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accomplish the works of science, above all when they affirm that one vessel is
alone needed, when they speak of the great and unique Athanor which all can use,
which is ready to each man's hand, which all possess without knowing it, they
allude to philosophical and moral alchemy. As a fact, the strong and resolute will
can arrive in a short time at absolute independence, and we are all in possession
of the chemical instrument, the great and sole Athanor which answers for the sep-
aration of the subtle from the gross and the fixed from the volatile. This instru-
ment, complete as the world and precise as mathematics, is represented by the
sages under the emblem of the Pentagram or five-pointed star, which is the abso-
lute sign of human intelligence. I will follow the example of the wise by forbearing
to name it: it is too easy to divine.
The Tarot symbol which corresponds to this chapter was misconstrued by
Court de Gebelin and Etteilla, who regarded it as the blunder of a German card-
maker. It represents a man with his hands bound behind him, having two bags of
money attached to the armpits, and suspended by one foot from a gibbet formed
by the trunks of two trees, each with the stumps of six lopped branches, and by a
crosspiece, thus completing the figure of the Hebrew TAU m. The legs of the victim
are crossed, while his head and elbows form a triangle. Now, the triangle sur-
mounted by a cross signifies in alchemy the end and perfection of the Great Work,
a meaning which is identical with that of the letter TAU, the last of the sacred
alphabet. This Hanged Man is, consequently, the adept, bound by his engage-
ments and spiritualized, that is, having his feet turned towards heaven. He is also
the antique Prometheus, expiating by everlasting torture the penalty of his glori-
60 The Doctrine of Transcendental Magic
ous theft. Vulgarly, he is the traitor Judas, and his punishment is a menace to
betrayers of the Great Arcanum. Finally, for Kabalistic Jews, the Hanged Man,
who corresponds to their twelfth dogma, that of the promised Messiah, is a protes-
tation against the Saviour acknowledged by Christians, and they seem to say unto
Him still: How canst Thou save others, since Thou couldst not save Thyself?
In the Sepher-Toldos-Jeshu, an anti-Christian rabbinical compilation, there
occurs a singular parable. Jeshu, says the rabbinical author of the legend, was
travelling with Simon-Barjona and Judas Iscariot. Late and weary they came to a
lonely house, and, being very hungry, could find nothing to eat except an exceed-
ingly lean gosling. It was insufficient for three persons, and to divide it would be
to sharpen without satisfying hunger. They agreed to draw lots, but as they were
heavy with sleep: Let us first of all slumber, said Jeshu, whilst the supper is
preparing; when we wake we will tell our dreams, and he who has had the most
beautiful dream shall have the whole gosling to his own share. So it was
arranged; they slept and they woke. As for me, said St. Peter, I dreamed that I
was the vicar of God. And I, said Jeshu, that I was God himself. For me,
said Judas hypocritically, I dreamed that, being in somnambulism, I arose, went
softly downstairs, took the gosling from the spit, and ate it. Thereupon they also
went down, but the gosling had vanished altogether. Judas had a waking dream.
This anecdote is given, not in the text of the Sepher-Toldos-Jeshu itself, but in
the rabbinical commentaries on that work. The legend is a protest of Jewish posi-
tivism against Christian mysticism. As a fact, while the faithful surrendered them-
selves to magnificent dreams, the proscribed Israelite, Judas of the Christian
civilization, worked, sold, intrigued, became rich, possessed himself of this life's
realities, till he became in a position to advance the means of existence to those
very forms of worship which had so long outlawed him. The ancient worshippers
of the ark remained true to the cultus of the strong-box; the Exchange is now their
temple, and thence they govern the Christian world. The laugh is indeed with
Judas, who can congratulate himself upon not having slept like St. Peter.
In archaic writings preceding the Captivity, the Hebrew TAU was cruciform,
which confirms further our interpretation of the twelfth symbol of the Kabalistic
Tarot. The Cross, which produces four triangles, is also the sacred sign of the
duodenary, and on this account it was called the Key of Heaven by the Egyptians.
So Etteilla, confused by his protracted researches for the conciliation of the ana-
logical necessities of this symbol with his own personal opinion, in which he was
influenced by the erudite Court de Gebelin, placed in the hand of his upright
hanged man, by him interpreted as Prudence, a Hermetic caduceus, formed by
two serpents and a Greek TAU. Seeing that he understood the necessity of the TAU
or Cross on the twelfth leaf of the Book of Thoth, he should have seen also the
manifold and magnificent meaning of the Hermetic Hanged Man, the Prometheus
of science, the living man who touches earth by his thought alone, whose firm
61
ground is heaven, the free and immolated adept, the revealer menaced with death,
the conjuration of Judaism against Christ, which seems to be an involuntary
admission of the secret divinity of the Crucified, and lastly, the sign of the work
accomplished, the cycle terminated, the intermediary TAU, which resumes for the
first time, before the final denary, the signs of the sacred alphabet.
62 The Doctrine of Transcendental Magic
XIII a N
NECROMANCY
EX IPSIS MORS
WE HAVE said that the images of persons and things are preserved in the Astral
Light. Therein also can be evoked the forms of those who are in our world no
longer, and by this means are accomplished those mysteries of Necromancy which
are so contested and at the same time so real. The Kabalists who have discoursed
concerning the world of spirits have described simply what they have seen in their
evocations. Eliphas Levi Zahed, who writes this book, has evoked, and he has
seen. Let us state, in the first place, what the masters have written on their visions
or intuitions in that which they term the light of glory. We read in the Hebrew
book concerning the Revolution of Souls that there are three classes of souls the
daughters of Adam, the daughters of angels and the daughters of sin. According
to the same work, there are also three kinds of spirits captive, wandering and free.
Souls are sent forth in couples; at the same time certain souls of men are born
widowed, for their spouses are held captive by Lilith and Naemah, queens of the
stryges: they are souls condemned to expiate the temerity of a celibate's vow.
Hence, when a man renounces the love of women from his infancy, he makes the
bride who was destined for him a slave to the demons of debauch.
Souls grow and multiply in heaven, as bodies do upon earth. Immaculate souls
are the daughters of the kisses of angels. Nothing can enter heaven save that
which comes from heaven. Hence, after death, the divine spirit which animated
man ascends by itself above and leaves two corpses below, one upon earth, the
other in the atmosphere; one terrestrial and elementary, the other aerial and side-
real, one already inert, the other still animated by the universal movement of the
soul of the world, yet destined to die slowly, absorbed by the astral forces which
produced it. The terrestrial body is visible; the other is unseen by the eyes of
earthly and living bodies, nor can it be beheld except by the application of the
Astral Light to the TRANSLUCID, which conveys its impressions to the nervous sys-
tem and thus influences the organ of sight, so that it perceives the forms which are
preserved and the words which are written in the book of vital light.
When a man has lived well the astral body evaporates like a pure incense
ascending towards the superior regions; but should he have lived in sin, his astral
body, which holds him prisoner, still seeks the object of its passions and wishes to
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