Gareth Knight's Blog, page 6

SONS OF HERMES - 10

Papus - A Methodical Treatise on Practical Magic
Having produced an Elementary Treatise on Occult Science and done his best to provide a Kabalistic philosophy behind it, it is only natural to expect Papus to have moved on to its more practical elements. This occurred in 1892 with his Traité Méthodique de Magie Practique (Methodical Treatise on Practical Magic) which in typical fashion tended to grow bigger and bigger over the years – in fact like its predecessor it first appeared entitled more humbly as an ‘Elementary Treatise’. The edition I happen to have (called the 11th) was printed in 1983 (apparently after being out of print for half a century) and runs to 639 pages with evidence of additions as late as 1910.
He announces magic to be as legitimate as any other science but one that is devoted to the study and control of the hidden forces of Nature. Also that his book has no other purpose than to serve as an introduction to Eliphas Levi’s Rituel de la Haute Magie, (aka part two of Transcendental Magic), that had been criticised for not being practical enough, though only by those who do not understand it.
Before getting down to the traditional accoutrements of practical magic which take up most of the book, he attempts to describe the process of magic in as direct and elementary a way as possible, using an example from the East.
There are in India individuals called fakirs who are able to manipulate hyperphysical forces by the force of their will. A number of witnesses have described presenting a fakir with a seed of their choice, along with a pot full of earth. This is placed on the floor before the fakir, naked apart from a loin cloth and turban, who sits cross legged before it, fixes his gaze and extends his arms toward it, and appears to fall into a cataleptic trance. He remains in this state for an hour or two, during which time the seed sprouts and the plant grows to a metre or more in height, and if the experiment is continued for three or four hours will begin to bear flowers and fruit.
What has happened here? According to Papus the fakir’s will has activated a force within the plant to produce a year’s growth within a few hours. A force that can only have one identity – natural organic life!  The fakir has acted upon the life sleeping within the plant, awakened  its vital forces and put them in motion, provoking degrees of activity greater than is generally perceived in nature.
 Has he performed a supernatural act? Not at all. He has precipitated and exaggerated a natural one. He has performed what seems like a magical action by the force of his will, but nothing that goes against the laws of nature.
Which leads Papus to make the somewhat surprising affirmation at the end of the book that THE SUPERNATURAL DOES NOT EXIST.
Apart from wanting to justify occult powers before a possibly nervous or unsympathetic general public Papus was at this time still very much the scientist, asserting that anything that occurs can only happen in accordance with natural law. It is called magic only because the natural law expressed has not yet been understood.
He had reason in later life to amend this denial of the supernatural after meeting Nizier Philippe, whom he came to recognise as his ‘spiritual master’, but at this time he was still very much the bright medical student specialising in the study of hypnosis at the St Antoine and La Charité hospitals in Paris, testing the theories of the German naturalist Baron von Reichenbach that animated beings and some magnetic materials gave off energies visible to sensitives, called Odic force.
Trying to keep things simple, he goes on to elaborate the theory of magic in psychological terms with the analogy of a horse-drawn cab. (We are still in a pre-automotive age!)
 The cab driver represents intelligence and the human will, – otherwise called the DIRECTING PRINCIPLE  –   that governs the whole vehicle.
The cab represents matter, which is inert but which carries all – and functions as the MOVED PRINCIPLE.
The horse represents force, acting on the cab, directed by the driver, that moves the whole system. It is the MOVING PRINCIPLE and at the same time the INTERMEDIARY between cab and driver. The link that joins and supports that which rules. That connects matter to the will.
So in practice, the driver is the human will, the horse is life, identical in its cause and effect within all animate beings, the intermediary without which the will could no more act on matter than the driver could move his cab if one took away his horse.
However, is it enough just to know this in order to be a magician? Alas, no! Not until one has learned how to drive. The difference between the practice of magic and occult science is that the first is practical while the second is theoretical. To expect to perform magic without knowing occultism is to expect to drive without having been taught how.
But if magic, being practical, is an applied science, to what is it applied?
The answer is the Will. The directing principle, the driver of the system.
 And to what is the will applied?  Never directly to matter. That would be like the driver sitting in his seat shouting at the cab while the horse is still in the stable.
The operator must therefore apply the will, not directly to  matter, but to that which modifies matter, which in occult science is called the Formative World, the astral plane. Or that Eliphas Levi called the Astral Light.
Although if we refuse to believe it exists, then of course we will have little chance of working with it!

