A Dark Muse: A History of the Occult (46 page)

This is also why it is natural for people talking about intelligence and wisdom to speak of "a good head," to speak of someone involved in charity as "a bosom friend," to refer to someone perceptive as "having a sharp nose," someone discerning as "sharp-sighted," someone powerful as "having a long arm," someone who wills something from his love as "willing from his heart."

These expressions, and many others in people's language, stem from correspondence. They actually stem from the spiritual world, though people do not realize it.

The existence of this correspondence between everything heavenly and everything human has been demonstrated to me by an abundance of experience - such an abundance that I am so thoroughly convinced about these matters as to find them quite obvious, beyond any doubt. But listing all this experience is not our task at this point, and the very abundance precludes it. You may find it assembled in Arcana Coelestia in the treatment of correspondences, representations, the inflow of the spiritual world into the natural, and interaction between soul and body.

In spite of the fact that everything physical about man corresponds to everything heavenly, still a person is not a picture of heaven as far as his outward form is concerned, only as far as his inner form is concerned. It is the more inward elements of a person, after all, that receive heaven; his outer elements receive the world. So an individual is inwardly a heaven in least form, a reflection of the greatest heaven, so far as his more inward elements do receive heaven. To the degree that his more inward elements are unreceptive, he is not a heaven or a reflection of the greatest.

Be that as it may, his more outward elements, which receive the world, may be in a form that follows some pattern of this world - with different degrees of beauty, therefore. Outward or physical beauty, that is, goes back to parents and to formation in the womb. Thereafter it is maintained by means of a general inflow from the world. As a result, the form of an individual's natural person may differ radically from the form of his spiritual person.

A number of times, I have been shown what the form of an individual's spirit was like, and with some people who looked lovely and charming, the spirit looked misshapen, black, and monstrous - something you would call a reflection of hell rather than of heaven. With others who were not beautiful, the spirit looked graceful, radiant, and angelic. After death, a person's spirit looks the way it actually was within his body while it dwelt there in the world.

But correspondence includes even more than just man. There is an intercorrespondence of the heavens, the second or middle heaven corresponding to the third or inmost, and the first or outmost heaven corresponding to the second or middle. This first heaven corresponds to physical forms in man, called members, organs, and viscera.

So man's body is where heaven finally leaves off; it is what heaven stands on like a base. But this arcanum will be explained more fully elsewhere.

But the following fact must certainly be known: all the correspondence that exists with heaven is with the Lord's Divine Human, since heaven is from Him and He is heaven, as has been pointed out in the preceding chapters. For unless the Divine Human did flow into all the elements of heaven - and, following correspondences, into all the elements of earth - neither angel nor man would exist.

This clarifies again why the Lord became Man, why He covered His Divine with a Human from beginning to end. This happened because the Divine Human which has sustained heaven- before the Lord's coming was no longer adequate to keep everything going, since man, the "base" of the heavens, had undermined-and-destroyed the pattern.

Angels are baffled when they hear that there actually are people who ascribe everything to nature and nothing to the Divine, people who believe that their bodies, where so many heavenly marvels are assembled, are just put together out of natural elements -- who believe nature to be the source even of man's rationality.

Yet if only they could raise their minds a bit, they would see that things like this are from the Divine, not from nature, that nature was created simply to clothe the spiritual, to act as its correspondent and to give it presence in the lowest realm of the overall design. Angels compare people like this to owls, who see in the dark but not in the light.

From Transcendental Magic

ELIPHAS LEVI

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 marvellous 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. Occult philosophy seems to have been the nurse or god-mother of all intellectual forces, the key of all divine obscurities and the absolute queen of society in those ages when it was reserved exclusively for the education of priests and of kings. It reigned in Persia with the Magi, who perished in the end, as perish all masters of the world, because they abused their power; it endowed India with the most wonderful traditions and with an incredible wealth of poesy, grace and terror in its emblems; it civilised Greece to the music of the lyre of Orpheus; it concealed the principles of all sciences, all progress of the human mind, in the daring calculations of Pythagoras; fable abounded in its miracles, and history, attempting to estimate this unknown power, became confused with fable; it undermined or consolidated empires by its oracles, caused tyrants to tremble on their thrones and governed all minds, either by curiosity or by fear. For this science, said the crowd, there is nothing impossible; it commands the elements, knows the language of the stars and directs the planetary courses; when it speaks, the moon falls blood-red from heaven; the dead rise in their graves and mutter ominous words, as the night wind blows through their skulls. Mistress of love or of hate, occult science can dispense paradise or hell at its pleasure to human hearts; it disposes of all forms and confers beauty or ugliness; with the wand of Circe it changes men into brutes and animals alternatively into men; it disposes even of life and death, can confer wealth on its adepts by the transmutation of metals and immortality by its quintessence or elixir, compounded of gold and light.

Such was Magic from Zoraster to Manes, from Orpheus to Apollonius of Tyana ...

I testify that in fine there is one sole, universal and imperishable dogma, strong as supreme reason; simple, like all that is great, intelligible, like all that is universally and absolutely true; and this dogma is the parent of all others. There is also a science which confers on man powers apparently superhuman ...

To attain the SANCTUM REGNUM, in other words, the knowledge and power of the Magi, there are four indispensable conditions - an intelligence illuminated by study, an intrepidity which nothing can check, a will which cannot be broke, and a prudence which nothing can corrupt and nothing intoxicate. TO KNOW, TO DARE, TO WILL, TO KEEP SILENCE - such are the four words of Magus, inscribed upon the four symbolical forms of the sphinx. These maxims can be combined after four manners and explained four times by one another ...

