Dogme et rituel de la haute magie
The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic · Dogma y ritual de la alta magia
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Su fórmula central es el telos del arte entero: «The Great Work is, above all else, the creation of man by himself» «Lévi — Dogma y ritual de la alta magia · p. 127». El eje es la voluntad — «All true will is confirmed by acts» — anillo de Giges y varita de las transmutaciones «Lévi — Dogma y ritual de la alta magia · pp. 149, 301», con los cuatro verbos del mago ligados a la esfinge «Lévi — Dogma y ritual de la alta magia · p. 49». Su agente es la luz astral, «Azoth and Magnesia, this unique and incontestable occult force» «Lévi — Dogma y ritual de la alta magia · p. 119», instrumento de la omnipotencia de Adán y luego de su tormento «Lévi — Dogma y ritual de la alta magia · p. 101».
El Dogme se publicó en 1854 y el Rituel en 1855, luego reunidos «Lévi — Dogma y ritual de la alta magia · p. 8»; la obra le dio a Lévi fama inmediata y encendió el revival de la magia «Lévi — Dogma y ritual de la alta magia · p. 8», con una cadena de recepción que va de Blavatsky y Albert Pike a Yeats y la Golden Dawn, que «basó su práctica en Lévi» «Lévi — Dogma y ritual de la alta magia · pp. 21, 22».
1262 claims · 1 source · 2 attributions
Attribution
recorded, never asserted«Lévi — Dogma y ritual de la alta magia · p. 132»
«Lévi — Dogma y ritual de la alta magia · pp. 9, 10»
The chain of the work
the processed witness, in emeraldClaims
1262 entries — the work's own voice, with its passage«Ego sum qui sum» — el axioma que propone contra el cogito cartesiano: la primera revelación divina en el hombre.
«True, without error, certain, and most true.» — la triple afirmación de la Tabla Esmeralda como criterio de verdad, que el texto atribuye a Mercurius Trismegistus.
Los cuatro verbos del mago — conocer, atreverse, querer, callar — se ligan a la esfinge.
«To doubt is to become insane; to stop is to fall; to retreat is to plunge into an abyss.»
«Imagination is the instrument of the adaptation of the Verb.»
«The universe is balanced by two forces which maintain its equilibrium: the force which attracts and the force which repels.»
«Shadow is a foil for light, and the possibility of error is necessary for the temporal manifestation of the truth.»
«All words have three meanings, all actions a threefold result, all forms a threefold idea.»
«Affirmation, negation, discussion, solution, these are the four philosophical operations of the human spirit.»
«There is no invisible world, there are only degrees of perfection in the different systems.»
«microcosm, or the little world, and, following the doctrine» — de las analogías—
«The septenary is the sacred number in all theogonies and in all symbols, because it is composed of the ternary and the quaternary.»
«All is enclosed in one word, and in one word of four letters: it is the Tetragrammaton of the Hebrews» — Su eco: «Four letters make the Name that rules all names».
«God, for us, is the Azoth of the sages»
«Analogy is the last word of science and the first word of faith.»
«The devil is God as understood by the wicked» — En la misma página: «The devil is formed from the rifts within God».
«THE DEVIL, IN BLACK MAGIC, IS THE GREAT MAGICAL AGENT USED FOR PURPOSES OF EVIL BY A PERVERSE WILL.» — así, en versales, su definición nuclear.
«The devil is death which disguises itself with the worn-out vestments of life;»
«He who affirms the devil creates or makes the devil.» — todo verbo crea lo que afirma.
«The terrible and just power which eternally kills fetuses was called, by the Hebrews, Samael; by the Orientals, Satan; and by the Latins, Lucifer.»
El Baphomet de los Templarios combina la cabra de Mendes y el Verbo gnóstico; Lévi niega la existencia real de Satanás y lo declara jeroglífico: «The terrible Baphomet is no more».
Su etimología cabalística del nombre: «whose name should be spelled Cabalistically and in the inverse, is composed of three abbreviations: TEM OHP AB» —el nombre es el Baphomet de los templarios— Templi omnium hominum pacis abbas.
«A werewolf is nothing but the astral body of a man, to whom the wolf represents wild and bloodthirsty instincts»
La luz astral es el agente mágico universal, «Azoth and Magnesia, this unique and incontestable occult force», con las operaciones coagula/solve tomadas de Khunrath.
«The astral light or the world soul was the instrument of Adam's omnipotence, which then became the instrument of his torment.»
«The law of magnetic currents is that of the movement of the astral light itself.»
«astral light directs the animal instincts and battles against man’s intelligence, which it tends to pervert»
«Magnetic respiration produces a radiation around the soul of which it is the center.»
«Love is one of the great instruments of magical power; but it is» — y sigue la prohibición al mago—
«The basilisk who kills with its gaze is not a fable; it is a magical allegory.»
«We have said that within the astral light are conserved the images of people and things.» — el fundamento de su necromancia.
«Strength attracts strength, life attracts life, good health attracts good health: it is a law of nature.»
Los hebreos llamaron al agente mágico OD cuando actúa, OB cuando es pasivo y AOUR en equilibrio.
Lévi reivindica una acuñación propia: «ASTRAL INTOXICATION, a word which we write here for the first time».
La doctrina de la voluntad es el eje: «All true will is confirmed by acts; all will confirmed by an act is an action».
«The will is the veritable ring of Gyges; it is also the wand of transmutations.»
«All intentions which are not manifested by acts are vain intentions.»
«The mage must therefore be calm, sober, and chaste, disinterested, impenetrable, and inaccessible to all type of bias or terror.» — Solo ejerce su poder en dirección opuesta a su interés material: el alquimista produce más oro cuanto más se resigna a la privación.
«Strength can only be affirmed through victories.»
«Magic is an instrument of divine grace or diabolical pride, but it is death to the joys of the world.»
«The number forty is sacred, and it is the symbol of magic itself.» — presentado como enseñanza propia, sin citar fuentes.
«Equilibrium is the result of two forces.»
«Never yield to the desire to convince through effects.»
«If you wish to accumulate burning coals upon the head of he who causes you harm, then pardon him and do him good.» — el perdón como venganza del soberano.
«Science is preserved through silence and is perpetuated through initiation.»
«If you are blind like Samson when you shake the columns of the temple, the ruins will crush you.»
«All the magical instruments must be double in number: one must have two swords, two wands, two cups...» — la ley del equilibrio aplicada al instrumental, con colores contrarios y magnetización por el operador.
«The ternary, being the foundation of magical doctrine, must necessarily be observed in evocations.» — el triángulo de evocación con la punta hacia el origen del espíritu.
«Paracelsus's trident is a pentacle which expresses the summary of the ternary in the unity and thus completes the sacred quaternary.»
«The elementary spirits are like children» — sílfides, ondinas, gnomos y salamandras, sin libre albedrío, dominables por la voluntad, con sus soberanos Paralda, Nichsa, Djinn y Ghob.
Consagración de la sal: «In isto sale sit sapientia, et ab omni corruptione servet mentes nostras et corpora nostra, per Hochmaël et in virtute Ruach» [«nostras», no «nostrae»]
De la Conjuración de los Cuatro: «Caput mortuum, imperet tibi Dominus per vivum et devotum serpentum.» — y «FLUAT UDOR per spiritum Elohim».
De la Conjuración de los Siete: «In the name of Michael, may Jehovah command you and drive you away from here, Chavajoth!»
La vara mágica: bastón de almendro o avellano atravesado por aguja de hierro magnetizado, con prismas y anillos de cobre y zinc grabados en hebreo; su nombre de autoridad es «Verendum» y no debe ostentarse en público — Richelieu buscó sin éxito su transmisión.
Consagración de la espada: «Sis mihi gladius Michaelis, in virtute Elohim Sabaoth fugiant a te spiritus tenebrarum et reptilia terrae» — con guarda según el Enchiridion de León III y el monograma de Miguel según Agrippa.
La lámpara mágica lleva los cuatro metales (oro, plata, bronce, hierro), sellos herméticos, los globos de los siete espíritus y el andrógino bicéfalo de Khunrath grabado en el pie.
«Gnostic schools we call the flaming star,347 is the sign of omnipotence and intellectual autocracy» — [«347» es la llamada de nota] — «drawn with luminous lines on glass through the means of an electrical machine also exerts a great influence over the spirits»; y «The G which the Freemasons place in the middle of the flaming star signifies GNOSIS and GENERATION».
«The seven magical planets correspond to the seven colors of the spectrum and the seven notes of the musical octave.» — el septenario de los «secundei» de Trithemius con los siete arcángeles.
«The operator must turn towards the Orient to pray, towards the Occident to evoke» — con oratorio mágico, prisma triangular para el rayo solar de día y globo de cristal con agua de noche.
De la invocación cabalística de Salomón: «Powers of the kingdom, may you be under my left foot and in my right hand;» — con la escala completa de los coros (Ishim, Cherubim, Malakhim, Seraphim, Aralim, Ophanim, Chaioth ha-Qodesh).
«What we vulgarly call necromancy has nothing to do with resurrection» — Distingue la necromancia de luz (oración, pentáculo, perfumes) de la de oscuridad (sangre, imprecaciones), que desaconseja.
«The resurrection of a dead person is the masterpiece of magnetism» — porque «Death is the phantom of ignorance; it does not exist: all is alive in nature»; ya en la Doctrina: «Death is never instantaneous; it operates by degrees, like sleep».
De la evocación infernal: «Per Adonai Elohim, Adonai Jehovah, Adonai Sabaoth» — dentro del círculo con triángulo y pentagrama, con la letanía «Hemen-Etan! Hemen-Etan! Hemen-Etan!».
Sobre los pactos diabólicos, con ironía: «the official record is in hell, in Lucifer's cabinet,» — el pacto se escribe por duplicado en pergamino de cabra, con pluma de hierro y sangre del brazo izquierdo.
La «Mass of the Devil»: la ceremonia negra ante Charles IX moribundo, ordenada por Catalina de Médicis, con dos hostias y cruz invertida; el poseído gritó «Vim patior».
«A threat is a real enchantment, because it acts strongly upon the imagination.» — Su contra-magia doméstica: «Wash your towels and the clothes you have made use of carefully before giving them away, or burn them;».
Reproduce la receta del ungüento de brujas que atribuye a la Magia Naturalis de Della Porta: «suim, acorum vulgare, pentaphyllon, verspertillionis sanguinem, solanum somniferum et oleum».
Solo Iamblichus, Porphyry y Pietro d'Abano hablaron seriamente del anillo de Giges, y el Petit Albert da la receta con mercurio; «transubstanciación» es la palabra que el Concilio de Trento dictó para el arcanum de la transformación.
«The Great Work is something more than a chemical operation: it is a veritable creation of the initiated human Verb to the power of the Verb of God itself.»
«The Great Work of Hermes is thus an essentially magical operation, and the highest of all»
«The Great Work is, above all else, the creation of man by himself.»
«All hermetic science is contained in the doctrine that Hermes originally engraved, or so it is said, on a tablet of emerald.» — el «or so it is said» es del propio Lévi: él mismo marca la atribución.
«In the past we created gold with science, today we must remake science with gold.»
«These words, enigmatic in form, but clear in content, clearly express what the philosophers mean by their mercury... it is the AZOTH.»
«The philosopher's stone ... a single fleck of the divine powder are sufficient to cure them.» — «him alone,” he adds, “that you are able to reach the universal medicine for man, for animals, for plants».
Afirma transmutaciones históricas reales: «probably Heinrich Khunrath made true gold and did not take their secret with them, since they concealed it within their symbols» (de la lista de atribuciones del digest).
Khunrath identifica a Abraxas como la verdadera forma del Cristo, pentagrama luminoso sobre la cruz astronómica; las doce llaves de Basilius Valentinus se superponen a la llave 22 del Tarot para revelar el arquetipo de la Gran Obra.
«Paracelsus, the greatest of Christian mages» — , descubrió el magnetismo antes que Mesmer.
«We have defined miracles as the natural effects of exceptional causes.»
«Insufflation is one of the most important practices in occult medicine, because it is the perfect sign of the transmission of life.» — aliento caliente, electricidad positiva; frío, negativa.
«The water of the homeopaths is truly a magnetized and enchanted water, which operates through faith.»
«All the power of occult medicine is in the consciousness of the will» — Su ancla evangélica: «If thou canst believe," said the Master, "all things are possible to him that believeth».
«To divine (divinari), is to exercise divinity.» — «Divination is thus an intuition, and the key to that intuition is the universal and magical doctrine of analogies».
«hiromancy246 is the art of reading the writing of the stars in» — la «C» se perdió en la capitular, y «246» es la llamada de nota—
«Flowers, colors, and animals all have an analogical classification with the spirits of the Cabala» — azul idealista, rojo materialista, negro Saturno, rosa Venus.
«This onomantic astrology was the one used by all the ancient Hebrew Cabalists» — con su operación: «During the day, take a black card in which you will cut out the letters of the name of the person».
Las veintidós llaves del Tarot corresponden a las veintidós letras hebreas, y los cuatro palos al Tetragrámaton: Bastones-Yod, Copas-Heh, Espadas-Vav, Pentáculos-Heh final.
«The Tarot was the unique book of the ancient mages; it is the primordial Bible.»
Lévi declara haber hallado la verdadera Clavícula de Salomón: «It was a hieroglyphic and numeral alphabet, expressing in characters and numbers a series of universal and absolute ideas» — «four decades as a ring, and as its shaft or body the scale of twenty-two characters».
La palabra ROTA, tomada de Postel, «symbolizes Ezekiel's wheel, or TAROT, and is thus synonymous with the AZOTH of the hermetic philosophers».
«By adding each of the columns of these squares, you invariably obtain the number which is characteristic of the planet» — los cuadrados planetarios según Paracelso, leídos con los jeroglíficos del Tarot.
«Thus the ace of coins or of the circle, is the soul of the world; the ace of swords is the active intelligence;»
«The solution to all magical questions is that of the pentagram, and all the antinomies are explained by the harmonious unity.»
«The four sacred words: YOD HEH VAU HEH.»
El Gran Arcano es el conocimiento supremo prohibido: «The great arcanum remained as unknown as ever; only the adepts, neutralized by one another, could not exercise its power».
Profecía datada: «This empire will be political and religious; it will provide a solution to all the problems stirred up in our day.» — el imperio universal surgiría en 1879 y duraría 354 años, sobre la profecía de Trithemius.
«a thing is not just because God wills it; but God wills it because it is just.» — su «ley absoluta de la razón».
«Reason is the necessity, is the law, is the rule of all liberty and the direction of all initiatives.» — El cierre de la Doctrina: «May initiation be rendered unto the priests and kings, and order will renew itself».
«Faith is but superstition and folly if it does not have reason as its base,» — «Faith and reason! Two terms which we believe are opposites and which are identical»; «Reason is holy».
«We do not come, like Oedipus, to kill the sphinx of symbolism; we undertake, to the contrary, to resuscitate it.» — el manifiesto del cierre del Ritual.
«The existence of a universal agent of life, of a living fire, of an astral light has been demonstrated to us through facts.»
El Suplemento trae el Nuctemerón de Apolonio de Tiana — «This monument to the high magic of the Assyrians556 is interesting enough for us to have taken the trouble to have its importance noticed», del manuscrito griego publicado por Gilbert Gaulminus y reproducido por Laurent Moshemius (1721) — con su griego: «Ἐν ᾗ δαίμονες ἀνοῦντες (...) τὸν θεὸν, οὐτε ἀδικοῦσιν, οὐτε κολάζουσιν».
«The mystery of the number nine must not be revealed.»
«Lightning obeys man, it becomes the vehicle of his will» — undécima hora del Nuctemerón; y el Shamir, el diamante con que Salomón talló el templo sin martillo.
«the human magnet acts at great distances and upon all bodies» — con la única excepción del carbón vegetal, que absorbe la luz astral terrestre.
«When an evil spell is thus cast off, it turns against its author» — la contra-magia rural: pactos enterrados bajo el umbral del establo, sal magnetizada para exorcismos.
«Here begin the mysterious prayers of Pope Leo.» — el Suplemento reproduce las conjuraciones del Enchiridion de León III («papa del siglo VIII», así lo consigna el texto), con las oraciones al «león de la tribu de Judá».
«To form a magnetic chain, is to give birth to a current of ideas that produces faith.» — «Printing is an admirable mechanism for forming a magical chain by the extension of the word»; y el ejemplo: «Peter the Hermit shocked all of Europe by crying out: God wills it!».