SONS OF HERMES - 9

The Qabalah - Secret Tradition of the West - 3
Having hinted at the formidable extent of the work to be tackled, Eliphas Levi, who had drunk deep of both mysticism and logged up a very considerable range of life experience, proceeds to set his aspiring student upon the right course with the right attitude, which is a high respect for the Tarot along with a religious dynamic that is both ancient and modern, Jewish and Christian, Egyptian and Greek, and even further afield.
SIXTH LESSON
Dear sir and brother,
The Bible gives two names to man. The first is Adam, which means ‘drawn from the earth’, or ‘the man of earth.’ The second is Enos or Enoch, which means ‘divine man’ or ‘risen to God.’ 
According to Genesis it is Enos (as principle of beings) to whom Adam addressed his public worship. And Enos was, like Enoch, raised alive to heaven, after having inscribed the basic elements of religion and universal science onto two stones – called the columns of Hénoch.
This Hénoch was not a person, but a personification of humanity raised by religion and science to the level of immortality. In the epoch called by the name of Enos or Hénoch, the worship of God, and the principle of  priesthood appeared on Earth. Thus civilisation began – along with writing.
The civilising spirit that the Hebrews personified in Hénoch the Egyptians called Trismegistus and the Greeks Kadmos or Cadmus, he who, to the notes of the lyre of Amphion,  saw the living stones of Thebes rise and arrange themselves. {Hermes taught Amphion music and gave him a beautiful golden lyre to the music of which the stones of the walls of Thebes, of which he became king, moved to their right places. GK. }
The primitive holy book, the book that Postel {Guillaume Postel, 1510-81, French Kabbalist} called the genesis of Hénoch, is the first source of Kabalah or tradition, at the same time divine,  human and religious. There, in all its simplicity, appears the revelation of supreme intelligence to the reason and love of man. Eternal law ruling infinite expansion. Numbers in infinite extension. Numbers in immensity and immensity in numbers. Poetry in mathematics and mathematics in poetry.
Who would believe that the inspirational book of all religious theories and symbols had been conserved, and  remained so until ourselves, in the form of a game of  cards? Nothing is more evident however as, in the last century, Court de Gebelin, followed by all who have seriously studied the symbolism of these cards, was the first to discover.
The alphabet and the ten signs for numbers. There is certainly nothing more elementary in the sciences. Join the signs of the four cardinal points of the heavens, or the four seasons, and you have the complete book of Hénoch. Where each sign represents an absolute, or if you will, an essential, idea.
The form of each number and each letter has its mathematical reason and hieroglyphic significance. The ideas, inseparable from the numbers, follow the function of numbers in acquiring exactitude.  The book of Hénoch is ultimately the arithmetic of thought.
Yours in the sacred science, Eliphas Levi.
{We may perhaps discernfrom these remarks Papus’ apparent obsession with number theory in his book on Tarot. Although whether he got it right may be another matter. G.K. }
SEVENTH LESSON
Dear Sir and Brother,
Court de Gebelin saw in the twenty two keys of the Tarot the representation of the Egyptian mysteries and attributed their invention to Hermes or Mercury Trismegistus, who has also been called Thaut or Thoth. It is certain that the hieroglyphs of the Tarot are found on the ancient monuments of Egypt.  It is certain that the signs of this book, traced in synoptic groups on steles or metallic tables, like the Isiac table of Bembo, were also reproduced separately on carved stones or on medals, that later became amulets and talismans. They thus divided the pages of the infinite book into diverse combinations – to assemble, transpose and dispose in ever new ways the inexhaustible oracles of truth.
I possess one of these antique talismans, given me by one of my friends, a traveller in Egypt. It represents the Binary of Cycles, or popularly, the Two of Coins. It is the figurative expression of the great law of polarisation and equilibrium, producing harmony by the analogy of contraries. This is how the symbol appears in the Tarot we possess – S.  The medal I have, that is still for sale nowadays, is roughly like a five franc silver piece but thicker. The two polar cycles are drawn exactly like our Italian Tarot, a lotus flower with an aureole or nimbus. {It is worth taking a look at the 2 of Coins in a commercial playing card Tarot pack, such as the M\arseilles, to see if it features the figure that Eliphas Levi is describing. GK.}
The astral current that at the same time separates and attracts the two polar foci is represented in an Egyptian talisman by the goat of Mendes placed between two vipers, analogous to the serpents of the caduceus. On the reverse of the medal one sees an adept or Egyptian priest who, being substituted for Mendes between the two cycles of universal equilibrium, drives the animal down an avenue planted with trees, the goat become docile  under the wand of the man imitating God.
The ten signs for numbers, the twenty two letters of the alphabet and the four astronomical signs of the seasons are the summary and résumé of all the Kabala.  Twenty two letters and ten numbers give the thirty two paths of the Sepher Jetzirah; four giving the Mercavah and the Schemhamphoresh. It is as simple as a childrens’ game and as complicated as the hardest problems of pure mathematics. Naive and profound – like truth or nature. They are the four elemental astronomical signs – under the four forms of the sphinx and the four animals of Ezekiel and St. John.
Yours in the sacred science, Eliphas Levi.
EIGHTH LESSON
Dear Sir and Brother,
The knowledge of Kabalah makes it impossible to doubt the matter of religion, because it alone reconciles reason with faith and shows that this universal dogma, diversely formulated but in the end always and everywhere the same, is the purest expression of the aspirations of the human spirit lit by the necessary faith.
It helps us understand the use of religious practices, that by fixing the attention strengthen the will, and throw a superior light on all cults. It proves that the most efficacious of all cults are those which, by their effective signs, approach the divinity of man in some way –  make him see, touch and in some way incorporate it.
Which includes the Catholic religion.
This religion may popularly seem the most absurd because, it is the most revealed. I use this word in its true sense, revelare, ‘re-veil’, ‘veil again’. It is said in the Gospels that at the death of Christ the veil of the temple was torn through. It follows that all the dogmatic work of the Church through the ages has been to weave and embroider a new veil.
It is true that the heads of it, through wanting to be princes, for a long time lost the keys of high initiation, which prevented the letter of dogma from being sacred and the sacraments from being efficacious. I have explained in my works how Catholic Christian worship is high magic organised and regularised by symbolism and hierarchy. A combination of ways of help offered to human weakness to maintain its will to the good.
Nothing has been neglected, neither mysterious and dark temple, nor incense that calms and exalts at the same time, nor prolonged and monotonous chants that soothe the brain to a light somnambulism. Its dogma, which may seem obscure formulae to the despair of reason, serves as a barrier to the petulance of the inexperienced and indiscrete critic. It appears unfathomable, the better to represent the infinite.
Even the liturgy, celebrated in a tongue that the mass of the people do not understand, widens the thought of those who pray, leaving them to find in prayer all that is in rapport with the needs of the spirit and the heart. That is why the Catholic religion resembles the fabulous sphinx, which renews itself from century to century, and is ever reborn from its ashes.
This great mystery of faith is quite simply a mystery of nature. It seems an enormous paradox if one says that the Catholic religion is the only one that can truly be called natural. However, this is true, since only it satisfies fully the natural need of man – which is the religious sense.
Yours in the sacred science,  Eliphas Levi.
{The above analysis of the benefits of established religious worship is worth pondering – unwelcome as it may appear to the agnostic, neo-pagan or even protestant. It may also be none too welcome, for different reasons, to the committed Roman Catholic, being a psychological  analysis of religious worship and the sacraments.
 The  overtly Catholic assumptions are due to the time of writing when Christian worship in France was 98% Catholic, with the Mass celebrated in Latin. Levi’s remarks seem primarily addressed  to an esoteric student who has lost touch with or is in some doubt about traditional forms of religious belief or practice – possibly to his own detriment. GK. }
NINTH LESSON
If  Christian Catholic dogma is kabalistic we should also include the great sanctuaries of the ancient world. The legend of Krishna, that gave the Bhaghavadam, is a true gospel, similar to ours, although more naive and bright. The incarnations of Vishnu are ten in number, like the Sephiroth of the Kabala, and form a revelation more complete, in some ways, than our own.
 Osiris was killed by Typhon, then resurrected by Isis. That is the Christ repudiated by the Jews, then honoured in the person of his mother.
 The Thebiad is a great religious epic that should placed beside the great symbol of Prometheus.
Antigone is a type of divine woman as pure as Mary. Everywhere the good triumphs through voluntary sacrifice after having suffered for a time the unruly assaults of fatal force. Even the rites are symbolic and transfer from one religion to another. The tiaras, the mitres, the robes appear in all the great religions.
Some might therefore conclude that all are false, but it is their own conclusion that is false. The truth is that religion is one, like humanity. Progressive like humanity. Remaining ever the same by always transforming.
If with the Egyptians Jesus Christ is called Osiris, with the Scandinavians Osiris is called Balder. He is killed by the wolf Jeuris, but Woden or Odin recall him to life, and the Walkyries themselves bring him hydromel in Valhalla. The scaldes, the druids, the bards sing the death and resurrection of Tarenis or Téténus, distributing to their faithful the sacred gui like we drink, blessed at the feasts of the summer solstice to render a cult that  inspired the virginity of the priestesses of the Ile de Seyne.
We can thus, in all conscience and with all reason, accomplish the duties that our maternal religion imposes on us. The practices are collective acts, repeated with direct and persevering intention.
 Such acts are always useful to employ and, by strengthening the will, of which they are the gymnastics, they cause us to arrive at the spiritual end we seek to attain. Magical acts and magnetic passes have no other end, and give analogous results, to religious practices, but more imperfectly.
How many men lack the energy to say what they want or do what they should? Yet there are great numbers of women who devote themselves, without discouragement, to work as difficult and demanding as nursing and teaching! Where do they find such strength? In little repeated practices. They say the holy office and their chaplet every day and give praise on their knees in personal examination.
Yours in the science, Eliphas Levi
TENTH LESSON
Religion is not a servitude imposed on man, it is a help that is offered to him. The priestly castes have ever sought to exploit, to sell and to transform this help into an insupportable yoke, but the evangelical work of Jesus had for its aim to separate religion from the priest – or at least to put the priest back in his place as minister or server of the religion, rendering all his freedom and reason to the consciousness of man.
See the parable of the good Samaritan and those precious texts that ‘the law is made for man and not man for the law’. Ill fortune to those who read and impose on the shoulders of others the burdens they themselves would only deign to touch with their finger tips (etc., etc.).
 The official Church calls itself infallible in the Apocalypse, which is the kabalistic key to the gospels. There has always been in Christianity an occult or Johanite church that, while respecting the necessity of the official Church, conserved an interpretation of dogma quite other from that given to the populace.
Before the French Revolution the Templars, Rosicrucians and high grade Freemasons all belonged to the Church of which Martinez Pasqualis, Saint-Martin and even Mme Krodemer were the apostles in the last century. The distinctive character of that school was to avoid publicity and never to constitute a dissident sect. Count Joseph de Maistre, that so radical a Catholic, was, more than is realised, sympathetic to the Martinist society and announced a new regeneration of dogma by the light that came from the occult sanctuaries. {We, like Papus, will have more to say about Martinism as we progress. GK.}
The disturbing character of this school was that there now once more existed fervent priests initiated into the old doctrine. One bishop, amongst others, on approaching death, asked me for kabalistic communications.
The disciples of Saint-Martin, called ‘the unknown philosophers’, and those of a modern master, quite happy to be ignored, had no need to take any name, for the world did not suspect their existence. Jesus had said that the leaven should be hidden at the bottom of the vessel that contained the dough, to work day and night in silence until little by little the fermentation had penetrated the whole loaf that was to become bread.
An initiate can thus with simplicity and sincerity practise the religion into which he was born, for all its rites represent diversely a single and same doctrine. But he should only reveal the depths of his conscience to God – and  not tell anyone his most intimate beliefs.
The priest should not judge what the Pope himself does not understand.
The external signs of the initiate are modesty in knowledge, discrete philanthropy, balanced character and permanent good will.
Yours in the sacred science, Eliphas Levi.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

