualism.

We admit that the name astral light does not perfectly apply to the soul of the earth. This instinctive power of our planet manifests itself by negative electricity and magnetism; positive electricity, heat and light come from the influence of the sun.
The soul of the earth radiates out specially during the night. The light restrains and repels its effluvia. It is at midnight, especially in the middle of the long nights of winter, that phantoms love to appear. 1 A man is not a saint because he has visions, but one may have visions and yet be a saint, and even amongst the saints visions always involve something ridiculous or hideous. St. Teresa was tormented by blood, and believed she saw living walls, which were choking, and a Cherub armed with an arrow to lance them. Marie Alacoque saw Jesus Christ open his chest and exhibit his heart palpitating and bleeding. Martin de Gallardon saw an angel dressed as a footman; the children of Sallette adorned the Virgin with a huge peasant's bonnet, with a yellow apron, and with roses stuck on to her feet. Bernadette Soubirons sees our Lady of Lourdes, dressed like a girl, about to take the sacrament, with a little blue apron and yellow roses planted by the stalks in her naked feet. Berbignier saw Jesus Christ in the midst of several flat candlestick sockets. This vision of candle-stick sockets reappears at Pontmain, where four candles are seen fixed to the wall of the heavens and the good Virgin in the middle of them. Ravaillac saw the sacred wafers fluttering around his head and heard a voice which told him to kill Henry the IV. 1 The instinctive soul of the Earth eagerly demands blood, and favours the exaltations which lead to its shedding. Spectres, like crows, seem to scent from afar off massacres and battles. The death of Cæsar, the civil war which resulted from it and the bloody proscriptions of the Triumvirate were announced by prodigies, of which Virgil speaks. A little before the war of extermination which the Romans waged against the Jews, the Temple was crowded by visions and marvels. The morbid miracles of the convulsionaries, preceded by a short time only the hecatombs of the Revolution, followed by the great wars of the Empire: nowadays the spirits turn jugglers and the dead haunt our salons and become familiar with ladies . . . we have just passed through the war with Germany and the Commune, what have we still to expect?
Man, the child of Earth, remains in magnetic communication with the Earth. He is himself a special magnet, which can indefinitely augment its powers by the combination of imaginations and wills. Then inert objects are magnetised, and, under the influence of the physical soul of the Earth, attracted and ill-directed by man, may displace themselves, be lifted up, and cause cracking noises or raps to be heard; at times even a kind of aerial coagulation roughly models out some fugitive form: people believe they see lights or hands; dreams take to themselves bodies, and nature seems to become delirious: new pythonesses scribble at hazard new oracles, as little serious as those of the ancients: 1 the same causes produce always the same effects.
Will man ever succeed in taming entirely this whirling and devouring animal that we call the Earth? No, so long as he cannot discover a fulcrum for the lever of Archimedes, and so long as the steed is always sure of throwing its rider. In vain man torments the Earth; the Earth will always end by swallowing him up. Hence it is that the grand dream of Prometheus, that is to say of human genius, has always been the secret of Hermes, that is to say the discovery of a panacea for disease, old age and death, 1 The desire for immortality, which has always exercised the human soul, is a protest against our subjection to the voracity of the Earth, but Religion has placed immortality in death, and only flatters herself that she will succeed in releasing from the slavery of Earth that portion of ourselves that she wants to raise to Heaven.
But in the language of symbolism, Heaven is spirit and Earth is matter; Heaven is light and Earth is shadow; Heaven is the good, Earth, the evil; Heaven is paradise, and Earth, hell. The Theologians moreover who believe in a local Hell can find no place for it save in the middle of the Earth, which seems to affirm that evil is materiality.

The Earth is lazy, because she is heavy and material, and, as laziness produces starvation, the earth engenders imperfect species reduced to devouring each other. She loves to produce beings who kill each other, because she fattens on the corpses of her children. Warfare is the inevitable condition of existence on the earth and the raison d’être always definitely pertains to the strongest. Might does not take precedence of Right; it constitutes it. What Darwin calls natural selection is the triumph of might.

Why are there abortions in nature? Why so many imperfect designs if the Creative Power is omnipotent? Because all Force has a Resistance as a Fulcrum, because inertia battles against movement, because shadow must equilibrise light. All is foreseen by the universal sovereign intelligence, and the Providence of God is not a direct and personal intervention. 1 If God does not create animals, he tells the earth to produce them. God has impregnated nature and nature has become a mother, producing unaided; but she husbands her efforts and simplifies her great works; she produces life, and life in its turn works on differentiating forms according to the circumscribing conditions. One effort begets other efforts, one form begets other forms, and progress is only possible through the law of transformation.