«All things considered, France in the year 1854 hardly seemed a propitious setting for a revival of the ancient traditions of magic.» — Greer, en la introducción general de esta edición, sitúa el año: la Francia industrial de 1854 no parecía terreno para un renacimiento de la magia, y ése es el marco con que presenta el libro
«Yet this was the year that a previously obscure French writer published, under the pen name Eliphas Lévi, a book titled Doctrine of High Magic (Dogme de la haute magie).» — Greer data la publicación y el seudónimo: Alphonse Louis Constant firma como Eliphas Lévi el Dogme de la haute magie. La atribución del nombre es del aparato, no del texto de Lévi
«While he did not act on the attraction, the experience convinced him that he was not suited for a celibate life, and he left the seminary before being ordained.» — Greer refiere la salida del seminario: Constant abandonó antes de ordenarse, convencido de no servir para el celibato
«It was apparently Wroński who showed Constant that the magical and alchemical writings he had encountered first by way of Alphonse Esquiros and his circle were not merely romantic curiosities but embodied a philosophy of life and a way of understanding the world that had not lost any of its relevance with the coming of the modern, up-to-date culture of the 1850s.» — adjudicación de linaje hecha por Greer: es Hoëné-Wroński quien le muestra a Constant que la magia y la alquimia no eran curiosidades románticas sino una filosofía de vida, tras el primer contacto por Alphonse Esquiros
«He was not exaggerating; from 1856 until the outbreak of the First World War, occultism was a massive presence not only in French culture but throughout Europe and America, and the revival of magic in those years sowed plenty of seeds that sprouted anew in the occult boom that got under way in the wake of the 1960s.» — Greer mide el alcance del renacimiento ocultista que arranca con el libro: de 1856 hasta la Primera Guerra Mundial, en Europa y América
«Lévi was the most important of the first generation of occult authors, the one who proved that it was possible to restate the old teachings of magic in modern language and introduce them to a mass market.» — la adjudicación central de Greer sobre el lugar de Lévi: el primero que probó que las viejas enseñanzas mágicas podían reformularse en lengua moderna para un mercado masivo
«Lévi rejected the Enlightenment’s blind faith in the omnipotence of the human intellect.» — Greer resume el primer tema de Lévi como rechazo de la fe ilustrada en la omnipotencia del intelecto humano
«He argued that human understanding was certainly capable of knowing some things about the cosmos, and insisted that where accurate knowledge was possible facts should take precedence over faith.» — y su límite, según Greer: donde el conocimiento exacto es posible, los hechos preceden a la fe. La acotación es lo que impide leer a Lévi como irracionalista sin más
«He pointed out, though, that a great many things cannot be known by human reason and that some of these are enormously important in terms of their impact on human existence.» — el reverso del mismo tema, en la formulación de Greer: hay mucho que la razón humana no alcanza, y parte de eso pesa enormemente sobre la existencia
«Even today, more than a century and a half after Constant’s alter ego Eliphas Lévi burst on the scene, those who speak of magic as anything but a collection of discarded superstitions can expect reactions that range from blank incomprehension to reflexive contempt.» — Greer describe la recepción que aún hoy espera a quien hable de magia como otra cosa que superstición descartada
«Not so fast, said Lévi. Literal meanings are not the only game in town.» — Greer expone la respuesta de Lévi a la crítica ilustrada de la religión: el sentido literal no agota el texto. La formulación coloquial es del traductor y del introductor, no de Lévi
«As for Dupuis and Volney, he argued, they had found the most marvelous proofs of Christianity’s relevance and mistaken them for proofs of Christianity’s falsehood—for what does the presence of common symbolic themes in different faiths indicate if not the presence of common truths shared by those faiths?» — la objeción que Greer atribuye a Lévi contra Dupuis y Volney: los temas simbólicos comunes a varias religiones les parecieron señal de falsedad y eran, para Lévi, señal de pertinencia
«The literal meaning was the proper spiritual food for children and the ignorant, who stood to benefit from a simple faith that taught basic lessons of morality.» — Greer consigna la doctrina de los sentidos escalonados: el literal como alimento espiritual de los niños y los ignorantes
«He also rejected out of hand the idea that magic could overturn natural laws.» — Greer señala que Lévi rechaza de plano que la magia derogue las leyes naturales
«His answer, the third theme of this book, was as simple as it was revolutionary: magic is a psychological process.» — la tesis que Greer declara tercer tema del libro y su aporte revolucionario: la magia es un proceso psicológico
«The powers and potencies that mages invoke exist within their own minds, and the arduous training through which the apprentice becomes an adept is simply a process of learning how to use vivid symbols and symbolic acts energized by the will to draw on capacities of consciousness that most human beings never discover in themselves.» — su desarrollo, en la glosa de Greer: las potencias que el mago invoca están en su propia mente, y el aprendizaje consiste en usar símbolos y actos simbólicos cargados de voluntad
«The apparent absurdity of many magical rituals is thus beside the point, because any set of actions that has been given a symbolic meaning can be used to accomplish the redirection of the mind that makes magic work.» — consecuencia que Greer deriva de esa lectura: el absurdo aparente del rito es irrelevante, porque cualquier acto al que se dé sentido simbólico sirve
«Vico argued that it was a mistake to think of human consciousness as a constant untroubled by historical change.» — Greer introduce a Vico como precedente: la consciencia humana no es una constante ajena al cambio histórico
«To Vico—and, as already noted, to Lévi as well— mythology is simply another method of communicating truths, but one that has become unfamiliar to modern people.» — la equiparación que hace Greer entre Vico y Lévi: la mitología es otro método de comunicar verdades, no un desván de necedades
«To Vico, that knowledge dealt with the same subjects as modern abstract thought; Lévi, on the other hand, drew from Renaissance sources the idea that the knowledge communicated by myth dealt with something beyond the ordinary.» — y donde Greer los separa: Vico entiende que el mito trata de los mismos asuntos que el pensamiento abstracto moderno; Lévi, de fuentes renacentistas, que trata de algo que excede lo ordinario
«Lévi’s debt to Schopenhauer is profound and pervasive.» — adjudicación de deuda hecha por Greer, no por Lévi
«Schopenhauer’s impact on Lévi, though, also reaches down into the realm of specifics, for the entire conception of magic Lévi presents can be found in embryo in one of Schopenhauer’s less famous books.» — Greer precisa esa deuda: la concepción entera de la magia de Lévi estaría en germen en un libro menor de Schopenhauer
«Magic as the manifestation of the trained and focused will: this is the seed from which Lévi’s conception of magic unfolded.» — Greer condensa así la semilla de la doctrina: la magia como manifestación de la voluntad entrenada y enfocada
«Mesmer was inevitably dismissed as a quack, a fate he has shared with many more recent discoverers of the same principle.» — Greer registra el precio que pagó Mesmer y que otros pagarían después por el mismo principio
«Lévi was familiar with the theory and suggested that the astral light might well be an ancient name for the ether, but he did not place any great importance on the identification.» — Greer consigna la reserva del propio Lévi: sugirió que la luz astral pudiera ser un nombre antiguo del éter, pero no le dio importancia a la identificación
«The importance of the astral light to Lévi’s teachings is that it allows a psychological interpretation of magic to explain some of the things that magic is traditionally held to be able to do.» — la función que Greer le asigna a la luz astral dentro del sistema: permite que una lectura psicológica de la magia explique lo que la magia dice poder hacer
«Lévi argues that every thought, word, and action shapes the astral light to some extent.» — resumen de Greer de la doctrina de la impronta: todo pensamiento, palabra y acto conforma en alguna medida la luz astral
«The more clearly we formulate an intention and the more forcefully we back it up with concentration and will, on the other hand, the more influence it will have on the astral light, and the more effectively it will shape the thoughts and actions of other beings.» — y su graduación: cuanto más clara la intención y más fuerte la concentración que la respalda, mayor su efecto sobre la luz astral
«The secret of the Great Work, as Lévi points out repeatedly, is incommunicable; like falling in love or facing death, it involves a shift in consciousness that cannot be translated meaningfully into words.» — límite que Greer subraya y que Lévi repite: el secreto de la Gran Obra es incomunicable, como enamorarse o morir
«It is thus crucial to keep in mind that Lévi very often uses the same symbolic and allegorical way of speaking he traces out in the Bible, the Thebaid, and so many other sources.» — advertencia de lectura que da Greer: Lévi usa con frecuencia el mismo hablar simbólico y alegórico que él mismo rastrea en la Biblia y en la Tebaida
«As Lévi himself points out, many magical teachings are meant to be taken in three different senses» — regla de lectura que Greer atribuye al propio Lévi: hay enseñanzas mágicas que se toman en tres sentidos distintos
«His goal throughout The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic is to force his readers to think for themselves, to look past the obvious surface meanings of his words to grasp a message that is not meant for the clueless.» — el propósito que Greer le adjudica al libro entero: obligar al lector a pensar por sí mismo y a pasar del sentido superficial
«A piece of advice found in the literature of medieval alchemy is worth following: “Lege, lege, lege, relege, ora, labora et invenies” (Read, read, read, read again, pray, labor, that you may discover).» — máxima alquímica medieval que Greer recomienda como método de lectura del libro
«The idea of helping to midwife a new English translation of Lévi’s Dogme et rituel de la haute magie had been on my mind for most of a decade before this project came together.» — Greer declara el origen del proyecto: llevaba una década pensando en apadrinar una traducción inglesa nueva
«The commonly available English rendering by Arthur Edward Waite is profoundly unsatisfactory— pompous and turgid in style, full of errors and significant omissions, and burdened by notes that are far too busy denouncing, dismissing, and misstating Lévi’s ideas to spare any time to help readers understand them.» — objeción de Greer a la traducción inglesa disponible hasta entonces, la de Arthur Edward Waite. Es la razón declarada de esta edición y explica por qué la letra inglesa que aquí se cita no coincide con la de Waite
«I am grateful to Mark Mikituk for approaching me about the possibility of working together on this translation and even more for tackling the project promptly and capably, producing a clear, readable English version in a remarkably short time.» — Greer nombra al traductor de esta edición y le atribuye la versión inglesa
«I believed that any great work of the occult—as The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic most certainly is—might have some ulterior, initially indefinable, motive, and that I should stick as closely as I 24» — Mikituk, en su nota del traductor, declara su premisa de método: supuso un motivo ulterior en la obra y decidió ceñirse al original
«This was not some vulgar book, on magic or otherwise; it was written with the intention to act upon the reader’s mind exactly like an initiatory experience, if that reader is of the right frame of mind.» — el juicio de Mikituk sobre lo que traducía: un libro escrito para obrar sobre la mente del lector como una experiencia iniciática
«In practice, as is the case when one translates poetry, this meant keeping as close as possible, not only to the sense, but also to the sound, the form and the rhythm, of the work.» — y su criterio, tomado de la traducción de poesía: conservar no solo el sentido sino el sonido, la forma y el ritmo
«Thus to the best of my ability I have attempted to intuit and reproduce The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic, as Éliphas Lévi might have written it, had he done so in English.» — la declaración de método que gobierna toda la letra inglesa de este ejemplar, y por la que ninguna frase citada aquí es literalmente de Lévi
«That intuition was quickly, and positively confirmed, by the effect the translation of Levi’s work had upon me.» — Mikituk consigna el efecto que la traducción tuvo sobre él como confirmación de su intuición inicial
«Occult philosophy seems to have been the wet nurse or the godmother for all religions, the secret lever of all intellectual powers, the key to all divine enigmas, and the absolute queen of society in the eras in which it was reserved exclusively for the education of priests and kings.» — la definición de apertura: la filosofía oculta como nodriza de todas las religiones y palanca secreta de todo poder intelectual. Es la tesis de continuidad única que sostiene el libro entero
«She reigned in Persia among the mages, who one day perished, as do perish the masters of the world, for having abused their power;» — su cronología de reinados y caídas: Persia, y la ruina de los mages por abuso del poder
«For this science, said the masses, nothing is impossible: she commands the elements, knows the language of the celestial bodies, and directs the progress of the stars;» — lo que la voz popular le atribuía a esa ciencia, en boca del propio texto
«At last, a universal cry of condemnation rose up against magic, whose name alone became a crime, and the hatred of the vulgar was formulated in this command: “Magicians to the flames!” as was said several centuries previously: “Christians to the lions!”» — la condena que registra, con su consigna
«Yet the multitudes never conspire against the real powers; they do not have the science of what is true, but only the instinct for what is strong.» — su lectura de esa condena: la multitud no conspira contra un poder que no exista, y por eso el odio delata la fuerza
«Nonetheless, at the heart of magic there is science, just as at the heart of Christianity there is love;» — la analogía con que empareja las dos herencias que quiere reconciliar
«What a remarkable thing! There exist among the sacred books of the Christians two works which the infallible Church makes no pretension to understanding and does not even try to explain: the prophecy of Ezekiel and the Book of Revelation;» — su observación sobre el canon cristiano: dos libros que la Iglesia infalible no pretende entender ni explicar, la profecía de Ezequiel y el Apocalipsis
«Another book also exists; but that one, even though it is in a way popular and can be found everywhere, is the most occult and the most unknown of all, because it contains the key to all the others;» — y el tercero, que declara el más oculto de todos por contener la clave de los demás. Anuncia aquí el Tarot sin nombrarlo
«The original alliance between Christianity and the science of the mages, if it is properly demonstrated for once, would not be a discovery of mediocre importance, and we doubt not that the result of a serious study of magic and the Cabala would bring serious minds to a reconciliation, until now regarded as impossible, between science and doctrine, and between reason and faith.» — el programa del libro: demostrar la alianza original entre el cristianismo y la ciencia de los mages
«The Church ignores magic, because it must ignore it or perish, as we we shall prove later on; it also does not recognize that its mysterious founder was greeted in his crib by the three mages, that is to say by the hieratic ambassadors from the three parts of the known world and from the three analogical worlds of occult philosophy.» — su acusación a la Iglesia, formulada como necesidad y no como culpa
«In the school of Alexandria, magic and Christianity almost held hands under the auspices of Ammonius Saccas and of Plato.» — la escuela de Alejandría como el punto donde magia y cristianismo casi se dan la mano, bajo Amonio Saccas y Platón
«Druidesses with golden sickles, wearing crowns of smallage and vervain, sacrifice children stolen before their baptism and prepare a horrific banquet.» — del cuadro del sabbat que monta como escena de terror: druidisas con hoces de oro sacrifican niños robados antes del bautismo. Es una puesta en escena retórica suya, no un informe
«except salt, which is the symbol of wisdom and of immortality.» — dentro de esa escena, la única sustancia ausente del banquete, con su valor simbólico
«you are initiated into the terrible secrets like those in the cave of Trophonius:27 you have witnessed the witches’ Sabbath!» — el cierre de la escena: la despierta como sueño y declara al lector iniciado en el secreto, comparándolo con la cueva de Trofonio
«I will have you witness the torment of Jacques de Molay and his accomplices, or his brothers, in martyrdom.» — pasa del sabbat al suplicio de Jacques de Molay y los templarios
«Judge nothing lightly, they are guilty of a great crime: they allowed the profane a glimpse into the sanctuary of the ancient initiation;» — y su adjudicación de la culpa templaria, que no es la que les imputó el proceso: dejaron que los profanos entrevieran el santuario de la iniciación antigua
«The judgment which condemns them comes from a higher power than even the Pope’s» — la instancia a la que atribuye esa condena, por encima de la papal
«He has the secret of the resurrection of the dead and the key to immortality.» — de la lista de poderes que atribuye al adepto: resurrección de los muertos y llave de la inmortalidad
«To force nature to surrender to him when he desires.» — y el dominio sobre la naturaleza, en la misma lista
«To predict all future events which do not rely on a superior free will or an imperceptible cause.» — con su límite explícito, que es lo que distingue su adivinación de la fatalidad: no alcanza lo que dependa de una voluntad libre superior ni de una causa imperceptible
«Such are, in fact, the results of occult philosophy, and we are in the position of not having to fear any accusation of folly or suspicion of charlatanism in affirming that all these privileges are real.» — asume por adelantado la acusación y la rechaza: afirma esos privilegios como reales
«The philosopher’s stone, the universal medicine, the transmutation of metals, the squaring of the circle, and the secret of perpetual movement are neither scientific hoaxes nor wild dreams; they are terms that must be understood in their true sense and express all the different uses of the same secret, the different characters of the same operation, that we define in a more general manner by simply calling it the Great Work.» — su reclasificación de los grandes problemas herméticos: ni engaños ni delirios, sino formulaciones de un secreto
«There also exists in nature a force much more powerful than steam.» — la fuerza que declara existente y más poderosa que el vapor, escrita en plena era industrial
«This force was known to the ancients: it consists of a universal agent whose supreme law is balance and whose control is directly related to the great arcanum of transcendental magic.» — y su definición: un agente universal cuya ley suprema es el equilibrio y cuyo control es el gran arcano de la magia trascendental
«The Gnostics made of it the flaming body of the Holy Spirit, and it was that which they adored in the secret rites of the sabbath or of the temple, under the hieroglyphic figure of Baphomet or of the androgynous goat of Mendes.» — adjudicación de linaje: atribuye a los gnósticos la adoración de ese agente como cuerpo flamígero del Espíritu Santo bajo la figura de Baphomet o el chivo andrógino de Mendes
«Oedipus answers with a simple and terrible word which kills the sphinx and which will have him become the perspicacious king of Thebes: the word for the enigma, is man!» — su lectura de la Tebaida: la palabra que mata a la esfinge es el hombre
«The secret book of ancient initiation was not ignored by Homer, who draws its plan and its main figures on Achilles’s shield, with exacting precision.» — atribuye a Homero el conocimiento del libro secreto de la iniciación antigua, trazado en el escudo de Aquiles
«God, for us, is the Azoth of the sages, the efficient and final principle of the Great Work.» — la identificación que hace del Azoth con Dios como principio eficiente y final de la Gran Obra
«The crime of the king of Thebes is not to have understood the sphinx, it is to have destroyed the bane of Thebes without having been pure enough to complete the expiation in the name of his people;» — su desplazamiento del crimen de Edipo: no fue no entender a la esfinge, sino destruir el mal sin la pureza necesaria para consumar la expiación
«Oedipus had seen what man is, and he puts out his eyes so as not to see what God is.» — y su glosa de la ceguera de Edipo
«The great magical secret is thus Psyche’s lamp and dagger, it is Eve’s apple, it is the sacred fire revealed by Prometheus, it is Lucifer’s burning scepter, but it is also the holy cross of the Redeemer.» — la cadena de símbolos que declara equivalentes al gran secreto mágico, incluida la cruz del Redentor
«To know this well enough in order to abuse it or divulge it, is to merit every type of torture; to know it as one should know it, to use it and to hide it, is to be master of the absolute.» — la prohibición que acompaña al secreto, y que reaparece en todo el libro: usarlo y ocultarlo
«Science, vanquished in Alexandria by the fanaticism of Hypatia’s murderers,48 is Christianized, or rather hides under Christian veils with Ammonius, Synesius, and Dionysius the Areopagite, an author’s pseudonym.» — su relato de la clandestinización de la ciencia tras el asesinato de Hipatia, bajo velos cristianos con Amonio, Sinesio y Dionisio Areopagita
«The Bible, with all the allegories which enclose it, expresses only in an incomplete manner the veiled religious science of the Hebrews.» — su tesis sobre la Biblia: expresa solo de manera incompleta la ciencia religiosa velada de los hebreos
«The books were only written to recall tradition, and they were written in symbols which are unintelligible to the profane.» — y su razón de los símbolos: los libros solo se escribieron para recordar la tradición, en signos ininteligibles para el profano
«We are seized with admiration when we penetrate the sanctuary of the Cabala, by the sight of a doctrine so logical, so simple, and at the same time so absolute.» — la declaración de adhesión a la Cabala como doctrina lógica, simple y absoluta a la vez
«They are the elementary principles of the written Verb, the reflection of that spoken Verb which created the world!» — su doctrina de las letras: principios elementales del Verbo escrito, reflejo del Verbo hablado que creó el mundo
«The Cabala alone devotes itself to the alliance of universal reason and the divine Verb;» — la adjudicación que le da a la Cabala su primacía en el sistema: es la única que alía la razón universal con el Verbo divino
«This work does not deal only with science; magic, or rather magical power, is composed of two things: a science and a force.» — la definición operativa de magia que gobierna la división del libro en Doctrina y Ritual
«Without force, science is nothing, or rather is in danger.» — y su corolario, que es también su advertencia
«He saw only astronomy as the origin of all cults, thus taking the symbolic Cycle for the dogma, and the calendar for legend.» — su objeción a Dupuis: tomó el ciclo simbólico por el dogma y el calendario por la leyenda
«He only lacked one single body of knowledge, that of true magic, which encloses the secrets of the Cabala.» — y lo que le atribuye como carencia: le faltaba la magia verdadera, que encierra los secretos de la Cabala
«And then we could understand Guillaume Postel and admit in a low voice that apart from his premature dreams and overly generous emancipation of woman, the famous and knowledgeable visionary might not be as crazy as he is called by people who have not read him.» — su rehabilitación parcial de Guillaume Postel, con la reserva incluida sobre sus sueños prematuros
«Without a doubt, since we are trying to explain the philosopher’s stone, perpetual movement, the secret of the Great Work and the universal medicine, we will be accused of madness, like the divine Paracelsus, or of charlatanism, like the great and unfortunate Agrippa.» — anticipa la acusación de locura y se pone en la línea de Paracelso
«Our work is divided into two parts: in one we establish the Cabalistic and magical doctrine in its entirety, the other is dedicated to the cult, that is to say, ceremonial magic.» — la arquitectura declarada de la obra: doctrina cabalística y mágica en una parte, culto y magia ceremonial en la otra
«The number and the subject of the chapters, which correspond between the two parts, are anything but arbitrary and are all found indicated in the great universal key for which we give for the first time a complete and satisfying explication.» — y su afirmación sobre la correspondencia entre los capítulos de las dos partes, remitida a la clave universal que dice publicar por primera vez
«On the pediment of the temple which antiquity had dedicated to the god of light, we read the following two-word inscription: Know Thyself.» — la inscripción délfica que pone como divisa del iniciado
«One who is a slave to his passions or to the prejudices of this world will not know how to become an initiate, he will never be able to do so, as long as he does not reform himself; and so he will not know how to become an adept, because the word adept means he who succeeded by his will and through his works.» — la condición moral que impone a la iniciación, formulada como imposibilidad y no como consejo
«If you hold something dearer in this world than reason, the truth, and justice; if your will is uncertain and faltering, either for good, or for evil; if logic frightens you, if the naked truth makes you blush; if your feelings are hurt when your errors are touched upon, throw this book away at once, and then act, in not reading it, as if it did not exist for you, but do not denounce it as dangerous: the secrets it reveals will only be understood by a small 48» — la advertencia con que despide al lector no apto, y que enumera las condiciones que él mismo pone por encima de todo: razón, verdad y justicia
«I will thus speak clearly, I will tell all, and I have the firm belief that only initiates, or those worthy of being initiates, will read everything and understand something.» — su declaración de método frente a la tradición del secreto: hablar claro y confiar en que solo el iniciado entienda
«There is a true and a false science, a divine magic and a magic that is infernal, that is to say misleading and obscure: we will reveal one and unveil the other; we will distinguish the magician from the sorcerer and the adept from the charlatan.» — la distinción que estructura su ética: hay ciencia verdadera y falsa, magia divina y magia infernal
«The magician disposes of a force which he knows, the sorcerer struggles to abuse that of which he is ignorant.» — y su criterio para separar al mago del hechicero, que es de conocimiento, no de intención
«The magician is the sovereign pontiff of nature, the sorcerer is but its desecrator.» — la misma distinción en su forma sacerdotal
«Magic is the traditional science of the secrets of nature, which comes to us from the mages.» — la definición de magia que da el libro, con su adjudicación de origen a los mages
«By using this science, the adept is invested with a sort of relative omnipotence and can act in a superhuman manner, that is to say in a manner which is not within the common reach of men.» — lo que atribuye al adepto, con la acotación de relativa que evita la omnipotencia sin más
«The mage is actually what the Hebrew Cabalists called the microprosopus,72 that is to say the creator of the little world.» — la identificación cabalística del mago con el microprosopo, creador del mundo pequeño