SONS OF HERMES - 8

The Qabalah - Secret Tradition of the West – 2
I don’t know if anyone noticed that despite Eliphas Levi saying he was listing twenty two letters of the Hebrew alphabet in fact he only gave twenty one!? The missing one is Shin –  which in his system of correspondences in the Tarot section of his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magic (Chapter 22 of Transcendental Magic)  is allocated to Trump 0 – the Fool.
This card and image should also give us pause for thought when at the beginning of his next lesson he tells his student to take up his Tarot pack and lay out the sequence of Trumps “in two lines of ten... from one to twenty one”.  This is a mathematical impossibility. He must intend two lines of eleven – with Trump Zero included in there somewhere. The question is – “Where?”
The answer is plain to see in the book – which he later advises the student to study. It falls between Trumps XX and XXI – the Last Judgement and The Universe. As we shall see from Eliphas Levi’s lessons, and also from the evidence of other French occultists who follow him, they like to see the sequence of Tarot Trumps as the story of a typical initiate (represented by Trump I – the Juggler) going through a series of initiatory experiences that conclude with the final judgement of his suitability for resurrection to the higher life  (Trump XX)  leading him to final achievement in the balanced harmony of Trump XXI. However  –  should the Last Judgement go against him, then he shows himself to be the Fool – worth nothing!  Or to quote from the book: “A man in the garb of a fool, wandering without aim, burdened with a wallet, which is doubtless full of his follies and vices; his disordered clothes discover his shame; he is being bitten by a tiger and does not know how to escape or defend himself.”
This is a far cry from the Golden Dawn conception of the Fool, placed at the start of the sequence of Trumps and representing a newly created innocent spirit entering material life or  initiatory experience. However, it is not our intention to become entangled in the webs of differing ideas of symbolic correspondence between one school of esoteric thought and another. Even if – and indeed precisely if – those who hold to them consider them to be the one and only true vouchsafed to them on the highest authority. Suffice to say, that for the comparative beginner, any reasonable system is likely to work, and they do best to stick to it – right or wrong – until such time as they are mature enough and practised in the ways of esoteric symbolism to be able to work with any – or to forge their own without being distracted by academic party poopers.  
There is, back of Levi’s magical symbolism, a profound religious interpretation within the line of the visionary Biblical books of Ezekiel and of the Apocalypse. As he plainly spells out in Lesson Three – the Tarot is “the great key to the hieratic hieroglyphs. We find there the symbols and numbers in the prophecies of Ezekiel and St John. The Bible is an inspired book, but the Tarot is an inspirational one.”
So much for Lesson Three. In the fourth lesson he raises the question of two great Kabbalistic traditions:  Bereshith, which means genesis or beginning, and Mercavah, which means chariot or throne. Bereshith and the Mercavah contain knowledge of God and of the world. 
Bereshith is the first word of the Old Testament, and usually translated into English as ‘In the beginning’. The opening pages of the Zohar (the Kabalistic Book of Splendour) analyse it and its implications at great length. The symbolism of the Throne of God, or its wheeled version as a Holy Chariot, comes from the first three chapters of the Book of Ezekiel, written soon after 600 BC with the exile of the Jews to Babylon. It is a book of visions and symbolic actions, beginning with the appearance of God in human form, throned  in glory and  surrounded by a rainbow and four winged cherubim. Apart from the Tarot figure of the Chariot one might speculate how far seated figures in the Tarot Trumps may reflect various elements of Throne mysticism.
Levi concludes the lesson with a rundown of the symbolism of the ten spheres of the Tree of Life seen as expressions of God, a great harmony of physical and moral worlds revealing and demonstrating the existence of eternal wisdom, eternal principles and eternal laws, emanating from an infinitely active creative intelligence. A wisdom and  understanding that are inseparable from each other, resting upon a supreme power called the Crown. Not a king, for that would imply an idol. The supreme power is, for kabalists, the Crown of the universe. And the whole creation is the kingdom of the Crown, or the Crown’s domain.
God is thus the power or supreme Crown (Kether) that reposes on eternal wisdom (Chokmah) and creative intelligence (Binah); in which are goodness (Chesed) and justice (Geburah) which are the ideal of beauty (Tiphareth). In Him are ever victorious movement (Netzach) and great eternal rest (Hod). His will is a continual childbearing (Yesod) and His kingdom (Malkuth) the immensity that peoples the universe.
“Let us stop here!”says Eliphas, “For we know God!
In the fifth lesson he tells how this rational knowledge of divinity is spread over the ten figures from which all numbers are composed, which gives the whole method of kabalistic philosophy.
This method is composed of thirty two instruments, or means of knowledge, called the thirty two paths; and the fifty subjects to which knowledge can be applied are like fifty gates.  This synthesising universal knowledge is thus like a temple to which thirty two ways lead and which one can enter by fifty doors. The fifty gates or doors are a classification of all beings into five series of ten that embrace all possible knowledge. This is sometimes depicted as five Trees of Life depending from each other, representing the four manifest worlds of the Kabalists and the Limitless Light behind them.
This numerical system, called decimal because it has the number ten as its base, establishes by analogies an exact classification of all human knowledge. In Levi’s view, nothing is more ingenious, nothing more logical or exact.
This high knowledge acquired, one can pass to the final revelations of the transcendental Kabala, and the study of the schemhamphorasch, a 72 letter name of God that also figures in traditions of angelology, and is said to be the source and reason for all dogmas. 
“There, my friend,” says Eliphas Levi, “ is what we have to learn. See if it does not frighten you. My letters are short, but they are very concise résumés that speak much in few words. I have left quite a long gap between my first five lessons to leave you the time to reflect on them, and I can write to you more often if you wish.
“Believe me, sir, with the ardent desire to be useful to you, your totally devoted one in the sacred science.” – Eliphas Levi.

SONS OF HERMES - 7

The Qabalah - Secret Tradition of the West [part 1]
Whether or not the Tarot has its roots in the Jewish Qabalah as Eliphas Levi assumed, there is no doubt that this Jewish secret tradition, however spelled, has long and almost universally been regarded as a source of esoteric wisdom in the West.
It was not for nothing that S.L.MacGregor Mathers went to the trouble of translating the Latin of Knorr von Rosenrath’s Kabbalah Denudata (The Kabbalah Unveiled) into English, even if the veil might still seem pretty opaque. Or Gérard Encausse rendering the ancient Sepher Yetzirah(Book of Formations) into French, making an early appearance in L’Initiation magazine in 1887.  His academic biographers André and Beaufils find it difficult to understand how he managed this without any proven  knowledge of the original language and hint that he might actually have done it from an already translated Spanish version.
Be this as it may, in 1892 he came out with a book on the subject, called La Kabbale – for which he sought the blessing of Adolphe Franck, (1809-1893) a distinguished scholar who had produced an academic work on the subject back in 1843. The gentleman concerned, perhaps slightly surprisingly, came back with an encouraging letter, although one in which he kept his options open by saying he had not yet had time to study Papus’ work in detail.
I accept with the greatest pleasure the dedication you wish to offer me in your book on the Kabbale, which is not an ‘essay’ as you choose to call it, but a book of great importance.
I have only been able to run through it quickly, but I know it enough to tell you that, in my opinion, it is the most curious, instructive, and knowledgeable that has appeared so far on this obscure subject.  
As Papus remarked at the head of his translation of the Sepher Yetzirah: “All the scientific, philosophical or religious teachings of the Kabbale are taken from two fundamental books, the Zohar and the Sepher Yesirah. It is translated into Latin in the Kabbala denudata and into English in the Kabbala Unveiled of M.A.Matthers.” (sic)  It is interesting to see this acknowledgement by Papus of one of the founders of the Golden Dawn, even if mispelled.
 Papus’ book of 1892 was succeeded, in 1903 by a much expanded version, retitled La Cabbale, Tradition secrete de l’Occident (Secret Tradition of the West) considerably augmented by contributions by friends and colleagues such as Stanislas de Guaita, Paul Sédir, Marc Haven and others – of whom more later.
It included an interesting set of personal lessons from the pen of Eliphas Levi, recently discovered, and which seem interesting enough also to  reproduce here. Letters 1 and 2  include a list of Levi’s symbolic correspondences which devoted symbolists may like to ponder.
 The numbers 1 to 10 accord fairly well with generally accepted attributions of the ten spheres of the Tree of Life, but when it comes to the Hebrew alphabet there is plainly a difference of perspective between adepti on one side of the English Channel and the other. Rather than taking sides you may find profit in meditating on what your own might be – and why! You can then start calling yourself a Kabbalist!
 But whatever your conclusions, there is much good sense in the general teaching of Eliphas Levi who was far more experienced mystically and magically than most of his contemporaries and many who came after. It is certainly worth pondering.
ELEMENTS OF THE KABBALA
FIRST LESSON
Dear Sir and Brother,
I can address you like this since you seek the truth in the sincerity of your heart and are ready to make sacrifices.
The truth is not difficult to find, being the  essence of all that is. It is within us and we are within it. It is like a light that the blind cannot see.
Being is. That is, incontestable and absolute. The exact idea of Being is truth; its knowledge is science; its ideal expression is reason; its activity is creation and justice.
You want to believe, you say. For that, it is enough to know and to love truth. For true faith is the unshakable adherence of the spirit to the necessary deductions of science in the conjectured infinite. 
The occult sciences alone give certainty, because they take reality for their base and not dreams.
They make true and false discernable in each religious symbol. Truth is the same everywhere, but the false varies according to place, time and people.
The occult sciences are three in number: the Kabbale, Magic and Hermeticism.
The Kabbale, or traditional science of the Hebrews, could be called the mathematics of human thought. It is the algebra of faith. It solves all problems of the soul by identifying the unknown, like equations. It gives to ideas the clarity and rigorous exactitude of numbers; its results are infallible for the spirit (relative, all the same, to the sphere of human consciousness) and peace profound for the heart.
Magic, or the science of the magi, has had for its representatives in antiquity the disciples and also perhaps the  Zoroastrian masters. It is the knowledge of secret and particular laws of nature that produce hidden forces. The magnetism, whether natural or artificial, that can exist beyond the world of metals. In a word, to use a modern expression, it is the science of universal magnetism.
Hermeticismis the science of nature hidden in hieroglyphs and symbols of the ancient world. It is research on the principle of life, with the dream (for those who have not yet arrived) of accomplishment of the great work. The reproduction, by man, of the natural and divine fire that creates and regenerates beings.
There you have, sir, the things that you wish to study. Its circle is immense, but the principles are so simple that they are represented and contained in the forms of numbers and letters of the alphabet. “It is a labour of Hercules that is like a children’s game” say the masters of the sacred science.
The dispositions to be successful in this study are: great rectitude of judgement, and great independence of spirit. It is necessary to abandon all prejudice and all preconceived ideas, which is why Christ said: “If you do not come with the simplicity of a child, you will never enter Malkuth,” which is to say, into the kingdom of knowledge.
We will start with the Kabbale – which can be divided into Bereshith, Mercavah, Gematria and Lemurah.
Yours in the holy science, Eliphas Levi.
 
