The Ritual of High Magic: Chapter 19

With this post we continue a monthly chapter-by-chapter discussion of The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic by Eliphas Lévi, the book that launched the modern magical revival.  Here and in the months ahead we’re plunging into the white-hot fires of creation where modern magic was born. If you’re just joining us now, I recommend reading the earlier posts in this sequence first; you can find them here.  Either way, grab your tarot cards and hang on tight.

If you can read French, I strongly encourage you to get a copy of Lévi’s book in the original and follow along with that; it’s readily available for sale in Francophone countries, and can also be downloaded for free from Archive.org. If not, the English translation by me and Mark Mikituk is recommended; A.E. Waite’s translation, unhelpfully retitled Transcendental Magic, is second-rate at best—riddled with errors and burdened with Waite’s seething intellectual jealousy of Lévi—though you can use it after a fashion if it’s what you can get. Also recommended is a tarot deck using the French pattern:  the Knapp-Hall deck, the Wirth deck (available in several versions), or any of the Marseilles decks are suitable.

Reading:

“Chapter Nineteen:  The Magistery of the Sun” (Greer & Mikituk, pp. 364-368).

Commentary:

The beating heart of magic, as Eliphas Lévi understood it, is the secret of the Great Arcanum, the operation that gives the mage control over the astral light. For the last forty chapters—twenty-two of theory and eighteen of practice—our text has been circling around that secret, now hinting at it in one way, now in another, here rejecting a misunderstanding without saying much about the correct understanding that should replace it, there following out one of its applications without letting on anything concrete about the operation itself.

None of this is accidental, and no, Lévi didn’t engage in all this obfuscation to hide the fact that he didn’t possess the secret he spoke about so evasively.  All the evidence known to me suggests that he believed that he had received the genuine secret of the Great Arcanum from his teacher Joseph-Marie Hoene-Wronski.  He had tested his understanding against the ancient myths and the texts of medieval and Renaissance occultism that were traditionally held to enshrine the secret, and also against the ultimate test of magical practice, and it had apparently passed these tests to his satisfaction.

What practical uses he may have made of the Great Arcanum are anyone’s guess, since he followed his own advice and practiced the fourth of the magical virtues, the virtue of silence.  Nor, of course, can anyone who does not already have the secret know if Lévi did or did not have it. Like the mages and alchemists of old, he followed to the letter the tradition that each adept should publish his or her knowledge of the secret in a way that is comprehensible to those who have it and obscure to those who don’t.

“Obscure,” however, is not the same thing as “unreadable.”  The myths, allegorical fables, and intricate symbolic discourses that Lévi studied and wrote about so assiduously include quite a few works that were intended by their authors to speak not only to their fellow adepts but to those students of occultism who are ready to follow the same path. Here, too, Lévi followed the guidance of tradition, and penned a symbolic discourse that displayed his own insights to the adepts and offered certain keys to aspiring students of magic. That discourse, in case you were wondering, is the present chapter.

To make any kind of sense of that discourse, it’s crucial to remember that Lévi is speaking in parables and metaphors.  Two sentences from the very first post in this sequence deserve repetition here:  “If you take Lévi’s narratives in a purely literal sense, as too many people have done, you’ll miss much more than half of what it has to teach. Furthermore, the more literally Lévi seems to be presenting what he has to say, the more suspicious you should be that that he means what he says in a purely symbolic sense.”

Remember that Lévi is trying to lead you by indirect means to what he saw as the greatest of all secrets, the closest approach a human being can make to the attainment of absolute truth and effective omnipotence. He accepted the injunctions of the ancient teachers that this secret was never to be revealed to the ignorant and selfish, and that each student must achieve it by his or her own efforts. The present chapter is a classic example of that most cryptic of all literary genres, the Hermetic initiatory parable.  It can be successfully deciphered, but only if you keep in mind that very little of it can be taken in a literal sense.

Let’s try to lift a veil or two and get a little closer to the secret than Lévi was willing to go on his own. He describes the goal of the Great Work, the Work of the Sun, in these terms:  “To find the absolute in the infinite, the indefinite, and the finite.” Those who know their way around the cosmos of the Renaissance occultists Lévi studied so closely will recognize at a glance what he is saying here. The infinite is God; the indefinite is the created universe, reaching out into unknown distances in all directions; the finite is the individual human being.

