The Science of The Prophets

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


The Science of The Prophets

This chapter is consecrated to divination, which, in its broadest sense, and following the grammatical significance of the word, is the exercise of divine power, and the realization of divine knowledge. It is the priesthood of the Magus. But divination, in general opinion, is concerned more closely with the knowledge of hidden things. To know the most secret thoughts of men; to penetrate the mysteries of past and future; to evoke age by age the exact revelation of effects by the precise knowledge of causes: this is what is universally called divination. Now, of all mysteries of Nature, the most profound is the heart of man; but at the same time Nature forbids its depth to be inaccessible. In spite of deepest dissimulation, despite the most skilful policy, she herself outlines and makes plain in the bodily form, in the light of glances, in movements, in carriage, in voice, a thousand telltale indices. The perfect initiate has no need of these; he reads the truth in the light; he senses an impression which makes known the whole man; his glance penetrates hearts, though he may feign ignorance to disarm the fear or hatred of the wicked whom he knows too well. A man of bad conscience thinks always that he is being accused or suspected; he recognizes himself in a touch of collective satire; he applies it in toto to himself, and cries loudly that he is traduced. Ever suspicious, but as curious as he is apprehensive, in the presence of the Magus he is like Satan of the parable, or like those scribes who questioned tempting. Ever stubborn and ever feeble, what he fears above all is the recognition that he is in the wrong. The past disquiets him, the future alarms him; he seeks to compound with himself and to believe that he is a good and well-disposed man. His life is a perpetual struggle between amiable aspirations and evil habits; he thinks himself a philosopher after the manner of Aristippus or Horace when accepting all the corruption of his time as a necessity which he must suffer; he distracts himself with some philosophical pastime and assumes the protecting smile of Mecaenas, to persuade himself that he is not simply a battener on famine like Verres or a parasite of Trimalcion. Such men are always mercenaries, even in their good works. They decide on making a gift to some public charity, and they postpone it to secure the discount. The type which I am describing is not an individual but a class of men with which the Magus is liable to come frequently in contact, especially in our own century. Let him follow their example by mistrusting them, for they will be invariably his most compromising friends and most dangerous enemies.

The public exercise of divination is derogatory at the present period to a veritable adept, for he would be frequently driven to jugglery and sleight of hand in order to keep his clients and impress his public. Accredited diviners, both male and female, have always secret spies, who instruct them as to the private life or habits of those who consult them. A code of signals is established between cabinet and antechamber; an unknown applicant receives a number at his first visit; a day is arranged, and he is followed; door-keepers, neighbours, servants are engaged in gossip, and details are thus arrived at which overwhelm simple minds, leading them to invest an impostor with the reverence which should be reserved for true science and genuine divination.

The divination of events to come is possible only in the case of those the realization of which is in some sense contained in their cause. The soul, scrutinizing by means of the whole nervous system the circle of the Astral Light, which influences a man and from him receives an influence; the soul of the diviner, we repeat, can comprehend by a single intuition all the loves and hatreds which such a person has evoked about him; it can read his intentions in his thoughts, foresee obstacles that he will encounter, possibly the violent death which awaits him; but it cannot divine his private, voluntary, capricious determinations of the moment following consultation, unless indeed the ruse of the diviner itself prepares the fulfilment of the prophecy. For example, you say to a woman who is on the wane and is anxious to secure a husband: You will be present this evening or tomorrow evening at such or such a performance, and you will there see a man who will be to your liking. This man will observe you, and by a curious combination of circumstances the result will be a marriage.

You may count on the lady going, you may count on her seeing a man and believing that he has noticed her, you may count on her anticipating marriage. It may not come to that in the end, but she will not lay the blame on you, because she would be giving up the opportunity for another illusion: on the contrary, she will return diligently to consult you.

We have said that the Astral Light is the great book of divinations; the faculty of reading therein is either natural or acquired, and there are hence two classes of seers, the instinctive and the initiated. This is why children, uneducated people, shepherds, even idiots, have more aptitude for natural divination than scholars and thinkers. The simple herd-boy David was a prophet even as Solomon, king of Kabalists and Magi. The perceptions of instinct are often as certain as those of science; those who are least clairvoyant in the Astral Light are those who reason most. Somnambulism is a state of pure instinct, and hence somnambulists require to be directed by a seer of science: sceptics and reasoners merely lead them astray. Divinatory vision operates only in the ecstatic state, to arrive at which doubt and illusion must be rendered impossible by enchaining or putting to sleep thought. The instruments of divination are hence only auto-magnetic methods and pretexts for auto-isolation from exterior light, so that we may pay attention to the interior light alone. It was for this reason that Apollonius enveloped himself completely in a woollen mantle and fixed his eyes on his navel in the dark. The magical mirror of Dupotet is kindred to the device of Apollonius. Hydromancy and vision in the thumb-nail, when it has been polished and blackened, are varieties of the magical mirror. Perfumes and evocations still thought; water and the colour black absorb the visual rays; a kind of dazzlement and vertigo ensue, followed by lucidity in subjects who have a natural aptitude or are suitably disposed in this direction. Geomancy and cartomancy are other means to the same end; combinations of symbols and numbers, which are at once fortuitous and necessary, bear sufficient resemblance to the chances of destiny for the imagination to perceive realities by the pretext of such emblems. The more the interest is excited, the greater is the desire to see; the fuller the confidence in the intuition, the more clear the vision becomes. To combine the points of geomancy on chance or to set out the cards for trifling purposes is to jest like children: the lots become oracles only when they are magnetized by intelligence and directed by faith.

