Constant Alphonse-Louis, Różne

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THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES
(LA CLEF DES GRANDS MYSTERES)
BY
ELIPHAS LEVI
THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES
ACCORDING TO
ENOCH, ABRAHAM, HERMES TRISMEGISTES
AND SOLOMON
BY
ELIPHAS LEVI
TRANSLATED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALEISTER CROWLEY
This is an elaborate symbol in the form of a barrel key. The shank is vertical and to the bottom.
Three flat bits extend to the right, with three projections at the upper edge of each. There is a large
circular ring at top. Down the shank, from top: "R" inverted, Sun, Moon, Mercury, circle (probably
for Mars), Venus, Jupiter and Saturn. Above the top bit: "DEUS", on that bit "rouge". Above the
middle bit: "HOMO", on that bit "blanc". Above the bottom bit: "TORA", on that bit "bleu". The
ring has a "T" above the top, "A" to right and "O" to left (with the "R" on the shank, "TORA").
Outside at the upper left, a cup, upper right a Pantacle, lower right a dagger and lower left a wand.
On the ring itself, the numbers from 1 to 20 arch over the top half, left to right and the Alphabet in
capital letters on the lower half from left to right. Inside, the ring is quartered by horizontal and
vertical diameters. The left upper quadrant has the sign of Aquarius, upper right the eagle head of
Scorpio, lower right the sign of Leo and lower left the bull's head of Taurus. In the center there is a
hexagram made up of two triangles, one apex to bottom and the other to top. The outer three
triangular points of the inverted triangle are shaded. In the heptagon formed in the center is HB:Yod-
Heh-Vau-Heh}
"Religion says: --- 'Believe and you will understand.' Science comes to say to you: --- 'Understand
and you will believe.'
"At that moment the whole of science will change front; the spirit, so long dethroned and forgotten,
will take its ancient place; it will be demonstrated that the old traditions are all true, that the whole of
paganism is only a system of corrupted and misplaced truths, that it is sufficient to cleanse them, so
to say, and to put them back again in their place, to see them shine with all their rays. In a word, all
ideas will change, and since on all sides a multitude of the elect cry in concert, 'Come, Lord, come!'
why should you blame the men who throw themselves forward into that majestic future, and pride
themselves on having foreseen it?"
(J. De Maistre, "Soirees de St. Petersbourg.")
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
IN the biographical and critical essay which Mr. Waite prefixes to his "Mysteries of Magic" he says:
"A word must be added of the method of this digest, which claims to be something more than
translation and has been infinitely more laborious. I believe it to be in all respects faithful, and where
it has been necessary or possible for it to be literal, there also it is invariably literal."
We agree that it is either more or less than translation, and the following examples selected at hazard
in the course of half-an-hour will enable the reader to judge whether Mr. Waite is acquainted with
either French or English:
"Gentilhomme" --- "Gentleman."
"The nameless vice which was reproached "against" the Templars."
"Certaines circonstances ridicules et un proces en escroquerie" --- "Certain ridiculous processes and
a swindling lawsuit."
"Se mele de dogmatiser" --- "Meddles with dogmatism."
"La vie pour lui suffisait a l'expiation des plus grands crimes, puis qu'elle etait la consequence d'un
arret de mort" --- "According to him life was sufficient for the greatest crimes, since "these" were the
result of a death sentence."
"Vos meilleurs amis ont du concevoir des inquietudes" --- "Your best friends have been reasonably
anxious." (The mistranslation here turns the speech into an insult.) {v}
"Sacro-sainte" --- "Sacred and saintly."
"Auriculaire" --- "Index."
"N'avez vous pas obtenu tout ce que vous demandiez, et plus que vous ne demandiez, car vous ne
m'aviez pas parle d'argent?" --- "Have you not had all and more than you wanted, and there has been
no question of remuneration?" (This mistranslation makes nonsense of the whole passage.)
"Eliphas n'etait pas a la question" --- "Eliphas was not under cross- examination."
"Mauvais plaisant" --- "Vicious jester."
"Si vous n'aviez pas ... vous deviendriez" --- "If you have not ... you may become." (This
mistranslation turns a compliment into an insult.)
"An awful and ineffaceable tableaux."
"Peripeties" --- "Circumstances."