«The first magical science, and also the first of all the works of science, was knowledge of oneself, it is that which contains all the others and which is the principle of the Great Work, it is the creation of oneself: this word needs to be explained.» — y el orden que impone a las obras: el conocimiento de sí mismo es la primera ciencia mágica y el principio de la Gran Obra
«You are called to be the king of the air, of water, of the earth, and of fire; but to reign over these four symbolic animals, you must conquer them and place them in chains.» — su lectura de los cuatro animales simbólicos como reinos que hay que conquistar y encadenar
«The goal of all ancient initiations was to find or to shape such men.» — la finalidad que atribuye a todas las iniciaciones antiguas
«Pythagoras trained his disciples through silence and all kinds of abstinence; in Egypt, initiates were trained in the four elements; in India, we know what prodigious austerities the fakirs and brahmins were condemned to do, to reach the kingdom of free will and divine independence.» — su enumeración de las disciplinas iniciáticas: el silencio pitagórico, los cuatro elementos en Egipto, las austeridades de faquires y brahmanes
«All of this ascetic scourging is borrowed from the initiation rites of the ancient mysteries, and they stopped because potential initiates could no longer find initiators; the directors of consciences have with time become as ignorant as the common man, the blind tired of following the blind, and nobody wanted to submit to trials which lead only to doubt and despair: the path of the light had been lost.» — y su diagnóstico de por qué cesaron: no faltaron candidatos, faltaron iniciadores
«One should not head recklessly onto the road of the high sciences, but once en route, one must succeed or perish.» — la advertencia sobre el punto de no retorno del camino
«You who have begun reading this book, if you understand it and if you wish to read it to the end, it will make of you a monarch or a madman.» — y la que dirige al lector de este mismo libro
«But if you are wicked, this book will be like an infernal torch for you, it will dig into your breast, tearing into it like a dagger; it will remain in your memory like a great regret; it will fill your imagination with chimeras, and it will drive you through folly to despair.» — su reverso para el lector no puro, en la misma página
«The verb, in fact, or the word, is the cloak of existence and the characteristic sign of life.» — la doctrina del verbo como envoltura de la existencia y signo de la vida
«That is why the ancient sages, for whom Trismegistus was their voice, had formulated their sole doctrine in these terms: What is above is like what is below, and what is below is like what is above.» — cita a Trismegisto para su axioma de correspondencia, que él llama doctrina única de los sabios antiguos. El dictum no es suyo: lo adopta
«But intelligence and will are assisted by a little known faculty and whose great power belongs exclusively to the domain of magic: I speak of imagination, which the Cabalists called the diaphane or the translucent.» — su tercera facultad, la que declara propia del dominio mágico: la imaginación, que los cabalistas llamaron el diáfano o traslúcido
«The imagination, in fact, is like the eye of the soul, and it is within it that the forms materialize and are conserved, it is through imagination that we can see the reflections of the invisible world, it is the mirror of visions and the apparatus of a magical life:» — y su definición: ojo del alma, donde las formas se materializan y se conservan
«Blind and bold belief is superstition and folly. One must believe in causes which reason forces us to admit the existence of after witnessing effects known and appreciated by science.» — el límite que pone a su propia defensa de la fe, y que conviene citar con ella: la creencia ciega es superstición y locura
«Thus the so-called philosophers are absurd who say: I will not believe what I do not know.» — y su objeción simétrica a los filósofos que condicionan la creencia al conocimiento previo
«The active principle searches for the passive principle, the full loves the empty.» — la ley del binario en su formulación más escueta
«Man makes war, and woman brings peace; man destroys to create, woman builds to preserve;» — su reparto de funciones entre los dos principios, en clave de guerra y paz
«The divinity, one in his essence, has two essential conditions as the fundamental basis for his being: necessity and liberty.» — las dos condiciones que declara esenciales a la divinidad, y de las que deriva todo lo demás
«To render light visible, God has only to imagine shadow.» — su explicación de la sombra: no es un fallo de la creación sino la condición de que la luz se vea
«If the shield of Satan did not stop Michael’s lance, the angel’s power would be lost in the abyss, and this would have resulted in infinite destruction, from the highest to the lowest.» — el mismo argumento con Miguel y Satán: sin el escudo que la detiene, la lanza del ángel se perdería en el abismo
«Satan is thus as necessary to Michael as the pedestal is to a statue, and Michael is as necessary to Satan as a brake to a locomotive.» — y su conclusión, que es la afirmación más citada de esta parte: Satán resulta necesario a Miguel
«These two forces exist in physics, in philosophy, and in religion.» — extiende las dos fuerzas a los tres órdenes
«They produce equilibrium in physics, criticism in philosophy, and gradual revelation in religion.» — y les asigna un producto propio en cada uno: equilibrio, crítica y revelación gradual
«The ancients represented this mystery in the battle between Eros and Anteros,86 in the combat between Jacob and the angel,87 by the mountain of gold held in equilibrium, using the symbolic serpent of India, by the gods on one side and the demons on the other.88» — adjudica a los antiguos la representación de ese misterio en Eros y Anteros, en Jacob y el ángel y en la serpiente simbólica
«There are also two forces in the domain of morality: one which attacks, and the other which represses or expiates.» — el binario aplicado a la moral: una fuerza que ataca y otra que reprime o expía
«Within God, there is mercy and justice: he does justice to the just and gives mercy to the sinners.» — y su versión teológica, misericordia y justicia dentro de Dios
«The woman who must crush the head of the serpent93 is intelligence, which is always surmounting the current of blind forces.» — su lectura de la mujer que aplasta la cabeza de la serpiente como la inteligencia sobre las fuerzas ciegas
«The perfect Verb is the ternary, because it supposes an intelligent principle, an expressive principle, and a spoken principle.» — la definición del Verbo perfecto como ternario de principio inteligente, expresivo y hablado
«The infinite prince, in creating, speaks of himself to himself.» — su explicación del ternario: el príncipe infinito, al crear, se habla de sí mismo a sí mismo
«That is the explanation of the ternary and the origin of the dogma of the Trinity.» — y la adjudicación que hace de ahí: el dogma de la Trinidad tiene ese origen
«The magical doctrine is also of one in three and three in one.» — la simetría que declara entre la doctrina mágica y la trinitaria
«The ternary is the universal doctrine.» — la tesis del capítulo, en cuatro palabras
«If God was only one, he would never be creator and father.» — su argumento contra la unidad sola
«If he was two, there would be infinite antagonism or division, and the result would be the division or death of all things: thus he is three in order to create from himself, and in his image, the infinite multitude of beings and numbers.» — y contra el dos, que le parece división y muerte: por eso afirma la necesidad del tres
«It is also for this reason that it is contrary to the laws of orthodox hieratic symbolism to personify the Holy Spirit as a woman.» — una de sus prohibiciones simbólicas: personificar al Espíritu Santo como mujer contraría las leyes del simbolismo hierático ortodoxo
«Dogma is not divine unless it is truly human, that is to say it summarizes the highest reason of humanity:» — su criterio para el dogma: solo es divino si es verdaderamente humano
«We write all this philosophically speaking, and not theologically, and this has nothing to do with the Church’s teachings, which condemn and must always condemn magic.» — la acotación que cambia cómo se lee todo el capítulo, y que él pone por escrito: escribe filosóficamente, no teológicamente, y reconoce que la Iglesia condena la magia y debe condenarla siempre
«Paracelsus and Agrippa did not raise altar against altar but submitted themselves to the dominant religion of their times.» — su modelo de convivencia con la religión dominante, tomado de Paracelso y de Agripa
«The Emperor Julian, in his hymn to the royal Sun,100 provides a theory of the ternary which is almost exactly the same as that of the visionary Swedenborg.» — adjudica al emperador Juliano una teoría del ternario casi idéntica a la de Swedenborg
«The ternary, being the fundamental principle of the entire Cabala, or sacred tradition of our fathers, had to be the fundamental dogma of Christianity,» — su tesis sobre el cristianismo: siendo el ternario el principio de toda la Cabala, tenía que ser el dogma fundamental de la nueva religión
«The Christ did not write down his dogma; he only revealed it in secret to his favorite disciple, the only Cabalist, and a great Cabalist among the apostles.» — y su adjudicación sobre la transmisión: el Cristo no escribió su dogma y lo reveló en secreto al discípulo predilecto, a quien declara cabalista
«The secret virtue of the Gospels is thus contained in three words, and those three words founded the three doctrines and three hierarchies.» — su lectura del Evangelio reducida a tres palabras que fundan tres doctrinas y tres jerarquías
«There are also three distinct classes, or three original and natural ranks, among men, who are all called to climb from the lowest to the highest rank.» — las tres clases o rangos naturales de hombres, con la posibilidad de ascenso incluida
«The Hebrews call these series or degrees of progress of the spirit, Assiah, Yetzirah, and Briah.» — la nomenclatura hebrea de esos grados
«The Gnostics, who were the Christian Cabalists, called them Hyle, Psyche and Gnosis;» — y la gnóstica, con la identificación de los gnósticos como cabalistas cristianos
«That is the ternary summarized in the unity, and, in adding the idea of the unity to that of the ternary, we arrive at the quaternary, the first square and perfect number, source of all numerical combinations and the principle behind all the forms.» — su derivación del cuaternario como primer número cuadrado y perfecto
«The great magical agent reveals itself through four types of phenomenon and was subjected to the groping of the profane sciences under four names: heat, light, electricity, magnetism.» — su reducción del gran agente mágico a cuatro fenómenos ya nombrados por la ciencia de su siglo: calor, luz, electricidad y magnetismo. Es la operación que le permite reclamar la física contemporánea para la magia
«The Moon takes part in this impregnation of the Earth by sending the Earth a solar image during the night, so that Hermes was correct in saying, when speaking of the great agent: “The Sun is its father, the Moon is its mother.”» — cita el dictum hermético del padre Sol y la madre Luna para su agente. El dictum es de la Tabla Esmeralda, no suyo
«This solar agent lives through two contrary forces: a force of attraction and a force of projection, which is why Hermes says that it always goes back up and comes back down.» — y la doble fuerza que le atribuye, con el ascenso y el descenso del mismo texto
«To understand the movement of this terrestrial Sun, so as to be able to benefit from its currents and direct them, is to have accomplished the Great Work, and it is to be master of the world.» — la definición de la Gran Obra por el dominio de esas corrientes
«All of magical science consists in the understanding of this secret.» — la reducción de toda la ciencia mágica a ese secreto
«To have this knowledge and to dare to use it is omnipotence in human affairs; to reveal it to the profane is to lose it; to reveal it even to a disciple is to abdicate in favor of that disciple,» — y la prohibición que le acompaña, escalonada: revelarlo al profano es perderlo, revelarlo a un discípulo es abdicar en su favor
«But the Antichrist will prepare and determine the new occasion and the definitive triumph of the Man-God.» — su lectura del Anticristo como preparación del triunfo definitivo del Hombre-Dios, no como su derrota
«Death, in fact, can no more be an absolute end than birth a real beginning.» — su axioma sobre la muerte y el nacimiento, del que deriva la preexistencia y la inmortalidad
«death proves immortality, since being cannot stop being any more than nothingness cannot stop not being.» — la mitad que corresponde a la muerte, sostenida sobre la imposibilidad de que el ser deje de ser
«To say the world came out of nothingness is to utter a monstrous absurdity.» — su objeción a la creación desde la nada
«The magical elements are: in alchemy, salt, mercury, sulfur, and azoth;» — la lista de los elementos mágicos en su clave alquímica
«In magical science, we know that water is not ordinary water; that fire is not simply fire, etc.» — la advertencia de lectura que gobierna toda su nomenclatura: los nombres de los elementos no designan las cosas ordinarias
«The pentagram expresses the domination of the mind over the elements, and it is by this symbol that we enchain the demons of air, the spirits of fire, the specters of water, and the ghosts of the earth.» — la función que asigna al pentagrama: dominación del espíritu sobre los elementos
«The soul can perceive objects on its own, without the intercession of the corporeal organs, through its own sensibility and its diaphane.» — su doctrina de la percepción sin órganos, por el diáfano del alma
«What we call our imagination is simply the inherent property of our soul to assimilate images and the reflections contained in the living light, which is the great magnetic agent.» — y su definición de la imaginación como propiedad de asimilar las imágenes contenidas en la luz viviente
«The man of genius differs from the dreamer and the madman only in that his creations are analogous to the truth, whereas those of dreamers and madmen are lost reflections and misplaced images.» — su criterio para distinguir al genio del soñador y del loco, que es de analogía con lo verdadero y no de intensidad
«Thus, for the sage, to imagine is to see, just as for the magician, to speak is to create.» — la fórmula doble del capítulo
«We can thus really and truly see demons, souls, etc., by means of the imagination; but the imagination of the adept is diaphanous, while the imagination of the vulgar is opaque;» — con el matiz que la salva de ser alucinación sin más: la imaginación del adepto es diáfana, la del vulgo opaca
«It is by means of this light that static visionaries are able to communicate with all the worlds, as happened so often to Emanuel Swedenborg, despite his not being perfectly lucid, since he did not discern the reflection of the rays and often confused simple reveries with his most admirable dreams.» — consigna a Swedenborg como caso de comunicación con todos los mundos, y le pone reparo en la misma frase
«Dreams are visions produced by the refraction of rays of truth; reverie is hallucination caused by a reflection.» — su distinción entre el sueño, que refracta rayos de verdad, y el ensueño, que es alucinación por reflejo
«Thus somnambulists do not really go to the places where the hypnotist sends them; they evoke images in the astral light and can see nothing that does not exist in that light.» — su explicación de la clarividencia sonambúlica: no hay viaje, hay evocación de imágenes en la luz astral
«Hypnotism with two participants is without a doubt a marvelous discovery, but hypnotism with a single participant who renders himself lucid at will and who directs himself is the perfection of the magical art» — su preferencia declarada por el hipnotismo de un solo participante, que dirige su propia lucidez
«This empire of will over the astral light, which is the physical soul of the four elements, is symbolized in magic by the pentagram, whose figure we placed at the head of this chapter.» — el pentagrama como signo del imperio de la voluntad sobre la luz astral, alma física de los cuatro elementos
«This explains all visions and more important demonstrates why the dead always appear to seers either the way they had been on earth or the way they still are in the tomb, never as they are in an existence which escapes the perceptions of our actual organism.» — la consecuencia que saca sobre las apariciones: el muerto se aparece como estuvo en la tierra o como está en la tumba, nunca en otro estado
«More than others, pregnant women are influenced by the astral light, which participates in the formation of their child and which incessantly presents them with reminiscences of the forms of which they are full.» — su doctrina sobre la embarazada como receptora privilegiada de la luz astral
«The use of the Cabalistic pentagram can thus determine the image of the child to be born, and an initiated woman could give her son the traits of Nero or Achilles, or those of Louis XIV or of Napoleon.» — y la aplicación que deriva de ahí, dicha sin reserva
«It was on the 24th of July of the year 1854 that the author of this book, Eliphas Lévi, conducted an experiment in evocation by pentagram in London, after having prepared himself using all the ceremonies indicated in the Ritual.» — el dato autobiográfico que fecha y localiza su propia evocación por pentagrama, con el nombre con que firma. La ejecución del rito se remite al capítulo 13 del Ritual
«The experiment, which has been repeated three times, gave truly extraordinary results; positive 85» — y el número de repeticiones que declara
«We invite unbelievers to make a conscientious and reasoned attempt before shrugging their shoulders and smiling.» — lo que pide al incrédulo antes de reírse
«Paracelsus, that innovator in magic who surpassed all the other initiates through the success of his achievements that only he was able to do, affirms that all the magical figures and all the Cabalistic signs of pentagrams which the spirits obey can be summarized by two of them, which are the synthesis of all the others: the sign of the macrocosm, or the seal of Solomon, which we have already shown, and which we reproduce here, and that of the microcosm, even more powerful than the first, that is to say the pentagram, of which Paracelsus gives, in his occult philosophy, a meticulous description.» — atribuye a Paracelso la reducción de todas las figuras mágicas y signos cabalísticos al pentagrama
«A sign is nothing on its own and only has power through the doctrine by which it is summarized and the Verb.» — y le pone su límite: el signo no vale por sí mismo, sino por la doctrina que resume
«Thus, for example, the vulgar believe in the sympathy between similar objects and the war between opposites; it is the obverse law which is the true one.» — invierte la creencia vulgar sobre simpatía y antipatía
«The forces of nature are at the disposal of he who knows how to resist them.» — su ley de la resistencia, que es la moral operativa del libro
«If you wish to intoxicate others, give them the desire to drink, but do not drink yourself.» — la misma ley en su forma práctica, y desagradable
«Man is the microcosm, or the little world, and, following the doctrine of analogies, all that is in the big world is repeated in the little.» — el axioma del microcosmos, del que cuelga toda su fisiología mágica
«We shall demonstrate later that death is always preceded by a lethargic sleep and only operates by degrees; that resurrection in certain cases is possible, that the lethargy is a real death, but uncompleted, and that many deaths are only completed after burial.» — su anuncio sobre la muerte por grados y sobre la posibilidad de resurrección en ciertos casos
«All intelligent efforts of the will are a projection of human fluid or light, and here it is important to distinguish human light from astral light and animal magnetism from universal magnetism.» — la distinción que exige antes de hablar de magnetismo: luz humana y luz astral no son lo mismo
«This light, which is incessantly projected by our will, forms what Swedenborg calls personal atmospheres.» — adopta de Swedenborg el nombre de atmósferas personales para esa proyección
«It is truly contagious to breathe the same air as the sick and to find oneself in the same circle of attraction and expansion as the wicked.» — su doctrina del contagio, que extiende de la enfermedad a la maldad
«Love is one of the great instruments of magical power; but it is formally forbidden to the mage, at least in the form of intoxication or passion.» — una de sus prohibiciones explícitas: el amor como instrumento de poder mágico, y su veda formal para el mago en forma de embriaguez o de pasión
«The Hercules of science who exchanges his royal scepter for Omphale’s spindle will soon feel Deianira’s vengeance and all that will remain for him is the pyre on Mount Oeta as escape from the devouring restraints of Nessus’s tunic.134» — la ilustra con Hércules cambiando el cetro por la rueca de Ónfale, y el desenlace en la pira del Eta
«Sexual love is always an illusion, since it is the result of an imaginary mirage.» — su juicio sobre el amor sexual
«The astral light is the universal seducer symbolized by the serpent of Genesis.» — la identificación de la luz astral con la serpiente del Génesis
«This book of conscious beings, which, according to Christian dogma, must become manifest on the last day, is nothing other than the astral light in which the impressions of all the Verbs are conserved, that is to say of all the actions and of all the forms.» — su lectura del libro de las conciencias del último día como la luz astral misma
«This faculty, which is a part of divination, was called the discernment of spirits by the Christian mystics of the primitive Church.» — consigna que los místicos cristianos de la Iglesia primitiva llamaron discernimiento de espíritus a esa facultad
«It is thus extremely dangerous to play at the mysteries of magic; most importantly it is totally reckless to practice rites out of simple curiosity, to try things out as though to tempt the superior powers.» — la advertencia central del capítulo, contra la práctica por curiosidad
«The curious who, without being adepts, get involved in evocations or occult magnetism resemble children who would play with fire beside a barrel of gunpowder: sooner or later they will be the victims of a terrible explosion.» — y su símil, que es el que más repite el libro
«To isolate oneself from the astral light, it does not suffice to wrap oneself in woolen material; one must also, and most importantly, have achieved an absolute tranquility of the mind and heart; have left the domain of the passions; and have made sure of one’s ability to keep an inflexible will while acting sincerely.» — lo que exige para aislarse de la luz astral, con la lana como condición insuficiente
«To command the astral light, one must also understand dual vibration and know the balance of forces that is called magical equilibrium, and is expressed, in the Cabala, by the senary.» — su condición para mandar sobre la luz astral: la doble vibración y el equilibrio de fuerzas que la Cabala llama senario
«This equilibrium, considered in its first cause, is the will of God; in man, it is liberty; in matter, it is mathematical equilibrium.» — y las tres caras del mismo equilibrio, que hace idénticas: voluntad de Dios, libertad en el hombre, equilibrio matemático en la materia
«If one observes the law, equilibrium is there; if we violate the law, even ever so lightly, it no longer is.» — su formulación de la ley, sin gradación posible
«Magical equilibrium is thus one of the primary conditions for the success of operations in science, and we must search for the same equilibrium in occult chemistry by learning to combine opposites without having one neutralize the other.» — lo que exige de la química oculta como analogía de ese equilibrio
«Thus faith, that aspiration to the infinite, that noble confidence in oneself, supported by the belief in all the virtues, faith, which in people of feeble nature can degenerate into pride, was represented by the Sun;» — su reasignación de las virtudes a los planetas, empezando por la fe bajo el Sol, con el vicio en que puede degenerar
«charity, opposed to lust, is represented by Venus, the brilliant star of the morning and dusk;» — la caridad opuesta a la lujuria bajo Venus, dentro de la misma serie
«temperance, opposed to gluttony, is represented by Saturn, to whom we give a stone to eat in the place of his children;» — la templanza bajo Saturno, con el guiño mitológico de la piedra en lugar de los hijos
«But one must not confound Cabalistic astrology with judicial astrology.» — la distinción que impone y que rara vez se le cita: la astrología cabalística no es la judiciaria
«It is on that basis that Trithemius established his prophetic key of the seven spirits,139 which we shall discuss later, and it is the means through which we can, by following the analogical dimensions of successive events, predict with certainty great future events and establish in advance, from period to period, the destinies of the peoples of the world.» — adjudica a Tritemio la clave profética de los siete espíritus, que anuncia para más adelante
«The seven planets, in fact, are none other than hieroglyphic symbols of the keyboard of our emotions.» — su reducción de los siete planetas a jeroglíficos del teclado de las emociones
«The virtue of the septenary is absolute in magic, because this number is the determining factor in all things;» — la virtud absoluta que atribuye al septenario
«The spiritual heaven has never changed, and astrology has remained more invariable than astronomy.» — y su defensa comparativa de la astrología frente a la astronomía, por invariabilidad y no por exactitud
«In understanding God as an infinite man, man says of himself; I am the finite God.» — la fórmula con que cierra la analogía del hombre con Dios
«In other terms, what is true in the cause becomes realized in the effect.» — su ley de realización: lo verdadero en la causa se realiza en el efecto
«The thought is then imprinted upon the astral light by means of the signs of writing or of speech; it influences other minds by being reflected in them; it refracts when crossing the diaphane of other men, and takes on new forms and proportions, which are then translated into acts which modify society and the world: that is the last degree of realization.» — el recorrido completo del pensamiento hasta la materia, por la escritura y la palabra sobre la luz astral
«The imprint of Adam’s disobedience, conserved within the astral light, could not be erased except by the stronger imprint of the obedience of the Savior, and it is thus that we can explain original sin and redemption in a natural and magical sense.» — su explicación del pecado original y de la redención como dos improntas de fuerza desigual en la luz astral
«The astral light, depicted in the ancient symbols by a serpent biting its tail, represented in turns vice and prudence, time and eternity, the tempter and the Redemptor.» — la serpiente que se muerde la cola como cifra de la luz astral, y su ambivalencia declarada
«This light, being the vehicle of life, can serve as much as the auxiliary to good as to evil, and can be taken for the fiery form of Satan as much as for the body of the Holy Spirit.» — y la consecuencia de esa ambivalencia, que él no atenúa: la misma luz sirve al bien y al mal
«The great initiator of Christianity, understanding that the astral light was overburdened with the impure reflections of Roman depravity, wished to separate his disciples from the ambient sphere of reflections and have them pay attention only to the interior light, so that through a common faith they could communicate together via new magnetic cords which he called grace, and thus vanquish the overwhelmed currents of universal 101» — su lectura del ascetismo cristiano primitivo como maniobra magnética contra la esfera ambiente de Roma
«For that matter, the prophets simply figured out, through the accuracy of their calculations, the propitious time for moral reactions.» — su reducción de la profecía a cálculo del momento propicio para las reacciones morales
