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

The Book of Hermes

The end of our work is upon us; it is here that we must give the universal key thereof and utter its final word. The universal key of magical works is that of all ancient religious dogmas - the key of the Kabalah and the Bible, the Little Key of Solomon. Now, this Clavicle, regarded as lost for centuries, has been recovered by us, and we have been able to open the sepulchres of the ancient world, to make the dead speak, to behold the monuments of the past in all their splendour, to understand the enigmas of every sphinx and to penetrate all sanctuaries. Among the ancients the use of this key was permitted to none but the high priests, and even so its secret was confided only to the flower of initiates. Now, this was the key in question: (i) a hieroglyphic and numerical alphabet, expressing by characters and numbers a series of universal and absolute ideas; (2) a scale of ten numbers, multiplied by four symbols and connected with twelve figures representing the twelve signs of the zodiac; (3) Plus the four genii of the cardinal points.

The symbolical tetrad, represented in the Mysteries of Memphis and Thebes by the four forms of the sphinx - man, eagle, lion and bull - corresponded with the four elements of the old world, water being signified by the cup held by the man or aquarius; air by the circle or nimbus surrounding the head of the celestial eagle; fire by the wood which nourishes it, by the tree fructifying in the heat of earth and sun, finally, by the sceptre of royalty, which the lion typifies; earth by the sword of Mithras, who each year immolates the sacred bull, and, together with its blood, pours forth that sap which gives increase to all fruits of earth. Now, these four signs, with all their analogies, explain the one word hidden in all sanctuaries, that word which the bacchantes seemed to divine in their intoxication when they worked themselves into frenzy for IO EVOHE. What then was the meaning of this mysterious term? It was the name of four primitive letters of the mother-tongue: JOD, symbol of the vine-stock, or paternal sceptre of Noah; HE, type of the cup of libations and also of maternity; VAU, which joins the two, and was depicted in India by the great and mysterious lingam. Such was the triple sign of the triad in the Divine Word; but the mother-letter appeared a second time, to express the fecundity of Nature and woman and to formulate the doctrine of universal and progressive analogies, descending from causes to effects and ascending from effects to causes. Moreover, the sacred word was not pronounced: it was spelt, and expressed in four words, which are the four sacred words - JOD He Vau He.

The learned Gaffarel regards the TERAPHIM of the Hebrews, by means of which they consulted the oracles of the URIM and THUMMIM, as the figures of the four kabalistic animals, which symbols, as we shall show shortly, were epitomized by the sphinxes or cherubs of the ark. In connexion with the usurped TERAPHIM of Michas, he cites a curious passage from Philo, which is a complete revelation as to the ancient and sacerdotal origin of our TAROTS. Gaffarel thus expresses himself: “He (Philo the Jew) speaking of the history concealed in the before-mentioned chapter of JUDGES, says that Michas made three “images of young boys and three young calves, three also of a lion, an eagle, a dragon and a dove, all of fine gold and silver; so that if anyone sought him to discover a secret concerning his wife, he interrogated the dove; concerning children, the young boy; concerning wealth, the eagle; concerning strength and power, the lion; concerning fecundity, the cherub or bull; concerning length of days, the dragon.” This revelation of Philo, though deprecated by Gaffarel, is for us of the highest importance. Here, in fact, is our key of the tetrad, and here also are the images of the four symbolical animals found in the twenty-first Key of the Tarot; that is, in the third septenary, thus repeating and summarizing all the symbolism expressed by the three septe-naries superposed; next, the antagonism of colours expressed by the dove and the dragon; the circle or ROTA, formed by the dragon or serpent to typify length of days; finally, the kabalistic divination of the entire Tarot, as practised in later days by Egyptian Bohemians, whose secrets were divined and recovered imperfectly by Etteilla.

We see in the Bible that the high priests consulted the Lord on the golden table of the holy ark between the cherubim, or bull-headed and eagle-winged sphinx; that they consulted by the help of the TERAPHIM, URIM and THUMMIM, and by the Ephod. Now, it is known that the Ephod was a magical square of twelve numbers and twelve words engraved on precious stones. The word TERAPHIM in Hebrew signifies hieroglyphs or figured signs; the URIM and THUMMIM were the above and beneath, the East and West, the yes and no, and these signs corresponded to the two Pillars of the Temple, JAKIN and BOAZ. When therefore the high priest wished to consult the oracle, he drew by lot the TERAPHIM or tablets of gold, which bore the images of the four sacred words, and placed them by threes round the rational or Ephod; that is, between the two onyx stones which served as clasps to the little chains of the Ephod. The right onyx signified GEDULAH, or mercy and magnificence; the left referred to GEBURAH, and signified justice and anger. If, for example, the sign of the lion were found on the left side of the stone which bore the name of the tribe of Judah, the high priest would read the oracle thus: “The staff of the Lord is angered against Judah.” If the TERAPHIM represented the man or cup and were found also on the left, near the stone of Benjamin, the high priest would read: “The mercy of the Lord is weary of the offences of Benjamin, which outrage Him in His love. Therefore He will pour out on him the chalice of his wrath,” etc. When the sovereign priesthood ceased in Israel; when all oracles were silenced in the presence of the Word made man, and speaking by the mouth of the most popular and mildest of Sages; when the ark was lost, the sanctuary profaned and the temple destroyed; the mysteries of the EPHOD and TERAPHIM, no longer traced on gold and precious stones, were written, or rather drawn, by some learned Kabalists on ivory, parchment, gilt and silvered copper, and, finally, on simple cards, which were always suspected by the official Church as enclosing a dangerous key to its mysteries. Hence came those Tarots, the antiquity of which, revealed to the erudite Court de Gebelin by the science of hieroglyphs and numbers, so exercised later the doubtful perspicacity and persistent investigation of Etteilla. Court de Gebelin, in the eighth volume of his Primeval World, gives sketches of the twenty-two Keys and four aces of the Tarot, and demonstrates their perfect analogy with all symbols of the highest antiquity. He endeavours subsequently to supply their explanation and goes astray naturally, because he does not start from the universal and sacred TETRAGRAM, the IO EVOHE of the Bacchanalia, the JOD He VAU He of the sanctuary, the of the Kabalah.