There is no invisible world; there are, however, many degrees of perfection in organs. The body is the coarse and, as it were, the perishable cortex of the soul. The soul can perceive of itself, and independently of the mediation of the physical organs ... the things, both spiritual and corporeal, which are existent in the universe ... What is called the imagination within us is only the soul's inherent faculty of assimilating the images and reflections contained in the living light, being the Great Magnetic Agent ... The man of genius differs from the dreamer and the fool in this only, that his creations are analogous to truth, while those of the fool and the dreamer are lost reflections and betrayed images. Hence, for the wise man, to imagine is to see, as, for the magician, to speak is to create ... but the imagination of the adept is diaphanous, whilst that of the crowd is opaque ...

... the Astral Light, or terrestrial fluid, which we call the Great Magnetic Agent, is saturated with all kinds of images or reflections ... Such images are always present before us, and are effaced only by the more powerful impressions of reality during waking hours, or by preoccupation of the mind, which makes our imagination inattentive to the fluidic panorama of the Astral Light. When we sleep, this spectacle presents itself spontaneously before us, and in this way dreams are produced ... Animal Magnetism is nothing but the artificial sleep produced by the voluntary or enforced union of two wills, one of which is awake while the other slumbers ... Thus, somnambulists do not actually travel to the place where they are sent by the magnetiser; they evoke its images in the Astral Light and can behold nothing which does not exist in that light ...

Magnetism between two persons is certainly a wonderful discovery, but the magnetising of a person by himself, awakening his own lucidity and directing it at himself at will, is the perfection of magical art.

Every intention which does not assert itself by deeds is a vain intention, and the speech which expresses it is idle speech. It is action which proves life and establishes will. Hence it is said in the sacred and symbolical books that men will be judged, not according to their thoughts and their ideas, but according to their works. We must do in order to be ...

Magical operations are the exercise of a natural power, but one superior to the ordinary forces of Nature. They are the result of a science and a practice which exalt human will beyond its normal limits ... But in order to work miracles we must be outside the normal conditions of humanity; we must be either abstracted by wisdom or exalted by madness, either superior to all passions or outside them through ecstasy or frenzy. Such is the first and most indispensable preparation of the operator .. .

Man can be modified by habit, which becomes, according to the proverb, his second nature. By means of persevering and graduated athletics, the powers and activity of the body can be developed to an astonishing extent. It is the same with the powers of the soul. Would you reign over yourselves and others? Learn how to will. How can one learn how to will? This is the first arcanum of magical initiation, and that it might be realised fundamentally the ancient custodians of sacerdotal art surrounded the approaches of the sanctuary with so many terrors and illusions. They recognised no will until it had produced its proofs, and they were right. Power is justified by attainment. Indolence and forgetfulness are the enemies of will, and for this reason all religions have multiplied their observances and made their worship minute and difficult. The more we deny ourselves for an idea, the greater is the strength we acquire within the scope of that idea ... What seek you therefore from the science of the Magi? Dare to formulate your desire, then set to work at once, and do not cease acting after the same manner and for the same end. That which you will shall come to pass, and for you and by you it has indeed already begun ... An idle man will never become a magician ...

Initiation is a preservative against the false lights of mysticism; it equips human reason with its relative value and proportional infallibility, connecting it with supreme reason by way of analogies. Hence the initiate knows no doubtful hopes, no absurd fears, because he has no irrational beliefs; he is acquainted with the extent of his power, and he can be bold without danger. For him, therefore, to dare is to be able. Here, then, is a new interpretation of his attributes: his lamp represents learning; the mantle which enwraps him, his discretion; while his staff is the emblem of his strength and boldness. He knows, he dares and is silent. He knows the secrets of the future, he dares in the present, and he is silent on the past. He knows the failings of the human heart; he dares to make use of them to achieve his work; and he is silent as to his purposes. He knows the significance of all symbolisms and of all religions; he dares to practise or abstain from them without hypocrisy and without impiety; and he is silent upon the one dogma of supreme initiation. He knows the existence and nature of the Great Magical Agent; he dares perform the acts and gives utterances to the words which make it subject to human will, and he is silent upon the mysteries of the Great Arcanum.

So you may find him often melancholy, but never dejected or despairing; often poor, never abject or miserable; persecuted often, never disheartened or conquered. He remembers the bereavement and murder of Orpheus, the exile and lonely death of Moses, the martyrdom of the prophets, the tortures of Apollonius, the Cross of the Saviour. He knows the desolation in which Agrippa died, whose memory is even now slandered; he knows what labours overcame the great Paracelsus, and all that Raymond Lull was condemned to undergo that he might finish by a violent death. He remembers Swedenborg simulating madness and even losing his reason in order to excuse his science; Saint-Martin and his hidden life; Cagliostro, who perished in the cells of the Inquisition; Cazotte, who ascended the scaffold. Inheritor of so many victims, he does not dare the less, but he understands better the necessity for silence. Let us follow his example; let us learn diligently; when we know, let us have courage, and let us be silent.

From A Season in Hell

ARTHUR RIMBAUD

EXCERPTS

A Season in Hell

Formerly, if I remember rightly, my life was a banquet, at which all hearts opened and all wines flowed.

One evening I took Beauty upon my knees. - And I found her bitter. And I insulted her.

I have armed myself against justice.

I have fled. Oh enchantress! Oh misery! Oh hatred! - it is to you that my treasure has been entrusted.