"Il avait fait partie du clerge de Saint Germain l'Auxerrois" --- "He was of the Society of St. Germain
l'Auxerrois."
"Bruit de tempete" --- "Stormy sound."
We are obliged to mention this matter, as Mr. Waite (by persistent self- assertion) has obtained the
reputation of being trustworthy as an editor. On the contrary, he not only mutilates and distorts his
authors, but, as demonstrated above, he is totally incapable of understanding their simplest phrases
and even their commonest words.
{vi}
INTRODUCTION
THIS volume represents the high-water mark of the thought of Eliphas Levi. It may be regarded as
written by him as his Thesis for the Grade of Exempt Adept, just as his "Ritual and Dogma" was his
Thesis for the grade of a Major Adept. He is, in fact, no longer talking of things as if their sense was
fixed and universal. He is beginning to see something of the contradiction inherent in the nature of
things, or at any rate, he constantly illustrates the fact that the planes are to be kept separate for
practical purposes, although in the final analysis they turn out to be one. This, and the extraordinarily
subtle and delicate irony of which Eliphas Levi is one of the greatest masters that has ever lived,
have baffled the pedantry and stupidity of such commentators as Waite. English has hardly a word to
express the mental condition of such unfortunates. "Dummheit," in its strongest German sense, is
about the nearest thing to it. It is as if a geographer should criticize "Gulliver's Travels" from his own
particular standpoint.
When Levi says that all that he asserts as an initiate is subordinate to his humble submissiveness as a
Christian, and then not only remarks that the Bible and the Qur'an are different translations of the
same book, but treats the Incarnation as an allegory, it is evident that a good deal of submission will
be required. When he agrees with St. Augustine that a thing is not just because God wills it, but God
wills it because it is just, he sees perfectly well that he is reducing God to a poetic image reflected
from his own moral {vii} ideal of justice, and no amount of alleged orthodoxy can weigh against that
statement. His very defence of the Catholic Hierarchy is a masterpiece of that peculiar form of
conscious sophistry which justifies itself by reducing its conclusion to zero. One must begin with
"one," and that "one" has no particular qualities. Therefore, so long as you have an authority properly
centralized it does not really matter what that authority is. In the Pope we have such an authority
ready made, and it is the gravest tactical blunder to endeavour to set up an authority opposed to him.
Success in doing so means war, and failure anarchy. This, however, did not prevent Levi from
ceremonially casting a papal crown to the ground and crying "Death to tyranny and superstition!" in
the bosom of a certain secret Areopagus of which he was the most famous member.
When a man becomes a magician he looks about him for a magical weapon; and, being probably
endowed with that human frailty called laziness, he hopes to find a weapon ready made. Thus we
find the Christian Magus who imposed his power upon the world taking the existing worships and
making a single system combining all their merits. There is no single feature in Christianity which
has not been taken bodily from the worship of Isis, or of Mithras, or of Bacchus, or of Adonis, or of
Osiris. In modern times again we find Frater Iehi Aour trying to handle Buddhism. Others again have
attempted to use Freemasonry. There have been even exceptionally foolish magicians who have tried
to use a sword long since rusted.
Wagner illustrates this point very clearly in "Siegfried." The Great Sword Nothung has been broken,
and it is the {viii} only weapon that can destroy the gods. The dwarf Mime tries uselessly to mend it.
When Siegfried comes he makes no such error. He melts its fragments and forges a new sword. In
spite of the intense labour which this costs, it is the best plan to adopt.
Levi completely failed to capture Catholicism; and his hope of using Imperialism, his endeavour to
persuade the Emperor that he was the chosen instrument of the Almighty, a belief which would have
enabled him to play Maximus to little Napoleon's Julian, was shattered once for all at Sedan.
It is necessary for the reader to gain this clear conception of Levi's inmost mind, if he is to reconcile
the "contradictions" which leave Waite petulant and bewildered. It is the sad privilege of the higher
order of mind to be able to see both sides of every question, and to appreciate the fact that both are
equally tenable. Such contradictions can, of course, only be reconciled on a higher plane, and this
method of harmonizing contradictions is, therefore, the best key to the higher planes.