Etteilla or Alliette, preoccupied entirely by his system of divination and the material profit to be derived from it, Alliette, formerly barber, having never learned French or even orthography, pretended to reform and thus appropriate the Book of THOTH. In the Tarot, now become very scarce, which he engraved, we find the following naive advertisement on the twenty-eighth card - the eight of clubs: “Etteilla, professor of algebra and correctors (sic) of the modern blunders of the ancient Book of Thoth, lives in the Rue de l'Oseille, No 48, Paris.” Etteilla would have certainly done better not to have corrected the blunders of which he speaks; his books have degraded the ancient work discovered by Court de Gebelin into the domain of vulgar Magic and fortune-telling by cards. He proves nothing who tries to prove too much. Etteilla furnishes another example of this old logical axiom. At the same time, his efforts led him to a certain acquaintance with the Kabalah, as may be seen in some rare passages of his unreadable works. The true initiates who were Etteilla's contemporaries, the Rosicrucians for example and the Martinists, were in possession of the true Tarot, as a work of Saint-Martin proves, where the divisions are those of the Tarot, as also this quotation from an enemy of the Rosicrucians: “They pretend to the possession of a volume from which they can learn anything discoverable in other books which exist now or may be produced at any future period. This volume is their criterion, in which they find the prototype of everything that exists by the facility which it offers for analysing, making abstractions, forming a species of intellectual world and creating all possible things. See the philosophical, theosophical, micro-cosmic cards.” (Conspiracy Against the Catholic Religion and Sovereigns, by the author of The Veil Raised for the Curious. Paris: Crapard. 1792.) The true initiates, we repeat, who held the secret of the Tarot among their greatest mysteries, refrained carefully from protesting against the errors of Etteilla and left him to reveil instead of reveal the arcana of the true Clavicles of Solomon. Hence it is not without profound astonishment that we have discovered intact and still unknown this key of all doctrines and all philosophies of the old world. I speak of it as a key, and such it is truly, having the circle of four decades as its ring, the scale of 22 characters for its trunk or body and the three degrees of the triad for its wards. As such it was represented by Postel in his Key of Things Kept Secret from the Foundation of the World. He indicates as shown opposite the occult name of this key, which was known only to initiates.

The word may read ROTA, thus signifying the wheel of Ezekiel, or TAROT, and then it is synonymous with the Azoth of Hermetic philosophers. It is a word which expresses kabalistically the dogmatic and natural absolute; it is formed of the characters of the Monogram of Christ, according to the Greeks and Hebrews. The Latin R or Greek P is found between the alpha and omega of the Apocalypse; the sacred TAU, image of the Cross, encloses the complete word, as represented previously in our “Ritual”. Without the Tarot the Magic of the ancients is a closed book, and it is impossible to penetrate any of the great mysteries of the Kabalah. The Tarot alone interprets the magic squares of Agrippa and Paracelsus, as we may satisfy ourselves by forming these same squares with the keys of the Tarot, and reading off the hieroglyphs thus collected. Hereinafter follow the seven magical squares of the planetary genii according to Paracelsus:

By casting up each column of these squares, you will obtain invariably the characteristic number of the planet, and, finding the explanation of this number by the hieroglyphs of the Tarot, you proceed to seek the sense of all figures, whether triangular, square or cruciform, which you find to be formed by the numbers. The result of this operation will be a complete and profound acquaintance with all allegories and mysteries concealed by the ancients under the symbol of each planet, or rather of each personification of influences, celestial or human, upon all events of life.

We have said that the twenty-two keys of the Tarot are the twenty-two letters of the primitive kabalistic alphabet, and here follows a table of the variants of this alphabet according to divers Hebrew Kabalists:

Being, mind, man, or God; the comprehensible object; unity mother of numbers, the first substance.

All these ideas are expressed hieroglyphically by the figure of the JUGGLER His body and arms constitute the letter ALEPH; round his head there is a nimbus in the form of ^, emblem of life and the universal spirit; in front of him are swords, cups and pantacles; he uplifts the miraculous rod towards heaven. He has a youthful figure and curly hair, like Apollo or Mercury; the smile of confidence is on his lips and the look of intelligence in his eyes.

The House of God and man, the Sanctuary, the law, Gnosis, Kabalah, the Occult Church, the duad, wife, mother.

Hieroglyph of the Tarot: THE FEMALE POPE, a woman crowned with a tiara, wearing the horns of the Moon and Isis, her head enveloped in a mantle, the solar cross on her breast, and holding a book on her knees, which she conceals with her mantle. The protestant author of a pretended history of Pope Joan has met with, and used, for good or bad, in the interests of his thesis, two curious and ancient figures of the Female Pope or Sovereign Priestess of the Tarot. These figures ascribe to her all the attributes of Isis; in one she is carrying and caressing her son Horus; in the other she has long and unbound hair. She is seated between the two Pillars of the duad, has a sun with four rays on her breast, places one hand upon a book and makes the sign of sacerdotal esotericism with the other - that is to say, she uplifts three fingers only, the two others being folded, to signify mystery. A veil is thrown behind her head, and on each side of her chair the flowers of the lotus bloom upon the sea. I commiserate sincerely the ill-starred scholar who has seen in this antique symbol nothing but a monumental portrait of his pretended Pope Joan.

