The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic: A New Translation

1059 Pages·2017·8.11 MB·English

by  Eliphas Lévi

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Copyright ©2017 John Michael Greer and Mark Anthony Mikituk
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lévi, Eliphas, 1810–1875, author.
Title: The doctrine and ritual of high magic / Eliphas Lévi; translated by Mark Anthony Mikituk;
introduction and notes by John Michael Greer.
Other titles: Dogme et rituel de la haute magie. English
Description: New York: TarcherPerigee, 2017. | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016040845 (print) | LCCN 2017002427 (ebook) | ISBN 9780143111030 | ISBN
9781101992746
Subjects: LCSH: Magic.
Classification: LCC BF1612 .C713 2017 (print) | LCC BF1612 (ebook) | DDC 133.4/3—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016040845
Cover design: Tal Goretsky
Cover image: (decorative border) Nicholas Belton/Getty Images; (paper stain)
NadiSpasibenko/Shutterstock
Version_1
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
General Introduction by John Michael Greer
Translator’s Note by Mark Anthony Mikituk
PART ONE
THE DOCTRINE OF HIGH MAGIC
Introduction to the Doctrine of High Magic
Chapter One: The Initiate
Chapter Two: The Columns of the Temple
Chapter Three: The Triangle of Solomon
Chapter Four: The Tetragrammaton
Chapter Five: The Pentagram
Chapter Six: Magical Equilibrium
Chapter Seven: The Flaming Sword
Chapter Eight: Realization
Chapter Nine: Initiation
Chapter Ten: The Cabala
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Chapter Eleven: The Magical Chain
Chapter Twelve: The Great Work
Chapter Thirteen: Necromancy
Chapter Fourteen: Transmutations
Chapter Fifteen: Black Magic
Chapter Sixteen: Enchantments
Chapter Seventeen: Astrology
Chapter Eighteen: Potions and Spells
Chapter Nineteen: The Stone of the Philosophers,
Elagabalus
Chapter Twenty: The Universal Medicine
Chapter Twenty-one: Divination
Chapter Twenty-two: Summary and General Key to the
Four Occult Sciences
PART TWO
THE RITUAL OF HIGH MAGIC
Introduction to the Ritual of High Magic
Chapter One: Preparations
Chapter Two: Magical Equilibrium
Chapter Three: The Triangle of the Pentacles
Chapter Four: The Conjuration of the Four
Chapter Five: The Flaming Pentagram
Chapter Six: The Medium and the Mediator
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Chapter Seven: The Septenary of Talismans
Chapter Eight: A Warning to the Imprudent
Chapter Nine: The Ceremony of the Initiates
Chapter Ten: The Key of Occultism
Chapter Eleven: The Triple Chain
Chapter Twelve: The Great Work
Chapter Thirteen: Necromancy
Chapter Fourteen: Transmutations
Chapter Fifteen: The Sabbath of the Sorcerers
Chapter Sixteen: Enchantments and Spells
Chapter Seventeen: The Writing of the Stars
Chapter Eighteen: Potions and Magnetism
Chapter Nineteen: The Magistery of the Sun
Chapter Twenty: Thaumaturgy
Chapter Twenty-one: The Science of the Prophets
Chapter Twenty-two: The Book of Hermes
SUPPLEMENT TO THE RITUAL
The Nuctemeron of Apollonius of Tyana
The Nuctemeron: According to the Hebrews
Of Country Magic and the Sorcery of Shepherds
Responses to Some Questions and Criticisms
The Religious, Philosophical, and Moral Tendencies of Our
Books on Magic
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Index
About the Translators
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GENERAL INTRODUCTION
John Michael Greer
A
ll things considered, France in the year 1854 hardly seemed a
propitious setting for a revival of the ancient traditions of magic. The
Industrial Revolution launched in Britain a century before had leapt across
the English Channel in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars and transformed
France into one of the world’s major economic powers. French scientists
were on the cutting edge of scores of rapidly advancing fields of
knowledge; railroads and telegraph lines spread across the French
landscape; in the cafés of bustling Paris, members of the comfortable
middle class could sit back, sip café au lait, and read up-to-date news
reports from the front lines of the Crimean War and the Taiping Rebellion.
To many French people, the world seemed in that year to be marching
steadily forwards into a new era of progress and modernity, with western
Europe in the vanguard and France, by many measures, out in front of the
other European nations. Yet this was the year that a previously obscure
French writer published, under the pen name Eliphas Lévi, a book titled
Doctrine of High Magic (Dogme de la haute magie). A sequel, Ritual of
High Magic (Rituel de la haute magie), appeared the next year, and a
single-volume edition that included both books found its way into print
one year later. Nor did these publications languish in obscurity—quite the
contrary. The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic brought Lévi immediate
fame and played a key role in kick-starting a revival of magic that remains
a significant cultural presence today. Though modern occultism has many
