Dogma and Ritual of High Magic Part I - Eliphas Levi 1896

The Universal Medicine

CAPUT RESURRECTIO CIRCULUS

The majority of our physical complaints come from our moral diseases, according to the one and universal dogma, and by reason of the law of analogies. A great passion to which we abandon ourselves corresponds always to a great malady in store. Mortal sins are so named because they cause death physically and positively. Alexander the Great died of pride; he was naturally temperate, and it was through pride that he yielded to the excess which occasioned his death. Francis I died of an adultery. Louis XV died of his Parc-aux-Cerfs. When Marat was assassinated he was perishing of rage and envy. He was a monomaniac of pride, who believed himself to be the only just man and would have slain everything that was not Marat. Several of our contemporaries perished of fallen ambition after the Revolution of February. So soon as any will is confirmed irrevocably in the tendency towards the absurd, the man is dead, and the rock on which he will break is not remote. It is therefore true to say that wisdom preserves and prolongs life. The great Master told us: "My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath everlasting life." And when the crowd murmured, He added: "Here the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you are spirit and life." So also, when He was about to die, He attached the remembrance of His life to the sign of Bread, and that of His spirit to the symbol of Wine, thus instituting the communion of faith, hope and charity. Now, it is in the same sense that the Hermetic masters have said: Make gold potable, and you will have the Universal Medicine - that is to say, appropriate truth to your needs, let it become the source at which you daily drink, and you will in yourself have the immortality of the sages. Temperance, tranquillity of soul, simplicity of character, calmness and rationality of will, these things not only make us happy but strong and well. By growth in reason and goodness man becomes immortal. We are the authors of our own destiny, and God does not save us apart from our own concurrence. There is no death for the sage; death is a phantom, made horrible by the weakness and ignorance of the vulgar. Change is the sign of motion, and motion reveals life; if the corpse itself were dead, its decomposition would be impossible; all its constituent molecules are living and working out their liberation. Yet you dream that the spirit is set free first so that it may cease to live! You believe that thought and love can die when the grossest matter is imperishable! If change must be called death, we die and are reborn daily, because daily our forms change. Fear therefore to soil or rend your garments, but do not fear to lay them by when the hour of sleep approaches.

The embalming and mummification of bodies is a superstition which is against Nature; it is an attempt to create death; it is the forcible petrification of a substance which is needed by life. But, on the other hand, we must not be quick to destroy or make away with bodies; there is no suddenness in the operations of Nature, and we must not risk any violent rupture of the bonds of a departing soul. Death is never instantaneous; it is, like sleep, gradual. So long as the blood has not become absolutely cold, so long as the nerves can quiver, a man is not wholly dead, and if none of the vital organs are destroyed the soul can be recalled, either by accident or by a strong will. A philosopher declared that he would discredit universal testimony rather than believe in the resurrection of a dead person, but his utterance was rash, for it was on the faith of universal testimony that he believed in the impossibility of resurrection. Supposing such an occurrence were proved, what would follow? Must we deny evidence or renounce reason? It would be absurd to say so. We should infer rather that we were wrong in supposing resurrection to be impossible. Ab actu ad posse valet consecutio.

Let us now make bold to affirm that resurrection is possible and occurs oftener than might be thought. Many persons whose deaths have been attested legally and scientifically have been found afterwards in their coffins dead indeed, but having evidently come to life and having bitten through their clenched hands so as to open the arteries and escape from their horrible agonies. A doctor would tell us that such persons were in a lethargy and not dead. But what is lethargy? It is the name which we give to an uncompleted death, a death which is falsified by return to life. It is easy by words to escape from a difficulty when it is impossible to explain facts. The soul is joined to the body by means of sensibility, and when sensibility ceases it is a sure sign that the soul is departing. The magnetic sleep is a lethargy or factitious death which is curable at will. The etherization or torpor produced by chloroform is a real lethargy which ends sometimes in absolute death, when the soul, ravished by its temporary liberation, makes an effort of will to become free altogether, which is possible for those who have conquered hell, that is to say, whose moral strength is superior to that of astral attraction. Hence resurrection is possible only for elementary souls, and it is these above all who run the risk of involuntary revival in the tomb. Great men and true sages are never buried alive. The theory and practice of resurrection will be given in our "Ritual"; to those meanwhile who may ask whether I have raised the dead, I would say that if I replied in the affirmative they would not believe me.

It remains now to examine whether the abolition of pain is possible, and whether it is wholesome to employ chloroform or magnetism for surgical operations. We think, and science will acknowledge it later on, that by diminishing sensibility we diminish life, and what we subtract from pain under such circumstances turns to the profit of death. Suffering bears witness to the struggle for life, and hence we observe that the dressing of a wound is excessively painful for the persons who have been operated on under anaesthetics. If chloroform were resorted to at each dressing, one of two things would happen - either the patient would die or the pain would return and continue between the dressings. Nature is not violated with impunity.