The word, the triad, plenitude, fecundity, Nature, generation in the three worlds.

Symbol, THE EMPRESS, a woman, winged, crowned, seated and uplifting a sceptre with the orb of the world at its end: her sign is an eagle, image of the soul and of life. She is the Venus-Urania of the Greeks and was represented by St. John in his Apocalypse as the Woman clothed with the Sun, crowned with twelve stars and having the moon beneath her feet. She is the mystical quintessence of the triad; she is spirituality, immortality, the Queen of Heaven.

The Porte or government of the easterns, initiation, power, the Tetragram, the quaternary, the cubic stone, or its base.

Hieroglyph, THE EMPEROR, a sovereign whose body represents a right-angled triangle and his legs a cross image of the Athanor of the philosophers.

Indication, demonstration, instruction, law, symbolism, philosophy, religion.

Hieroglyph, THE POPE, or grand hierophant. In more modern Tarots this sign is replaced by the image of Jupiter. The grand hierophant, seated between the two Pillars of Hermes and of Solomon, makes the sign of esotericism and leans upon a Cross with three crossbars of triangular form. Two inferior ministers kneel before him. Having above him the capitals of the two Pillars and below him the two heads of the assistants, he is thus the centre of the quinary and represents the divine Pentagram, giving its complete meaning. As a fact, the Pillars are necessity or law, the heads liberty or action. A line may be drawn from each Pillar to each head and two lines from each Pillar to each of the two heads. This gives a square, divided by a cross into four triangles and in the middle of this cross is the grand hierophant, we might almost say like the garden spider in the centre of his web, were such a comparison becoming to the things of truth, glory and light.

Sequence, interlacement, lingam, entanglement, union, em-brace, strife, antagonism, combination, equilibrium.

Hieroglyph, man between VICE and VIRTUE. Above him shines the Sun of Truth, and in this Sun is Love, bending his bow and threatening Vice with his shaft. In the order of the ten SEPHIROTH, this symbol corresponds to TIPHERETH that is, to idealism and beauty. The number six represents the antagonism of the two triads, that is, absolute negation and absolute affirmation. It is therefore the number of toil and liberty, and for this reason it connects also with moral beauty and glory.

Weapon, sword, cherubic sword of fire, the sacred septenary, triumph, royalty, priesthood.

Hieroglyph, a CUBIC CHARIOT, with four pillars and an azure and starry drapery. In the chariot, between the four pillars, a victor crowned with a circle adorned with three radiant golden pentagrams. Upon his breast are three superposed squares, on his shoulders the URIM and THUMMIM of the sovereign sacrificer, represented by the two crescents of the moon in GeDULAH and GEBURAH; in his hand is a sceptre surmounted by a globe, square and triangle: his attitude is proud and tranquil. A double sphinx or two sphinxes joined at the haunches are harnessed to the chariot; they are pulling in opposite directions, but are looking the same way. They are respectively black and white. On the square which forms the fore part of the chariot is the Indian lingam surmounted by the flying sphere of the Egyptians. This hieroglyph, which we reproduce exactly, is perhaps the most beautiful and complete of all those that are comprised in the Clavicle of the Tarot.

Balance, attraction and repulsion, life, terror, promise and threat.

Hieroglyph, JUSTICE with sword and balance.

Good, horror of evil, morality, wisdom.

Hieroglyph, a sage leaning on his staff, holding a lamp in front of him and enveloped completely in his cloak. The inscription is THE HERMIT or CAPUCHIN, on account of the hood of his oriental cloak. His true name, however, is PRUDENCE, and he thus completes the four cardinal virtues which seemed imperfect to Court de Gebelin and Etteilla.

Principle, manifestation, praise, manly honour, phallus, virile fecundity, paternal sceptre.

Hieroglyph, THE WHEEL Of FORTUNE, that is to say, the cosmogonical wheel of Ezekiel, with a Hermanubis ascending on the right, a Typhon descending on the left and a sphinx in equilibrium above, holding a sword between his lion's claws -an admirable symbol, disfigured by Etteilla, who replaced Typhon by a wolf, Her-manubis by a mouse, and the sphinx by an ape, an allegory characteristic of Etteilla's Kabalah.

The hand in the act of grasping and holding.

Hieroglyph, STRENGTH, a woman crowned with the vital [infinity sign] closes, quietly and without effort, the jaws of a raging lion.

Example, instruction, public teaching.

Symbol, a man hanging by one foot, with his hands bound behind his back, so that his body makes a triangle, apex downwards, and his legs a cross above the triangle. The gallows is in the form of a Hebrew TAU, and the two uprights are trees, from each of which six branches have been lopped. We have explained already this symbol of sacrifice and the finished work.

The heaven of Jupiter and Mars, domination and force, new birth, creation and destruction.

Hieroglyph, DEATH, reaping crowned heads in a meadow where men are growing.

The heaven of the Sun, climates, seasons, motion, changes of life, which is ever new yet ever the same.

Hieroglyph, TEMPERANCE, an angel with the sign of the sun upon her forehead, and on the breast the square and triangle of the septenary, pours from one chalice into another the two essences which compose the Elixir of Life.

The heaven of Mercury, occult science, Magic, commerce, eloquence, mystery, moral force.