You’ll notice that none of these involve any appreciable quantity of metallic gold. Gold is the bait dangling above most of the pitfalls on the path to adeptship. It is certainly the case that the master of Lévi’s Great Arcanum has access to as much wealth as he or she needs, and in Lévi’s own time—since all European countries at that time were on the gold standard, and gold coins were an ordinary medium of exchange—there was a point in describing the adept’s hands as overflowing with gold. None of that, however, came into being in any improbable way. “Nothing can be made from nothing,” our text points out; “one does not create wealth absolutely; one augments and multiplies. Thus aspirants of science well understand that one must not ask of the adept either sleight of hand or miracles.”

The philosopher’s stone about which Lévi and the alchemists write, therefore, is a mystification—but it is a mystification with a profound purpose. When they speak of the philosopher’s stone they are speaking of something utterly real, but it doesn’t happen to be a stone in any ordinary sense, nor does it manufacture metallic gold out of lead—or for that matter out of thin air. “Our stone is not a stone,” the alchemists wrote, and for good measure:  “our gold is not the common gold.”

What is it? Lévi is more than a little daring here, for he is willing to identify certain alchemical factors—not the stone itself, but the essential ingredients that go into the creation of the stone—in so many words. In his understanding, the mercury of the philosophers, which is the universal solvent and the White Queen of alchemical symbolism, is nothing other than the astral light, the great magical agent. The sulfur of the philosophers, which is also their secret fire and the Red King of alchemical symbolism, is intellectual energy refined by concentration and directed by the individual will.

This sulfur must fertilize the mercury of the wise, and this fusion of sulfur and mercury must then descend into the salt that is present in every material thing. That descent transforms the salt and thus the material object in which it resides, creating gold—in some sense or other of that highly symbolic word. This may happen quickly, or it may take considerable time, depending on the relative condition of the matter and the astral light.

All this depends, Lévi reminds us, on a secret operation. He is willing to go a little further and discuss the theory behind that operation. It depends, as he has explained in previous chapters, on the two natural dynamics or motions of the astral light. He sets out these dynamics in a little more detail here. A table may help sort things out:

Both these motions must be in action for the Great Arcanum to be performed. As earlier chapters have suggested, in fact, they must take place simultaneously: in the Great Work, when it is properly performed, there are always paired upward and downward movements, a constant interchange between the volatile and the fixed, in the working of the Arcanum. Something is descending and something is ascending, and the astral light is the medium through which this twofold motion happens.  The glyph of the Great Arcanum, which Lévi gave back in the fourth chapter of the Doctrine, is worth another glance here:

The triangle on top, with the Hebrew letters Yod and Heh in it, represents the fertilization of mercury by sulfur.  The hexagram made from two interpenetrating triangles represents the double movement, while the square-and-circle at the bottom represents the material salt. This is the key to the whole mystery.  Once you have passed through the process of initiation Lévi has outlined in this book, he says, you will have the philosopher’s stone always at your disposal, because the extraction of the stone from its raw materials “is then a simple and easy operation very distinct from projection or metallic realizations.”

Projection, in alchemical jargon, is the process of using the philosopher’s stone in the laboratory, while metallic realizations are the specific alchemical operations in which projection has a role. The point here is that the Great Arcanum need not be put to work in the specific manner the alchemists teach. There is another way of using it, which is specific to the initiate of magic. Again, this magical way is the heart of what Lévi has to teach, and he’s said as much in this chapter as he is willing to communicate.

It’s crucial to keep in mind that Lévi is not just being difficult, or hiding a secret that could as well be passed on in so many words. One of the essential principles of all esoteric traditions is that certain realizations are only possible to those who have done the necessary work. In Zen Buddhism, for example, the koans—riddling statements that appear to trample on all the rules of logic—each have standard answers, and every properly trained Zen master knows them. They are kept private, however, because the mere knowledge of the answer means nothing; the process of awakening that leads the student to discover the answer independently is everything.