SECOND LESSON
THE KABBALE – AIM AND METHOD
That to which one aims in studying the Kabbale is to arrive at peace profound through the tranquillity of the spirit and a peaceful heart.
Tranquillity of the spirit is a consequence of certainty; peace of heart of patience and faith.
Without faith, knowledge leads to doubt; without knowledge, faith leads to superstition. United, the two give certainty –  but uniting does not mean confusing them. The object of faith is a hypothesis, and it becomes a certainty when the hypothesis is necessitated by evidence or by the demonstrations of science.
Science consists of facts. The repetition of facts suggests laws. The generality of facts in the presence of this or that force demonstrates the existence of laws. Intelligent laws are necessarily wanted and directed by the intelligence. Unity in laws leads us to suppose the unity of a legislative intelligence. This intelligence, that we are led to suppose because of its manifest works, is impossible for us to define. It  is what we call God!
You receive my letter, which is an evident fact. You recognise my writing and my thoughts, and conclude from that that it is truly me who has written to you. This is a reasonablehypothesis, but the necessary hypothesis is that someone has written that letter. It could be counterfeit, but you have no reason to suppose that. If you suppose it anyway, you make a very doubtful hypothesis. If you claim that the written letter has fallen from the sky, you make an absurd hypothesis.
Here then, following the kabbalistic method, is how certainty is formed:
            Evidence....................................................certainty
            Scientific demonstration............................certainty
            Necessary hypothesis................................certainty
            Reasonable hypothesis..............................probability
            Doubtful hypothesis..................................doubt
            Absurd hypothesis.....................................error
In following this method the spirit acquires real infallibility, since it affirms what it knows, believes what it must necessarily suppose, admits reasonable suppositions, examines doubtful suppositions, and rejects absurd suppositions.
All Kabbale is contained in what the masters call the thirty two Paths and fifty Doors or Gateways.
The thirty two paths are thirty two absolute and real ideas attached to the signs of the ten arithmetical numbers and the twenty two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
Here are these ideas:
NUMBERS
1 Supreme power
2 Absolute wisdom
3 Infinite intelligence
4 Good
5 Justice or rigour
6 Beauty
7 Victory
8 Eternity
9 Fecundity
10 Reality
LETTERS
Aleph                       Father
Beth                         Mother
Ghimel                     Nature
Daleth                      Authority
Hé                            Religion
Vau                          Liberty
Dzain                       Propriety
Cheth                       Repartition
Theth                      Prudence
Iod                           Order
Caph                        Force
Lamed                      Sacrifice
Mem                        Death
Nun                          Reversability
Samech                    Universal Being
Gnain                       Equilibrium
Phè                          Immortality
Tsade                       Shadow and reflection
Koph                       Light
Resch                       Recognition
Thau                        Synthesis
 

SONS OF HERMES - 6

 “PAPUS” – DR GÉRARD ENCAUSSE [continued]
The Tarot of the Bohemians
Papus, along with the Tarot, came to the attention of English readers in 1896 through a translation of his 1889 book Le Tarot des Bohémiens. Whether or not it can be considered a classic work it was certainly a pioneering one, reproducing line drawings of Marseilles Tarot originals of the 22 Trumps along with ‘esoterically improved’ versions by Oswald Wirth, a Swiss freemason and budding Tarot authority. A.E.Waite’s fully illustrated coloured cards, drawn by Pixie Coleman-Smith, that have become classics in their own right and usually unacknowledged pattern for dozens of latter day Tarots, did not appear for another fourteen years.
The originality of Papus’ subject brought a number of  problems, and not only esoteric ones. Although a professional translator had been engaged  he plainly suffered from complete  ignorance of his subject including even the common nomenclature of playing cards. For instance, the word in French for playing card suits is ‘couleurs’ which he blithely rendered as ‘colours’ although presumably most readers realised what was meant. And  when it came to occult matters, anyone interested in spiritual topics is called a ‘spiritualist’; initiations are referred to as ‘initiatives’; the Theosophical Society renamed the Theosophite Society and the Egyptian god Ammon rechristened ‘Amen’. Most fundamental was, however, the translation of the title. Le Tarot des Bohémiens means ‘The Tarot of the Gypsies’ so to call the English version The Tarot of the Bohemians was to name it the Tarot of the Inhabitants of Bohemia or alternatively members of the Parisian artistic community, like Mimi in La Bohème.  I don’t think she shuffles the cards to tell fortunes in the opera.
None of which probably matters in the longer view as there is considerable doubt as to whether the Gypsies had anything to do with the Tarot anyway!  The idea began as a random speculation (among many) by Court de Gebelin, the late 18th century originator of occult interest in the Tarot. The gypsies’ preferred method of fortune telling was palmistry. Oddly enough, although Gerard Encausse’s claim to gypsy blood was almost certainly spurious, he was quite good at palmistry. Soon after their first meeting, he showed Victor Émile Michelet his hand and said it foretold he would die at the age of 53. He was only a couple of years out. Papus died in 1916 at the age of 51 as a result of his medical work in the trenches of the 1st World War.    
Like a number of his works, Papus’ Tarot book is divided into three parts. The first is devoted to the kind of number symbolism we found in his Traité Élémentaire de Science Occulte, and as he all but admits later on, we could probably just as well have done without it! It is a numerological analysis of the Jewish divine name Yod – Heh – Vau – Heh that will probably cause any kosher student of the Jewish Qabalah to cry aloud and leave the rest of us very confused. Those of long patience can try their luck with pages 243 to 251 of Professor Michael Dummett’s analysis in A Wicked Pack of Cards  –  a detailed work on the origins of the occult Tarot that contains a chapter on Papus.
With the second part of the book we are into the diagrams and lists of correspondences dear to the hearts of dedicated occultists. The only problem here will be, for those of us who have been brought up on Golden Dawn attributions, that the correspondences are all different to what we are used to. The reason for this being that Eliphas Levi, whose lead Papus follows, chose to list the Tarot Trumps in a different order.
We gave forewarning of this back in Sons of Hermes 2. There need be no problem at all if one takes to heart that the Tarot is a system of symbolism big enough and well integrated enough to stand on its own merits, without close correspondence with any other symbolic system – be it Qabalah, Astrology, or Egyptian hieroglyphs. Insofar that any magical symbol system is an attempt to describe elements of the inner worlds, it may have similarities with others insofar that each is trying to describe the same general landscape. However, such is the range and complexity of the interlocking spheres of the inner worlds, that expecting close correspondence between one system and another is doomed to disappointment. (But as a wise old teacher of mine once remarked – the way toward reality tends to be a process of shedding illusions – another word for which can be disillusionment.)
So to get the most from the Tarot my advice is to treat it as a stand alone system. It will work very well like that, without a lot of constricting webs. The same might be said for the Paths and Spheres of the Tree of Life, or the I Ching hexagrams, or the constellations of the Starry Wisdom of the Ptolemaic cosmos. If you come across what looks like a close correspondence of realities between one system and another, tip your hat in respect, reflect upon your good luck, or inherent wisdom if you should be so foolish, and then pass on. However, I grant that there can be fascinating speculation in juggling with correspondences and some occultists have come up with interesting alternatives. 
Actually Papus comes close to this in the third part of his book, which is a typical Papusian bran tub of bits and pieces gathered from here and there, including a long contribution from Albert Foucheux, otherwise known as Barlet (anagram of Albert) a civil servant who seems to have been a permanent fixture of Parisian occultism, and member of every committee, ever ready with words of wisdom on whatever subject required, and local representative of the Anglo-American H.B.L. or Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor (Luxor being a Latin/Hebrew code for Light (Lux + Aur). As will later be seen, Papus and his circle had a great weakness for secret societies and their titles and paraphernalia.  
But more striking is Papus’ advice on how to read the Tarot – a long chapter consisting of seven lessons intended for lady readers. Successful card reading, he says, is largely a matter of intuition, the implication being that they need not bother about trying to understand all the difficult stuff in the rest of the book.
“The first part of our study of the Tarot, full of numbers, of Hebrew letters, and abstract deductions, is not calculated to attract the attention of ladies...and I hope that the pleasure gained by the fair inquirers will balance the scepticism of sterner intellects.”
For myself, I wonder how it is that for someone who from 1888 until the eve of his marriage in 1895 was very close to a prominent feminist, Anna Wolska, could not have had this arch chauvinism posing as gallantry knocked out of him. But he was at this time still only 23 and maybe he had only just met her.