Hieroglyph, THE DEVIL, the Goat of Mendes, or the Baphomet of the Temple, with all his pantheistic attributes. This is the only hieroglyph which was properly understood and interpreted correctly by Etteilla.

The heaven of the Moon, alterations, subversions, changes, failings.

Hieroglyph, a TOWER struck by lightning, probably that of Babel. Two persons, doubtless Nimrod and his false Prophet or minister, are precipitated from the summit of the ruins. One of the personages in his fall reproduces perfectly the letter Ayin.

Heaven of the soul, outpourings of thought, moral influence of idea on form, immortality.

Hieroglyph, the BLAZING STAR and eternal youth. We have described this symbol previously.

The elements, the visible world, reflected light, material forms, symbolism.

Hieroglyph, the MOON, dew, a crab rising in the water towards land, a dog and wolf barking at the moon and chained to the base of two towers, a path lost in the horizon and sprinkled with blood.

Composites, the head, apex, prince of heaven.

Hieroglyph, a radiant SUN and two naked children, taking hands in a fortified enclosure. Other Tarots substitute a spinner unwinding destinies, and yet others a naked child mounted on a white horse and displaying a scarlet standard.

Vegetative principle, generative virtue of the earth, eternal life.

Hieroglyph, THE JUDGEMENT. A genius sounds his trumphet and the dead rise from their tombs. These persons, who are living and were dead, are a man, woman and child the triad of human life.

The sensitive principle, the flesh, eternal life.

Hieroglyph, the FOOL. A man in the garb of a fool, wandering without aim, burdened with a wallet, which is doubtless full of his follies and vices; his disordered clothes discover his shame; he is being bitten by a tiger and does not know how to escape or defend himself.

The microcosm, the sum of all in all.

Hieroglyph, KETHER, or the Kabalistic Crown, between four mysterious animals. In the middle of the Crown is Truth holding a rod in each hand.

Such are the twenty-two Keys of the Tarot, which explain all its numbers. Thus, the Juggler, or Key of the unities, explains the four aces with their quadruple progressive signification in the three worlds and in the first principle. So also the ace of deniers or of the circle is the soul of the world; the ace of swords is militant intelligence; the ace of cups is loving intelligence; the ace of clubs is creative intelligence; they are further the principles of motion, progress, fecundity and power. Each number, multiplied by a Key, gives another number, which explained in turn by the Keys, completes the philosophical and religious revelation contained in each sign. Now, each of the fifty-six cards can be multiplied in turn by the twenty-two Keys; a series of combinations thus results, giving all the most astonishing conclusions of revelation and of light. It is a truly philosophical machine, which keeps the mind from wandering, while leaving its initiative and liberty; it is mathematics applied to the Absolute, the alliance of the positive and the ideal, a lottery of thoughts as exact as numbers, perhaps the simplest and grandest conception of human genius.

The mode of reading the hieroglyphs of the Tarot is to arrange them in a square or triangle, placing equal numbers in antagonism and conciliating them by the unequal. Four signs express invariably the absolute in a given order and are explained by a fifth. Hence the solution of all magical questions is the Pentagram, and all antinomies are explained by harmonious unity. So arranged, the Tarot is a veritable oracle and replies to all possible questions with more precision and infallibility than the Android of Albertus Magnus. An imprisoned person with no other book than the Tarot, if he knew how to use it, could in a few years acquire universal knowledge, and would be able to speak on all subjects with unequalled learning and inexhaustible eloquence. In fact, this wheel is the real key to the ORATORICAL Art and the Grand Art of Raymund Lully; it is the true secret of the transmutation of shadows into light; it is the first and most important of all the arcana of the Great Work. By means of this universal key of symbolism, all allegories of India, Egypt and Judea are illuminated; the Apocalypse of St. John is a kabalistic book the sense of which is indicated rigorously by the figures and numbers of the URIM, THUMMIM, TERAPHIM and EPHOD, all resumed and completed by the Tarot. The old sanctuaries contain no further Mysteries, and the significance of the objects of the Hebrew cultus is comprehensible for the first time. Who does not perceive in the golden table, crowned and supported by Cherubim which covered the Ark of the Covenant, the same symbols as those of the twenty-first Tarot Key? The Ark was a hieroglyphical synthesis of the whole kabalistic dogma; it included the JOD or blossoming staff of Aaron, the He or cup, the gomor containing the manna, the two tables of the law - an analogous symbol to that of the sword of justice - and the manna kept in the gomor, four objects which interpret wonderfully the letters of the Divine Tetragram. Gaffarel has proved learnedly that the Cherubim of the Ark were in the likeness of bulls, but he did not know that instead of two there were four - two at each end, as the text expressly says -though it has been misconstrued for the most part by commentators. The eighteenth and nineteenth verses of the twenty-fifth chapter of Exodus should read thus: “And thou shalt make two calves or sphinxes of beaten gold on each side of the oracle. And thou shalt make the one looking this way and the second that way.” The Cherubim or sphinxes were, in fact, coupled by twos on each side of the Ark, and their heads were turned to the four corners of the Mercy-Seat, which they covered with their wings inclined archwise, thus overshadowing the crown of the golden table, which they sustained upon their shoulders, facing one another at the openings and looking at the Propitiatory, as shown in the figure above. The Ark, moreover, had three parts or stages, representing ATZILUTH, YETZIRAH and BRIAH - the three worlds of the Kabalah: the base of the coffer, to which were fitted the four rings of two levers, analogous to the Pillars of the Temple, JAKIN and BOAZ; the body of the coffer, on which the sphinxes appeared in relief; and the cover, overshadowed by the wings. The base represented the kingdom of Salt, to use the terminology of the adepts of Hermes; the coffer, the realm of Mercury or AZOTH; and the cover, the realm of Sulphur or of fire. The other objects of the cul-tus were not less allegorical, but would require a special treatise to describe and explain them.