«The law of realization produces what we call magnetic respiration, with which objects and places are impregnated, and which gives them an influence in conformity with our dominant desires, especially those objects and places which are confirmed and realized by acts.» — la doctrina de la respiración magnética que impregna objetos y lugares
«In fact, the universal agent, or the latent astral light, always searches for equilibrium; it fills the void and sucks in the full, which renders vice contagious like certain physical maladies and powerfully serves proselytism and virtue.» — y su ley de equilibrio, de la que deriva el contagio del vicio
«It is for this reason that the cohabitation of antipathetic beings is an ordeal; it is for this reason that the relics, either of the saints or of the great evildoers, can produce sudden supernatural conversions or perversions; it is for this reason that sexual love can often be produced by a breath or by touch, and not only by the touch of the person themselves but through objects that they have touched» — la aplica a las reliquias, tanto de santos como de grandes malhechores
«The astral body is not always of the same sex as the terrestrial body,» — su afirmación sobre el cuerpo astral y el sexo, que no siempre coinciden
«Myths are fantastic realizations of religious dogma, superstitions are the spells of false piety,» — su definición del mito y de la superstición como realizaciones fantásticas
«Thus either by vice or by virtue, there is no speech for which we are not responsible;» — la responsabilidad que atribuye a toda palabra
«In the eighteenth century, the unfortunate poet Gilbert fell victim to his own audacity in braving the current of popular opinion and even the philosophical fanaticism of his era.» — el caso del poeta Gilbert, que ofrece como muerte por corriente de opinión
«Unpopularity can be a proof of integrity and of courage, but it is never a proof of prudence» — su juicio sobre la impopularidad, que separa integridad de prudencia
«It is because of these terrible laws of solidarity that Christianity so highly recommends forgiveness of insults and reconciliation.» — deriva de esa solidaridad la recomendación cristiana del perdón, que lee como ley y no como consejo moral
«He who dies without forgiving throws himself into eternity armed with a dagger and devotes himself to the horrors of eternal murder.» — su imagen del que muere sin perdonar
«Parents should always take heed, because one does not kindle hell in one’s own blood and one does not curse one’s own children without being burnt and cursed oneself.» — la advertencia a los padres sobre la maldición del propio linaje
«It is never a crime to forgive, and it is always dangerous and evil to cast a curse.» — y su regla simétrica, formulada como asimetría de riesgo
«The number nine is that of the divine reflections: it expresses the divine idea in all its abstract power, but it also expresses the extravagance in belief and, in consequence, superstition and idolatry.» — la doble carga que atribuye al número nueve: idea divina y también extravagancia y superstición
«That is why Hermes made it the number of initiation, because the initiate reigns over superstition and through superstition.» — y lo que adjudica a Hermes: por eso hizo del nueve el número de la iniciación
«Reason was given to all men, but not all men know how to make use of it; it is a science which must be learned.» — su tríada de bienes que no bastan por venir dados, empezando por la razón
«Liberty is offered to all, but not everyone can be free; it is a right which must be won.» — la libertad en la misma serie, como derecho que hay que ganar
«The magical science was once called the priestly and royal art, because initiation gave the sage dominion over souls and the aptitude to govern wills.» — la denominación antigua de la ciencia mágica como arte sacerdotal y real, con la razón que le atribuye
«Human acts are not only written in the astral light, they also leave their traces on the face, they modify one’s bearing and walk, they change the tone of one’s voice.» — su doctrina de la huella de los actos, que pasa de la luz astral al rostro, al andar y a la voz
«These ten first notions attached to the ten first characters of the original alphabet, signifying both the principles and the numbers, are what the masters of the Cabala call the ten Sephiroth.» — nombra las diez Sephiroth como las diez primeras nociones ligadas a las diez letras del alfabeto original
«According to the Cabala, this is the basis for all religions and for all sciences, the first and immutable idea of things:» — y lo que la Cabala pone en la base, según él, de toda religión y toda ciencia
«It is in the name of Iot-Chavah, written with these twenty-four signs crowned with a triple crown of light, that one must find the twenty-four thrones of heaven and the twenty-four crowned elders of the Book of Revelation.» — su lectura del Apocalipsis por el nombre Iot-Chavah escrito con veinticuatro signos, que remite a los veinticuatro tronos y ancianos
«Thus an initiate dared to say: “The devil is God as understood by the wicked”; and another, in stranger, but no less vigorous terms, added: “The devil is formed from the rifts within God.”» — consigna dos dicta de iniciados sobre el diablo sin firmarlos. No son suyos: los transcribe
«We could summarize and explain these very original assertions by remarking that, within the symbolism itself, the demon is an angel fallen from heaven for having wished to usurp the divinity.» — y su propio resumen del asunto dentro del simbolismo
«Philosophically speaking, the devil is a human idea of divinity surpassed and dispossessed of heaven through the progress of science and of reason.» — su definición filosófica del diablo como idea humana de la divinidad desposeída por el progreso de la ciencia y de la razón
«The aggregation of all these divine names formed from the unique Tetragrammaton, but outside of the Tetragrammaton itself, is one of the bases of the Hebrew ritual, and makes up the occult power the Cabalistic rabbis invoke under the name of Shemhamphorash.» — la doctrina de los nombres divinos derivados del Tetragrámaton como base del ritual hebreo
«The Cabalists, in multiplying the divine names, related them all either to the unity of the Tetragrammaton, or to the ternary figure, or to the Sephirothic ladder of the decad; they draw the ladder of the divine names and numbers like this:» — y el procedimiento cabalístico que describe: referirlos todos a la unidad del Tetragrámaton, a la figura ternaria o a la escala sefirótica
«Thus figure No. 1, called the Mage, represents the active principle in the unity of the divine and human self-regulation;» — su lectura de la primera lámina del Tarot
«figure No. 2, crudely called the Priestess, describes the dogmatic unity founded upon the numbers, it is the Cabala or Gnosis personified;» — y de la segunda, que identifica con la Cabala o la Gnosis personificada
«These symbols are the hieroglyphs of the Tetragrammaton: thus, the Wand, is the phallus of the Egyptians or the Yodh of the Hebrews;» — la correspondencia de los palos con las letras del Nombre, empezando por la vara
«the Cup is the cteis175 or the primordial Heh;» — y la copa como cteis o primera Heh
«That which acts in the intellectual and moral sphere affects the physical world even more; and when Archimedes called for a fulcrum with which to raise the world, he was simply looking for the great magical arcanum.» — su lectura del punto de apoyo de Arquímedes como búsqueda del gran arcano
«To gather and to disperse are the two verbs of nature; but how does one gather, and how does one disperse the astral light or the world soul?» — los dos verbos que atribuye a la naturaleza, con la pregunta operativa que abre
«The isolation of thought means absolute independence, the isolation of the heart is total liberty, the isolation of the senses is perfect abstinence.» — su definición del triple aislamiento del adepto
«Any man who has prejudices and fears, any individual who is a slave to his passions, is incapable of gathering or coagulating, to use Khunrath’s expression, the astral light or world soul.» — y la incapacidad que declara del hombre con prejuicios y pasiones, tomando de Khunrath el verbo coagular
«I am sorry to distress or discourage you, but I am not reinventing the high sciences here; I teach them and I am attesting to their strict requirements by mentioning their primary and most inexorable conditions.» — su declaración de posición frente a las exigencias que acaba de enumerar: no las inventa, las transmite
«Apollonius of Tyana and the emperor Julian were men of frightful austerity;» — los dos ejemplos de austeridad que pone, Apolonio de Tiana y el emperador Juliano
«Must one be like them to know what they knew? Certainly not, and this book which I write is the proof; but, to do what they did, it is absolutely necessary to use the same means that they used.» — y la distinción que salva a su propio libro: para saber lo que supieron no hace falta imitarlos; para hacer lo que hicieron, sí
«But these dispositions of absolute renouncement are only necessary for establishing the universal currents and changing the face of the world; there are magical operations, relative to and limited within a given circle, which do not require such heroic virtues.» — la acotación que abre la magia práctica a quien no renuncia a todo: hay operaciones limitadas que no exigen la corriente universal
«We can act upon the passions with passions, determine the sympathies and antipathies, even afflict and heal, without having the omnipotence of the mage; one must simply be forewarned of the risk that one runs of a reaction proportional to any action and to which one can easily fall victim.» — con el riesgo declarado en la misma frase
«To create a magical chain is to establish a magnetic current which becomes stronger depending on the length of the chain.» — su definición de la cadena mágica por la corriente magnética y su longitud
«Mesmer’s wooden tub was a rather imperfect magical chain; many great circles of the illumined, in various northern countries, have more powerful chains.» — consigna la cubeta de Mesmer como cadena mágica imperfecta frente a los círculos de iluminados del norte
«Even a certain society of Catholic priests famous for their occult powers and their unpopularity186 was established according to the plan and following the requirements of the most powerful magical chains, and that is the secret of their power, which they attribute solely to grace or the will of God, a vulgar and easy solution to all the questions regarding the effects of power upon influence or upon unconscious impulses.» — y adjudica a una orden de sacerdotes católicos, sin nombrarla, una constitución trazada según el plan de la magia más poderosa
«The effect of the current is to enchant and often overly stimulate impressionable and weak persons, excitable constitutions, and temperaments disposed to hysteria or hallucinations.» — describe a quiénes afecta primero la corriente: impresionables, excitables, dispuestos a la histeria o a la alucinación
«These persons soon become powerful vehicles for magical power and strongly project the astral light in the same direction as the current; thus to oppose oneself to manifestations of power is in a way to fight against destiny.» — y su paradoja operativa: oponerse a las manifestaciones del poder es alimentarlas
«I would add that magical circles and magnetic currents are established on their own, and in accordance with their inexorable laws influence those who submit to their effects.» — afirma que las cadenas y corrientes se forman solas, con leyes propias
«The man of genius is one who has discovered a real law, and in consequence possesses an invincible power of action and direction.» — su definición del hombre de genio por el descubrimiento de una ley real, no por la originalidad
«A great action always entails an equal reaction, and the secret of great success is all about predicting the reactions.» — su regla de la reacción igual, y dónde pone el secreto del éxito
«It is in this manner that Chateaubriand, inspired by his disgust for the revolutionary saturnalia, predicted and prepared the immense success of his Génie de christianisme.» — el caso de Chateaubriand como previsión acertada de una reacción
«We fixed the volatile, now we must make volatile the fixed; in other terms, we materialized the spirit, we must now spiritualize matter.» — la fórmula alquímica con que describe la tarea de su siglo
«The phenomena which recently agitated America and Europe with regard to talking tables and fluidic manifestations194 are nothing other than magnetic currents which are beginning to form, and solicitations whose nature is to invite us, in the name of the salvation of humanity, to reconstitute the great sympathetic and religious chains.» — su explicación de las mesas parlantes que agitaban a América y Europa: corrientes magnéticas en formación
«On its own, it is a blind force, but which can be directed by the will of men and which is influenced by contemporary opinion.» — con la reserva que impone a esa fuerza: es ciega, y la dirige la voluntad de los hombres y la opinión del tiempo
«The movement of an inert object, determined by the undulations of the universal agent, thus obeys the dominant impression and thereafter reproduces in its revelations all the lucidity of the most marvelous of daydreams or all the strangeness and all the lies of the most incoherent and vaguest of dreams.» — y lo que deduce sobre las revelaciones que las mesas producen
«The convulsive miracles of Saint-Médard197 were of the same order and often seemed to defy the laws of nature.» — pone los milagros convulsionarios de Saint-Médard en ese mismo orden
«It has happened several times to me, after experimenting with the magical chain with persons of good faith who were not sympathetic to my beliefs, that I was suddenly awakened during the night, by images and truly terrifying communications.» — su testimonio en primera persona sobre el efecto de la cadena mágica con personas de buena fe pero no afines
«This magical agent, which the ancient hermetic philosophers disguised under the name of the first matter, determines the forms of the modifiable substance, and through its use we can actually arrive at metallic transmutation and the universal medicine.» — su identificación del agente mágico con la materia primera de los filósofos herméticos
«This is not just hypothesis, it is previously tested and rigorously demonstrable scientific fact.» — y la categoría en que insiste en ponerlo: hecho científico, no hipótesis
«Nicolas Flamel199 and Raymond Lully,200 both poor men, evidently gave away immense riches.» — su argumento a favor de las transmutaciones históricas por la riqueza repartida de Flamel y de Lully, ambos pobres
«It ascends from the earth to heaven, then descends again to earth, and receives the power of the superiors and the inferiors.» — del texto de la Tabla Esmeralda que transcribe: el ascenso y el descenso con el poder de lo superior y lo inferior. La letra es del dictum hermético, no suya
«To separate the subtle from the coarse, in the first operation, which is entirely done from within, is to liberate one’s soul from all prejudice and vice: which is done with the use of the philosophical salt, that is to say wisdom;» — su lectura moral de la primera operación: separar lo sutil de lo espeso es liberar el alma del prejuicio y del vicio
«By these means we are able to transform less precious things, even the filth of the earth, into spiritual gold.» — y el oro que declara meta de esa operación
«When the masters of alchemy said that one needs little time or money to accomplish the great works of science, when they affirm moreover that only a single vessel is required, when they speak of the great and unique athanor which anyone can put to use, and which is available to everyone and that men possess it without knowing, they are alluding to philosophical and moral alchemy.» — su explicación de por qué los maestros dicen que basta poco tiempo, poco dinero y un solo vaso
«The Tarot drawing which corresponds to this chapter was poorly understood by Court de Gébelin and Etteilla, who believed that all they saw was an error committed by a German card maker.» — su objeción a Court de Gébelin y a Etteilla, que tomaron por error de un cartero alemán la lámina que él lee como jeroglífico
«In fact, while the believers were having nice dreams, the exiled Israelite, the Judas of Christian civilization, worked, sold, agitated, became rich, and made off with the realities of our present life and was thus able to help his cult, which had been proscribed for so long.» — su alegoría del Judas de la civilización cristiana, aplicada al israelita exiliado. Es un pasaje antijudío del texto y se consigna como está
«sacred symbol of the duodenary, and the Egyptians called it, for that reason, the key to heaven.» — su lectura de la letra Tav como símbolo del duodenario y llave del cielo entre los egipcios
«Also Etteilla, troubled by his long search to conciliate the analogical necessities of the drawing with his own personal opinion (in this he had been influenced by the scholar Court de Gébelin), placed in the hand of his hanged man the hermetic caduceus formed by two serpents and a Greek Tav and then stood him upright and called him Prudence.» — su objeción a Etteilla, a quien atribuye haber deformado el dibujo por influencia de Court de Gébelin
«Since he understood the necessity of the Tav or the cross on the twelfth page of the book of Thoth, he should have understood the multiple and magnificent symbol of the hermetic hanged man, the Prometheus of science, the living man who does not touch the ground except with his thought and whose foundation is in heaven, the free and sacrificed adept, the revealer threatened with death, Judaism’s polemic against Christ, which seems to be an involuntary admission of the occult divinity of the crucified, the sign of the work accomplished, the termination of the cycle, the intermediary Tav, which summarizes, for a first time before the last denary, the signs of the sacred alphabet.» — y lo que le reprocha no haber entendido: el símbolo del ahorcado hermético
«It is also in this light that we can evoke the forms of those who are no longer of this world, and it is by this means that are accomplished such mysteries, as disputed as they are real, like necromancy.» — su tesis sobre la evocación: en la luz astral se llaman las formas de los que ya no están
«The Cabalists who spoke of the world of the spirits were simply recounting what they had seen in their evocations.» — y su lectura de los cabalistas que hablaron del mundo de los espíritus, a quienes toma por testigos y no por especuladores
«Eliphas Lévi Zahed,207 who writes this book, has evoked, and he has seen.» — la firma dentro del texto con que el autor se declara testigo, y que la ficha usa como base de atribución
«We read in the Hebrew book of the Revolution of Souls that there are three types of souls: the daughters of Adam, the daughters of angels, and the daughters of sin.» — consigna la tripartición de las almas del libro hebreo de la Revolución de las Almas, que cita como fuente ajena
«There are also, according to the same book, three types of spirits: captive spirits, errant spirits, and free spirits.» — y la de los espíritus, del mismo libro
«Thus when a man renounces from early childhood his love for women, he renders the wife who was destined for him a slave to the demons of debauchery.» — la consecuencia que deriva de la doctrina de las almas gemelas para quien renuncia al amor desde la infancia
«Necromancy obtains real results, and magical evocations can produce actual visions.» — su afirmación sobre la necromancia, sin atenuar
«To see without illusions in this light, one must push aside the reflections with a powerful will and only attract the rays to oneself.» — y la condición para ver sin ilusión: apartar los reflejos y atraer solo los rayos
«Often the preparations and the substances used to arrive at this result were horrific, as we shall see in Ritual; but the results were never in doubt.» — reconoce lo horrible de los preparados que el Ritual describirá, sin retirar el resultado
«I was a bit discouraged because, to tell the truth, far from being disposed to initiating others into the mysteries of ceremonial magic, I was always afraid of, for myself, the illusions and the fatigue;» — su reserva personal, que casi nunca se le cita: temía por sí mismo las ilusiones de la magia ceremonial
«All was ready by the 24th of July, it concerned the evocation of the divine ghost of Apollonius, and I was to ask him about two secrets: one which concerned me, and one which the lady was interested in.» — la fecha y el objeto de la evocación londinense, con las dos preguntas que llevaba
«but at the last moment that person took fright, and since the ternary or the unity is strictly required for these magical rites, I was left to conduct it alone.» — y por qué la ejecutó solo, con la regla del ternario o la unidad que declara estricta
«I was dressed in robes like that of our Catholic priests, but that they were more ample and longer» — la descripción de su indumentaria durante el rito
«From this I hypothesized that the sword offended the spirit, and I drove the point of the sword into the circle surrounding me.» — lo que infiere de la reacción de la figura ante la espada
«The figure never spoke to me, but it seemed to me that the questions I had had for him had been answered for me in my mind.» — su testimonio sobre las respuestas: la figura nunca le habló
«I was no longer either cheerful, or sad, but I felt a singular attraction to death, without being, however, at all tempted to commit suicide.» — el efecto que declara sobre sí mismo, con la acotación que descarta la tentación suicida
«I carefully analyzed what I had gone through; and, despite a very strong feeling of nervous repugnance, I twice repeated, at a few days interval, the same experience.» — y la repetición del experimento, pese a la repugnancia nerviosa que confiesa
«But the result of the two other evocations was the revelation of two Cabalistic secrets, which could, if they were known to the world, quickly transform the foundations and the laws of our entire society.» — lo que atribuye a las otras dos evocaciones: dos secretos cabalísticos capaces de transformar los fundamentos de la sociedad
«Should I conclude from all this that I actually evoked, saw, and touched the great Apollonius of Tyana? I am not enough of a crackpot to believe so, nor so irresponsible as to confirm it.» — la abstención que él mismo escribe sobre la identidad de lo evocado, y que es la afirmación más cuidadosa del libro entero
«I cannot explain by what physiological laws I saw and touched; I only confirm that I saw and that I touched, that I saw clearly and distinctly, without dreaming, and that suffices in order to believe in the genuine efficacy of magical ceremonies.» — lo único que sí afirma, y donde pone el límite: no puede explicar por qué leyes fisiológicas vio y tocó
«I also believe the practice to be dangerous and harmful; one’s health, both moral and physical, would not withstand such exercises if they were to become habitual.» — su advertencia contra la práctica habitual, en primera persona
«I shall not end this chapter without mentioning here the rather strange opinion of certain Cabalists who distinguish apparent death from true death, and who believe that they rarely coincide.» — consigna la opinión de ciertos cabalistas sobre la muerte aparente y la verdadera, que separa de la suya
«Incurable madness, for example, would be for them an incomplete death, but a real one, which leaves the terrestrial body under the purely instinctive control of the astral body.» — dentro de esa opinión ajena, la locura incurable como muerte real e incompleta
«They are the dead, who we take to be living; they are vampires, whom we take to be friends!» — y su conclusión, que él transmite en boca de ellos
«Saint Augustine seriously doubted that Apuleius could have been changed into an ass by a witch from Thessaly.» — registra la duda de Agustín sobre la metamorfosis de Apuleyo en asno
«This simply proves that the eloquent doctor of Hippo was unaware of the magical arcanum, and that the theologians in question were not very advanced in exegesis.» — y su objeción al obispo de Hipona y a los teólogos: ignoraban el arcano mágico
«I would answer that miracles, when they are real, are simply phenomena to be studied by science.» — su definición del milagro como fenómeno pendiente de estudio científico
«We now dare to say that a werewolf is nothing but the astral body of a man, to whom the wolf represents wild and bloodthirsty instincts,» — su explicación del hombre lobo por el cuerpo astral, con el lobo como figura de los instintos
«The attacks on the werewolf cause actual harm to the sleeping person through odic214 and sympathetic congestion of the astral light, through the correspondence between the immaterial body and the material body.» — y el mecanismo del daño real por congestión ódica y simpática de la luz astral
«A woman who has witnessed the suffering of a man who was severely beaten will give birth to a child whose limbs have all been broken.» — su argumento por analogía: la impresión de la madre sobre el feto
«Diabolic obsessions, and most nervous sicknesses that affect the brain, are wounds caused to the nervous system due to a perverted astral light, that is to say one that is absorbed or projected in abnormal proportions.» — su reducción de las obsesiones diabólicas y de buena parte de las enfermedades nerviosas a heridas del sistema nervioso por luz astral pervertida
«All extraordinary and extranatural tensions of the will dispose one to obsessions and nervous sicknesses; forced celibacy, asceticism, hatred, ambition, unrequited love, are all the principal generators of infernal forms and influences.» — y la lista de causas que enumera, con el celibato forzado a la cabeza
«Paracelsus says that the menstrual blood of women engenders phantoms in the air; a convent, from this point of view, would be a seminary of nightmares, and we could compare it to those demons with heads like the Lernaean hydra,216 which were reborn without end and multiplied through the blood from their wounds.» — atribuye a Paracelso la doctrina de los fantasmas engendrados por la sangre menstrual, y la aplica a los conventos
«The nuns were actually possessed due to hysteria and a fanatical imitation of the secret thoughts of their exorcists, transmitted to their nervous system via the astral light.» — su explicación de las monjas posesas por histeria e imitación fanática del pensamiento secreto de los exorcistas
«Thus in this unfortunate affair everyone was of good faith, even Laubardement,217 who, in blindly executing the biased 142» — su adjudicación de buena fe a todos los actores del caso, incluido Laubardemont
«The possession of the nuns of Louviers is barely more than a copy of that of Loudun: demons are not very inventive and often plagiarize each other.» — su juicio sobre Louviers como copia de Loudun
«We act through our imagination upon the imagination of others, through our astral body upon theirs, and through our organs upon their organs.» — la triple vía de la acción de un ser sobre otro
«When we dream about a living person, it is their astral body which presents itself to ours in the astral light, or at least the reflection of that same body, and the manner in which we are affected by our encounter with it often reveals hidden dispositions that this person holds with regard to us.» — su explicación del sueño con una persona viva por el cuerpo astral de ésta
«Love, for example, creates the astral body of one in the image and resemblance of the other, such that woman’s animus219 is like a man and man’s anima is like a woman.» — y la transmutación astral que atribuye al amor, con los términos animus y anima
«It is this exchange that the Cabalists wished to express in an occult manner when they said, in explaining an obscure term in Genesis: “God created love by placing one of Adam’s ribs in the breast of Eve and some of Eve’s flesh in the breast of Adam, such that at the bottom of the heart of woman is a man’s bone and at the bottom of the heart of man is the flesh of woman,” an allegory that is certainly not without profundity and beauty.» — cita a los cabalistas sobre la costilla de Adán como explicación oculta de ese intercambio. La glosa del Génesis es de ellos, no suya