SONS OF HERMES - 5

“PAPUS” – DR GÉRARD ENCAUSSE [continued]
An Elementary Treatise on Occult Science
One of the charms of buying examples of French occult publishing of a hundred years or so ago is that you are never quite sure what you will be getting. It was a period when Papus and his friends were learning the ropes of self publishing – which could lead to quite astounding surprises in quantity and quality. Not that one was ever likely to be short changed – their success meant that they had plenty of money and so new printings of books could be considerably expanded in extent.
So it is with my copy of Papus’ first book-sized book, the Traité Elémentaire de Science Occulte. First appearing in 1888, as a volume of 229 pages, it appears that my copy was in fact turned out to be of indeterminate date by which time it had become bloated to 625 pages. Bibliographic histories were not helped by their custom of calling reprints ‘new editions’. Thus the copy I have is called the 16th edition but is apparently a reprint of the 7th edition of 1903 by which time they had proudly logged up a sale of 10,000 copies. As Papus says in his Preface ‘its success had progressively grown with each new transformation of the volume.’
So, something of a dog’s breakfast in fact, but none the worse for that.
“Also,” he writes, “we have once more taken care to perfect our work, while conserving its elementary character which is one of the causes of its success.” I have to say I am not too sure about this ‘elementary character’. He launches off into some very erudite, not to say obscure, and even irrelevant, number theory. But perhaps the French esoteric mind differs somewhat from the Anglo-Saxon. We will return to this when we take a look at his book on the Tarot.
On the evidence of the number and extent of the quotations he uses it could be said that this is obviously a first book by an intellectual young man in a hurry. Of the original 229 pages about thirty percent of the text consists of extracts from other writers, fifteen of them, ranging from Mme. Blavatsky to Eliphas Levi with the lion’s share going to the early 19th century savant Fabre d’Olivet and the contemporary esoteric recluse Saint-Yves d’Alveydre. The first, a great favourite of his, was author of a book on the Golden Verses of Pythagoras and also La Langue hébraïque restitué (The Hebraic tongue restored) speculations on the origins of  Hebrew language in light of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, a fair amount of which was subsequently invalidated when the Rosetta Stone was discovered and translated.
The main drive of the young Papus’ original book, (the first 229 pages) is to emphasise the difference between the approach of modern with that of ancient science. In a telling and simple image he likens modern science to the close examination of a closed book.
“Let us first examine the way that moderns treat a natural phenomenon the better to know it, as opposed to the ancient way. What would you say to a man who described a book to you like this: ‘The book you have given me to study is placed on the mantelpiece at 2 metres 49 centimetres from the table where I am sitting; it weighs 545 grams 8 decigrams, and is formed of 342 small paper pages on which 218,145 characters are printed and which have used 190 grams of black ink.’
“If this example shocks you, open modern books of science and see if they do not correspond exactly to the way of describing the Sun or Saturn by an astronomer, who describes the position, weight, volume and density of stars, or a physicist who describes the solar spectrum by counting the number of lines.   
“Returning to the printed book that served as our first example, we note that there are two ways of looking at it, because we realise that the characters, the paper, the ink, that is to say the material signs, are only the representation of something that we cannot see physically – the ideas of the author.
“The visible is the manifestation of the invisible. This principle, true for this particular example, is so for all other things in nature, as we shall see. We will then see more clearly the fundamental difference between ancient science and modern science.
“The ancient is concerned only with the visible in order to discover the invisible that it represents. The modern is concerned only with the phenomenon itself without bothering about its metaphysical connections.
“The science of the ancients is the science of the hidden, of the esoteric. The science of the moderns is the science of the visible, the exoteric.
“The hidden science, the science of the hidden, the science which hides what it has discovered – is the triple definition of OCCULT SCIENCE.”
The rest of the book, and of all the books that he and his colleagues are destined to write, is concerned with solving this by no means easy problem.

SONS OF HERMES - 4

                                         “PAPUS” – DR GÉRARD ENCAUSSE [continued]
References to Martinism and Rosicrucianism had not been plucked from thin air by Papus. During 1888, the first steps had been taken to revive the activities of both these early western traditions. He himself the Martinist Order, founded toward the end of the 18thcentury by Louis Claude de Saint Martin (1743-1803); and a Rosicrucian revival – l’Ordre Kabbalistique de la Rose+Croix  under the joint aegis  of an aristocratic young poet and intellectual Stanislas de Guaita  and a popular occult novelist and art critic Joséphin Péladan.  Mysterious initials began to appear after their names, such as S...I... (Supérieur Inconnu) or ‘Unknown Superior’ of the Martinist Order – or in the case of the Kabbalistic Rosicrucian Order the Hebrew letter Aleph with three dots in triangular formation signifying, for those in the know,  a  Rosicrucian Grand Master.
A manifesto for each organisation appeared in l’Initiation, a new monthly journal founded in October 1888, the financing of which Papus was inclined to regard as an act of Providence. For one day a young man had unexpectedly called on him, and thrusting a bundle of banknotes into his hands announced that observers on the astral plane were aware that he lacked the resources to start an important new work.
The source of the cash turned out to be a philanthropic industrialist with esoteric sympathies by the name of Jean Jacques Bourcart, who may have been stimulated by the prospect of a great ExpositionUniverselle, or World Fair, to be held in Paris from May to October 1889. A glorification of the 3rdRepublic, founded in 1870, celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, and that saw the erection of the Eiffel Tower, considered by some a mark of technological progress, by others a supreme vulgarity.
In conjunction with this general celebration some spiritually minded enthusiasts seized the chance to launch a week long esoteric convention, Le Congrès spirite et spiritualiste international from  9thto 15th September 1889. Thirty four esoteric organisations took part, with the theme of ‘the survival of the conscious self and the possibility of communication between the living and the dead’.
In the mean time a confrontation had developed  between Papus and Mme Blavatsky on the meaning of the word ‘ initiate ’.  She insisted that the term applied only to a ‘hierophant’ or very high adept (no doubt with her own ‘mahatmas’ in mind). And as something of a put down said that for Papus to think it was anything else was an error ‘typical of Freemasons’. She wanted to know, with heavy sarcasm, if this brilliant young man, until now one of the most promising French recruits to Theosophy, had turned away from the light and was wandering toward the shadows?
The ‘recruit’ retorted by refusing to change his definitions, and referred to inconsistencies in her great work, the Secret Doctrine, recently published, in which, he said, the  terms ‘initiate’ and ‘adept’ were often referred to with the meaning that he himself had attributed to them. And if she was unaware of the fact (implying blind plagiarism, muddle headedness, or ignorance of her own work) he would be happy to provide details of the relevant passages.
Apart from this, the relative success of the esoteric convention in 1889 led him to think the time was ripe for a permanent centre devoted to the various aspects of occultism. Not having the resources to found one himself he put the idea to a friend, the mature law student Lucien Chamuel, who promptly hired a shop at 29, rue de Trévise and named it the ‘Librairie du Merveilleux’ (Bookshop of the Marvellous).
It included the facility of a circulating library and space for a meeting hall at the back and soon became a great success. And its appearance coincided with the foundation and growth of a remarkable organisation inspired and headed by Papus. Its work and aims were summarised in a small but significant publication, La science des mages et ses applications théoriques et pratiques (The Science of the Magi and its Theoretical and Practical Applications), and were as follows.
1. The impartial study, beyond the academic and priestly, of scientific, artistic and social evidence to be found in the symbolism of all cults and traditions.
2. The scientific study, by experiment and observation, of yet unknown forces within man and nature (spirit phenomena, hypnosis, magic and theurgy).
3. The grouping of all these scattered elements in view of the struggle against doctrines of materialism and atheism.
With regard to spiritualism (or spiritism) occultists did not deny the possibility of communicating with the departed but  doubted the number of genuine instances, as for much of the time it seemed more likely to be a matter of auto-suggestion or transcendent hypnosis, for which only the forces of the medium and those physically present were responsible.
Enquirers were advised, if unfamiliar with these matters, to study the theory and practice of spirit communication and if spiritualism with its essentially consoling doctrine seemed to provide them with a total expression of truth, and satisfied their hopes, then not to seek any further. However, the philosophically inclined would seek in vain for a cosmogony, or even an original metaphysic, in spiritualism and might do better to move on to occultism, which was more abstract and complex in its explanations of psychic phenomena. True occultists did not claim exclusive possession of the truth but were independent seekers, and, although some may have wanted to make occultists adversaries of spiritualism, those who ran the G.I.E.E. were persuaded that time would serve to bring everyone into agreement.
As for the Theosophical Society, if anyone desired to occupy themselves with Oriental occultism they would do better to consult the Guimet Museum in Paris which had more accurate information on Buddhism and the religions and philosophies of India. Or alternatively the Paris branch of the English language Buddhist Propagation Society.
 With this announcement, Papus had plainly shaken the dust of the Theosophical Society from his feet! Not only that, it has been estimated by some scholars that his activities set back the growth of the Theosophical Society in France by some twenty years!
Nor had Papus neglected his medical career, which he contrived to link with his esoteric interests. Although still a student, he produced an essay, as Gérard Encausse, on physiology relating to the theory and practice of animal magnetism, and was evidently doing well enough in his medical studies to be entrusted to write, together with Dr Luys, a professor at La Charité hospital, a report for the Annales de psychiatrie et d’hypnologie,  describing experiments with a form of clairvoyance at a distance by a hypnotised subject, aided by magnetic devices applied to the head.
Over the next few years the G.I.E.E. developed branches not only throughout France but also Europe, Egypt, and the Americas, issuing diplomas to successful students and eventually degrees and doctorates in Kabbalistic studies.
The organisation also encouraged and grew through the development of bright young newcomers who became its writers and lecturers, developing their writing, speaking, esoteric and organisational skills. Some of whom we shall later follow.
But first we would do well to examine the remarkable efforts of Papus himself, particularly through the written word.
[to be continued]
 