Saint-Martin, in his NATURAL TABLE of the Correspondences between God, Man and the Universe, followed, as we have said, the division of the Tarot, giving an extended mystical commentary upon the twenty-two keys; but he refrained carefully from stating whence he derived his scheme and from revealing the hieroglyphics on which he commented. Postel showed similar discretion, naming the Tarot only in the diagram of his key to the arcana, and referring to it in the rest of his book under the title of the Genesis of Enoch. The personage Enoch, author of the primeval sacred book, is in effect identical with Thoth among the Egyptians, Cadmus among the Phoenicians and Palamedes among the Greeks. We have obtained in an extraordinary manner a sixteenth-century medal, which is a key of the Tarot. We are doubtful whether it should be confessed that this medal and the place where it was deposited were shown us in dream by the divine Paracelsus: in any case, the medal is in our possession. On one side it depicts the Juggler in a German costume of the sixteenth century, holding his girdle in one hand and a Pentagram in the other. On a table in front of him, between an open book and a closed purse, are ten deniers or talismans, arranged in two lines of three each and a square of four; the feet of the table form two and those of the Juggler two inverted . The obverse side of the medal contains the letters of the alphabet, arranged in a magical square, as follows:

It will be observed that this alphabet has only twenty-two letters, the V and N being duplicated, and that it is arranged in four quinaries, with a quaternary for base and key. The four final letters are two combinations of the duad and the triad, and read kabalistically they form the word AZOTH by rendering to the shapes of the letters their value in primitive Hebrew, taking N for , Z as it is in Latin, V for the Hebrew Vau, which is pronounced O between two vowels, or letters having the value of vowels, and X for the primitive TAU, which had precisely the same figure. The entire Tarot is thus explained in this wonderful medal, which is worthy of Paracelsus, and we hold it at the disposal of the curious. The letters arranged by four times five are summed by the word , analogous to those of and INRI, and containing all the Mysteries of the Kabalah.

The Book of the Tarot, being of such high scientific importance, it is desirable that it should not be altered further. We have examined the collection of ancient Tarots preserved in the Imperial Library, and have thus collected all their hieroglyphs, of which we have given a description. An important work still remains to be done - the publication of a really complete and well-executed exemplar. We shall perhaps undertake the task.

Vestiges of the Tarot are found among all nations. As we have said, the Italian is possibly the most faithful and best preserved, but it may be perfected further by precious indications derived from Spanish varieties. The two of cups, for example, the Naibi is completely Egyptian, showing two archaic vases, with ibis handles, superposed on a cow. A unicorn is represented in the middle of the four of deniers; the three of cups exhibits the figure of Isis emerging from a vase, while two ibises issue from two other vases, one with a crown for the goddess and one holding a lotus, which he seems to be offering for her acceptance. The four aces bear the image of the hieratic and sacred serpent, while in some specimens the Seal of Solomon is placed at the centre of the four of deniers, instead of the symbolical unicorn. The German Tarots have suffered great alteration, and scarcely do more than preserve the numbers of the keys, which are crowded with grotesque or pan-tagruelian figures. We have a Chinese Tarot before us, and the Imperial Library contains samples of others that are similar. M. Paul Boiteau, in his remarkable work on playing-cards, has given some admirably executed specimens. The Chinese Tarot preserves several primeval emblems; the deniers and swords are plainly distinguishable, but it would be less easy to discover the cups and clubs.

It was at the epoch of the Gnostic and Manichaean heresies that the Tarot must have been lost to the Church, at which time also the meaning of the divine Apocalypse perished. It was understood no longer that the seven seals of this kabalistic book are seven pantacles, the representation of which we give (facing this page), and that these pantacles are explained by the analogies of the numbers, characters and figures of the Tarot. Thus the universal tradition of the one religion was broken for a moment, darkness or doubt spread over the whole earth, and it seemed in the eyes of ignorance, that true catholicism, the universal revelation, had disappeared for a space. The explanation of the book of St. John by the characters of the Kabalah will be an entirely new revelation, though foreseen by several distinguished Magi, one among whom, M. Augustin Chaho, thus expresses himself:

“The poem of the Apocalypse presupposes in the young evangelist a complete system and traditions individually developed by himself. It is written in the form of a vision, and weaves into a brilliant framework of poetry the whole erudition, the whole thought of African civilization. An inspired bard, the author touches upon a series of ruling events; he draws in bold outlines the history of society from cataclysm to cataclysm, and even further still. The truths which he reveals are prophecies brought from far and wide, of which he is the resounding echo. He is the voice which cries, the voice which chants the harmonies of the desert and prepares paths for the light. His speech peals forth with mastery and compels faith, for he carries among savage nations the oracles of IAO, and unveils Him Who is the First-Born of the Sun for the admiration of civilizations to come.

