Éliphas Lévi Warns the Impudent

Éliphas Lévi, Arthur Edward Waite (T) · Down to Earth Series · 7 pages

Éliphas Lévi in Arthur Edward Waite's translation, presented under the heading “The French Magus warns the impudent.” Its companion in this series, “Lévi on the two opposing forces,” comes from the same translator.

The passage is a warning about who should attempt the operations of the science and in what spirit. Lévi states that they are not devoid of danger and may end in madness for those not firmly established on the basis of supreme, absolute and infallible reason; that excessive nervous excitement can occasion incurable disease, and that swoons and death from cerebral congestion may result from an imagination unduly impressed and terrified. He dissuades nervous and naturally exalted persons, and everyone not habituated to perfect self-control, and singles out as more dangerous still the making of magic into a pastime or a part of an evening's entertainment — magnetic experiments performed under such conditions only exhausting the subjects, misleading opinion and defeating the science. A second warning follows against the desire to convince others by phenomena: the most astounding phenomena would not be proofs for anyone not already convinced, since they can always be attributed to ordinary artifice and the magus counted among conjurors, and to require prodigies as a warrant for believing is to show oneself incapable of the science. He points the reader to the twelfth Tarot key and the symbol of Prometheus, notes that the magi who divulged their works died violently or were driven to suicide, naming Cardan, Schroppfer and Cagliostro, and concludes that the magus should live in retirement and be approached with difficulty — the meaning he assigns to the ninth key, where the initiate appears as a hermit shrouded in his cloak.

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