Eliphas Levi

Éliphas Lévi
Born Alphonse Louis Constant
(1810-02-08)8 February 1810
Paris
Died 31 May 1875(1875-05-31) (aged 65)
Paris

Éliphas Lévi, born Alphonse Louis Constant (February 8, 1810 – May 31, 1875), was a French occult author and ceremonial magician.[1]

"Éliphas Lévi", the name under which he published his books, was his attempt to translate or transliterate his given names "Alphonse Louis" into the Hebrew language.

Life and work until 1848

Constant was the son of a shoemaker in Paris; he attended the seminary of Saint Sulpice since 1830 and began to study to enter the Roman Catholic priesthood. However, while at the seminary he fell in love and left in 1836 without being ordained. He spent the following years among his socialist and Romantic friends, including Henri-François-Alphonse Esquiros and so-called petits romantiques such as Gérard de Nerval and Théophile Gautier. During this time he turned to a radical socialism that was decisively inspired by the writings of Félicité de Lamennais, the former leader of the influential neo-Catholic movement who had recently broken with Rome and propagated a Christian socialism. When Constant published his first radical writing, La Bible de la liberté (1841, The Bible of Liberty), he was sentenced to an eight-month prison term and a high fine. Contemporaries saw in him the most notorious "disciple" of Lamennais, although the two men do not seem to have established a personal contact. In the following years, Constant would describe his ideology as communisme néo-catholique and publish a number of socialist books and pamphlets. Like many socialists, he propagated socialism as "true Christianity" and denounced the Churches as corruptors of the teachings of Christ.

Important friends at that time include, next to Esquiros, the feminist Flora Tristan, the excentric socialist mystic Simon Ganneau, and the socialist Charley Fauvety. In the course of the 1840s, Constant developed close ties to the Fourierist movement, publishing in Fourierist publications and praising Fourierism as the "true Christianity". Several of his books were published by the Fourierist Librairie phalanstérienne. He also turned to the writings of the Catholic traditionalist Joseph de Maistre, whose writings were highly popular in socialist circles. An especially radical pamphlet, La voix de la famine (1846, The Voice of Famine), earned Constant another prison sentence that was significantly shortened at the request of his pregnant wife, Marie-Noémi Cadiot.[2]

In his Testament de la liberté (1848), Constant reacted to the atmosphere that would produce the February Revolution. In 1848, he was the leader of an especially notorious Montagnard club known for its radicalism. Although it has been claimed that the Testament marked the end of Constant's socialist ambitions,[3] it has been argued that its content is in fact highly euphoric, announcing the end of the people's martyrdom and the "resurrection" of Liberty: the perfect universal, socialist order.[4] Like many other socialists, the course of events, especially the massacres of the June Uprising in 1849, left him devastated and disillusioned. As his friend Esquiros recounted, their belief in the peaceful realization of a harmonious universal had been shattered.[5]

Life and work after 1848

Baphomet, in Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, 1856

In December 1851, Napoleon III organized a coup that would end the Second Republic and give rise to the Second Empire. Similar to many other socialists at the time, Constant saw the Emperor as the defender of the people and the restorer of public order. In the Moniteur parisien of 1852, Constant praised the new government's actions as "veritably socialist," but he soon became disillusioned with the rigid dictatorship and was eventually imprisoned in 1855 for publishing a polemical chanson against the Emperor. What had changed, however, was Constant's attitude towards "the people." As early as in La Fête-Dieu and Le livre des larmes from 1845, he had been skeptical of the uneducated people's ability to emancipate themselves. Similar to the Saint-Simonians, he had adopted the theocratical ideas of Joseph de Maistre in order to call for the establishment of a "spiritual authority" led by an élite class of priests. After the disaster of 1849, he was completely convinced that the "masses" were not able to establish a harmonious order and needed instruction (a concept similar to other socialist doctrines such as the "revolution from above", the Avantgarde, or the Partei neuen Typs.[6]

Constant's activities reflect the socialist struggle to come to terms both with the failure of 1848 and the tough repressions by the new government. He participated on the socialist Revue philosophique et religieuse, founded by his old friend Fauvety, wherein he propagated his "Kabbalistic" ideas, for the first time in public, in 1855-1856 (notably using his civil name). The debates in the Revue do not only show the tensions between the old "Romantic Socialism" of the Saint-Simonians and Fourierists, they also demonstrate how natural it was for a socialist writer to discuss topics like magic, the Kabbalah, or the occult sciences in a socialist journal.[7]