«It is to this occult power that one must attribute the redoubtable influence of the curse of one’s parents, redoubtable to all the peoples of the Earth, and the real danger of magical operations when one has not managed to isolate oneself as the true adepts do.» — lo que deriva de ese poder oculto: la maldición de los padres y el peligro real de las operaciones mágicas contra el amor
«The Cabalists still say that when we love an elementary woman, whether she be an undine or a sylph or a gnomide,221 we immortalize her within us or we die with her.» — consigna la doctrina cabalística sobre amar a una mujer elemental, con su alternativa cerrada
«A man who looks upon woman with impure desire profanes that woman, said the great Master.» — el dictum evangélico con que abre su moral de la voluntad. La frase es del Maestro, no suya
«All action is subject to judgment, and that judgment is eternal.» — su encadenamiento de acto y juicio
«The acts must be analogous to the will.» — la regla operativa que separa la voluntad eficaz del deseo
«It is for this reason that every type of hostile action towards another is regarded by moral theology as the beginning of a homicide.» — la equiparación que toma de la teología moral y que sostiene su doctrina del encantamiento
«we affirm fearlessly that enchantment is possible.» — su afirmación sobre la posibilidad del encantamiento, dicha sin reserva
«Let us go further and affirm that not only is it possible, but in a certain way necessary and inevitable.» — y el paso siguiente, que lo hace necesario e inevitable
«Involuntary enchantment is one of the most terrible dangers of human life.» — su distinción entre encanto voluntario e involuntario, con el peligro puesto en el segundo
«Moral sicknesses are more contagious than physical ones, and there are fads and fashions whose success is comparable to leprosy or cholera.» — su ley del contagio moral, comparada con la lepra y el cólera
«There exists loves which kill as easily as hate, and the enchantments of benevolence are a torture for the wicked.» — y su reverso, que es donde el sistema se vuelve inquietante: hay amores que matan
«If two children live together, and especially if they sleep together, and if one is weak and one is strong, the strong one will absorb the weak one, and the weak one will waste away.» — el caso de los dos niños que duermen juntos, como absorción del débil por el fuerte
«Properly speaking, evil spells, that is to say a ceremonial performance with the object of enchantment, act only upon the performer, and serve to fix and confirm his will by formulating it with perseverance and effort, the two conditions which render the will efficacious.» — su reducción del maleficio ceremonial a acción sobre el propio operador, que es la clave psicológica de todo el capítulo
«The more that the performance is difficult or horrible, the more effective it is, because it acts more fully upon the imagination and attests to the effort required, which is in direct relationship to the sense of resistance to it.» — y por qué la atrocidad del rito lo hace más eficaz: obra sobre la imaginación y mide el esfuerzo
«Black magic is in fact simply a combination of sacrilege and progressive murder whose goal is to forever pervert the human will and to produce in a man the hideous phantom of the devil.» — su definición de la magia negra, que no es un arte sino un crimen progresivo
«The Cabalist Bodin, who was falsely suspected of being weak minded and superstitious, had no other motive in writing his Demonomania than the need to guard minds against an overly dangerous incredulity.» — su rehabilitación del cabalista Bodin, a quien atribuye un motivo defensivo al escribir la Demonomanía
«Bodin was ignored in his time and so will M. Eudes de Mirville be, because it is not enough to indicate phenomenon while presupposing the cause in order to impress serious people; that cause must be studied, explained, and proven to exist, and that is our task here.» — y su objeción a Bodin y a Eudes de Mirville por igual: señalar el fenómeno presuponiendo la causa no convence a nadie serio
«Antipathy is nothing other than the presentiment of a possible enchantment, an enchantment which could be of love or of hatred, because we often see love following after antipathy.» — su definición de la antipatía como presentimiento de un encantamiento posible
«The polarity of the hands resides in the thumb, and it is for this reason, according to the magical tradition still kept in our countryside, that» — la advertencia sobre el pulgar como polo de las manos, que atribuye a la tradición mágica campesina
«There also exist certain animals whose property is to break the currents of the astral light through an ability for absorption which is particular to them.» — y los animales que declara capaces de romper las corrientes de la luz astral por absorción
«But Paracelsus had discovered magnetism well before Mesmer and had pushed to its limits this marvelous discovery, or rather this initiation into the magic of the ancients,» — su adjudicación de prioridad: Paracelso descubrió el magnetismo mucho antes que Mesmer
«In his occult philosophy, Paracelsus opposes ceremonial magic, whose terrible power he was certainly aware of but whose practices he wished to disparage,» — con la tensión que él mismo señala en Paracelso, que denigraba la magia ceremonial conociendo su poder
«However, Paracelsus wants us to use the magical symbols, and more importantly the talismans, in order to cure maladies.» — y lo que sí le atribuye: el uso de símbolos y talismanes para curar
«We know then, in popular magic, that an enchantment, which is to say a determined and confirmed will to do evil, always obtains its desired effect, and that it cannot be recanted without risk of death.» — la regla de la magia popular sobre el encantamiento, que no se retira sin riesgo
«Demonic possessions are nothing other than enchantments, and there exist in our time innumerable quantities of the possessed.» — su identificación de las posesiones demoníacas con encantamientos, y su cifra para el presente
«A vice is a poison, even for the body: true virtue is a guarantee of longevity.» — su axioma médico-moral
«We all have a ruling vice which is, for our soul, like the umbilical cord of its birth into sin, and it is through it that the enemy can always grab hold of us:» — la doctrina del vicio dominante como cordón umbilical del alma en el pecado
«The only remedy to this enchantment is to seize upon madness in order to cure madness,» — y el remedio que propone, que es de sustitución y no de supresión
«By acting in this manner upon morals, we can cure a great number of physical maladies, because morals influence the physical by virtue of the magical axiom: “That which is above is like that which is below.”» — con la máxima hermética que le da fundamento. El axioma es de la Tabla Esmeralda; él lo aplica a la medicina
«Sickness often comes from a vice or an abuse, and you will always find at the source of a physical illness a moral disorder: it is an invariable law of nature.» — su ley invariable sobre el origen moral de la enfermedad física
«True astrology, incidentally, the kind which is related to the universal doctrine and the Cabala, was profaned by the Greeks and the Romans in their decadence;» — su historia de la astrología verdadera, profanada por griegos y romanos en la decadencia
«The precise place and time of birth must therefore be calculated by a true adept in astrology;» — lo que exige del astrólogo verdadero antes de calcular
«Beyond this, the astrologer must take into account human liberty and initiative, if the child manages one day to become a true man and extract himself with courageous will from fatal influences and the chain of destinies.» — y el límite que le impone al cálculo, que es la libertad humana. Sin esa acotación su astrología sería fatalismo
«Astrology is as old as, or even older than, astronomy, and all the visionary sages of antiquity gave it their entire confidence;» — su adjudicación de antigüedad: la astrología es tan vieja como la astronomía o más
«Paracelsus was perhaps the last of the great practical astrologers; he cured the sick with talismans created under the influence of the stars and recognized in all bodies the mark of their dominant star, and it was this, according to him, which was true universal medicine;» — consigna a Paracelso como acaso el último de los grandes astrólogos prácticos, que curaba con talismanes hechos bajo influjo estelar
«To recognize the sign of each star in men, in animals, and in plants is the true natural science of Solomon, that science which is said to be lost but whose principles are, however, kept, like all other secrets, in the symbolism of the Cabala.» — y la ciencia natural de Salomón, que declara perdida pero conservada en principio dentro de la Cabala
«It is to this very planisphere that Gaffarel attributes the origin of the writings of the patriarchs, and they had found in the chains of attractions between the stars the first outlines of the primordial characters;» — atribuye a Gaffarel el origen de la escritura de los patriarcas en el planisferio celeste
«Men carry the signs of their star on their foreheads and most of all on their hands; animals, in their entire form and in their particular signs; plants reveal them in their leaves and their seeds; minerals, in their veins and in their level of friability.» — su doctrina de los signos estelares impresos en frentes, manos, formas animales y hojas
«The serious art of divination rests entirely upon the knowledge of these signs.» — y la base que le da a la adivinación seria
«The destinies of life are thus necessarily written in our lines, and we often recognize at first glance, on the forehead of a stranger, one or more mysterious letters from the Cabalistic planisphere.» — su lectura de las líneas del rostro como letras del planisferio cabalístico
«If the mark is troubled and has difficulty outlining itself, there is a battle in him between his destiny and his will, and in his emotions and strongest tendencies his entire past is revealed to the mage; the future is then easy to estimate, and if at times events mislead the wisdom of the diviner, the patient nonetheless remains impressed and convinced by the superhuman science of the adept.» — con el caso en que el signo aparece turbio, que atribuye a la lucha entre destino y voluntad
«According to Ptolemy, the Sun dries and the Moon humidifies; according to the Cabalists, the Sun represents strict Justice, and the Moon is sympathetic Mercy.» — contrapone la doctrina de Ptolomeo sobre el Sol y la Luna a la cabalística, sin armonizarlas
«We read in the Zohar, one of the great sacred books of the Cabala, that “the magical Serpent, son of the Sun, will devour the world, when the Sea, daughter of the Moon, puts her foot down on its head and subjugates it.”» — cita el Zohar sobre la serpiente mágica hija del Sol y el mar hijo de la Luna. El dictum es del Zohar, no suyo
«Girolamo Cardano, one of the boldest of seekers and undeniably the most skilled astrologer of his time; Girolamo Cardano, who was, if we believe the legend surrounding his death, a martyr to his faith in astrology, left us a calculus with which each of us can predict the good or bad fortune for all the years of our life.» — su elogio de Girolamo Cardano como el astrólogo más hábil de su tiempo
«The number four is fulfillment; the number eight, that of Venus or natural things; the number twelve, which is that of the cycle of Jupiter, corresponds to success; the number nineteen corresponds to the cycles of the Moon and of Mars; the number thirty is that of Saturn or Fate.» — la clave numérica que atribuye a Cardano, con el cuatro como cumplimiento
«I conclude that, for me and in this present year, experience perfectly confirms the precision of the astrological calculus of Cardano.» — y su verificación personal, que declara confirmada por la experiencia de ese mismo año
«Johannes Trithemius,251 in his book On the Seven Secondary Causes, very curiously estimated the return of good years or bad years for all the empires of the world;» — atribuye a Tritemio, en el libro de las siete causas segundas, el cálculo del retorno de los años buenos y malos de los imperios
«According to all the great masters of astrology, the comets are the stars of exceptional heroes and only visit the Earth to announce great changes;» — su doctrina de los cometas como estrellas de héroes excepcionales
«Dupuis was in error when he believed that all the religions arose solely from astronomy.» — y su objeción a Dupuis, repetida aquí sobre el origen astronómico de las religiones
«a star with eight rays, that of Venus, symbol of peace and love;» — la estrella de ocho rayos de Venus dentro de su repertorio de símbolos herméticos
«We have said that there exists within magic a great and unspeakable arcanum, which is never communicated between adepts, and that most of all one must prevent the profane from surmising; in the past, whoever revealed or caused others to discover the key to this supreme arcanum through imprudent revelations was immediately condemned to death and was often forced to execute his own sentence.» — su declaración sobre el gran arcano, que ni siquiera los adeptos se comunican entre sí
«Cazotte’s infamous prophetic dinner, written about by La Harpe,255 has not yet been understood; and La Harpe, in telling it, yielded to the rather natural desire to marvel his readers by exaggerating the details.» — su objeción a La Harpe por el relato de la cena profética de Cazotte
«All the men present at this dinner, with the exception of La Harpe, were initiates and revealers, or at least profaners, of the mysteries.» — y su adjudicación sobre los comensales: todos iniciados o profanadores de los misterios, salvo el narrador
«Cazotte, more highly ranked than all the others on the scale of initiation, pronounced a sentence of death over them in the name of illuminism, and this sentence was diversely, but rigorously, executed, as all the other similar sentences have been over many years and over many centuries in the past, against the abbé of Villars, Urbain Grandier, and so many others;» — la lectura que hace de la profecía de Cazotte como sentencia de muerte pronunciada en nombre del iluminismo
«If I expose myself to a violent death to teach them, they would certainly not try to save me; if they are afraid for themselves, then they should abstain from all imprudent investigations: that is what I can tell them.» — su respuesta a quien le pida el secreto, que traslada el riesgo al que pregunta
«We will not repeat his sad theories about crime, how to poison plants, how animals fed with poisoned plants develop unhealthy flesh and can, when they are used in turn as food for humans, cause death without leaving any trace of the poison; we shall not say how, through venomous unctions, we can poison the walls of houses, and the air which becomes breathable again only through fumigation, requiring the operator to wear the glass mask of the Holy Cross; we will leave these mysterious abominations to the ancient Canidia, we shall not examine how far the infernal rites of Sagana helped to perfect the arts of Locusta.» — se abstiene de repetir la teoría de los venenos por vía vegetal y animal, y declara la abstención
«It suffices to say that these malefactors of the worst type distilled together poisons and contagious sicknesses, the venom of reptiles and the harmful sap from plants; that they took the toxic and narcotic fluids from fungi, and they took from Jimson weed its asphyxiating principle; from the peach tree and cherry laurel they took that poison with which a single drop placed on the tongue or in the ear strikes you down like lightning and kills even the most healthy» — lo que sí resume de esos malhechores: destilaban venenos y contagios juntos
«the powder of projection is nothing other than that of the powder of succession.» — su identificación del polvo de proyección con el polvo de sucesión, que es una de sus equiparaciones más duras
«Giambattista della Porta,262 in his Magia Naturalis, gives a recipe for the poison of the Borgias, but as we might imagine, he makes fun of his readers and does not divulge the entire truth,» — su lectura de Della Porta en la Magia Naturalis: da la receta del veneno de los Borgia y se burla del lector sin decirlo todo
«The toad on its own is not venomous, but it acts as a sponge for poisons:» — la función que atribuye al sapo, que no es la que la superstición le da
«It is certain that the operator must have been possessed by evil, body and soul, and justifiably deserved universal and irrevocable condemnation as expressed by the allegory of hell.» — su juicio sobre el operador de esas obras, en clave alegórica del infierno
«The witches of the Middle Ages claimed to receive similar powders during the Sabbath, and sold them at high prices to ignorance and hate: it was through the rumor of similar mysteries that they spread terror throughout the countryside and managed to cast spells.» — consigna la pretensión de las brujas medievales de recibir esos polvos en el sabbat, y el rumor que llevó a Roma a prohibir los cultos nocturnos
«The word “superstition” derives from a Latin word which signifies “to survive.”» — su etimología de superstición, que es la definición que gobierna todo el capítulo
«It is the sign which survives thought; it is the cadaver of religious practice.» — y la imagen con que la remata: el signo que sobrevive al pensamiento
«It is in this sense that the cult of images is forbidden and that a doctrine that is most holy in its first conception can become superstitious and impious when it is bereft of inspiration and spirit.» — lo que deriva de ahí sobre el culto de las imágenes y sobre cualquier doctrina que pierda su inspiración
«But Christians, having rejected the science in their desire to amplify their faith, later wished to hide the origins of their doctrine and condemned to the fires all the books of the Cabala and of magic.» — su acusación a los cristianos por quemar los libros de la Cabala y de la magia para ocultar el origen de su propia doctrina
«It is thus that, six centuries later, the believer Omar had to sacrifice the library of Alexandria to the originality of the Koran,268 and who knows whether, in time to come, some future apostle will wish to burn our literary museums and confiscate the printing press in the name of some religious fad or some newly accredited legend?» — y la simetría que traza con Omar y la biblioteca de Alejandría, extendida a un apóstol futuro
«The ancients adored the Sun in the form a black stone which they called Elagabalus or Heliogabalus.» — la piedra negra solar de los antiguos, con sus dos nombres
«He called himself the cornerstone, and he told the most believing of the apostles: “Call yourself Pierre, because you are the pierre upon which I shall build my Church.”» — su lectura del nombre de Pedro como piedra angular, jugando con el francés del traductor
«This stone, say the masters of alchemy, is the true salt of the philosophers, which is one third of the composition of azoth.» — lo que los maestros de alquimia dicen de esa piedra: sal verdadera de los filósofos, un tercio de la composición del azoth
«Thus we must free our certitudes from our beliefs and render distinct the respective domains of science and faith; we must understand that we do not know the things which we believe in, and that we no longer believe in the things which we are able to know, and that it is the essence of matters of faith that they are unknown and indefinite, while it is the complete contrary for matters of science.» — su exigencia epistemológica, que es también su acotación sobre la fe: separar lo que se sabe de lo que se cree
«In other words, the philosopher’s stone is true certitude, which human prudence ensures through conscientious research and modest doubt, while religious enthusiasm attributes it to faith.» — su definición de la piedra filosofal como certidumbre verdadera
«Yet it belongs neither to reason without aspirations nor to aspirations without reason; true certitude is the reciprocal acquiescence of reason which knows to sentiment which believes, and of sentiment which believes to reason which knows.» — con el límite que le pone: no pertenece ni a la razón sin aspiración ni a la aspiración sin razón
«The definitive alliance of reason and of faith results not in their absolute distinction and separation but in their mutual control and their fraternal confluence.» — y la alianza que propone, que no es distinción sino control mutuo y confluencia
«God himself is not without a reason for existing and can only exist by virtue of a supreme and inevitable reason.» — su afirmación sobre Dios sometido a la razón suprema
«We may say in our day and age that God is but a hypothesis, but absolute reason is not one: it is essential to being.» — y la distinción que sostiene todo su racionalismo: Dios puede ser hipótesis, la razón absoluta no
«When Voltaire said: “If God did not exist, we would have to invent him,” he sensed rather than understood the reason for God.» — su objeción a Voltaire, a quien concede el presentimiento y le niega la comprensión
«Yet all natural phenomena depend upon a single and immutable law represented by the philosopher’s stone and most of all symbolized by its form, that of the cube.» — su reducción de todos los fenómenos naturales a una ley única figurada en el cubo de la piedra
«Most physical maladies derive from moral maladies, according to the unique and universal magical doctrine and due to the law of analogies.» — su ley de derivación de la enfermedad física desde la moral
«The deadly sins are called that because they cause one to physically and actually die.» — su lectura literal de los pecados capitales
«Alexander the Great died of pride.» — con sus ejemplos, empezando por Alejandro
«It is thus true to say that wisdom conserves and prolongs life.» — la conclusión médica que saca de esa ley
«He therefore wished to say: “Drink of my spirit and live from my life.”» — su glosa de la frase eucarística del Maestro. La cita es evangélica; la interpretación es suya
«It is in the same sense that the hermetic masters said: Render gold drinkable and you shall have the universal medicine;» — y la equiparación con la fórmula hermética del oro potable como medicina universal
«It is by becoming reasonable and good that man becomes immortal.» — su condición para la inmortalidad, que es moral y no operativa
«We are the authors of our destinies, and God does not save without our participation.» — su reparto de responsabilidad con la divinidad
«Death does not exist for the sage: death is a phantom rendered horrifying by ignorance and vulgar weakness.» — su definición de la muerte para el sabio
«Let us now dare to affirm that resurrection is possible, and even that it happens more often than we think.» — su afirmación sobre la resurrección, que declara más frecuente de lo que se cree
«A doctor would tell us that these people were not dead but were lethargic.» — y la objeción médica que él mismo anticipa y consigna
«Magnetic sleep is a lethargy or a false death and can be healed by the will.» — su identificación del sueño magnético con la letargia curable por la voluntad
«Also, resurrection is only possible for elementary souls, and it is these souls above all which are exposed to the possibility of reviving involuntarily in their tomb.» — con el límite que casi nunca se le cita: la resurrección solo alcanza a las almas elementales
«In our Ritual we will provide the theory and practice of resurrectionism, and to those who ask me if I have resuscitated the dead I would answer that if I told them, they would not believe me.» — y la abstención con que despacha la pregunta directa sobre si él resucitó muertos
«The two signs of human divinity, or of divine humanity, are prophecies and miracles.» — los dos signos que declara de la divinidad humana
«To be a prophet is to see ahead of time the effects that exist in the causes, it is to read the astral light; to make miracles is to act upon the universal agent and submit it to our will.» — y sus definiciones, que reducen profecía y milagro a lectura y a acción sobre la luz astral
«Raymond Lully enriched sovereigns, seeded Europe with his funds, and remained poor; Nicolas Flamel, who is certainly dead, whatever they say about his legend, only found the Great Work through asceticism and a complete detachment from wealth.» — su cuadro de los adeptos que repartieron riqueza y quedaron pobres, con Lully y Flamel
«He was initiated through the intelligence which he suddenly acquired from the book of Aesch Mezareph,293 written in Hebrew by the Cabalist Abraham, perhaps the same one who wrote the Sepher Yetzirah.» — y la iniciación que atribuye a Flamel por el libro Aesch Mezareph del cabalista Abraham
«But, to succeed at the Great Work, one must be divinus, or devin, in the Cabalistic sense of the word, and it is indispensable to have renounced, for one’s own interest, the advantages of the wealth of which one will become the dispenser.» — la condición que pone a la Gran Obra, que es de estado y no de técnica: ser divinus en el sentido cabalístico
«Hypnotism, precognition, and second sight are all of one disposition, either accidental or habitual, dreamed in a voluntary sleep or while awake, that is to say they perceive the analogical reflections of the astral light.» — su unificación del hipnotismo, la precognición y la segunda vista como una sola disposición
«But do not be confused regarding the function we attribute to the imagination in the divinatory arts.» — la advertencia que interpone sobre el papel de la imaginación en la adivinación
«We see through the imagination, without a doubt, and that is the natural aspect of the miracle, but we see true things, and it is that which makes for the marvelous in this natural work.» — y su matiz decisivo: se ve por la imaginación, pero lo que se ve es verdadero
«The Tarot, that miraculous book, the inspiration for all the sacred books of the ancient peoples, is, because of the analogical precision of its figures and its numbers, the most perfect instrument for divination, which can be used with complete confidence.» — la función que asigna al Tarot como instrumento adivinatorio, por precisión analógica de figuras y números
«In fact, the oracles of this book are always rigorously true, at least in one sense, and while it predicts nothing, it always reveals hidden things and provides consultants with the wisest of advice.» — con la acotación que rebaja la promesa: el libro no predice, revela lo oculto y aconseja
«Alliette, who was a wig maker before becoming the Cabalist of the previous century, after having spent thirty years meditating upon the Tarot; Alliette, who Cabalistically called himself Etteilla, by reading his name as one reads Hebrew,295 was very close to finding all that was hidden in that strange book, but he only managed to displace the keys of the Tarot because he did not understand them, and he inverted the order and the character of the figures without completely destroying the analogies, because they are so sympathetic and correspond so well to one another.» — su semblanza de Alliette, peluquero antes que cabalista, que se llamó Etteilla por inversión del nombre
«The writings of Etteilla, which have become relatively rare, are obscure, tiring, and of a truly barbarous style; not all his works were published, and the manuscripts of this father of modern card readers are still in the hands of a Parisian librarian, who was most willing to show them to me.» — su juicio sobre esos escritos, que llama oscuros y de estilo bárbaro
«He had little respect for Agrippa and made much of Jean Belot, and knew nothing of the philosophy of Paracelsus; but he had a well-practiced intuition, a relentless will, and more imagination than good judgment: it was too little to make him a mage, but it was more than enough to make him a very skillful vulgar seer, and in consequence very credible.» — y su balance de las lecturas de Etteilla: poco Agripa, mucho Belot, nada de Paracelso, pero intuición ejercitada
«Harmony is in equilibrium, and equilibrium subsists in the analogy of opposites.» — su definición de la armonía por el equilibrio de los opuestos
«Analogy is the only possible mediator between the visible and the invisible, between the finite and the infinite.» — la analogía como único mediador posible entre lo visible y lo invisible
«The man who denies God is just as fanatical as he who defines him with a pretense of infallibility.» — su simetría contra los dos fanatismos, el del que niega a Dios y el del que lo define con pretensión de infalibilidad