Of all oracles, the Tarot is the most astounding in its answers, because all possible combinations of this universal key of the Kabalah give oracles of science and of truth as their solutions. The Tarot was the sole book of the ancient Magi; it is the primitive Bible, as we shall prove in the following chapter, and the ancients consulted it as the first Christians at a later date consulted the Sacred Lots, that is, Bible verses selected by chance and determined by thinking of a number. Mlle. Lenormand, the most celebrated of our modern fortune-tellers, was unacquainted with the science of the Tarot, or knew it only by derivation from Etteilla, whose explanations are shadows cast upon a back-ground of light. She knew neither high Magic nor the Kabalah, but her head was filled with ill-digested erudition, and she was intuitive by instinct, which deceived her rarely. The works she left behind her are Legitimist tomfoolery, ornamented with classical quotations; but her oracles, inspired by the presence and magnetism of those who consulted her, were often astounding. She was a woman in whom extravagance of imagination and mental rambling were substituted for the natural affections of her sex; she lived and died a virgin, like the ancient druidesses of the isle of Sayne. Had Nature endowed her with beauty, she might have played easily at a remoter epoch the part of a Melusine or a Velleda.

The more ceremonies are employed in the practice of divination, the more we stimulate imagination both in ourselves and in those who consult us. The CONJURATION Of THe Four, the Prayer Of Solomon, the magic sword to disperse phantoms, may then be resorted to with success; we should also evoke the genius of the day and hour of operation, and offer him a special perfume; next we should enter into magnetic and intuitive correspondence with the consultant, inquiring with what animal he is in sympathy and with what in antipathy, as also concerning his favourite flower or colour. Flowers, colours and animals connect in analogical classification with the seven genii of the Kabalah. Those who like blue are idealists and dreamers; lovers of red are material and passionate; those who prefer yellow are fantastic and capricious; admirers of green are often commercial and crafty; the friends of black are influenced by Saturn; the rose is the colour of Venus, etc. Lovers of the horse are hard-working, noble in character, and at the same time yielding and gentle; friends of the dog are affectionate and faithful; those of the cat are independent and libertine. Frank persons hold spiders in special horror; those of a proud nature are antipathetic to the serpent; upright and fastidious people cannot tolerate rats and mice, the voluptuous loathe the toad, because it is cold, solitary, hideous and miserable. Flowers have analogous sympathies to those of animals and colours, and as Magic is the science of universal analogies, a single taste, one tendency, in a given person, enables all the rest to be divined: it is an application of the analogical anatomy of Cuvier to phenomena in the moral order.

The physiognomy of face and body, wrinkles on the brow, lines on hands, furnish the Magus also with precious indications. Metoposcopy and chiromancy have become separate sciences; their findings, purely empirical and conjectural, have been compared, examined and combined as a body of doctrine by Goclenius, Belot, Romphilus, Indagine and Taisnier. The work of the last-mentioned writer is the most important and complete; he combines and criticizes the observations and conjectures of all the others. A modern investigator, the Chevalier D'Arpentigny, has imparted to chiromancy a fresh degree of certitude by his remarks on the analogies which really exist between the characters of persons and the form of their hands, as a whole or in detail. This new science has been developed and verified further by an artist who is also a man of letters, rich in originality and skill. The disciple has surpassed the master, and our amiable and spiritual Desbar-rolles, one of those travellers with whom our great novelist Alexandre Damas delights to surround himself in his cosmopolitan romances, is quoted already as a veritable magician in chiromancy.

The querent should be questioned also upon his habitual dreams; dreams are the reflection of life, both interior and exterior. They were considered with serious attention by the old philosophers; patriarchs regarded them as certain revelations; most religious revelations have been given in dreams. The monsters of perdition are nightmares of Christianity, and as the author of Smarra has observed ingeniously, never could pencil or chisel have produced such prodigies if they had not been beheld in sleep. We should beware of persons whose imagination continually reflects deformities. Temperament is, in like manner, manifested by dreams, and as this exercises a permanent influence upon life, it is necessary to be well acquainted therewith, if we would conjecture a destiny with certitude. Dreams of blood, of enjoyment, and of light indicate a sanguine temperament; those of water, mud, rain, tears, are characteristic of a more phlegmatic disposition; nocturnal fire, darkness, terrors, spectres, belong to the bilious and melancholic. Syn-esius, one of the greatest Christian bishops of the first centuries, the disciple of that beautiful and pure Hypatia who was massacred by fanatics after presiding gloriously over the school of Alexandria, in the inheritance of which school Christianity should have shared - Synesius, lyric poet like Pindar and Callimachus, priest like Orpheus, Christian like Spiridion of Tremithonte - has left us a treatise on dreams which has been the subject of a commentary by Cardan. No one concerns themselves now with these magnificent researches of the mind because successive fanaticisms have well-nigh forced the world to despair of scientific and religious rationalism. St. Paul burned Trismegistus; Omar burned the disciples of Trismegistus and St. Paul. O Persecutors! O incendiaries! O scoffers! When will ye end your work of darkness and destruction?