The theory of the four ages is found in the Apocalypse, as it is also in the books of Zoroaster and in the Bible. The gradual reconstruction of primeval federations, of the reign of God among peoples emancipated from the yoke of tyrants and the bonds of error, are foretold clearly for the end of the fourth age, and the recurrence of the cataclysm, exhibited at first from afar, is portrayed in the fulness of time. The description of the cataclysm and its duration; the new world emerging from the waves and spreading in all its beauty under heaven; the great serpent, bound for a time by an angel in the depths of the abyss; finally, the dawn of that age to come, prophesied by the Word, Who appeared to the apostle at the beginning of the poem: ’His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.’ Such is Ormuz, Osiris, Chourien, the Lamb, the Christ, the Ancient of Days, the Man of the time and the river celebrated by Daniel. He is the first and the last, Who was, Who must be, ALPHA and OMEGA, beginning and end. He holds the key of mysteries in His hands; He opens the great abyss of central fire, where death sleeps beneath the canopy of darkness, where sleeps the great serpent awaiting the wakening of the ages.”

The author connects this sublime allegory of St. John with that of Daniel, wherein the four forms of the sphinx are applied to the chief periods of history, where the Man-Sun, the Word-Light, consoles and instructs the seer.

“The prophet Daniel beholds a sea tossed by the four winds of heaven, and beasts differing one from another come out of the depths of the ocean. The empire of all things on earth was given them for a time, two times, and the dividing of time. They were four who so came forth. The first beast, symbol of the solar race of seers, came from the region of Africa, resembling a lion and having eagle's wings: the heart of a man was given it. The second beast, emblem of the northern conquerors, who reigned by iron during the second age, was like unto a bear; it had three rows of sharp teeth, images of three great conquering families, and they said unto it: Arise, devour much flesh. After the apparition of the fourth beast, there were thrones raised up, and the Ancient of Days, the Christ of seers, the Lamb of the first age, was manifested. His garment was of dazzling whiteness, his head radiant; his throne, whence came forth living flames, was borne upon burning wheels; a flame of swift fire shone in his countenance; legions of angels or stars sparkled round him. The tribunal was held, the allegorical books were opened. The new Christ came with the clouds of heaven and stood before the Ancient of Days; there were given Him power, honour and a kingdom over all peoples, tribes and tongues. Then Daniel came near unto one of them that stood by, and asked him the truth of all this. And it was answered him that the four beasts were four powers which should reign successively over the earth.”

M. Chaho proceeds to explain a variety of images, strikingly analogous, which are found in almost all sacred books. His observations at this point are worthy of remark.

“In every primitive logos, the parallel between physical correspondences and moral relations is established on the same basis. Each word carries its material and sensible definition, and this living language is as perfect and true as it is simple and natural in man the creator. Let the seer express by the same word, slightly modified, the sun, day, light, truth, and applying the same epithet to a white sun and to a lamb, let him say, Lamb or Christ, instead of sun, and sun instead of truth, light, civilization, and there is no allegory, but there are true correspondences seized and expressed by inspiration. But when the children of night say in their incoherent and barbarous dialect, sun, day, light, truth, lamb, the wise correspondence so clearly expressed by the primitive logos becomes effaced and disappears, and, by simple translation, the lamb and the sun become allegorical beings, symbols. Remark, in effect, that the word allegory itself signifies in Celtic definition, change of discourse, translation. The observation just made applies exactly to all barbarian cosmogonical language. Seers made use of the same inspired radical to express nourishment and instruction. Is not the science of truth the nourishment of the soul? Thus, the scroll of papyrus, or the book, eaten by the prophet Ezekiel; the little volume which the angel gave as food to the author of the Apocalypse; the festivities of the magical palace of Asgard, to which Gangler was invited by Har the Sublime; the miraculous multiplication of seven loaves narrated of the Nazarene by the Evangelists; the living bread which Jesus-Sun gave his disciples to eat, saying, ’This is my body’; and a host of similar stories, are a repetition of the same allegory; the life of souls who are sustained by truth - truth which multiplies without ever diminishing but, on the contrary, increases in the measure that it nourishes.

Exalted by a noble sentiment of nationality, dazzled by the idea of immense revolution, let a revealer of hidden things come forward and seek to popularize the discoveries of science among gross and ignorant men, destitute of the most simple elementary notions; let him say, for example, that the earth revolves and that it is shaped like an egg: what resource has the barbarian who hears him except to believe? Is it not plain that every proposition of this nature becomes for him a dogma from on high, an article of faith? And is not the veil of a wise allegory sufficient to make it a mythos? In the schools of seers the terrestrial globe was represented by an egg of pasteboard or painted wood, and when young children were asked, ’What is this egg?’ they answered, ’It is the earth.’ Those older children, the barbarians, hearing this, repeated, after the little children of the seers: ’The world is an egg.’ But they understood thereby the physical, material world, while the seers meant the geographical, ideal, image-world, created by mind and the logos. As a fact, the priests of Egypt represented mind, intelligence, Kneph, with an egg placed upon his lips, to express clearly that the egg was here only a form of comparison, an image, a mode of speech. Choumountou, the philosopher of the Ezour-Veda, explains after the same manner to the fanatic Biache what must be understood by the golden egg of Brahma.”

We must not despair altogether of a period which still concerns itself with these serious and reasonable researches; we have therefore cited these pages of M. Chaho with great mental satisfaction and profound sympathy. Here is no longer the negative and desolating criticism of Dupuis and Volney, but an effort towards one faith and one worship connecting all the future with all the past; it is an apology for all great men accused falsely of superstition and idolatry; it, is, finally, the justification of God Himself, that Sun of intelligences Who is never veiled for upright souls and pure hearts.