The Great Arcanum can be seen as the central koan of Hermetic magic.  Lévi has talked about the secret in a great many ways. In the process, he’s provided more information about it than most traditional sources, and offered guidance that will help the attentive reader avoid some of the more common mistakes. This chapter summarizes some of the basic points, but much more is to be found in the opening chapters of the Doctrine, especially those in which he discusses the Tetragrammaton and the astral light. Close attention to those chapters, especially now that you have a clearer knowledge of the applications of magic, will reveal much.

And if you, dear reader, want to follow the trail Lévi has marked out, through what one of the classic alchemists called “an open door to the closed palace of the King”? He offers a specific course of study meant to reach that goal. Start, he says, by meditating on the principles of the doctrine he teaches—that is, the theoretical material covered in the first half of our text. Proceed from there to read alchemical literature, and in particular the Alchemical Catechism of Baron Tschoudy, which is readily available in French as well as English translation and can be found online here among other places.

As you study these texts, keep in mind what Lévi calls “the unique doctrine of Hermes,” which he has defined elsewhere in the following words:  “The visible is for us the proportional measure of the invisible.” (I recommend going over this sentence repeatedly, word by word.)  To sort out what you learn and direct your practical efforts, in turn, the twenty-two trump cards of the Tarot in the order Lévi gives them form an essential guide.

That is as much as our text is willing to say. In the next two chapters, Lévi will discuss the two most famous applications of magic—healing and divination—and in the final chapter, he will return once more to the trumps of the tarot to offer some final guidance to the assiduous student and a final summary of the principles of his book. His last word on the Great Arcanum, however, has already been spoken in this chapter.  Whether or not you follow up his hints in the traditional manner and unveil the mystery of the ages is, of course, entirely up to you.

Notes for Study and Practice:

It’s quite possible to get a great deal out of The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic by the simple expedient of reading each chapter several times and thinking at length about the ideas and imagery that Lévi presents. For those who want to push things a little further, however, meditation is a classic tool for doing so.

Along with the first half of our text, I introduced the standard method of meditation used in Western occultism:  discursive meditation, to give it its proper name, which involves training and directing the thinking mind rather than silencing it (as is the practice in so many other forms of meditation).  Readers who are just joining us can find detailed instructions in the earlier posts in this series. For those who have been following along, however, I suggest working with a somewhat more complex method, which Lévi himself mention in passing:  the combinatorial method introduced by Catalan mystic Ramon Lull in the Middle Ages, and adapted by Lévi and his successors for use with the tarot.

Take the first card of the deck, Trump 1, Le Bateleur (The Juggler or The Magician). While looking at it, review the three titles assigned to it:  Disciplina, Ain Soph, Kether, and look over your earlier meditations on this card to be sure you remember what each of these means. Now you are going to add each title of this card to Trump II, La Papesse (The High Priestess): Chokmah, Domus, Gnosis. Place Trump II next to Trump I and consider them. How does Disciplina, discipline, relate to Chokmah, wisdom?  How does Disciplina relate to Domus, house?  How does it relate to Gnosis?  These three relationships are fodder for one day’s meditation. For a second day, relate Ain Soph to the three titles of La Papesse. For a third day, relate Kether to each of these titles. Note down what you find in your journal.

Next, combine Le Bateleur with Trump III, L’Imperatrice (The Empress), in exactly the same way, setting the cards side by side. Meditate on the relationship of each of the Juggler’s titles to the three titles of the Empress,  three meditations in all.  Then combine the Juggler and the Emperor in exactly the same way. Then go on to the Juggler and the Pope, giving three days to each, and proceed from there. You’ll still be working through combinations of Le Bateleur when the next Lévi post goes up, but that’s fine; when you finish with Le Bateleur, you’ll be taking La Papesse and combining her with L’Imperatrice, L’Empereur, and so on, and thus moving through all 231 combinations the trumps make with one another.

Don’t worry about where this is going. Unless you’ve already done this kind of practice, the goal won’t make any kind of sense to you. Just do the practice.  You’ll find, if you stick with it, that over time the relationships between the cards take on a curious quality I can only call conceptual three-dimensionality:  a depth is present that was not there before, a depth of meaning and ideation.  It can be very subtle or very loud, or anything in between. Don’t sense it?  Don’t worry.  Meditate on a combination every day anyway. Do the practice and see where it takes you.

We’ll be going on to Chapter 20, “Thaumaturgy,” on January 8, 2025. See you then!