SONS OF HERMES - 3

“PAPUS” – DR GÉRARD ENCAUSSE
Dr. Gérard Encausse, (1865-1916) who wrote and taught under the name of “Papus” has been called “the Balzac of Occultism”. That is to say, comparable to the great 19th century writer Honoré de Balzac who set out to write a series of  books describing the whole of French society.  Gérard Encausse, in his fashion, did much the same for the occultism of his day.  Not in fiction but in a great process of esoteric education of his fellows.
In the course of his life he was responsible for over a hundred brochures and books, was a prodigious public speaker, and also a great founder of organisations and of successful occult journals such as the monthly L’Initiation and weekly La Voile d’Isis. All this while studying to become a Doctor of Medicine with a particular interest in hypnosis and clairvoyance, and complying with three years military national service.
 He was born on 13th July 1865 the eldest child of a French father and a Spanish mother, at La Coruña in Galicia, northern Spain, where his father Louis was trying to interest the authorities in his ‘Encausse Generator’ – a device he had invented for the absorption of medicaments through the skin. Until, having failed to make much progress, he moved on to Paris when Gérard was three years old, where the imaginative child grew up in the bohemian district of Montmartre with a tendency to fantasize about his family origins. That his father’s name was really Don Luis who had spent his life wandering through Spain in a caravan with a gypsy wife, living on his wits by selling things he had made. A story more or less based upon fact if considerably romanticised!
The struggle his father had had to be taken seriously by an extremely conservative and prestigious medical profession may have inclined Gérard to study medicine himself, although as an adolescent he was more interested in general philosophical ideas and at the age of 19 produced  a 51 page book called Hypothéses – a diversion that may have caused him to fail his baccalauréat and put his education  back a year, and even when accepted as a medical student he was hardly a model scholar. Instead of  studying his textbooks he was more likely to be found at the Bibliothèque Nationale reading works on magic, such as Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, L’Histoire de la Magie and Le Clef des Grands Mystères by Eliphas Levi. Indeed, so impressed was he by these works that he wrote a letter to the old mage, suggesting they meet to exchange experiences and ideas.
11th January 1886
Monsieur l’Abbé, for more than three months I have looked for your address. If I have finally had the good fortune to have found it I beg you to reply to me. I very much want to make your acquaintance first because you have known a man whom I deeply admire and of whom I have written a biography: Louis Lucas; and then because, thanks to your works, I have been able to make great steps in the studies that I have already long pursued. If the astral light has truly not deceived me but guided me to you, please reply. I will then write to you about some experiences that it is impossible for me to mention in a letter that might not reach you. Please accept, Monsieur l’Abbé the greetings of one of your most fervent admirers wanting to become one of your disciples. Gérard Encausse, Hospital extern, 14, rue de Strasbourg, Paris.
 
Unfortunately Eliphas Levi had died eleven years before.  It is not recorded if the tyro magician tried to contact his hero by any other, psychic, means. (Louis Lucas, by the way was a scientist contemporary with Levi, author of La Chimie Nouvelle, with alchemical leanings).
A youthful poemwritten at the time also reveals Gérard’s convictions and romantic state of mind, beginning:
‘Hail to thee, light of the cosmos at the centre of all spheres...’
in which we also find the Qabalistic term of Ketheras evidence of his current reading.
 
Notwithstanding his educational and national service commitments he sought further esoteric contacts by joining the Isis Lodge of the Theosophical Society, that had been founded in Paris in 1879 but had never really got going until 1887, when an idealistic young Breton, Felix-Krishna Gaboriau, sank his small personal fortune into launching a magazine for it, called Le Lotus. To establish the magazine and draw attention to the Isis Lodge a series of promotional meetings was laid on at the fashionable Grand Vefour café.
At an early one of these meetings an esoterically inclined poet, journalist and man about town, Victor-Émile Michelet, drifted in, and  half a century later, in 1938,  recorded the occasion in his memoirs Les Companions de la Hiérophanie.
His first impression was that the young man lecturing on ‘Contemporary Occultism’, striving to speak without a script and  groping for words with such difficulty, had absolutely no future as a public speaker! But then he had no idea of the prodigious will and drive of this young man, who was the remarkable 22 year old Gérard Encausse.
A few weeks later Michelet heard him speak again – this time with such charisma, clarity and skill that he decided he must get to know him. Calling at Gérard’s student lodgings one Sunday morning in a scruffy commercial area near the Gare de l’Est, he found an atmosphere that he described as like a ‘boiling cauldron’, brewed up by half a dozen young men intent on changing the world by restoring the wisdom of the ancients. Indeed it seemed to Michelet that Pythagoras himself would not have felt out of place in their company!
The May 1887 issue of Le Lotus contained a couple of articles by  Gérard Encausse under the pen name of ‘Papus’, a name he had chosen from the Nuctameron of Apollonius of Tyana, an ancient manuscript published as an appendix to Eliphas Levi’s Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, containing a list of spirits of the hours along with their attributes, the first of which was ‘Papus, the spirit of medicine’.
One of Gérard’s articles was a commentary on the symbolism of the sigil of the Theosophical Society, and the other on alchemy – a subject that latter day occultists in France took very seriously.  And a number still do.
 In the next issue the young ‘Papus’ launched a strong attack against Freemasonry, on the grounds that, having forgotten the meaning of its traditional symbols it had become more of a social than an esoteric organisation. A criticism that had been raised by Eliphas Levi in his latter days, when he resigned from the organisation. Gérard Encausse took much the same line which was to cause him some difficulty when later he sought to become a mason himself.
In the meantime he launched into print with a 36 page version of his initial lecture – L’occultisme contemporain, attacking the intellectual and scientific establishment for failing to take occultism seriously. And, quite astonishingly, even foolhardy for a medical student, lambasting his chosen profession for concentrating on physical symptoms rather than inner causes for them.
As examples he chose two long standing nineteenth century controversies. That of “animal magnetism”, originating from Anton Mesmer and developed by a series of investigators over the years, and currently by Professor Luys at the La Charité hospital in Paris under whom Gérard was studying. The other was “spiritism” that under the more upbeat name of “spiritualism” had begun in the United States with the Fox sisters in 1848, and rapidly crossed the Atlantic.
He ended his book with praise for early 19th century writers such as Fabre d’Olivet for his work on ancient languages, and two colleagues of Eliphas Levi, the Polish esoteric mathematician Hoene Wronski, who died of starvation, and also the neglected Louis Lucas, concluding with an honourable mention for various contemporaries.
From the start however, he seemed determined to cast his net wider than that of the Theosophical Society by emphasising occult lore that was indigenous to the West; and a quotation on the front cover of the booklet hinted at this: ‘The West is the fount of practice and the East the fount of theory’
Papus  soon became a regular speaker at Isis lodge meetings and a contributor to Le Lotus and the following year, 1888, he published a full length book, Traité élémentaire de science occulte (Elementary Treatise on Occult Science), that claimed “to explain to all the theories and symbols employed by the ancients, alchemists, astrologers, the E... de la V..., and Kabalists.”  The mysterious initials revealing a long standing interest in secret societies dispensing grades of occult initiation and the first indication of his impending involvement with the Martinist Order and other initiatory bodies. 
Originally 219pp in extent, by its 7thimpression ten years later the Elementary Treatise had swollen to 625 pages. True to form for a young man in a hurry, both original and later editions incorporated long quotations from other writers, including pages from Madame Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled and paragraphs from A.P.Sinnet’s The Occult World quoting, with approval, the Theosophical Mahatma Koot Hoomi, all of which were retained despite his falling out with Mme Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society a couple of years later.
His exit from the Theosophical Society was sparked in March 1888 when the president of the Isis Lodge died unexpectedly. The post should have passed to the vice-president who, perhaps wisely, declined the honour by pleading youth and inexperience, although no such modesty afflicted either Gérard Encausse or Felix-Krishna Gaboriau. The succession seemed to hang in the balance between them, and soon developed into direct confrontation. 
Members of the Isis lodge soon split into opposing camps. Urgent action was needed and the situation  became serious enough for Colonel Olcott to travel from India to try to sort things out.
He promptly dissolved the Isis lodge and replaced it with a new one called the Hermes. He showed little sympathy for Gaboriau, who struck him as a ‘hypersensitive young man’ suspected of having recourse to hashish, (actually not uncommon in France in those days). A reliable middle aged gentleman, Arthur Arnolde, was appointed president, and a couple of similar mature members as vice presidents, whilst Gérard Encausse was appointed to the new post of ‘corresponding secretary’.
Gaboriau felt himself downgraded and expressed his bitterness by deploring the ‘typically American way’ in which Olcott had ‘thrown members to the fire’. In this state of mind he crossed the English Channel to complain personally to Mme Blavatsky, who was then living in London. He discovered that she too was very angry about Olcott, accusing him of having sacrificed Theosophy in the interests of ‘that wretched little **** Papus!’
An attempt was made to patch things up by offering Gaboriau a charter to start his own branch, but it appears he was unable to find the statutory seven initial members; all remained faithful to the new Hermes lodge. Gaboriau submitted his resignation, predicting that it would not be long before Papus tried to take over the whole Theosophical Society.
In the final issue of Le Lotus in March 1889 he bade farewell to his readers and, his small fortune spent, fell into poverty and obscurity, although he did later render valuable service by translating some Theosophical works into French.
Papus, however, had not been set on the acquisition of the Theosophical Society. He had wider ambitions.
[to be continued]
 