“Great and pre-eminent is the seer, the initiate, the elect of Nature and of supreme reason,” cries the author once more, in concluding what we have just cited. “His alone is that faculty of imitation which is the principle of his perfection, while its inspirations, swift as a lightning flash, direct creations and discoveries. His alone is a perfect Word of rightness, propriety, flexibility, wealth, creating harmony of thought by physical reaction-of thought, whereof the perceptions, as yet independent of language, ever reflect Nature exactly reproduced in its impressions, well judged and well expressed in its correspondences. His alone are light, science, truth, because imagination, confined to its passive secondary part, never governs reason, the natural logic which results from the comparison of ideas; which come into being, extend in the same proportion as his needs, and which the circle of his knowledge enlarges thus by degrees without intermixture of false judgements and errors. His alone is a light infinitely progressive, because the rapid increase of population, after terrestrial renovations, establishes in a few centuries a new society in all the imaginable moral and political correspondences of its destiny. We might add, in fine, that his alone is absolute light. The man of our time is immutable in himself; he changes no more than Nature, in which he is rooted. The social conditions which surround him alone determine the degree of his perfection, of which the bounds are virtue, holiness of man and his happiness in the law. “

After such elucidations, will anyone ask the utility of the occult sciences? Will they treat with the disdain of mysticism and illuminism these living mathematics, these proportions of ideas and forms, this revelation permanent in the universal reason, this emancipation of mind, this immutable basis provided for faith, this omnipotence revealed to will? Children in search of illusions, are you disappointed because we offer you marvels? Once a man said to us, “Raise up the devil, and I will believe in you.” We answered, “You ask too little; we will not make the the devil appear but rather vanish from the whole world: we will chase him from your dreams!” The devil is ignorance, darkness, chaotic thought, deformity. Awake, sleeper of the Middle Ages! See you not that it is day? See you not the light of God filling all Nature? Where now will the destroyed prince of perdition dare to show himself?

It remains for us to state our conclusions and to define the end and import of this work in the religious and philosophical order, and in the order of positive and material realizations. As regards the religious order, we have demonstrated that the practices of worship cannot be indifferent that the Magic of religions is in their Rites, that their moral force is in the triadic hierarchy and that the base, principle and synthesis of hierarchy is unity. We have demonstrated the universal unity and orthodoxy of dogma, vested successively in various allegorical veils, and we have followed the truth saved by Moses from profanation in Egypt, preserved in the Kabalah of the prophets, emancipated by the Christian school from the slavery of the Pharisees, attracting all the poetic and generous aspirations of Greek and Roman civilization, protesting against a new Pharisaism more corrupt than the first, with the great saints of the Middle Ages and the bold thinkers of the Renaissance. We have exhibited, I say, that truth which is always universal, always living, alone conciliating reason and faith, science and obedience-the truth of being demonstrated by being, of harmony proved by harmony, of reason manifested by reason. By revealing for the first time to the world the Mysteries of Magic we have not sought to revive practices entombed beneath the ruins of ancient civilizations, but would say to humanity in this our own day that it is called also to make itself immortal and omnipotent by its works. Liberty does not offer itself but must be seized, says a modern writer: it is the same with science, for which reason to divulge absolute truth is never useful to the vulgar. But at an epoch when the sanctuary has been devastated and has fallen into ruins, because its key has been thrown into the ditch, to the profit of no one, I have deemed it my duty to pick up that key, and I offer it to him who can take it: in his turn he will be doctor of nations and liberator of the world. Fables and leading-strings are needed, and will be needed always by children; but it is not necessary that those who hold the leading-strings should be children also, lending a ready ear to fables. Let the most absolute science, let the highest reason, be the property of the chiefs of the people; let the Priestly Art and the Royal Art assume once more the double sceptre of antique initiations, and the world will re-issue from chaos. Burn no more holy images, destroy no more temples; temples and images are necessary for man; but drive out the merchants from the House of Prayer; let the blind no longer be leaders of the blind; reconstruct the hierarchy of intelligence and holiness; recognize only those who know as the teachers of those who believe. Our book is catholic, and if the revelations it contains are likely to alarm the conscience of the simple, we are consoled by the thought that they will not read it. We write for unprejudiced men and have no wish to flatter irreligion any more than fanaticism. If there be anything essentially free and inviolable in the world, it is belief. By science and persuasion we must endeavour to lead bewrayed imaginations from the absurd, but it would be investing their errors with all the dignity and truth of the martyr to either threaten or constrain them.

Faith is nothing but superstition and folly if it have not reason for its basis, and we cannot suppose that which we do not know except by analogy drawn from the realm of knowledge. To define that which lies outside all experience is presumptuous ignorance; to affirm positively that which we do not know is to lie. So is faith an aspiration and desire. Amen; I desire it to be so: such is the last word of all professions of faith. Faith, hope and charity are three such inseparable sisters that they may be taken one for another. Thus in religion universal and hierarchic orthodoxy, restoration of temples in all their splendour; reestablishment of high ceremonial in its primitive pomp; hierarchic instruction of symbols, mysteries, miracles; legends for children, light for grown men who will beware of scandalizing little ones in the simplicity of their faith: this in religion is our whole Utopia, as it is also the desire and need of humanity.

Coming now to philosophy, our own is that of realism and positivism. Being is by reason of that Being of Whom no one doubts. All exists for us by science. To know is to be. Science and its object become identified in the intellectual life of him who knows. To doubt is to be ignorant. Now, a thing of which we are ignorant does not as yet exist for us. To live intellectually is to learn. Being develops and amplifies by science. The first conquest of science, and the first result of the exact sciences, is the sentiment of reason. The laws of Nature are algebraic. Thus the sole reasonable faith is the adhesion of the student to theorems, the entire essential justice of which lies outside his knowledge, though its applications and results are demonstrated adequately to his mind. So does the true philosopher believe in that which is and does not admit a posteriori that all is reasonable. But no more charlatanism in philosophy, no more empiricism, no more system! The study of being and its compared realities! A metaphysic of Nature! Then away with mysticism! No more dreams in philosophy; philosophy is not poesy but pure mathematics of realities, physical and moral. Leave unto religion the freedom of its infinite aspirations, and let it leave in turn to science the exact conclusions of absolute experimentalism.