These mysteries of nature demonstrate and explain those of Religion which try to the utmost the Human understanding; Divine selection, that is to say, final salvation, coupled with the probable reprobation of the majority; the narrow gate, regeneration or moral transformation, the resurrection or future transformation of the man that now is into a more perfect being. So what has been looked on as calculated to shatter Faith corroborates it, that which one fancied must overthrow Religion reestablishes it. The asserted paradoxes of Darwin explain the oracles of Jesus Christ, and we believe with greater assurance, because we know better what we ought to believe. These truths will sooner or later accomplish the conquest of opinion, and opinion when founded on Truth always carries authority along with it. They begin with condemning Galileo; later they are e’en forced to admit what he asserted, and the Church is none the less infallible, because authority is necessary, and when she transmits her authority to the Pope, the Pope becomes infallible by an infallibility, authoritative, but not miraculous; for an authority may be delegated, a miracle cannot be delegated.
The yearning for Religion is the primary want of the Human soul: it exists side by side with Love, and in Love. "There exist," says Mr. Tyndall, 1 one of the foremost scientific men of England, "there exist other things woven into the tissue of man, such as the sentiments of veneration, respect, admiration, and not only sexual love, to which we have just referred, but the love of the Beautiful in nature, physical and moral, of poetry and art; there is also that profound sentiment that from the first dawn of History and probably for ages anterior to all History, has incorporated itself in the Religions of the world; you may laugh at these Religions, but in any case you only laugh at certain accidents of form, and you will not touch the immovable basis of the religious sentiment in the emotional nature of man. The problem of problems at this present hour is to give to this sentiment a reasonable satisfaction."

The solution of this great problem we believe that we have sufficiently plainly indicated, to enable writers better accredited than ourselves to discover it and give it with greater success to the legitimate aspirations of the world. The spirit of intelligence will come as Christ has promised us, and this will teach us all the Truth.

The doctrines of the highest science, called magic by the ancients, being no longer recognised in our days by official science, can only be presented to it under the name of Paradoxes, a word which signifies things above reason.
Paracelsus, whose name signifies an elevation of thought in some way paradoxical, designated these the Archidoxes, that is to say, things ultra-reasonable or more than reasonable. 1 God is the great Archidox of the universe. Religion is Archidoxal when it appears Paradoxical. Liberty is the Paradox or the Archidox of the human divine.

Absolute reason, absolute knowledge, absolute love, are Archidoxes of the human genius; imagination is Archidoxal in the creation and realisation of its paradoxes.

The Will rushes on to the Archidox and does not halt before Paradox.

Absolute Reason is, like the Divinity, the supreme Archidox of the understanding; the absolute for the mind is the unconditioned reason; the absolute for the heart is infinite perfection; moreover, the beautiful being the refulgence of the true, infinite beauty can only exist in the ideal personification of Truth and Love. This personification, realised in the man, is Christianity, realised in society as a whole it will be Catholicity.
He who said, "I believe because it is absurd," gave us in a paradoxical shape the formula of the Archidox, and, in fact alike beneath and above reason only absurdity is to be found; but the absurdity which lies below is nonsense and folly, while that which floats above is enthusiasm and self-sacrifice. Below the reason of the mass is materialism, above the reason of the scientific is God. Credo quia absurdum!

Let us now complete our Magic Paradoxes by one last one that we will call the Gospel of Science.

Gospel of Science! what an absurdity! As if Science could have a Gospel, a Bible, a Koran, a Zend-Avesta or Vedas. All these sacred books pertain exclusively to religion and the Priests of the several forms of worship, and Science only concerns herself with them, to ascertain their antiquity, authenticity and influence on the History of nations.

There is no true Gospel but that of Jesus Christ, but it is true that there do exist Apocryphal Gospels.

To write in the present day an Apocryphal Gospel would be an anachronism; to seek to give any other dogmatic Gospel but that of Jesus Christ would be a folly and an impiety.

We employ, therefore, the word Gospel as a paradoxical expression, in accordance with the title of this work which is Magical Paradoxes.

The word Gospel signifies happy news, and it would be indeed happy news for the world to learn that science and religion had been definitively harmonised.

But everything comes in its due season, and the world is not saved because an eccentric book has been written.

Occult sciences are necessarily eccentric, for so soon as they cease to be eccentric, they cease to be occult.

A seed is placed within the earth; no one sees it but he who sows it, and when the earth has closed upon it, no one again sees it. Men pass close to where it is hidden, they even walk above it and for long it ferments and germinates in silence. Then a tiny shoot pierces the earth, the shoot divides into two leaves, and between these two leaves a bud appears. Thus it remains for long without any one noticing it. One day it is found that the shoot has become a sapling, then the sapling grows larger and becomes, slowly, a tree.

Then oft-times he who sowed it is himself enveloped in the earth.

He will never gather his fruits from his tree, nor sit beneath its shade.
His body fattens the earth and may cause other trees to germinate; his thought grows in the heavens and will make other thoughts blossom. For nothing dies; all is transformed; that which no longer is, shall be again, but that which was small shall be great, and that which was ill shall be better. 1 This is our faith and hope—AMEN, and so be it!

Colophon

Paradoxes of the Highest Science. By Eliphas Levi. Second edition, revised. Adyar: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1922. First published 1883.

This text is in the public domain.

Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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