SONS OF HERMES 2

ELIPHAS LEVI – ALPHONSE LOUIS CONSTANT
Even though our concern is with the remarkable activities of the ‘Sons of Hermes’ in Paris a century or so ago, it is worth taking a look at those who inspired them in the previous generation. And one name that stands before all is that of Eliphas Levi Zahed – usually shortened to Eliphas Levi – derived from a Hebrew letter transliteration of his baptismal names and surname Alphonse Louis Constant.
Born to a poor Parisian shoemaker and his wife in 1810, the only way a brighter than average lad could better his lot was to be selected for training for the priesthood. Although little could the  parish priest have foreseen that his protégé would one day become famous for writing books on magic!
Not that Eliphas Levi considered himself to be anything other than a good Catholic. He voluntarily submitted his books to the church authorities in Paris and received the somewhat backhanded assurance that “we neither approve nor disapprove; your books are neither heretical nor impious, they are simply eccentric.”
But in the end he never became a priest. Having passed through parish school and junior and senior seminaries, he recoiled from being ordained after a period teaching young girls their catechism which led him to doubt if he could live up to the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience; and chastity in particular!
It was no light matter to take such an honest and radical step at this stage. Although well schooled in theology and ecclesiastical history and with the ability to read Latin, Greek and Hebrew, these  accomplishments were unlikely to earn him a living. But he had natural artistic talent and after a few months working as a travelling actor began to make money painting devotional pictures for local churches, a line of work that eventually extended into portraits of actresses, dancers and society ladies for the journal Les Belles Dames de Paris (The Beautiful Ladies of Paris).
He also tried his hand at journalism, although his high ideals and firsthand knowledge of grinding poverty led him to political pamphleteering, and his work called La Bible de la Liberté (The Bible of Freedom) earned him eleven months in prison, the harsh conditions of which were ameliorated by his comrade in arms, the feminist Flora Tristran (and future grandmother of the artist Gauguin) who sent in food for him.
He also demonstrated a high religious idealism in a work on the Virgin Mary La Mère de Dieu – about which a friend frankly observed: “My friend, your work is deplorable in its idealism; it is celibacy gone to the head; your excessive purity makes you a libertine, my friend, and if you knew women a bit better you would not adore womankind  so much! “
Not that he was particularly a womaniser but after a long bachelorhood, at the age of 36, he embarked on a romantic runaway marriage with a 16 year old Marie-Néomie Cadot. 
Marie-Néomie was a very bright and talented girl and it was not long before she was making her way writing articles for newspapers and journals, and posing for a celebrated sculptor. Some representations of her as Psyche and other classical figures are said to have decorated the Parisian scene and may still do so. Meanwhile her husband made a modest income by his art work and restoring antiques and other decorative ware. They had four children of whom three, including twins, died in infancy, with the eldest, Marie, expiring at the age of seven. Such were the conditions of urban life in those days in gay Paree!
However, by the time she was 21 Marie-Néomie was beginning to feel the need to spread her wings and duly left him, eventually divorcing and marrying a prominent politician. This was a devastating blow for Alphonse, Almost the death of him in a sense, only to be reborn as the celebrated teacher of magic –  Eliphas Levi.
He had probably been studying occultism in some shape or form for some time and already had something of a reputation for it, attending discussion circles and even taking students in Kabalistic studies. Indeed he was sufficiently well known to be welcomed to London in the Spring of 1853, with “letters of introduction to eminent persons curious of revelations about the supernatural world.”
He was disappointed with most of his contacts however, finding English gentry well mannered but superficial, and expecting him to provide spectacular wonders. This was a likely consequence of the great influx of spirit phenomena from the United States that began to cross the Atlantic after 1848. Eliphas Levi therefore withdrew to private study of Kabalah, probably at the British Museum, aiming to return to France in a few weeks.
Before he did so, however, he was tempted into a quite bizarre magical experiment – an attempted evocation of the spirit of the 1st century thaumaturge Apollonius of Tyana. For English readers sufficiently curious, the circumstances are described in Chapter XIII of the first part of Transcendental Magic, the main lesson of which is that reciting medieval or ancient magical formula in a highly nervous state is not the best way of going about things however impressive one’s equipment in the way of gilded marble altar tops, magnetised chains, magic mirrors and tripods of burning incense.  Certainly, he got some results, a numbed arm after threatening a vision with a magic sword, followed by an immediate physical and nervous collapse. It is perhaps to his credit –  at any rate in courage and determination – that he had two more goes at it! But with similar results.
From now on he made it a rule with students  that he was not interested in teaching techniques of ceremonial magic. A caveat, it should be said, that was not taken too seriously by his followers a generation later, who launched themselves whole heartedly into practical work of one kind or another, whilst taking on board the general theoretical structures he had laid down. In particular the concept he called the Astral Light – which had been approached from various angles since Anton Mesmer in the 18th century and developed through various theories and practical experimentation under different names, from animal magnetism to odic force, somnambulism or trance, and associated clairvoyant or healing phenomena, and eventually hypnosis, ‘positive thinking’ and the New Thought movement of the 1920’s. Its last puff as an occult theory possibly being Israel Regardie’s Art of True Healing, a 1937 amalgam of New Thought practice with elementary Kabalistic symbolism.
 In some respects the Astral Light has been psychologised into theories of the Collective Unconscious – and is still with us as a force, not least in the advertising, entertainment and journalistic industries, wherever the human imagination is manipulated for whatever purpose.
Eliphas Levi was also responsible for providing an imaginative symbolic structure that could be regarded as compatible with the Kabalah. That is to say the set of symbolic diagrams preserved in the Tarot. Whether one regards Tarot as a popular game, an oracular device or remains of an ancient system of transcendental wisdom, it can provide the structure for a coherent magical system – or map of the inner realms of the universe. 
One can approach such a system in various ways, from the trivial and superstitious to the learned and academic. The latter approach has been fulsomely provided in recent years by  A Wicked Pack of Cards – the Origins of the Occult Tarot by Decker, Depaulis & Dummett and A History of the Occult Tarot by Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett. First class academics all, with all the wisdom and all the blind spots of the disciplined academic mind. Their blind spots a consequence of the fact that they do not realise that the system works – whatever the illogicalities or irrational assumptions of the card reader, magical operator or transcendental philosopher.
It is a matter of embracing the wisdom of the Bellman in Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark – “If I say something three times it’s true!” And is no more difficult or irrational than quantum mechanics if taken on its own terms. A more hifaluting way of expressing it would be the evocation of Faith, Hope and Charity.
Another stumbling block to rationally minded students is the fact that Eliphas Levi’s method of structuring and interpreting the cards differs from that of the savants behind the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, as indeed from umpteen other ways of approaching the oracle.
Levi placed Trump 0 between Trumps XX and XXI, and as we shall see, the leading lights of the Sons of Hermes opted to follow him. Whilst in England the Golden Dawners placed Trump 0 at the beginning of the sequence – adding their own nips and tucks, such as swapping the places of VIII and XI Justice and Strength, with Aleister Crowley suggesting likewise for IV and XVII the Emperor and the Star.  Latterly British occultists of the calibre of W.G.Gray (The Talking Tree), R.J.Stewart (The Dream Power Tarot) and others have come up with their own evocative versions, whilst I have had my own tilts at windmills in Tarot & Magic and The Magical World of the Tarot.
Confused? It is simply a matter of letting the symbols talk to you. And having the confidence that your conversation is likely to be as good as anyone else’s. One of the first true realisations in magic is avoiding the sticky bogs of intellect – particularly someone else’s intellect. Of course you can also go wrong as well! Second true realisation of magic.
By their very nature, the Tarot cards are capable of varieties of interpretation. Which is why they are so useful in divination. That depicting Death, for example, can be regarded not merely as an end but as a new beginning. A curse or as a blessed release. And operative at any level of human experience.
When Eliphas Levi was asked the source of his wisdom by Kenneth Mackenzie, a delegate from the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, he said that after twenty years meditation any truths he had brought through resulted not from his own wisdom but from the diverse combinations of the cards themselves.
He did at one point write that a prisoner in solitary confinement with simply a deck of Tarot cards could have access to all knowledge. A claim thought patently ridiculous by Michael Dummett – who should have known better.  In fairness to Michael Dummett and the academic approach, one should quote his view on p.252 of A Wicked Pack of Cards.
 “But although occultists would prefer grounds for their theories in order to convince others, they can convince themselves without grounds. An elaborate theory known only to those who take the trouble to study the occult is satisfying enough in itself, and, being satisfying, is to be believed; grounds for thinking it to be true are welcome, but dispensable. The theory can be claimed to be a key to unlock further doors, but then tacitly ignored when those doors are to be opened.”
But it is the opening of the doors that is important – whether or not the lock has been picked.
Nothing should be too readily taken for granted in Levi’s work, one example being the figure of the 15thTrump, popularly called the Devil, which on close examination is revealed to be not an evil card but one that contains balanced and equilibrated powers that can be used for good or ill, and could more accurately be regarded as a symbol for the Astral Light in its various manifestations. (Although it could be said that Levi’s heavy mid 19th century style of drawing does not make the figure a particularly attractive one.) Aleister Crowley was not so far out when he attributed the card to the force of Pan! A force that is also quite palpable in another mode of action in Dion Fortune’s Rite of Pan.
We shall return to these matters when we come to examine The Tarot of the Bohemians, by Papus, the great populariser of occultism in France, and one of the few French occult books translated into English. It has its faults, although it is little realised that at the time of writing the author was only a 24 year old medical student. They developed talent young in those days – with all the advantages and disadvantages that this implies.
One or two other points should be cleared up before leaving the life and times of Eliphas Levi, for he was not an advocate of some aspects of esoteric theory that nowadays tend to be taken for granted.
One was that he did not take spiritualism – or spiritism as it is more usually called in France –  at face value. Like his contemporary English occultist friend Edward Bulwer Lytton he considered  most assumed contacts were not with discarnate spirits but were a species of natural clairvoyance between the living. From my own experience I would tend to agree – although there may well be exceptions – if somewhat rarer than wished for or supposed.
The same applies to reincarnation. Despite a few scattered references to metempsychosis in Pythagorean times, (not quite the same thing), it was not  much considered before the Theosophical Society popularised elements of Eastern philosophy in the West after its foundation in 1875. As a good Catholic Eliphas Levi gave it no credence. Nor does it feature in the classics of western esotericism prior to the 19th century, nor very largely in spiritualism apart from the version promulgated by Allan Kardac in The Spirit Book  of 1857. Whilst apart from a few scattered references, it is not until 1912 that we find Papus responsible for a book devoted to the doctrine of Reincarnation.
There are fashions, even in the secret wisdom!