«Analogy is the key to all the secrets of nature and the only raison d’être of all revelations.» — y la primacía que le da a la analogía sobre toda revelación
«A thing is, not just because God wishes it, said the Angel of the Schools; but God wishes it because it is just.» — cita al Ángel de las Escuelas para su ley absoluta de la razón sobre la voluntad divina. La sentencia es tomista, no suya
«Reason is of itself; it is because it is and not because we suppose it; it is or nothing exists; and how would you have anything exist without reason?» — y su propia formulación de la razón como lo que es por sí mismo
«But merciless and terrible death will no longer appear, to harvest like dry grass the ripe ears of wheat in the century to come; she will cede her place to the angel of progress, who will softly detach souls from their mortal chains, to allow them to rise up to God.» — del preámbulo alegórico del Ritual: la muerte cederá su lugar al ángel del progreso
«There is in nature a force which does not die, and that force continually transforms beings in order to conserve them.» — la fuerza que declara indestructible en la naturaleza y su función conservadora
«That force is reason, or the Verb of nature.» — y su nombre, que es la tesis del capítulo
«There exists in man a force analogous to that of nature, and that force is reason, or the Verb of man.» — la analogía correspondiente en el hombre
«The Verb of man is the expression of his will directed by reason.» — su definición del Verbo humano por la voluntad dirigida por la razón
«This Verb is all powerful when it is reasonable, because then it is analogous to the actual Verb of God.» — con la condición que la hace omnipotente, y que es su único requisito: ser razonable
«Human beings who die without having understood and without having formulated the speech of reason, die without eternal hope.» — la consecuencia para quien muere sin haber formulado esa palabra
«The Lucifer of the Cabala is not a cursed and stricken angel, he is the angel which brings light and regenerates by burning; he is to the angels of peace that which the comet is to the peaceful stars of the constellations of spring.» — su rehabilitación del Lucifer cabalístico, que separa expresamente del ángel maldito
«Do not believe, my dear sister! that I wander about in search of adventure and trouble the harmony of the stars; God has traced my path like he has yours, and if my course appears uncertain and wandering, it is because your rays do not extend far enough to be able to embrace the contour of the ellipse which was given to me as my career.» — de la fábula del cometa que monta para explicarlo: la trayectoria irregular también está trazada por Dios
«I am the messenger of the suns, and I dip into their fires in order to share them along my route with young worlds who do not yet have enough warmth and with aging stars who are cold in their solitude.» — y la función que la cometa se atribuye a sí misma en esa fábula, mensajera de los soles
«She felt free, because God had commanded her to be so; and she answered, while raising her head and spreading her wings: —I shall not be servitude!» — el ángel que rehúsa ser esclavitud, en la escena de la negación divina
«—Pride will seduce you, answered the supreme voice, and you shall give birth to death.» — con la respuesta de la voz suprema, que anuncia el nacimiento de la muerte
«—I must fight against death in order to conquer life, answered back the created light.» — y la réplica de la luz creada, que cierra la alegoría
«God did not create suffering; it was intelligence which accepted it in order to be free.» — su adjudicación del origen del sufrimiento, que retira de Dios y pone en la inteligencia
«Because the essence of intelligence is judgment, and the essence of judgment is liberty.» — con el encadenamiento que lo funda: inteligencia, juicio, libertad
«That is why blasphemy glorifies God; and that is why hell was necessary for the happiness of heaven.» — la paradoja con que remata, y que él no atenúa
«If the light was not pushed back by the shadow, there would be no visible forms.» — su razón de la sombra en el orden visible
«Never would intelligence have known the goodness of God, if she had never lost it!» — y la que da del pecado, en clave de conocimiento del bien perdido
«Nowhere did he speak of the demon in Genesis. It is an allegorical serpent who fools our first parents.» — su lectura del Génesis: allí no se habla del demonio, sino de una serpiente alegórica
«But here, Fabre d’Olivet passes by the true interpretation, because he is ignorant of the great keys of the Cabala.» — su objeción a Fabre d Olivet, a quien atribuye ignorancia de las grandes claves de la Cabala
«The doctrine thus serves in all the hieratic religions to veil the secret forces of nature which the initiate can dispose of; the religious formulas are the summaries of the words full of mystery and power which make the gods descend from the sky and submit them to the will of men.» — su tesis sobre la función de las religiones hieráticas: velan las fuerzas secretas de la naturaleza
«According to the Gospels, the inscription which declared the spiritual royalty of Christ was written in Hebrew, in Greek, and in Latin;307 it was the expression of universal synthesis.» — su lectura de la inscripción trilingüe de la cruz como síntesis universal
«The Roman persecutors then brought Hellenism a dishonor which the false moderation of Julian the philosopher (perhaps unjustly called the Apostate, because his Christianity had never been sincere) could not rehabilitate.» — con su reserva sobre el mote de Apóstata aplicado a Juliano
«But when science and philosophy, reconciled with faith, will reunite into one all the different symbols, then all the magnificence of the ancient cults will bloom again in the memory of men, by proclaiming the progress of the human spirit in understanding the light of God;» — su programa de reconciliación entre ciencia, filosofía y fe
«We wish to free the altars by upturning the idols, we wish that the man of intelligence again becomes the priest and the king of nature, and we wish to conserve all the images of the universal sanctuary by explaining them.» — y su fórmula, que separa altares de ídolos
«Symbolism thus comes from God, despite being formulated by men.» — su tesis sobre el símbolo: viene de Dios aunque lo formulen los hombres
«The true religion is one, and its doctrines are simple and within reach of everyone.» — su afirmación sobre la religión verdadera, que declara una y simple
«Have faith, therefore, in human progress and in the stability of God; the free man respects religion in all its past forms and does not blaspheme against Jupiter more than Jehovah; he still pays tribute with love to the 200» — su regla de respeto a todas las formas pasadas de la religión, sin blasfemar de Júpiter ni de Jehová
«he is more Protestant than Luther, because he does not even believe in the infallibility of the Augsburg Confession, and is more Catholic than the pope, because he is not afraid that religious unity could be broken by the malice of the royal courts.» — la posición que se atribuye a sí mismo, más protestante que Lutero y más católico que el papa
«The author of this book makes a new appeal to the mages of the Orient, that they shall come and once more recognize the divine Master whom they greeted in his cradle, the great initiator of all the ages.» — el llamamiento con que abre este tramo, dirigido a los mages de Oriente
«They believe they butchered him in his cradle at Bethlehem, but he is alive in Egypt!» — su argumento contra la muerte del Maestro, en clave de presencia continua
«Fools! the tomb is empty, and he whom they believed dead walks peacefully, between two travelers, on the road to Emmaus.» — con el camino de Emaús como cierre
«We can enchain man, but we cannot keep the Verb of God captive.» — su distinción entre encadenar al hombre y cautivar al Verbo
«It is this divine spirit, the spirit of the only Son of God, that Saint John represents as standing upright in his Apocalypse, in the midst of golden candlesticks, because he is the center of all light, holding the seven stars in his hand, like the seeds of a new heaven, and having his words descend to Earth under the sign of a double-edged sword.» — su lectura del Cristo del Apocalipsis en medio de los candelabros de oro
«Christ means priest and king par excellence.» — su definición del nombre Cristo
«The arrival of the Savior had been announced to the mages by a star.» — la estrella que anunció al Salvador a los mages
«It is the pentagram of the mages.» — y su identificación de esa estrella, que es la operación central del libro
«It is the flaming star of the children of Hiram.315» — con su equivalente masónico, la estrella flamígera de los hijos de Hiram
«Yet this same sign, if broken or irregularly drawn, represents astral intoxication, abnormal projections and deregulations of the great magical agent, and in consequence enchantments, perversity, madness, and this is what mages call Lucifer’s signature.» — la advertencia sobre el mismo signo mal trazado, que invierte su efecto
«But if an ignorant operator makes use of the signs without understanding them, he is a blind man who speaks of the light to the blind.» — y sobre el operador ignorante que usa los signos sin entenderlos
«If you do not obey the forces of destiny, the forces of destiny will obey you.» — su regla sobre el destino, formulada como condición y no como promesa
«One must KNOW in order to DARE.» — el encadenamiento de los verbos del mago, aquí en su forma imperativa
«All intentions which are not manifested by acts are vain intentions, and the words which express them are idle words.» — su ley sobre las intenciones no manifestadas en actos
«Miracles are only for the ignorant, but since absolute science barely exists among men, the miracle can still exist, and it exists for everyone.» — su definición del milagro por la ignorancia de quien lo mira, con la acotación que lo salva: la ciencia absoluta apenas existe entre los hombres
«Thus, through a providential or fatal law, the magician can only exercise his omnipotence in the reverse direction of his material interests; the alchemist makes all the more gold the more he resigns himself to privation and the more he respects poverty, protector of the secrets of the Great Work.» — la ley providencial o fatal que impone al mago: solo ejerce su poder en dirección contraria a su interés material
«The adept with a passionless heart alone disposes of the love and the hate of those whom he wishes to make the instruments of his science: the myth of Genesis is eternally true, and God only allows those men to approach the tree of science who are abstinent and strong enough not to covet its fruits.» — y la condición del corazón sin pasión para disponer del amor y del odio ajenos
«You, then, who look to magic as the means to satisfy your passions, stop yourselves along that deadly road: you will only find madness there, or death.» — la prohibición dirigida a quien busque la magia para satisfacer pasiones
«The first and most important of magical works is to arrive at this rare superiority.» — lo que declara primera y principal de las obras mágicas
«We have said that passionate ecstasy can produce the same results as absolute superiority, and this is true regarding success in such matters but not with regard to the direction» — su acotación sobre el éxtasis pasional: consigue resultados pero no dirección
«Passion projects the vital light by force and imprints unforeseen movements upon the universal agent, but it cannot be held back as easily as it was cast, and one’s destiny is then to resemble Hippolytus dragged off by his own horses, or Phalaris suffering from the instrument of torture he had invented for others.» — con la imagen de lo que no se puede recoger una vez lanzado
«When a child says, “I can’t,” his mother answers him: “Try.” Faith does not even try; it begins with the certitude of accomplishment, and it works calmly since it has omnipotence at its command and eternity before it.» — su definición de la fe por la certidumbre previa, no por el intento
«Sixtus V, while taking care of his livestock, said: “I want to be Pope.”» — el ejemplo de Sixto V pastoreando ganado
«You are a mendicant and you wish to make gold: put yourself to work and never stop. I promise you, in the name of the science, all the treasures of Flamel and of Ramon Lully.» — la promesa que ofrece al mendigo que quiere hacer oro, en nombre de la ciencia
«A lazy man will never be a magician. Magic is exercised at all hours and at all moments.» — su exclusión del perezoso, en dos frases
«It is important that the mage knows the secrets of the science, but he can know them through intuition, without ever having learned them.» — su acotación sobre la vía intuitiva, que no exige estudio
«Real practical magicians are almost always found in the countryside and are often uneducated people and simple shepherds.» — y la consecuencia sociológica que saca: los magos prácticos reales están en el campo y suelen ser pastores sin letras
«but these phenomena are exceptions, and generally the power of magic must, and can, be acquired through perseverance and work.» — con el límite que le pone: eso son excepciones, y el poder mágico se adquiere por perseverancia y trabajo
«One must never speak to anyone of the works one has accomplished, and as we have often said in the Doctrine, mystery is the strict and indispensable condition for all the operations of the science.» — la regla del silencio sobre las obras cumplidas, que declara condición indispensable
«A laborious and poor life is so favorable to initiation through practice that the greatest masters searched it out, even when they could have disposed of the riches of the world.» — su tesis sobre la pobreza como favorable a la iniciación, buscada por los grandes maestros
«It is then that Satan, that is to say the spirit of ignorance, who sneers, who doubts, and who hates science because he fears it, comes to tempt the future master of the world by saying to him, “If you are the son of God, say that these stones will become bread.”» — su definición operativa de Satán como espíritu de ignorancia que tienta al futuro maestro
«One must avoid, as much as one can, viewing hideous things and ugly people, avoid eating at the houses of people one does not respect, avoid all excess, and live in the most uniform and regulated manner.» — su régimen de vida para el operador, con lo que hay que evitar
«Have the greatest respect for oneself and see oneself as an unknown sovereign who consents to being unknown in order to reconquer his crown.» — la disposición interior que exige: verse a sí mismo como soberano desconocido
«Finally, one can, and even should, accomplish the obligations and practice the rites of the religion to which one belongs.» — y su regla sobre la religión propia, que no manda abandonar
«Our magic is at once a science and an absolute religion, which, rather than destroying and absorbing all opinion and all religions, must regenerate and direct them by reconstituting the circles of initiates and by thus giving the blind masses wise and clairvoyant leaders.» — su definición de la magia como ciencia y religión absoluta a la vez, que no destruye las religiones sino que las regenera
«We live in a century where there is nothing left to destroy; but everything is to be remade, since everything is destroyed.» — su diagnóstico de la época
«To know the law of this exchange, to know the alternative or simultaneous proportion of these forces, is to possess the first principles of the great magical arcanum, which constitutes true human divinity.» — lo que declara primer principio del gran arcano mágico: la ley del intercambio de fuerzas
«May scientists search and discover: the Cabalists will explain the discoveries of science.» — su reparto de tareas entre científicos y cabalistas
«The human body is subject, like the Earth, to a double law: it attracts and it radiates; it is magnetized by an androgynous magnetism328 and acts upon the two powers of the soul, the intellectual and the emotive, in inverse manners but proportional to the alternate forces of the two sexes within each physical organism.» — su doctrina del cuerpo humano como sujeto de doble ley y de magnetismo andrógino
«It will also be impossible for magnetizers not initiated into the supreme arcana and not assisted by the light of the Cabala ever to dominate this resistant and fugitive element.» — y la imposibilidad que declara para los magnetizadores no iniciados en la Cabala
«Man can produce at will two breaths, one cold, the other hot; he can also project at will the active light or the passive light; but he must become conscious of this force through the habit of thinking about it.» — los dos alientos que atribuye al hombre, con la condición de la práctica para hacerse consciente de esa fuerza
«To always act in the same sense and in the same manner is to overcharge a single pan of a balance, and the result will soon be the absolute destruction of equilibrium.» — su ley del equilibrio aplicada a la conducta del operador
«Just so, in magic, one must temper the works of anger or rigor by operations of beneficence and love;» — con su aplicación concreta: templar las obras de cólera con operaciones de amor
«A magical operation must always be followed by a time of rest equal to its length and analogical distraction but contrary to its object.» — y el descanso que prescribe tras cada operación
«Paracelsus dared to do so, but even in this battle, he used balanced forces and opposed the intoxication of wine with that of intelligence,» — su lectura de Paracelso enfrentando la embriaguez del vino con la de la inteligencia
«Nevertheless, since the binary would be immobility and death without the equilibrating motor, there could only be one or three people participating in works of magic;» — su regla sobre el número de operadores, derivada del binario y del ternario
«I would answer that in magic there is nothing arbitrary, because all is ruled and determined in advance by the unique and universal doctrine of Hermes,» — su declaración contra lo arbitrario en magia, remitida a la doctrina única de Hermes
«These observances are not in vain because, in the magical work, all the instruments of the art are magnetized by the operator, the air is charged with his perfumes, the fire consecrated by him is submitted to his will, the forces of nature seem to hear him and answer him;» — la razón que da para esas observancias: los instrumentos quedan magnetizados por el operador
«I know that Christianity has always suppressed ceremonial magic and severely proscribed the evocations and sacrifices of the ancient world:» — reconoce sin rodeos que el cristianismo proscribió la magia ceremonial y las evocaciones antiguas
«Let there be respect for the established religions but also a place for science.» — y la fórmula con que pide lugar para la ciencia sin atacar las religiones establecidas
«Paracelsus also was a man of inspiration and miracles, but he used up his life with this devouring activity, or rather he quickly got tired of and tore up the cloth:» — su juicio sobre Paracelso, hombre de inspiración y de milagros que gastó su vida en esa actividad
«To evoke a spirit, he says, is to enter into the dominant thought of that spirit, and if we raise ourselves morally higher at the same time, we will lead that spirit to us and he will serve us; otherwise he will lead us into his circle and we will serve him.» — su definición de evocar, que es moral antes que ritual: entrar en el pensamiento dominante del espíritu
«To conjure is to oppose the resistance of a current and a chain to an isolated spirit: com jurare, to vow together, that is to say to profess a common faith.» — y la de conjurar, con la etimología que le da
«It is for this reason that newborn Christianity silenced the oracles: it alone then possessed the inspiration and the force.» — lo que deduce de esa definición sobre el silencio de los oráculos ante el cristianismo naciente
«To the first part of the question, we can answer that anything whose impossibility is not evident can and must be provisionally admitted as possible.» — su regla de admisión provisional de lo posible
«Nothing perishes in nature, and all that has lived continues to live forever in new forms, but the anterior forms themselves are not destroyed, since we can find them in our recollections.» — su principio de conservación de las formas, que funda la evocación
«On the other hand, all forms are proportional and analogical to the idea that determined them; they are the natural character, the signature of that idea, as the mages say, and the moment we actively evoke that idea, its form is realized and produced.» — y la analogía entre forma e idea, que llama firma con el término de los mages
«Schröpfer, the famous illuminist of Leipzig, cast a terror over all Germany with his evocations, and his audaciousness with regard to magical operations was so great that his reputation became an unbearable burden for him; then he allowed himself to be carried away by the immense current of hallucinations which he had allowed to form; visions of another world made him disgusted with this one, and he killed himself.» — consigna a Schröpfer, el iluminado de Leipzig, y el terror que sus evocaciones causaron en Alemania
«It is due to this consideration that we have refused, and that we will continue to refuse, the vain curiosity of those who ask to see in order to 221» — su negativa declarada a satisfacer la curiosidad de quien pide ver para creer
«“It is perfectly within your rights not to believe; as for ourselves, we are neither more discouraged nor less convinced regarding our beliefs.”» — y la respuesta que da a quien no cree
«The isolated “A” represents the unity of the first principle, or of the intellectual or active agent.» — su lectura de las letras del triángulo evocatorio, empezando por la A como unidad del principio activo
«The “R” is the sign of the ternary, because it hieroglyphically represents the effusion which results from the union of the two principles.» — y la R como signo del ternario
«Let us remark in passing that the author of the Book of Revelation, that clavicle of the Christian Cabala, composed the number of the beast, that is to say of idolatry, by adding another six to the double senary of ABRACADABRA, which Cabalistically is eighteen, the number assigned in the Tarot to the hieroglyphic sign of the night and profanity, the Moon with the towers, the dog, the wolf, and the crawfish; a mysterious and dark number, whose Cabalistic key is nine, the number of initiation.» — su lectura del número de la bestia del Apocalipsis, que llama clavícula de la Cabala cristiana
«It is in fact Pythagoras’s decad multiplied by itself and added to the sum of the triangular pentacle of Abracadabra;340 it is thus the summary of all the magic of the ancient world, the entire program of human genius, which the divine genius of the Gospels wished to absorb or supplant.» — su desarme aritmético de ese número por la década pitagórica y el pentáculo triangular del Abracadabra
«These hieroglyphic combinations of letters and numbers belong to the practical part of the Cabala, which, from this point of view, is subdivided into Gematria and Temurah.» — la subdivisión de la Cabala práctica que consigna
«We have already seen that these keys, preserved until our time but completely misunderstood, are none other than the Tarot deck, whose ancient allegories were remarked upon and appreciated for the first time, in our day, by the scholarly archeologist Court de Gébelin.» — su identificación de las claves conservadas e incomprendidas con la baraja del Tarot
«He attributes to this figure all the virtues that the Cabalistic Hebrews attributed to the name of Jehovah, and the thaumaturgical properties of the Abracadabra of the hierophants of Alexandria.» — lo que atribuye a Paracelso sobre el tridente: las virtudes que los hebreos daban al nombre de Jehová y las propiedades del Abracadabra alejandrino
«All these figures, all these acts analogous to the figures, all these dispositions of numbers and characters are not, as we have already said, just educational instruments for the will, whose habits they fix and determine.» — su acotación sobre los pentáculos: no son solo instrumentos didácticos de la voluntad
«The great religions have only had to fear one serious rival, and that rival is magic.» — su adjudicación de rivalidad: la magia es el único competidor serio que han tenido las grandes religiones
«Magic produced the occult associations which brought about the revolution called the Renaissance, but it has fallen to the human spirit, blinded by mad loves, to realize point for point the allegory of the Hebrew Hercules:343 by shaking the columns of the temple he buried himself under the ruins.» — y su tesis sobre el Renacimiento como obra de asociaciones ocultas
«Masonic societies know no more about the high reason of their symbols than do rabbis who do not understand the Sepher Yetzirah and the Zohar, on the ascending scale of three degrees, with the transverse progression from right to left and from left to right of the Cabalistic septenary.» — su objeción a la masonería y a los rabinos por igual, por no entender los símbolos que custodian
«The profaning adepts whose bloody deaths were predicted by the illuminated Cazotte have surpassed in our time the sin of Adam: after having boldly gathered the fruits of the tree of science, with which they did not know how to feed themselves, they threw them to the animals and the reptiles of the Earth.» — su condena de los adeptos profanadores que anunció Cazotte, a quienes atribuye haber superado el pecado de Adán
«They are what caused the nightmares of Saint Anthony and most probably the visions of Swedenborg; they are neither damned nor guilty, they are curious and innocent.» — atribuye a esos espíritus elementales las pesadillas de san Antonio y probablemente las visiones de Swedenborg, con la acotación de que no son culpables sino curiosos
«The mage who employs their cooperation takes upon himself a terrible responsibility, because he must expiate all evil that he might have them do, and the grandeur of his torments will be proportionate to the extent of the power he will have exercised as their mediator.» — y la responsabilidad que carga sobre el mago que los emplea
«The Spirit of God moved upon the waters, and breathed into the face of man the breath of life.» — la fórmula bíblica con que abre el exorcismo del aire. La cita es del Génesis, no suya
«I therefore exorcise thee, creature of air, by Pentagrammaton and in the name of Tetragrammaton, in which is firm will and true faith.» — la fórmula de exorcismo del aire por el Pentagrámaton y el Tetragrámaton, con las dos condiciones que le exige al operador
«Spirit of light, spirit of wisdom, whose breath gives and takes away the form of all things;» — del texto de la oración de los sílfides que transcribe
«by the laying on of hands, with one’s breath, through words and by mixing the sacred salt with some ashes which remain in the bowl of incense.» — los medios materiales de la consagración: imposición de manos, aliento, palabras y sal sagrada con ceniza
«The aspergillus345 is made with the branches of verbena, periwinkle, sage, mint, valerian, ash, and basil tied together with a thread taken from the distaff of a virgin;» — la composición del hisopo, con el hilo tomado de la rueca de una virgen
«made of hazel wood which had not yet born fruits, and upon which you engrave with a magical awl the characters of the seven spirits.» — y la madera del mango, avellano que no haya dado fruto, con los caracteres de los siete espíritus
«The Sun is its father, the Moon its mother, and the wind has carried it in its womb, it ascends from Earth to heaven and descends again from heaven to Earth.» — la fórmula de la Tabla Esmeralda incorporada al exorcismo del agua. La letra es del dictum hermético
«exorcise thee, creature of water, that you may be for me a mirror of the living God in his works, and a fount of life, and an ablution for sins.» — y el exorcismo del agua propiamente dicho
«One exorcises the fire by throwing salt, incense, white resin, camphor, and sulfur into it, and by pronouncing three times the three names of the spirits of fire: MICHAEL, king of the Sun and the lightning; SAMAEL, king of the volcanoes, and ANAEL, prince of the astral light; then by reciting the prayer of the salamanders.» — lo que se arroja al fuego para exorcizarlo, con los tres nombres que se pronuncian
«One exorcises the Earth by the aspersion of water, through breath and through fire, with the correct perfumes for each day, and one then says the prayer of the gnomes.» — el exorcismo de la tierra por aspersión, aliento y fuego, seguido de la oración de los gnomos