It has been shown that Constant has developed his ideas about magic in a specific milieu that was marked by the confluence of socialist and magnetistic ideas.[8] Influential authors included Henri Delaage (1825–1882) and Jean du Potet de Sennevoy (1796–1881), who were, to different extents, propagating magnetistic, magical, and kabbalistic ideas as the foundation of a superior form of socialism. It has often been noted that Constant's reception of medieval or early modern magical sources has been remarkably superficial and often flawed. This can be explained by the fact that he developed his theory of magic in the particular magnetistic context of the 1850s, building on his earlier theory of a science universelle, a concept that he had developed in a Fourierist-Swedenborgian context. Indeed, many Fourierist became ardent Spiritualists at that time. Constant, however, was highly critical of Spiritualism, thus laying the foundations of an ongoing rivalry between Spiritualists and occultists. The major reason for this was Constant's neo-Catholic background, resulting in a determined Catholic self-understanding. For this reason, Constant equalled ("true") Catholicism and occultism. Developing the neo-Catholic notion of a "primitive revelation", Constant claimed that the Kabbalah and the Tarot were the means to decipher the true essence of the single true, universal religion, which is Catholicism.

Constant commenced to write the volumes of his famous Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie in 1854. It began to appear in several livraisons but was only published in two volumes in 1855-1856. The two books were later combined into one book, which was translated into English by A. E. Waite as Transcendental Magic, its Doctrine and Ritual in 1896. Its famous opening lines, only added in the edition of 1861, present the essential theme of Occultism and gives some of the flavour of its atmosphere:

Behind the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegories of ancient doctrines, behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the seal of all sacred writings, in the ruins of Nineveh or Thebes, on the crumbling stones of old temples and on the blackened visage of the Assyrian or Egyptian sphinx, in the monstrous or marvelous paintings which interpret to the faithful of India the inspired pages of the Vedas, in the cryptic emblems of our old books on alchemy, in the ceremonies practised at reception by all secret societies, there are found indications of a doctrine which is everywhere the same and everywhere carefully concealed.

Lévi began to write in succession Histoire de la magie in 1860. The following year, in 1861, he published a sequel to Dogme et rituel, La clef des grands mystères ("The Key to the Great Mysteries"). In 1861 Lévi revisited London. Further magical works by Lévi include Fables et symboles ("Stories and Images"), 1862, Le sorcier de Meudon ("The Wizard of Meudon", an extended edition of two novels originally published in 1847) 1861, and La science des esprits ("The Science of Spirits"), 1865. In 1868, he wrote Le grand arcane, ou l'occultisme Dévoilé ("The Great Secret, or Occultism Unveiled"); this, however, was only published posthumously in 1898.

Remarkably, Constant would resume to use an openly socialist language after the government had loosened the restrictions against socialist doctrines in 1859. From La clef on, he extensively cited his radical writings, even his infamous Bible de la liberté. He continued to developed his idea of an élite of initiates that would lead the people to its final emancipation. In several passges he explicitly identitied socialism, Catholicism, and occultism.[9]

The magic propagated by Éliphas Lévi became a great success, especially after his death. That Spiritualism was popular on both sides of the Atlantic from the 1850s contributed to this success. His magical teachings were free from obvious fanaticisms, even if they remained rather murky; he had nothing to sell, and did not pretend to be the inititate of some ancient or fictitious secret society. He incorporated the Tarot cards into his magical system, and as a result the Tarot has been an important part of the paraphernalia of Western magicians.[10] He had a deep impact on the magic of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and later on the ex-Golden Dawn member Aleister Crowley. He was also the first to declare that a pentagram or five-pointed star with one point down and two points up represents evil, while a pentagram with one point up and two points down represents good. It was largely through the occultists inspired by him that Lévi is remembered as one of the key founders of the 20th-century revival of magic.