Man is the son of his works; he is what he wills to be; he is the image of the God he makes; he is the realization of his own ideal. Should that ideal lack basis, the whole edifice of his immortality collapses. Philosophy is not the ideal, but ought to serve as its foundation. The known is for us the measure of the unknown; by the visible we appreciate the invisible; sensations are to thoughts even as thoughts to aspirations. Science is a celestial trigonometry: one side of the absolute triangle is that Nature which is submitted to our investigations; the second is our soul, which embraces and reflects Nature; the third is the Absolute, in which our soul is magnified. No more atheism possible henceforward, for we pretend no longer to define God. God is for us the most perfect and best of intelligent beings, and the ascending hierarchy of beings demonstrates His existence amply.' Do not let us ask for more; but, to understand Him ever better, let us grow perfect by ascending towards Him. No more ideology; being is being, and cannot perfectionize save according to real laws of being. Observe, and do not prejudge; exercise our faculties, do not falsify them; enlarge the domain of life in life; behold truth in truth! Everything is possible to him who wills only what is true! Rest in Nature, study, know, then dare; dare to will, dare to act and be silent! No more hatred of anyone. Everyone reaps what he sows. The consequence of works is fatal: to judge and chastise the wicked is for the Supreme Reason. He who enters into a blind alley must retrace his steps or be broken. Warn him gently, if he can still hear you, but human liberty must takes its course. We are not the judges of one another. Life is a battlefield. Do not pause in the warfare on account of those who fall, but avoid trampling them. Then comes the victory, and the wounded on both sides, now brothers in suffering and before humanity, will meet in the ambulances of the conquerors.

Such are the consequences of the philosophical dogma of Hermes; such has been from all time the ethic of true adepts; such is the philosophy of the Rosicru-cian inheritors of all the ancient wisdoms; such is the Secret Doctrine of those associations that are treated as subversive of the public order, and have ever been accused of conspiring against thrones and altars. The true adept, far from disturbing the public order, is its firmest supporter. He has too great a respect for liberty to desire anarchy: child of the light, he loves harmony and knows that darkness begets confusion. He accepts everything that is and denies only what is not. He wills true religion, practical, universal, full of faith, palpable, realized in all life; he wills it to have a wise and powerful priesthood, surrounded by all the virtues and all the prestige of faith. He wills the universal orthodoxy, the absolute, hierarchic, apostolic, sacramental, incontestable and uncontested catholicity. He wills an experimental philosophy, real, mathematical, modest in its conclusions, untiring in its researches, scientific in its progress. Who, therefore, can be against us if God and reason are with us? Does it matter if man prejudge and slander us? Our entire justification is in our thoughts and our works. We come not, like Oedipus, to destroy the sphinx of symbolism; we seek, on the contrary, to resuscitate it.

The sphinx devours only blind interpreters; and he who slays it has not known how to divine it properly; it must be subdued, enchained and compelled to follow us. The sphinx is the living palladium of humanity, it is the conquest of the King of Thebes; it would have been the salvation of Oedipus, had Oedipus understood its whole enigma!

In the positive and material order, what must be concluded from this work? Is Magic a force which science may abandon to the boldest and wickedest? Is it a cheat and falsehood invented by rogues to cozen the ignorant and feeble? Is Philosophical Mercury the exploitation of credulity by address? Those who understand us know already how to answer these questions. In these days, Magic can be no longer the art of fascinations and illusions: those only who wish to be deceived can be deceived now. But the narrow and rash incredulity of the last century is denied in totality by Nature herself. We are environed by prophecies and miracles; unbelief once denied them unwisely; now, science explains them. No, M. le Comte de Mirville, a lost spirit is not allowed to disturb the empire of God! No, things unknown cannot be explained by things impossible! No, invisible beings are not permitted to deceive, torment, seduce and even kill the living creatures of God, poor human beings, so ignorant, as it is, so weak, scarce able to combat their own delusions! Those who told you all this in your childhood, M. le Comte, have deceived you, and if you were child enough once to listen, be man enough now to disbelieve. Man is himself the creator of his heaven and hell, and there are no demons except our own follies. Minds chastised by truth are corrected by that chastisement, and dream no more of disturbing the world. If Satan exist, he can be only the most unfortunate, most ignorant, most humiliated and most impotent of beings. The existence of a universal agent of life, a living fire, an Astral Light, is demonstrated by facts. Magnetism enables us to understand today the miracles of old Magic; the facts of second sight, aspirations, sudden cures, thought-reading, are now admitted and familiar things, even for our children. But the tradition of the ancients has been lost; discoveries have been regarded as new; the last word is sought on observed phenomena; minds are agitated over meaningless manifestations; fascinations are experienced without being understood. We say, therefore, to table-turners: These prodigies are not novel; you can perform even greater wonders if you study the laws of Nature. And what will follow a new acquaintance with these powers? A new career opened to the activity and intelligence of man, the battle of life reorganized with arms more perfect and opportunity restored to the flower of intelligence of becoming once more the masters of all destinies, by providing true priests and great kings for the world to come!

Here ends the Ritual of Transcendental Magic