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sources and streams, a surprisingly large number of them can be traced
back to these works of Lévi’s busy pen.
Eliphas Lévi’s real name was Alphonse Louis Constant. A shoemaker’s
son, he was born in Paris in 1810, when the Napoleonic Wars were at their
height. He was a frail and studious child with strong religious feelings, and
his parents encouraged him to study for the Catholic priesthood. His piety
and intellectual gifts impressed his teachers to such an extent that once he
became a deacon, he was appointed to a teaching position at the Petit
Séminaire de Paris, a prestigious Catholic school.
This apparent stroke of luck proved fatal to his career in the church,
however. Assigned to teach the catechism to a class of young women, he
promptly fell in love with one of his pupils. While he did not act on the
attraction, the experience convinced him that he was not suited for a
celibate life, and he left the seminary before being ordained. Thereafter, he
supported himself by a variety of odd jobs while making his first efforts
towards a career as a writer.
France in the first half of the nineteenth century was wracked by
political turmoil, with royalist supporters of the house of Bourbon,
imperialist supporters of the heirs of Napoleon, republican proponents of
the ideals of the Revolution, and the first wave of proponents of modern
socialism among the many forces at work in the political smorgasbord of
those years. Lévi was inevitably drawn into political journalism and
proceeded to write his first major work, The Bible of Liberty (La bible de
la liberté), which saw print in 1841. The French governing powers found
plenty of objectionable material in this manifesto of Christian socialism; it
was confiscated by the Paris police an hour after it went on sale, and
Constant was arrested. His trial and eleven-month prison sentence, on a
charge of inciting insurrection, afforded him his first real public exposure.
The years that followed saw Constant leading the ordinary life of an
aspiring writer of the era: taking on an assortment of literary jobs to pay
the bills while pursuing his own studies and a diverse range of interests
during his off hours. Socialist journalism took up much of his time, but he
also put his considerable knowledge of theology and Catholic tradition to
good use, penning a substantial Dictionary of Christian Literature that
remained in print for many years. In 1846 he married Noémie Cadiot, a
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talented young sculptor and author, but the marriage proved unsuccessful
and they separated in 1853.
By that time Constant’s studies had begun to move in unexpected
directions. By 1839 he was a friend of Alphonse Esquiros, a romantic
novelist interested in occultism, and it may have been contact with
Esquiros and his circle that led Constant to begin reading forgotten tomes
on magic and alchemy. He continued writing socialist tracts for a time, but
his unsuccessful campaign for a seat in the newly constituted National
Assembly, after the revolution of 1848, proved to be the last hurrah of his
activist phase. From that point on, he was on the track of something
different—and more profound.
In 1853 he met the most important of his occult teachers. Jósef Maria
Hoëné-Wroński was at once one of the most brilliant and most eccentric
figures in nineteenth-century French intellectual life: the inventor of
Wronskian determinants—still much used in the study of differential
equations—and of the caterpillar tread used to this day for tanks,
bulldozers, and the like. Born in Poland in 1776, Wroński distinguished
himself in the Polish cause when that country was conquered by the
Russians and Germans. By 1800 he was, along with many other Polish
exiles, in France, where he devoted himself to a variety of abstruse studies
for the rest of his life. Occultism was only one of his many interests, but
most of his later books focus on it increasingly, expounding an intricate
system of thought derived from the Cabala, the ancient Jewish tradition of
esoteric philosophy. Constant met Wroński just before the latter’s death,
but their brief acquaintance had a profound impact on the younger man.
It was apparently Wroński who showed Constant that the magical and
alchemical writings he had encountered first by way of Alphonse Esquiros
and his circle were not merely romantic curiosities but embodied a
philosophy of life and a way of understanding the world that had not lost
any of its relevance with the coming of the modern, up-to-date culture of
the 1850s. That realization transformed Constant’s life. Before long, he
was devoting all his spare time to occult study and practice—a detail that
may have had more than a little to do with the failure of his marriage—and
assembling the first drafts of the book that would be his masterpiece. To
distance this new work from his earlier writing, he adopted a pen name
that was simply his own name loosely translated into Hebrew: Eliphas
Lévi Zahed, or, for short, Eliphas Lévi.
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