Socialist background and alleged initiation

It was long believed that the socialist Constant disappeared with the demise of the Second Republic and gave way to the occultist Éliphas Lévi. It has been argued recently, however, that this narrative has been constructed at the end of the nineteenth century in occultist circles and was uncritically adopted by later scholarship. Accordings to this argument, Constant not only developed his "occultism" as a direct consequence of his socialist and neo-catholic ideas, but he continued to propagate the realization of "true socialism" throughout his entire life.[11]

According to the narrative developed by the occultist Papus (i.e., Gérard Encausse) and cemented by the occultist biographer Paul Chacornac, Constant's turn to occultism has been the result of an "initiation" by the eccentric Polish expatriate Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński. However, it has been argued that Wronski's influence has been brief, between 1852 and 1853, and superficial.[12] However, this narrative had been developed before Papus and his companions had any access to reliable information about Constant's life. This becomes most obvious in the light of the fact that Papus had tried to contact Constant by mail on January 11, 1886 – almost eleven years after his death. The two did know each other, as evidenced in Constant's 6 January 1853 letter to Hoene-Wroński, thanking him for including one of Constant's articles in Hoené-Wroński's 1852 work, "Historiosophie ou science de l’histoire". In the letter Constant expresses his admiration for Hoené-Wroński's "still underappreciated genius" and calls himself his "sincere admirer and devoted disciple".[13] Later on, the construction of a specifically French esoteric tradition, in which Constant was to form a crucial link, perpetuated this idea of a clear rupture between the socialist Constant and the occultist Lévi. A different narrative has been developed independently by Arthur Edward Waite, who had even less information about Constant's life.[14]

Also, a journey to London that Constant made in May 1854 did not cause his occupation with magic, although he seems to have been involved in practical magic for the first time. Instead, it was the aforementioned socialist-magnetistic context that formed the background of Constant's interest in magic.[15] It should also be noted that the relationship between Constant and the novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton has not been as intimate as it is often claimed.[16] In fact, Bulwer-Lytton's famous novel A Strange Story (1862) includes a rather unflattering remark about Constant's Dogme et rituel.[17][18]

Definition of Magic

Lévi's works are filled with various definitions for "Magic" and the "Magician":

Magic

Magician

Éliphas Lévi's Tetragrammaton pentagram, which he considered to be a symbol of the microcosm, or human being.

Cultural references

Selected writings

See also

Notes and references

  1. ↑ Christopher McIntosh, Éliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival, 1972.
  2. ↑ Strube 2016.
  3. ↑ Chacornac, Paul (1989) [1926]. Eliphas Lévi. Paris. p. 119.
  4. ↑ Strube 2016, pp. 376-383.
  5. ↑ Strube 2016, pp. 383-388.
  6. ↑ Strube 2016, pp. 418-426.
  7. ↑ Strube 2016, pp. 470-488.
  8. ↑ Strube 2016, pp. 523-563.
  9. ↑ Strube 2016, pp. 565-589.
  10. ↑ Josephson, Jason Ānanda. “God’s Shadow” History of Religions, Vol. 52, No. 4 (May 2013), 321.
  11. ↑ Strube, Julian (2016-03-29). "Socialist religion and the emergence of occultism: a genealogical approach to socialism and secularization in 19th-century France". Religion. 0 (0): 1–30. doi:10.1080/0048721X.2016.1146926. ISSN 0048-721X.
  12. ↑ Strube 2016, pp. 426-438.
  13. ↑ Rafał T. Prinke, Uczeń Wrońskiego - Éliphas Lévi w kręgu polskich mesjanistów, Pamiętnik Biblioteki Kórnickiej, Zeszyt 30., Red. Barbara Wysocka. 2013, p. 133
  14. ↑ Strube 2016, pp. 590-618.
  15. ↑ Strube 2016, pp. 455-470.
  16. ↑ C. Nelson Stewart, Bulwer Lytton as Occultist 1996:36 notes that the one surviving letter from Lévi to Lytton "would appear to be addressed to a stranger or to a very distant acquaintance" (A. E. Waite).
  17. ↑ Strube 2016, pp. 584-585.
  18. ↑ Bulwer Lytton, Edward Jones (1862). A Strange Story. 2. Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz. p. 249. Hence the author of Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, printed at Paris, 185-53 — a book less remarkable for tis learning than for the earnest belief of a scholar of our own day in the reality of the art of which be records of history — insists much on the necessity of rigidly observing Le Ternaire, in the number of persons who assist in an enchanter's experiments.
  19. ↑ Lévi, Éliphas; Blavatsky, H. P. (2007). Paradoxes of the Highest Science. Wildside Press LLC. p. 15. ISBN 9781434401069.

Sources

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