A SKEPITCAL
LOOK AT FAMOUS OCCULTISTS By The Notorious Doctor Zoom Zoom
ELIPHAS LEVI (1810 - 1875)
Wrote
several books on the occult, and put a new spin on magic. Born Alphonse
Constant, Levi became a Deacon in the Roman Catholic Church. He found
the vow of celibacy hard to keep, and left the Church to marry a young
girl. The marriage only lasted a year. Levi made abig splash by trying
to make sense of the occult by translating and reinterpreting
(“misinterpreting” would be a more accurate word) medieval grimories.
He basically rewrote them to make old spell-books sound as though they
were sources of hidden wisdom. He transformed them from the
superstitious books that had previously been for slackers, who thought
spirits could be compelled to find buried treasure, or lovesick old men
trying to win the hearts of teenage maidens via magic spells. By Levi’s
reinterpretation for instance, a love charm in an old grimorie might
now be re-written as a “seal to commune with the Olympian spirit of
Venus”. Levi is probably best known for his drawing of the Devil, which
he now called “the god of witches” also known as “Baphomet” or
“The Goat of Mendes”. This drawing is a favorite of occultists of all
types, including Wiccans and Satanists, and no doubt you’ve seen it
previously as it has become somewhat famous.
Under Levi, sorcery was now a religious path...something it had not
previously been. He tried to make the occult more respectable and to
the more naive types, he succeeded. He’s credited with creating the
term “occult” to describe sorcery, fortune telling, necromancy, and all
kinds of spooky weirdness to make it sound less like spooky
weirdness. Levi created a myth that all, occult teachings and
magic practices were all connected. Tarot cards, alchemy, sorcery,
astrology, thecabala, Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, etc., were all part
of a mystical religious knowledge that was handed down from time
immemorial and had been all but lost. Levi was convinced the key to
this knowledge was through ritual magic. Not everyone agrees with his
theory. Occult historian Collin Wilson bluntly called it “a lie” [The
Occult: A History by Collin Wilson, pg.326) . The man who had many of
Levi’s books translated, occultist A. E. Waite, warned readers Levi was
prone to use his imagination...a case of the pot calling the cauldron
black.
Even though Levi wrote extensively
about sorcery, he didn’t actually do things anyone would consider
“magical”. While Levi may have thought of the occult as a science, he
was never able to repeatedly produce results through magic (not even
once) under the observation of others, which would have been necessary
to validate this idea. He traveled to England in 1854, but the English
expected him to be able to actually produce miracles which he couldn’t
do. Although this event ended in failure, he did make a few contacts,
notably author Bulwer-Lytton who gave him a well needed infusion of
cash. Levi returned to France and still continued on as an occultist.
Determined to actually produce magic after this, he later claimed he
had conjured the spirit of Apollonius of Tyana (a Greek mystic who
lived around 30 A.D.) to ask him two questions...obviously, Levi had a
lot of time on his hands. In some accounts of the story, Levi got
so scared when the spirit appeared, he forgot the two questions and
passed out! No one else was present when this incident supposedly
occurred, so it’s possible the story is a deliberate invention of Levi,
or the product of his vivid imagination. He had to prepare for three
weeks before this ritual that included 2 weeks of vegetarian dieting
and a week of fasting. During this three weeks, Levi constantly
meditated on Apollonius and imagined having conversations with him
(visualization). The conjuration itself consisted of a grueling
12 hours of incantations. It’s not hard to believe since Levi wanted
the spirit to appear so desperately, coupled with weakness from weeks
of starving and constantly visualizing the “ghost” that he had simply
hallucinated. Since by his own admission he passed out (which can
happen from starvation), it’s even possible the whole thing was just a
dream. Even Levi later admitted it was possible he had imagined
it. If so, where was the magic? Passing out and having hallucinations
aren’t magic!
Nevertheless, Levi’s books
about sorcery were a big inspiration to later occultists such as
H.P.Blavatsky, A..E. Waite (who translated several of Levi’s books into
English), MacGregor Mathers and the occultists of the Golden Dawn, and
Aleister Crowley. Crowley even declared he was the reincarnation of
Levi, who died in 1875, the same year Crowley was born. Gardner was
familiar with the works of Levi and seems to have followed in his
footsteps; Just as Levi had taken ancient grimories and changed them
from superstitious spell books to repositories of religious wisdom, so
Gerald Gardner later took witchcraft and changed it from nefarious
sorcery to a pre-Christian Pagan priesthood.
Levi did not seem to begin his career in the occult until his wife left
him, which suggests to me that initially he got into the occult for the
reason so many people do, to win back a lost lover through love
spells. I wonder if his wife had never left him what would have
happened. Perhaps he would have never got into the occult in the first
place, and the occult revival would not have lasted as long as it did,
nor had the long reaching impact.
Eliphas Levi; A man with an active imagination who didn’t really have occult powers. .
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