«One must note the special kingdom of the gnomes is to the north, that of the salamanders to the south, that of the sylphs to the east, and that of the undines to the west.» — el reparto cardinal de los cuatro reinos elementales
«They influence the four temperaments of man, that is to say the gnomes influence the melancholic, the salamanders influence the choleric, the undines influence the phlegmatic, and the sylphs influence the sanguine.» — y su correspondencia con los cuatro temperamentos
«Their signs are: the hieroglyphs of Taurus for gnomes, and they are commanded with the sword; Leo for salamanders, and they are» — los signos zodiacales de cada pueblo elemental, con el instrumento que los manda
«When an elemental spirit comes to torment or even trouble the inhabitants of this world, one must conjure it by air, by water, by fire, and by earth, by breathing and sprinkling, by burning the perfumes, and by drawing on the ground the star of Solomon and the sacred pentagram.» — su regla para conjurar a un espíritu elemental por los cuatro elementos a la vez
«The sign of the cross which was adopted by the Christians does not belong exclusively to them.» — su adjudicación sobre la cruz, que declara no exclusiva de los cristianos
«It is also Cabalistic and represents the oppositions and the quaternary equilibrium of the elements.» — y la lectura cabalística que le da, como equilibrio cuaternario de los elementos
«However, it is indubitable that one can by one’s will direct the elements in a certain measure and really change or stop their effects.» — su afirmación sobre el dominio de los elementos, con la medida incluida
«It is better to remain silent and to act.» — la regla de conducta con que la cierra
«The metals which correspond to the four elementary forms are gold and silver for air, mercury for water, iron and copper for fire, and lead for earth.» — los metales que hace corresponder a las cuatro formas elementales
«Divination with the four elementary forms, which are called aeromancy, hydromancy, pyromancy, and geomancy, is done in diverse manners, which all depend on the will and on the translucent, or the imagination, of the operator.» — las cuatro adivinaciones elementales, remitidas a la voluntad y al translúcido
«Thus the four elements are but instruments for aiding second sight.» — con la reducción que las explica: los elementos solo asisten a la segunda vista
«Second sight is the faculty to see in the astral light.» — y su definición de la segunda vista
«Sanguine temperaments are more disposed to aeromancy, the bilious to pyromancy, the pituitous to hydromancy, and the melancholic to geomancy.» — el reparto de temperamentos entre esas cuatro artes
«But divination, of any type that we can perform, is dangerous, or at the least useless, because it discourages the will and in consequence hinders liberty and tires the nervous system.» — una de sus objeciones más netas contra su propio arte: la adivinación es peligrosa o inútil porque desalienta la voluntad
«The pentagram, which in the Gnostic schools we call the flaming star,347 is the sign of omnipotence and intellectual autocracy.» — su definición del pentagrama en clave gnóstica
«Any negligence regarding a single one of these ceremonies, which seem difficult and arbitrary, will abort the entire success of any great work of science.» — y la exigencia con que cierra el capítulo, sobre la negligencia en una sola ceremonia
«The pentagram drawn with luminous lines on glass through the means of an electrical machine also exerts a great influence over the spirits and terrifies phantoms.» — el trazado luminoso del pentagrama sobre vidrio con máquina eléctrica, y su efecto declarado
«The ancient magicians drew the sign of the pentagram on the threshold of their door to stop evil spirits from entering and to keep good spirits from leaving.» — el uso antiguo del signo en el umbral, con su doble función
«In disposing it in a manner such that two of its points are above and one single point is below, we can see the horns, the ears, and the beard of the hieratic goat of Mendes, and it becomes the sign of infernal evocations.» — su lectura del pentagrama invertido como cabra hierática de Mendes
«The allegorical star of the mages is nothing other than the mysterious pentagram; and those three kings, children of Zoroaster, led by the flaming star to the cradle of the microcosmic God,351 suffice to prove the entirely Cabalistic and truly magical origins of Christian doctrine.» — su identificación de la estrella de los mages con el pentagrama, y de los tres reyes como hijos de Zoroastro
«As we can see, all the mysteries of magic, all the symbols of the Gnosis, all the figures of occultism, all the Cabalistic keys of the prophecies, are summarized in the sign of the pentagram, that Paracelsus proclaims as the most great and most powerful of all the signs.» — la función sintética que atribuye al signo dentro de todo su sistema
«The mage, on the contrary, when he feels his will weakening, looks upon the symbol, takes it in his right hand, and feels armed with intellectual omnipotence, as long as he is truly a king worthy of being led by the star to the cradle of divine realization;» — y su uso práctico por el mago cuando siente flaquear la voluntad, con la condición que lo acompaña
«We have said that in order to acquire magical power one needs to do two things: to free the will from all servitude and train it in domination.» — las dos cosas que declara necesarias para adquirir el poder mágico
«Let us declare here without bandying about that the great magical agent, the double current of light, the living and astral fire of the earth was symbolized by the serpent» — su identificación del gran agente mágico con la serpiente
«All magical work thus consists of freeing oneself from the coils of the ancient serpent, then placing one’s foot on his head and driving him where one wishes.» — y en qué consiste, por tanto, toda obra mágica
«An odic or magnetic current formed by a chain of wills is what constitutes this evil spirit, which the gospel calls legion, and which drives the swine into the sea:» — su lectura de la legión evangélica como corriente ódica formada por una cadena de voluntades
«In addition, observe what Ulysses does to protect himself and save his companions: he refuses the cup of the enchantress and commands her with his sword.» — el ejemplo de Ulises ante la copa de la encantadora
«The great agent or natural mediator of human omnipotence can only be used and directed by an extra-natural mediator, which is an emancipated will.» — su exigencia de un mediador extranatural, que es la voluntad emancipada
«To will well, to will for a long time, to always will, but to never covet anything, such is the secret of power;» — su fórmula del secreto del poder, con la codicia excluida
«The conclusion of all this is that a true magician is more redoubtable than lovable.» — y la conclusión que saca sobre el mago verdadero
«Many people will say that it is difficult and even impossible to arrive at such resolution, that such force of will and energy of character are gifts of nature, and so on. I do not deny this, but I also recognize that habit can remake nature;» — su respuesta a quien objeta que el carácter es un don de nacimiento
«If it has been impossible so far to direct the phenomena of magnetism, it is because there has not yet been found an initiated magnetizer who is truly free.» — la razón que da del fracaso en dirigir los fenómenos magnéticos: falta un magnetizador iniciado y verdaderamente libre
«It is nevertheless certain that nature will obey the sign and the word of one who feels strong enough not to doubt.» — su afirmación sobre la obediencia de la naturaleza al que no duda
«I say that nature will obey, but I do not say that it will contradict itself or that it will trouble the order of its possibilities.» — con el límite que él mismo añade en la frase siguiente, y que es la acotación que separa su magia del milagro
«It is thus that Valens was struck with a blinding light and with terror, when entering the church of Caesarea,367 just as Heliodorus before him, who was struck by a sudden madness in the temple of Jerusalem, and who believed he was being whipped and trampled under the feet of angels.» — los casos históricos que aduce, Valente y Heliodoro
«What rendered Joan of Arc ever victorious was the glamor of her faith and her marvelous audacity: she paralyzed the arms that wished to strike her, and the English seriously believed her to be a magician or a witch.» — y su lectura de Juana de Arco por el prestigio de la fe y la audacia
«She was in fact a magician without knowing it, because she believed that she acted 248» — con la adjudicación que hace de ella, que ella misma no habría aceptado
«The magnetizing magician must command the natural medium and in consequence the astral body which allows communication between our soul and our organs; he can say to the material body, “Sleep!” and to the astral body: “Awake!”» — lo que el magnetizador debe mandar, según él: el medio natural y el cuerpo astral
«Cagliostro possessed this power, it is said, and aided its action through fumigation and incense, but true magnetic power must do without such auxiliaries which are more or less poisonous to reason and noxious to health.» — consigna que Cagliostro apoyaba esa acción con fumigaciones, y lo objeta por venenoso
«Music is a powerful auxiliary to the voice, and it is from there that the word enchantment is derived. No musical instrument is more enchanting than the human voice, but the distant sounds of the violin or the harmonica can augment its power.» — su etimología de encantamiento por la música, con la voz humana por encima de todo instrumento
«Since the ceremonies, the garments, the perfumes, the characters, and the figures, as we have said, are necessary in order to employ the imagination for the education of the will, the success of magical works depends on the faithful observation of all the rites.» — su explicación del papel de ceremonias, vestidos y perfumes: educar la imaginación para la voluntad
«These rites, as we have said, are neither fantastical nor arbitrary; they were transmitted from antiquity and are always based upon the essential laws and the analogical realization of both the relationship which exists between ideas and between the forms.» — y su declaración de que los ritos no son arbitrarios sino transmitidos
«Paracelsus thus did not teach ritual, but he practiced it, and his practice resulted in a series of miracles.» — su lectura de Paracelso: no enseñó el ritual, pero lo practicó
«According to the beliefs of the ancients, the world is governed by seven secondary causes, which Trithemius calls secundei,» — las siete causas segundas que atribuye a Tritemio, con su nombre
«With these notions, the ancients formed the occult science of physiognomy, imperfectly rediscovered by Lavater.» — y la fisiognomía antigua, que declara redescubierta imperfectamente por Lavater
«On Monday you will wear a white robe striped with silver, with a triple necklace of pearls, of crystals, and of selenite;» — del calendario ritual: el lunes con túnica blanca listada de plata y el triple collar
«On Tuesday, a day for operations of anger, the robe will be the color of fire, or of rust or of blood, with a belt and bracelets of steel;» — y el martes, día de las operaciones de cólera, con su color y sus metales
«The mage who wishes to proceed with works of light must perform them on Sunday, from midnight to eight in the morning, or from three in the afternoon until ten at night.» — la franja horaria que fija para las obras de luz en domingo
«We have already said that a pentacle is a synthetic character which summarizes all of magical doctrine in their special conceptions.» — su definición del pentáculo como carácter sintético que resume la doctrina
«It is thus the veritable expression of a complete thought and will; it is the signature of a spirit.» — y como firma de un espíritu
«The ceremonial consecration of this sign attaches the operator’s intentions even more strongly to it and establishes between himself and the sign a true magical chain.» — la función de la consagración ceremonial: establecer una cadena mágica entre operador y signo
«Gaffarel, in a scholarly work about ancient magics, had demonstrated through science the real power of these talismans, and confidence in their virtue is also so natural that we willingly carry on our person souvenirs of those we love, persuaded that these relics protect us 254» — adjudica a Gaffarel la demostración científica del poder real de los talismanes
«It should be remarked that Paracelsus replaces the figure of Jupiter by that of a priest, a substitution that is not without mysterious and earnest intention.» — su observación sobre Paracelso, que sustituye la figura de Júpiter por la de un sacerdote
«The pentagram must always be engraved on one side of the talisman, with a circle for the Sun, a crescent for the Moon, a caduceus for Mercury, a sword for Mars, a G for Venus, a crown for Jupiter, and a sickle for Saturn.» — los signos que prescribe grabar en una cara del talismán
«On the other side of the talisman there must be the sign of Solomon, that is to say the six-pointed star made from two superimposed triangles, and at its center you will place a human figure for talismans of the Sun, a cup for those of the Moon, the head of a dog for those Mercury, the head of an eagle for those of Jupiter, the head of a lion for those of Mars, and the head of a bull or of a goat for those of Saturn.» — y en la otra, con el sello de Salomón
«Thus the pentacles and the talismans of the Sun must not be seen or touched by deformed and distorted people or by immoral women;» — una de sus prohibiciones de manipulación, sobre quién no debe ver ni tocar los pentáculos solares
«They say that Napoleon believed in his star, and, if we could have him say what he meant by that star, we would find that it was his genius:» — su lectura de la estrella de Napoleón como su genio
«The great soldier of the revolution knew little, but he guessed almost everything: thus he was the greatest instinctive practical magician of modern times.» — y la adjudicación que le hace: el mayor mago práctico instintivo de los tiempos modernos
«The figures are so perfectly Cabalistic that this medal is truly a double and marvelous pentacle.» — su lectura cabalística de una medalla mariana popular de su tiempo, que declara doble pentáculo
«Everyone will tell you that the wearers of these medals do not attach any particular significance to them, but this does not make them any less perfectly magical, having a double meaning and, in consequence, a double virtue.» — con la acotación sobre quienes la llevan sin saberlo
«The wand and the other instruments, but most of all the wand, must be carefully hidden, and under no pretext should the mage allow them to be seen or touched by the profane; otherwise they will lose all their virtue.» — su prohibición sobre la vara: que nadie profano la vea ni la toque
«The manner of transmission of the wand is one of the arcana of science that is never permitted to be revealed.» — y el arcano de la transmisión, que declara nunca revelable
«The length of the magical wand should not exceed the length of the arm of the operator.» — la medida que fija para la vara mágica
«Many ancient mages made it only the length of their forearm and hid it in their long sleeves, showing only the divinatory wand to the public, or some allegorical scepter made ivory or ebony, depending on the nature of the works.» — su noticia sobre la vara oculta en la manga y el cetro alegórico enseñado al público
«Cardinal Richelieu, who was always chasing after power, searched all his life for the transmission of the wand without ever managing to find it.» — su relato sobre Richelieu, que buscó toda su vida la transmisión de la vara sin obtenerla
«His Cabalist, Gaffarel, could only provide him with the sword and the talismans: this was perhaps the secret motive behind his hatred for Urbain Grandier, who knew something of the cardinal’s weaknesses.» — y el móvil secreto que atribuye a su odio contra Urbain Grandier
«The magical wand is the verendum of the mage; he must not speak about it in a clear and precise manner; no one should boast about having 260» — su regla de silencio sobre la vara
«It must be made of pure steel, with a handle of copper made in the form of a cross with three pommels, as it is represented in the Enchiridion of Leo III, or which has a guard made of two crescents, as in our figure.» — las especificaciones de la espada, remitidas al Enchiridion de León III
«The consecration of the sword must be done on a Sunday, during daylight hours, under the invocation of Michael.» — la fecha y advocación de su consagración
«It will have nine wicks, three in the middle and three for each arm.» — las nueve mechas de la lámpara mágica
«On the foot you will engrave the seal of Hermes and above it Khunrath’s two-headed androgyne.» — y lo que se graba en su pie, con el andrógino bicéfalo de Khunrath
«This lamp is of great help in aiding with intuitive operations of slow imagination and is able to immediately create in front of magnetized persons the forms of a terrifying reality, which, being multiplied by mirrors, will cause a mage’s chamber to suddenly grow and change it into a single immense room filled with visible souls;» — el efecto que atribuye a esa lámpara sobre las personas magnetizadas
«As we have already said several times, the operations of science are not without their dangers.» — su advertencia general sobre los peligros de las operaciones de la ciencia
«Nothing is more dangerous than turning magic into a hobby, like certain people who make it an ornament for their soirées.» — y su prohibición más concreta: hacer de la magia pasatiempo de salón
«Nor should you ever boast about the works you have performed, even if you have resuscitated the dead.» — su regla de silencio, extendida al caso extremo
«All the mages who had divulged their works died a violent death, many were reduced to suicide, like Cardano, Schröpfer, Cagliostro, and so many others.» — y la lista de magos que murieron violentamente por haber divulgado sus obras
«Thus Venus gives equilibrium to the works of Mars; Mercury tempers and accomplishes the works of the Sun and the Moon; Saturn must balance Jupiter.» — su reparto de equilibrios planetarios entre las obras
«The great master thus revealed a mystery of positive magical science when he said: “If you wish to accumulate burning coals upon the head of he who causes you harm, then pardon him and do him good.”» — cita al gran maestro sobre los carbones encendidos en la cabeza del que hace daño, y lo llama misterio de ciencia mágica positiva. La sentencia es evangélica
«But one must remember that the mage is sovereign. And a sovereign never takes revenge, since he has the right to punish.» — con la corrección que le añade: el mago es soberano y no se venga porque tiene derecho a castigar
«The law of silence is thus only absolute and inviolable relative to the multitude of non-initiated.» — su acotación sobre la ley del silencio, que declara absoluta solo frente al no iniciado
«Yes, the sages must speak, not to say, but to lead others to find.» — y la fórmula con que resuelve la tensión entre hablar y callar
«The destiny of man is, as we have said, to make or create himself; he is and will be the son of his works for the moment and for eternity.» — su definición del destino del hombre como obra de sí mismo
«But the government of the world belongs by right to the elite, and when a mechanism or some usurpation prevents them from in fact having it, a political or social cataclysm occurs.» — su tesis política: el gobierno del mundo pertenece por derecho a la elite, y su usurpación produce cataclismos
«To submit to the same discipline, there must be a communion of ideas and of desires, and one can only arrive at this communion through a common religion founded on the actual bases of intelligence and reason.» — la condición que pone a esa disciplina: una religión común fundada en bases reales
«This religion has always existed in the world, and it is the only one that can be called infallible, unfailing, and truly catholic, that is to say universal.» — la religión que declara siempre existente, infalible y verdaderamente católica en el sentido de universal
«It can never be a matter of faith that two and one make more or less than three;» — su límite a la fe por la aritmética
«The sage affirms what he knows and only believes what he does not know in the measure of the reasonable and known necessities of the hypothesis.» — y la regla del sabio, que mide la creencia por la necesidad razonable de la hipótesis
«But this reasonable religion will never be that of the multitudes, who require fables, mysteries, defined hopes, and materially motivated terrors.» — con la reserva que él mismo pone: esa religión razonable nunca será la de las multitudes
«Religious forms perish when initiation ceases to be practiced within the sanctuary, either through divulgation or through negligence and oblivion of the sacred mysteries.» — su explicación de la muerte de las formas religiosas por cese de la iniciación
«The Gnostic divulgations, for example, distanced the Christian church from the high truths of the Cabala, which contain all the secrets of the higher theology.» — y el caso que aduce: las divulgaciones gnósticas alejaron a la Iglesia de las verdades altas de la Cabala
«Life is war, where one must prove oneself to rise in rank: power is not given; one must take it.» — su definición de la vida como guerra, con el poder que no se da sino que se toma
«To lift up a faltering and declining society, one must reestablish hierarchy and initiation. The job is difficult, but everyone of intelligence already knows that it must be done.» — su remedio para una sociedad en decadencia: restablecer jerarquía e iniciación
«The pentacle, being a complete and perfect synthesis, expressed in one single sign, is used to assemble all of the intellectual power into a glance, into a memory, into a contact.» — la función que da al pentáculo como síntesis que reúne el poder intelectual en una mirada
«All these effusions of blood operated ceremonially are abominable and impious, and since the death of Adonhiram, the society of true adepts has a horror for blood, Ecclesia abhorret a sanguine.» — su condena de las efusiones de sangre ceremoniales, con el adagio latino que invoca
«One who does not know the hieroglyphic alphabet will get lost in the obscurities of the Vedas, the Zend-Avesta, and the Bible.» — su advertencia al lector sin alfabeto jeroglífico ante los Vedas, el Zend-Avesta y la Biblia
«Is not to preach equality to those below without telling them how to rise, the commitment to descend oneself?» — su objeción a la igualdad predicada sin enseñar a subir
«The simultaneous emancipation and the absolute equality of all men supposes the cessation of progress and in consequence of life: on the earth of equals, there can be no children or old men; thus birth and death could not be admitted.» — y su argumento contra la emancipación simultánea y la igualdad absoluta, que llama cese del progreso
«Dupuis and Volney exerted their great erudition in order to discover the identity of all symbols and concluded by negating all religions.» — su objeción a Dupuis y a Volney, que de la identidad de los símbolos concluyeron la negación de las religiones
«we recognize with admiration that there have never been any false religions in the civilized world; that the divine light, that splendor of the supreme reason of the Logos, of the Verb, which illuminates any man coming into the world, no more missed the children of Zoroaster than it did the faithful sheep of Saint Peter;» — y la conclusión contraria que él saca de la misma identidad: nunca hubo religiones falsas en el mundo civilizado
«that in the end there is only one true religion, only one doctrine, and only one legitimate belief, just like there is only one God, only one reason, and only one universe;» — con su formulación de la unidad de doctrina
«A woman adorned by the Sun and crowned with twelve stars is the celestial Isis, is the gnosis which the serpent of material life wishes to devour young; but she takes the wings of an eagle and escapes to the desert, protestation of the prophetic spirit against materialism and official religion.» — su lectura de la mujer vestida de sol y coronada de doce estrellas como la Isis celeste y la gnosis
«Her feet represent the equilibrium of Briah396 or the world of forms; her legs are the two columns of the Masonic temple, Jachin and Boaz; her body, veiled by clouds, from which comes out a hand reading a book, is the sphere of Yetzirah397 or the initiatic trials, the solar head, crowned with the luminous septenary, is the world of Atziluth398 or the perfect revelation, and we are not very surprised that the Hebrew Cabalists did not recognize or divulge this symbolism, which attaches so closely and inseparably the highest mysteries of Christianity to the secret, but invariable, doctrine of all the masters in Israel.» — y su lectura de la misma figura por partes, con Jachin y Boaz como piernas
«Commentators who looked for something else in this book of the high Cabala lost their time and efforts only to manage to render themselves ridiculous.» — su objeción a los comentaristas que buscaron otra cosa en ese libro de la alta Cabala
«The Great Work in practical magic, after the education of the will and the personal creation of the mage, is the formation of the magnetic chain, and this secret is truly that of the priesthood and royalty.» — lo que declara Gran Obra de la magia práctica tras la educación de la voluntad: formar la cadena magnética
«It is thus that all Christians communicate together by the sign of the cross, the Masons by the sign of the set square under the Sun, the mages by the sign of the microcosmos which is made by extending the five fingers, and so on.» — los signos de reconocimiento que enumera para cristianos, masones y mages
«Imagination is creative, not only within us, but outside of us, through our fluidic projections, and we should doubtless not attribute to other causes the phenomena of Constantine’s labarum400 and the cross of Migné.» — y su atribución del lábaro de Constantino a la imaginación creadora por proyección fluídica
«A single word from the Emperor electrified his army and rendered France invincible.» — su ejemplo napoleónico de la palabra que electriza un ejército
«Proudhon killed socialism with his famous paradox “Property is theft.”» — y el de Proudhon, a quien atribuye haber matado al socialismo con una paradoja
«Voltaire knew this well, he who turned the world upside down with his sarcasms; he, who feared neither popes, nor kings, nor the parliament, nor prison was afraid of a play on words.» — su lectura de Voltaire, que no temía a papas ni a reyes pero sí a un juego de palabras
«We are on the cusp of accomplishing the will of any man whose words we repeat.» — la ley que deriva: repetir la palabra de un hombre es estar a punto de cumplir su voluntad
«The great round dance of the Sabbath, which came at the end of the mysterious reunions of the adepts of the Middle Ages, was a magical chain which united everyone in the same desires» — su lectura de la ronda del sabbat como cadena mágica que unía deseos
«We do not deny, without doubt, the possible intervention of the elementary spirits in these manifestations as in divination by cards or by dreams; but we in no way believe that this is proven, and therefore nothing obliges us to admit otherwise.» — su reserva sobre los espíritus elementales en esas manifestaciones, que no toma por probada
«The strangest power of the human imagination is the realization of the desires of the will, or even its apprehensions and fears.» — el poder que atribuye a la imaginación: realizar los deseos y también los temores
«We have proven this a hundred times during the course of our initiation into magic: the rarest of books always offered themselves to us without our searching for them, the moment they became indispensable for us.» — su testimonio personal sobre la cadena por la imprenta, con los libros raros que se le ofrecían solos
«The raw material of the Great Work in the upper world is enthusiasm and activity; in the intermediate world, it is intelligence and industry; in the lower world, it is labor; and in science, it is sulfur, mercury, and salt, which, successively volatilized and fixed, compose the Azoth of the sages.» — la materia prima de la Gran Obra repartida entre los tres mundos y la ciencia