It seems unnecessary to add anything to these few remarks. This is the only difficulty in the whole
book, though in one or two passages Levi's extraordinarily keen sense of humour leads him to
indulge in a little harmless bombast. We may instance his remarks on the "Grimoire" of Honorius.
We have said that this is the masterpiece of Levi. He reaches an exaltation of both thought and
language which is equal to that of any other writer known to us. Once it is understood that it is
purely a thesis for the Grade of Exempt Adept, the reader should have no further difficulty. --- A. C.
PREFACE
On the brink of mystery, the spirit of man is seized with giddiness. Mystery is the abyss which
ceaselessly attracts our unquiet curiosity by the terror of its depth.
The greatest mystery of the infinite is the existence of Him for whom alone all is without mystery.
Comprehending the infinite which is essentially incomprehensible, He is Himself that infinite and
eternally unfathomable mystery; that is to say, that He is, in all seeming, that supreme absurdity in
which Tertullian believed.
Necessarily absurd, since reason must renounce for ever the project of attaining to Him; necessarily
credible, since science and reason, far from demonstrating that He does not exist, are dragged by the
chariot of fatality to believe that He does exist, and to adore Him themselves with closed eyes.
Why? --- Because this Absurd is the infinite source of reason. The light springs eternally from the
eternal shadows. Science, that Babel Tower of the spirit, may twist and coil its spirals ever ascending
as it will; it may make the earth tremble, it will never touch the sky.
God is He whom we shall eternally learn to know better, and, consequently, He whom we shall never
know entirely.
The realm of mystery is, then, a field open to the conquests of the intelligence. March there as boldly
as you will, never will you diminish its extent; you will only alter {xi} its horizons. To know all is an
impossible dream; but woe unto him who dares not to learn all, and who does not know that, in order
to know anything, one must learn eternally!
They say that in order to learn anything well, one must forget it several times. The world has
followed this method. Everything which is to-day debateable had been solved by the ancients. Before
our annals began, their solutions, written in hieroglyphs, had already no longer any meaning for us.
A man has rediscovered their key; he has opened the cemeteries of ancient science, and he gives to
his century a whole world of forgotten theorems, of syntheses as simple and sublime as nature,
radiating always from unity, and multiplying themselves like numbers with proportions so exact, that
the known demonstrates and reveals the unknown. To understand this science, is to see God. The
author of this book, as he finishes his work, will think that he has demonstrated it.
Then, when you have seen God, the hierophant will say to you: --- "Turn round!" and, in the shadow
which you throw in the presence of this sun of intelligences, there will appear to you the devil, that
black phantom which you see when your gaze is not fixed upon God, and when you think that your
shadow fills the sky, --- for the vapours of the earth, the higher they go, seem to magnify it more and
more.
To harmonize in the category of religion science with revelation and reason with faith, to
demonstrate in philosophy the absolute principles which reconcile all the antinomies, and finally to
reveal the universal equilibrium of natural forces, is the triple object of this work, which will
consequently be divided into three parts. {xii}
We shall exhibit true religion with such characters, that no one, believer or unbeliever, can fail to
recognize it; that will be the absolute in religion. We shall establish in philosophy the immutable
characters of that Truth, which is in science, "reality;" in judgment, "reason;" and in ethics, "justice."
Finally, we shall acquaint you with the laws of Nature, whose equilibrium is stability, and we shall
show how vain are the phantasies of our imagination before the fertile realities of movement and of
life. We shall also invite the great poets of the future to create once more the divine comedy, no
longer according to the dreams of man, but according to the mathematics of God.
Mysteries of other worlds, hidden forces, strange revelations, mysterious illnesses, exceptional
faculties, spirits, apparitions, magical paradoxes, hermetic arcana, we shall say all, and we shall
explain all. Who has given us this power? We do not fear to reveal it to our readers.
There exists an occult and sacred alphabet which the Hebrews attribute to Enoch, the Egyptians to
Thoth or to Hermes Trismegistus, the Greeks to Cadmus and to Palamedes. This alphabet was
known to the followers of Pythagoras, and is composed of absolute ideas attached to signs and
numbers; by its combinations, it realizes the mathematics of thought. Solomon represented this
alphabet by seventy-two names, written upon thirty-six talismans. Eastern initiates still call these the
"little keys" or clavicles of Solomon. These keys are described, and their use explained, in a book the
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