SONS OF HERMES - 1

SONS OF HERMES 1
Back in the closing years of the last millennium, when I was approaching 70 years of age and thinking I might be reaching the end of my useful time, I found myself called to the colours again with an invitation to rejoin the Society of the Inner Light, where I had learned my trade back in the 1950’s.  What I have found useful – and printable – to say about all that I glossed in my esoteric memoirs I Called It Magic back in 1980, when I thought that might have come to the effective end of the line as far as this incarnation goes. However, here I am, another half decade  on, and somewhat awed by my impending approach towards ninety. Shall I make it that far? And in the meantime however – what to do?
I am not sure that I am up to writing another book. Assuming there is any kind of hunger out there for yet another one. Nonetheless I have had one at the back of my mind that has been nagging away with increasing insistence, and stems from some time I spent in France back in those pre-millennium days. There had been over the years a small French publisher, (Ediru) , now alas defunct, who translated and published some of my books: A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism, A History of White Magic, The Rose Cross and the Goddess, The Secret Tradition in Arthurian Legend which led to me undertake some lecture trips around France to help along sales between 1984 and 1999.
In the course of those trips and getting to know a number of French occultists I began to realise what a huge gap there was between the English and the French when it came to the development, aims and attitude toward the esoteric. The English Channel might just as well have been a Cosmic Abyss.
 I thought not a lot more of this at the time although I was conscious, on one or two occasions when invited to sit in on some practical workings with the French, that something was happening on an inner level of which I ought to take notice – although at the time I could not think what it might be. One just had to ‘bear it in mind’ for possible future use.
It seems as if the time for this possible further use is upon me. I have been prodded by some very sharp elbows on the inner planes to do something about it, and as a result in the last few months have gradually amassed about a couple of yards of books in French that weigh heavy on my mind and my bookshelves. I also realise why it was, when I retired from fulltime work, that I was obsessed into spending the next eight years at the University of London acquiring an external BA in French language and literature.  
The hour has now struck. Or as one of my French friends said in relation to the Tarot card of the Magician, that they call Le Bateleur – it is Le Bat á l’Heure!  Or in good old plain English: “Get on with it!”
The trouble is that, being a highly Aries kind of person, I am not good at being patient about things. If I am going to do something I need to have done  it yesterday – not tomorrow! And at the age of 85, how many tomorrows have I got to look forward to?  I don’t intend to ask the Tarot or anyone else. Sufficient unto the day is the labour thereof. However I cannot bring myself to embark on what might turn out to be a lengthy task that I might not be able to finish. So a formal kind of book I find out of the question.
After a deal of pushing and shoving between the planes a compromise has come to me that I can live with, which is to deal with it all in a piecemeal episodic manner. As a series of separate articles or chapters that feature in each case a particularly important character or issue on the French occult scene during its heyday at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. 
At the time when the London occult scene was dominated by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the characters that went with it, Paris had its equivalent organisations and colourful characters. Some of these I would like to take a good look at, one by one, as Sons of Hermes, as they liked to regard themselves.
Very little has made it across the English Channel apart from A.E.Waite’s rather stodgy translations of Eliphas Levi (History of Magic and Transcendental Magic)  and a grotesquely inaccurate ‘professional’ translation of Papus’ Tarot of the Bohemians, where they even got the title wrong! Over a period of fifty years these were the only serious occult books translated from French into English after the 1890’s, until a highly imaginative History of Magic by Paul Christian.
In the meantime, if anyone wants to acquaint themselves with a little of the material ahead, in the form of the French interest in ‘animal magnetism’ during the 19th century, from Anton Mesmer onward, they could do worse than peruse a copy The Circuit of Force, subtitled Occult Dynamics of the Etheric Vehicle.
This was written by Dion Fortune as a series of fifteen articles between February 1939 and August 1940, published by Thoth Publications in 1998, with commentary by me. My commentary is largely based on a strange book, Théories et procédés du Magnétisme by Hector Durville, that I picked up from a bouquinist’s bin on the quays of the Seine. This was a subject that greatly interested Dion Fortune in the late 1930’s and in her private library I came across, amongst others, Private Instructions in the Science and Art of Organic Magnetism by Miss Chandos Leigh Hunt, privately published in 1884 in a lockable binding of gold velvet. Style as well as substance in those days!
This caused some fluttering in the esoteric dovecots, then and in later years. So much so that with the publication of a collection of her articles, Applied Magic, in 1962, the alleged inclusion of The Circuit of Force was reduced to the first and last chapters. The other thirteen chapters were missing! A very frugal sandwich! Which no doubt led to Ernest Butler’s fondness, in relation to occult groups, for quoting the White Queen in Through the Looking Glass – “The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today!”  A rule that, I must say, has never appealed to me.