One of the greatest Magi of the Christian era, Trithemius, irreproachable abbot of a Benedictine monastery, learned theologian and master of Cornelius Agrippa, has left among his disesteemed but inestimable works, a treatise entitled, “De Septem Secundiis”, id est intelligentiis sive spiritibus orbes post Deum moventi-bus. It is a key of all prophecies new or old, a mathematical, historical and simple method of surpassing Isaiah and Jeremiah in the prevision of all great events to come. The author in bold outline sketches the philosophy of history, and divides the existence of the entire world between seven genii of the Kabalah. It is the grandest and widest interpretation ever made of those seven angels of the Apocalypse who appear successively with trumpets and cups to pour out the word and its realization upon earth. The duration of each angelic reign is 354 years and 4 months, beginning with that of Orifiel, the angel of Saturn, on 13 March, for, according to Trithemius, this was the date of the world's creation; his rule answers to a period of savagery and darkness. Next came the reign of Anael, the spirit of Venus, on 24 June, in the year of the world 354, when love began to be the instructor of mankind; it created the family, while the family led to association and the primitive city. The first civilizers, were poets inspired by love; presently the exaltation of poetry produced religion, fanaticism and debauchery, culminating subsequently in the deluge. This state of things continued till 25 October, being the eighth month of the year A.M. 708, when the reign of Zachariel, the angel of Jupiter, was inaugurated, under whose guidance men began to acquire knowledge and dispute the possession of lands and dwellings. It was also the epoch of the foundation of towns and the extension of empires; its consequences were civilization and war. The need of commerce began, furthermore, to be felt, at which time -namely, 24 February, A.M. 1063 - was inaugurated the reign of Raphael, angel of Mercury, angel of science and of the word, of intelligence and industry. Then letters were invented, the first language being hieroglyphic and universal, a monument of which has been preserved in the Book of Enoch, Cadmus, Thoth and Palamedes, the kabalistic clavicle adopted later on by Solomon, the mystical book of the TERAPHIM, URIM and THUMMIM, the primeval Genesis of the Zohar and of William Postel, the mystical wheel of Ezekiel, the ROTA of the Kabalists, the Tarot of Magi and Bohemians. The invention of arts began, and navigation was attempted for the first time; relations extended, wants multiplied and there followed speedily an epoch of general corruption, preceding the universal deluge, under the reign of Samael, angel of Mars, which was inaugurated on 26 June, A.M. 1417. After long exhaustion, the world strove towards a new birth under Gabriel, the angel of the moon, whose reign began on 28 March, A.M. 1771, when the family of Noah multiplied and re-peopled the whole earth, after the confusion of Babel, until the reign of Michael, angel of the sun, which commenced on 24 February, A.M. 2126, to which epoch must be referred the origin of the first dominations, the empire of the children of Nimrod, the birth of sciences and religions, the first conflicts between despotism and liberty. Trithemius pursues this curious study throughout the ages, and at corresponding epochs exhibits the recurrence of ruins; then civilization, born anew by means of poetry and love; empires, reconstituted by the family, enlarged by commerce, destroyed by war, repaired by universal and progressive civilization, absorbed subsequently by greater empires, which are syntheses of history. The work of Trithemius, from this point of view, is more comprehensive and independent than that of Bossuet and is a key absolute to the philosophy of history. His exact calculations lead him to the month of November in the year 1879, epoch of the reign of Michael and the foundation of a new universal kingdom, prepared by three centuries and a half of anguish and a like period of hope, coinciding precisely with the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and first part of the nineteenth centuries for the lunar twilight and expectation, with the fourteenth, thirteenth, twelfth, and second half of the eleventh centuries for the ordeals, the ignorance, the sufferings, and the scourges of all Nature. We see therefore according to this calculation, that in 1879 - or in twenty-four years’ time - a universal empire will be founded and will secure peace to the world. This empire will be political and religious; it will offer the solution of all problems agitated in our own days, and will endure for 354 years and 4 months, after which it will be succeeded by the return of the reign of Orifiel, an epoch of silence and night. The coming universal empire, being under the reign of the Sun, will belong to him who holds the keys of the East, which are now being disputed by the princes of the world’s four quarters. But intelligence and activity are the forces which rule the Sun in the superior kingdoms, and the nation which possesses at this time the initiative of intelligence and life will have also the keys of the East and will establish the universal kingdom. To do this it may have to undergo previously a cross and martyrdom analogous to those of the Man-God; but, dead or living, its spirit will prevail among nations; all peoples will acknowledge and follow in four-and-twenty years the standard of France, ever victorious or miraculously raised from the dead. Such is the prophecy of Trithemius, confirmed by all our previsions and rooted in all our hopes.