«All the masters of alchemy who wrote about the Great Work used symbolic and figurative expressions, and they had to do so, as much to distance the profane from a work which is dangerous to them as to be properly heard by adepts, by revealing the entire world of the analogies which rules the unique and sovereign doctrine of Hermes.» — su explicación del lenguaje figurado de los alquimistas, con el doble motivo
«Thus, for them, gold and silver are the king and queen, or the Moon and the Sun; sulfur is the flying eagle; mercury is the winged and bearded androgen standing on a cube and crowned in flames; matter or salt is the winged dragon; the metals at boiling point are lions of diverse colors; finally, the entire work is symbolized by the pelican and the phoenix.» — y su clave de lectura de esas figuras
«The Hermetic art is thus at the same time a religion, a philosophy, and a natural science.» — su definición del arte hermético como religión, filosofía y ciencia natural a la vez
«The science is only real to those who admit and understand philosophy and religion, and its procedures can only be successfully enacted by the adept who has achieved sovereign will and has thus become the king of the elementary world;» — con la condición que impone: la ciencia solo es real para quien admite la filosofía y la religión
«Here, then, is the great Hermetic arcanum, and we reveal it here clearly and without mystical figures for the first time: what the adepts call dead matter consists of bodies as they are found in nature; living bodies are substances which are assimilated and magnetized by the science and the will of the operator.» — su declaración de revelar el gran arcano hermético sin figuras místicas por primera vez, con la definición de materia muerta
«Raymond Lully says that to make gold, one must have gold and mercury; that to make silver, one must have silver and mercury.» — lo que atribuye a Raymond Lully sobre el oro y el mercurio
«There is no doubt that he speaks here of the OD or astral light.» — y su interpretación de ese mercurio como el OD o luz astral
«Paracelsus, Raymond Lully, and Nicolas Flamel seem to be the only ones to have perfectly understood this mystery.» — los tres únicos que declara haber entendido perfectamente ese misterio
«Khunrath represents and summarizes the most knowledgeable Gnostic schools and associates himself with the mysticism of Synesius.» — su adjudicación sobre Khunrath, a quien sitúa en las escuelas gnósticas y junto al misticismo de Sinesio
«He affects being Christian in his expressions and his signs, but it is easy to recognize that his Christ is that of Abraxas, the luminous shining pentagram on the astronomical cross, the incarnation in humanity of the sun-king celebrated by Emperor Julian; it is the luminous and living manifestation of that Ruach Elohim that, according to Moses, covered and worked the surface of the waters at the birth of the world;» — y lo que le imputa bajo la apariencia cristiana: su Cristo es el de Abraxas
«The winged dragon dominated by the triangle represents the Christ of Khunrath, that is to say the sovereign intelligence of light and life: it is the secret of the pentagram, it is the highest doctrinal and practical mystery of traditional magic.» — su lectura del dragón alado dominado por el triángulo
«The Cabalistic figures of Abraham the Jew, who provided Flamel with the beginning of the science,408 are nothing other than the twenty-two keys of the Tarot, imitated and summarized elsewhere in the twelve keys of Basilius Valentinus.» — su identificación de las figuras cabalísticas de Abraham el Judío con las veintidós llaves del Tarot
«There is light in gold, and there is gold in light, and there is light in all things.» — su axioma sobre el oro y la luz
«Agrippa, a man of immense erudition and beautiful genius, but a pure philosopher and a skeptic, was unable to surpass the limits» — su juicio sobre Agrippa, a quien concede erudición y genio y niega el paso del límite por escéptico
«Etteilla, a confused, befuddled, and fantastical Cabalist, who was nonetheless blessed with perseverance, reproduced in alchemy the anomalies of his misunderstood and disfigured Tarot;» — y sobre Etteilla, a quien atribuye haber trasladado a la alquimia las anomalías de su Tarot mal entendido
«An obscure alchemist of our time, who died mad, the poor Louis Cambriel,410 truly did heal his neighbors, and resuscitated, according to the whole neighborhood, a smith and his friends.» — el caso de Louis Cambriel, alquimista oscuro muerto loco, a quien atribuye curaciones y una resurrección según el vecindario
«We have boldly stated our thoughts, or rather our convictions, regarding the possibility of resurrection in certain cases; we must complete the revelation of this arcanum here by exposing its practice.» — su declaración sobre la resurrección, que presenta como convicción y no como certeza
«Old age is the beginning of regeneration; it is life working to renew itself, and the mystery which we call death was symbolized by the ancients as the fountain of Youth where one enters decrepit and exits a child.» — su lectura de la vejez como comienzo de la regeneración, con la fuente de Juventud como símbolo antiguo
«The body is the vestment of the soul.» — su definición del cuerpo como vestido del alma
«Death is neither the end of life nor the beginning of immortality; it is the continuation of the transformation of life.» — su definición de la muerte como continuación de la transformación de la vida
«Also, success is never infallible and must always be regarded as accidental and unexpected.» — con la acotación que impide tomarla por técnica: el éxito nunca es infalible y hay que tenerlo por accidental
«resurrected today before our doctors would simply be noted in their official reports to their academies as a strange case of lethargy accompanied by the beginnings of an apparent putrefaction and a relatively strong cadaverous odor; we would name it an exceptional accident, and all will have been said.» — su previsión sobre cómo los médicos de su tiempo registrarían una resurrección
«The resurrection of a dead person is the masterpiece of magnetism, because one must, to accomplish it, exert a type of sympathetic omnipotence.» — su definición de la resurrección como obra maestra del magnetismo, por omnipotencia simpática
«It is possible in cases of death due to congestion, suffocation, lethargy, and hysteria.» — con los cuatro casos de muerte en que la declara posible, que es su acotación más concreta
«One must, in such a case, and when we feel the power and faith necessary to accomplish such a work, practice, like the apostle, mouth to mouth insufflation, by making contact with the extremities in order to bring back the heat of the body.» — la técnica que prescribe, insuflación boca a boca al modo del apóstol
«It may sometimes suffice to take the person by the hand and energetically raise it while loudly calling out their name.» — el procedimiento más simple que a veces basta, según él
«He must also either be tenderly loved or respected by the person upon whom he wishes to act, and he must perform his work with a great surge of faith and of will, which cannot always be found within oneself during the first shock of great sorrow.» — y las condiciones afectivas que exige del operador
«It is certain that images of the dead appear to the magnetized persons who evoke them; it is also certain that they never reveal any mysteries regarding the next life.» — lo que declara cierto de las apariciones y lo que declara que nunca ocurre: no revelan misterios de la otra vida
«When specters are evoked and respond to the questions one asks them, it is always through signs or by imaginary and interior impressions, never with a voice which actually hits the ears; and this is relatively understandable: how can a shadow talk?» — su acotación sobre la voz de los espectros, que nunca golpea el oído
«One experiences, however, electrical contacts during apparitions, and these contacts seem sometimes to be produced by the phantom itself; but this phenomenon is entirely interior and must have as an only cause the power of the imagination and local peaks in occult power which we call the astral light.» — y sobre los contactos eléctricos, que atribuye a fenómeno interior
«Evocations must always be motivated and have an honorable goal; otherwise, they are operations of darkness and folly, very dangerous to the mind and health.» — su regla sobre el motivo de la evocación, con la advertencia sobre el que carece de él
«An honorable motive for an evocation can be either for love or for knowledge.» — los dos motivos honorables que admite
«To evoke purely out of curiosity and to find out if one will see something is to be disposed in advance to tiring oneself for nothing.» — su objeción a evocar por curiosidad
«If you see nothing, you will have to try the experience again in a year’s time and up to three times.» — el plazo que fija si no se ve nada
«The goal of these preparations is to provide the magical agent with the elements for a physical apparition and to also relieve the tension of our imagination, which we do not exalt without the risk of it becoming an absolute dream illusion.» — la función que asigna a los preparativos: dar elementos al agente mágico y aliviar la tensión de la imaginación
«Thus, we would never evoke Voltaire, for example, by reciting orations in the style of Saint Bridget.» — su regla de congruencia entre el rito y el evocado, con el ejemplo de Voltaire
«When we evoked Apollonius, we took as a ritual the philosophical magic of Patrizi, which contain the doctrines of Zoroaster and the works of Hermes Trismegistus.» — y el ritual que declara haber usado para Apolonio, la magia filosófica de Patrizi
«The brazier of the sacred fire must be in the center of the oratory, and the altar of perfumes not very far away from it.» — la disposición del brasero y del altar de perfumes en el oratorio
«Most of all one must remember well, in the conjurations, that the names of Satan, of Beelzebub, of Adramelech, and the others do not designate spiritual unities but the legions of impure spirits.» — su reinterpretación de los nombres demoníacos: no designan unidades espirituales sino legiones
«In hell, anarchy reigns, it is the crowd that rules, and progress occurs in the inverse direction, that is to say that those most advanced in Satanic development, in consequence the most degraded, are the least intelligent and the weakest.» — su descripción del infierno como anarquía, con el progreso invertido
«Thus a fatal law pushes demons to descend when they believe and wish to climb up.» — la ley fatal que le atribuye a esa inversión
«We will not end this chapter without adding, for the curious, a few details regarding the ceremonies of black necromancy.» — declara que añade los detalles de la necromancia negra para los curiosos, lo que enmarca todo lo que sigue
«The procedures of black magic have as their goal to disturb reason and produce all the feverish exaltations which provide the courage to commit great crimes.» — su definición del fin que persiguen los procedimientos de la magia negra: perturbar la razón
«Sacrilege, murder, and theft were recommended or implied as the means of realization in almost all these works.» — y los medios que dice recomendados o sobreentendidos en casi todos esos libros
«It is thus that in the Grand Grimoire and in the Dragon Rouge, a more modern forgery of the Grand Grimoire, we can read a recipe entitled: Composition of death, or the philosopher’s stone.» — su noticia sobre el Grand Grimoire y el Dragon Rouge, que llama falsificación moderna del primero
«This recipe from the Grand Grimoire is thus certainly efficacious, but we do not counsel any of our readers to make use of it.» — con su fórmula ambigua sobre esa receta, que declara eficaz y desaconseja en la misma frase
«Transmutations and metamorphoses have always been, in the opinion of the vulgar, the essence of magic itself.» — lo que el vulgo toma por la esencia misma de la magia, según él
«We know that magnetizers can make the water they give to those they hypnotize have any taste they wish, and if we suppose a mage with enough power over the astral fluid to magnetize an entire assembly of people previously prepared to be magnetized through sufficient overexcitation, we can easily explain, not the evangelical miracle at Cana, but works of the same type.» — su explicación de las transmutaciones por magnetización del fluido astral, con el ejemplo del gusto del agua
«Thus we can really change men into animals and animals into men; we can metamorphose plants and change their virtue; we can give minerals ideal properties: one must only will it.» — su afirmación sobre metamorfosis de hombres en animales, con la condición que la reduce a la voluntad
«To become invisible, one of three things is necessary: either to interpose an opaque medium of some kind between the light and our body, or between our body and the eyes of the observers, or to fascinate the eyes of the observers in such a manner that they cannot make use of their eyesight.» — las tres vías posibles de la invisibilidad
«Of these three manners of becoming invisible, only the third is magic.» — y cuál de las tres declara mágica, que es la acotación que evita leerlo como prestidigitación
«We will not repeat here the mystifications from the vulgar grimoires about the ring of invisibility.» — se abstiene de repetir lo que llama mistificaciones de los grimorios vulgares sobre el anillo
«The only authors who have spoken seriously about the ring of Gyges are Iamblichus, Porphyry, and Pietro d’Abano.» — los tres únicos autores que declara serios sobre el anillo de Giges
«It must have a double bezel with two precious stones, one of topaz constellated under the sign of the Sun, and the other of emerald under the sign of the Moon:» — la doble piedra del anillo, topacio solar y esmeralda lunar
«The mage commands an entire assembly not to see him, and the assembly does not see.» — su descripción del efecto sobre una asamblea entera
«The secret of invisibility is thus entirely part of a power that we can define: that of diverting or paralyzing attention in a way that the light arrives at the visual organ without exciting vision in the soul.» — y su definición del secreto de la invisibilidad, que es de atención y no de óptica
«The person who wants to be seen always makes sure he is noticed, and the one who wishes to remain unseen effaces himself and disappears.» — la formulación llana de esa misma ley
«The Tetragrammaton, which is the supreme word of magic, signifies: what is will be; and, if we apply ourselves to any transformation whatsoever with full intelligence, it will renew and modify all things, even despite the evidence and common sense.» — su lectura del Tetragrámaton como palabra suprema de la magia, con su traducción
«M. de Montalembert recounts most seriously, in his legend about Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, that one day that pious lady, surprised by her noble husband, from whom she wished to hide her good works, at the moment when she was carrying bread in her apron to the poor, tells him that she is carrying roses, and the verification being made, he finds that she had not lied: the bread was changed into roses.» — consigna el relato de Montalembert sobre santa Isabel de Hungría y las rosas, que atribuye a esa clase de transformación
«Yes, it is our profound conviction that the Grand Masters of the Order of the Templars adored Baphomet and made their initiates adore him;» — su convicción declarada sobre los Templarios y Baphomet
«only the adorers of this sign do not think, as we do, that it is the representation of the devil but that of the god Pan,» — con la corrección que introduce sobre el sentido de ese culto, que no lee como diabólico
«The bull represents the earth or the philosopher’s salt; the dog is Hermanubis, the Mercury of the sages, the fluid, the air and the water; the goat represents the fire, and he is at the same time the symbol of regeneration.» — su clave de los tres animales simbólicos: toro, perro y cabra repartidos entre los elementos
«The pure one was sacrificed in expiation for sins; the other, charged through imprecation with these same sins, was freed into the desert.» — el doble macho cabrío del rito judío, el sacrificado y el emisario
«Yet all the fathers who occupied themselves with Jewish symbolism recognized in their immolated goat the figure of the one who took away, they say, the form itself of sin.» — lo que atribuye a los padres que se ocuparon del simbolismo judío sobre esa figura
«Thus the Gnostics were not outside the symbolic traditions when they gave Christ the liberator the mystical figure of the goat.» — y su conclusión sobre los gnósticos, a quienes exime de salirse de la tradición simbólica
«The goat which is represented on our frontispiece has the sign of the pentagram on his forehead point upwards, which suffices for it to be a symbol of the light;» — su lectura del pentagrama en la frente de la cabra del frontispicio
«One of his arms is feminine, the other masculine, like Khunrath’s androgyne whose attributes we had to unite with our goat, since it is the unique and same symbol.» — y la fusión que declara con el andrógino de Khunrath
«The torch of intelligence which shines between his horns is the magical light of universal equilibrium; it is also the figure of the soul risen above matter, even though it comes from matter, as the flame rises from the torch.» — la antorcha entre los cuernos como luz del equilibrio universal
«The terrible Baphomet is no more, like all those other monstrous idols, enigmas of the ancient science and its dreams, it is but an innocent and even pious hieroglyph.» — su desactivación explícita del Baphomet, que reduce a jeroglífico inocente
«Let us say it aloud, to combat against the remains of Manichaeism which still arise in our time among Christians,437 that Satan as a superior personality and as a power does not exist.» — su negación del Satán personal, que declara contra el maniqueísmo residual entre cristianos. Es una de sus afirmaciones más netas y contradice cómo se le suele citar
«Della Porta, whom we have already indicated as a mystifier, provides in his Magia Naturalis the supposed recipe for the unguent of the witches, by means of which they traveled to the Sabbath.» — su lectura de Della Porta como mistificador que da la receta del ungüento de las brujas
«We think that opiates like the heart of green cannabis, Datura stramonium, and the cherry laurel would enter with no less success into such compositions.» — los opiáceos que él propone como más plausibles en esas composiciones
«Only nightmares can produce such things and only they can explain them.» — y su explicación de esas experiencias por la pesadilla
«But the Sabbath was not always a dream, and it really existed; there even still exist 307» — con la salvedad inmediata, que impide leerlo como negación: el sabbat existió realmente
«When Christianity proscribed the public exercise of the ancient cults, it reduced the partisans of religion to meeting in secret to celebrate their mysteries.» — su explicación histórica del sabbat como refugio de los cultos antiguos proscritos
«The initiate of the Sabbath had to be brought, or rather carried, to the assembly with his eyes covered by a magic coat, with which he was entirely wrapped;» — el rito de entrada del iniciado, llevado con los ojos cubiertos
«It is also a tradition of high magic that pentacles and talismans lose all their virtue when he who carries them takes them to a house of prostitution» — la tradición sobre los pentáculos que pierden su virtud, que consigna como de alta magia
«The orgiastic Sabbath must therefore not be considered as one belonging to veritable adepts.» — su exclusión del sabbat orgiástico del terreno de los adeptos verdaderos
«The simplest, according to us, is the one which has this word come from the Jewish Sabbath, since it is certain that the Jews, the most faithful guardians of the secrets of the Cabala, were almost always with regard to magic the great masters of the Middle Ages.» — su etimología del sabbat por el sábado judío, con los judíos como guardianes de los secretos de la Cabala
«The Sabbath was thus always on a Sunday for the Cabalists, the day of their religious feast or rather the night of their regular assembly.» — y el día que fija para el sabbat de los cabalistas
«the diabolical Sabbath of the necromancers, it was a counterfeit of the mage’s Sabbath and an assembly of evildoers who exploited idiots and the insane.» — su definición del sabbat diabólico de los necromantes como falsificación del de los mages
«The sorcerers and sorceresses were their own police and informed themselves regarding one another in order to mutually support their reputation for prophecy and divination, because seers at that time were generally consulted and had a lucrative profession while exercising veritable influence.» — su descripción del sistema de delación mutua entre hechiceros
«These assemblies of sorcerers and sorceresses, incidentally, did not possess and could not possess the regular rites: all depended on the caprices of the leaders and the giddiness of the assembly.» — y su juicio sobre la irregularidad de esas asambleas, que dependían del capricho de los jefes
«The rites of the Gnostic Sabbath were transmitted in Germany to an association which took the name of Mopses;442 they replaced the Cabalistic goat with the hermetic dog, and at the reception of male or female candidates (because the order admitted ladies), they bring them blindfolded;» — la asociación alemana de los Mopses, que declara heredera de los ritos del sabbat gnóstico con el perro en lugar de la cabra
«For the rest, their doctrine is summarized by the cult of love and of liberty.» — su resumen de la doctrina de los Mopses
«The Mopses claimed that they recruited only Catholics, and they substituted the oath of reception with a solemn promise on their honor not to reveal any of the secrets of the association.» — y la sustitución del juramento por una promesa de honor
«Baphomet was, according to some, a monstrous head; according to others, a demon in the form of a goat.» — las dos versiones que consigna sobre la forma de Baphomet, sin decidirse por una
«One single thing surprises me, it is that, believing in the devil and his minions, we do not light the pyres back up.» — su ironía contra los que creen en el diablo y no reencienden las hogueras
«MAGICAL AXIOM Within the circle of their action, all verbs create what they affirm.» — el axioma mágico que enuncia en este tramo
«We do not flatter ourselves by claiming we understand the meaning of these words, which perhaps have none, and should not have any which are reasonable, since they have the power to evoke the devil, who is sovereign unreason.» — su abstención declarada sobre el sentido de las palabras bárbaras de conjuro, que quizá no lo tengan
«Pico della Mirandola, no doubt with the same motive, affirms that in black magic the most barbaric and most absolutely unintelligible words are the best and most efficacious.» — y lo que atribuye a Pico della Mirandola sobre la eficacia de las palabras ininteligibles en la magia negra
«You must fast for fourteen days, having only one meal without salt after the Sun has set; this meal will be of black bread and blood seasoned with spices without salt, or of black beans, and milky and narcotic weeds;» — el ayuno de catorce días que prescriben esos ritos negros, con su comida de pan negro y sangre
«You must choose a solitary and detested spot, such as a cemetery haunted by evil spirits, a feared ruin in the countryside, the basement of an abandoned convent, the place where a murder was committed, a Druidic altar, or an ancient temple of idols.» — y el lugar que exigen, siempre solitario y detestado
«He is ordinarily preceded, when he is about to appear, by a violent wind that seems to make the entire countryside howl.» — la señal atmosférica que precede a la aparición
«Domestic animals tremble and hide; the assistants feel a breath on their faces, and their hair, damp with a cold sweat, stands on end.» — con su efecto sobre los animales domésticos y sobre los asistentes
«These signatures are apposed at the bottom of a pact which M. Collin de Plancy449 provided as a facsimile in the linguistic atlas of his Infernal Dictionary, and which has as a marginal note: “the official record is in hell, in Lucifer’s cabinet,” a rather precious piece of information regarding a very poorly known locale and from an era still so close to ours, anterior» — consigna las firmas del pacto que Collin de Plancy reprodujo en facsímil en su Diccionario Infernal
«The Church, with its exorcisms, consecrated the belief in all these things, and one could say that black magic and its dark prince are a real, living, and terrible creation of Roman Catholicism; that they are even the Church’s special and characteristic work, since their priests did not invent God.» — su acusación al catolicismo romano: los exorcismos consagraron la creencia, y la magia negra sería creación suya
«They say that, in jailhouse lingo, evildoers call the devil the baker: all our desire, and here we are not speaking as a mage but as a devoted child of Christianity and the Church, to which we owe our primary education and our first enthusiasms; all our desire, we were saying, is that the phantom of Satan might no longer also be called the baker of ministers of morality and of the representatives of the highest virtue.» — y la voz desde la que dice esto, que él mismo declara y que conviene citar con la acusación
«It is most of all to combat, by revealing them, these sad aberrations of the human spirit that we have published this book.» — su declaración del propósito del libro entero, que este pasaje pone en clave polémica
«The Cabalist Bodin, a Jew by conviction and a Catholic by necessity, had no other intention, with his Demonomania of the Sorcerers, than to attack Catholicism with these works and to undermine it with the greatest of all abuses of its doctrine.» — su segunda lectura de Bodin, que contradice la que dio en la Doctrina: aquí le atribuye la intención de socavar el catolicismo. Las dos coexisten en la obra y no se armonizan
«“Burn them all!” So the Inquisitors seemed to say.» — la consigna que atribuye a los inquisidores
«Poor madmen, hysterical women, idiots were burned without mercy for the crime of magic; but there were also great culprits who escaped this unjust and sanguinary justice!» — su distinción entre los quemados y los culpables que escaparon
«Suffering from a malady whose causes no physician could discover and whose terrible symptoms none could explain, King Charles IX was about to die.» — el relato de la misa negra ante Carlos IX moribundo, que abre nombrando la enfermedad sin diagnóstico
«At this Mass, celebrated before the image of the demon, having under his feet an upturned cross, the sorcerer consecrated two hosts, one black and one white.» — con las dos hostias y la cruz invertida
«The exorcism then began, and the demon was commanded to pronounce an oracle and to answer through the mouth of that child’s head to a secret question that the king did not dare speak aloud and had not even mentioned to anyone.» — el exorcismo sobre la cabeza del niño degollado y la pregunta secreta del rey
«He then cried out in a hoarse voice: “Take away that head! take away that head!” and right up to his last breath no one heard him say anything else.» — y el grito del rey hasta su último aliento
«What the sorcerers and necromancers sought most of all with their evocations of the impure spirit was that magnetic power which is the allotment of the true adept, and which they wanted to usurp in order to shamefully abuse it.» — lo que declara buscado de verdad por hechiceros y necromantes: el poder magnético del adepto
«The true mage enchants those whom he disapproves of, and whom he believes should be punished, without ceremonies and solely through his condemnation; he enchants even those who do him harm, through his forgiveness, and the enemies of initiates will never get away with their injustices for very long.» — su descripción del encantamiento del mago verdadero, que obra por condena y sin ceremonia
«Mages condemn in the manner of skillful doctors, and that is why we cannot appeal their sentences once they have pronounced a warrant against a guilty person.» — la comparación con el médico y la inapelabilidad que le atribuye a esa sentencia
«They do not need ceremonies or invocations; they need only abstain from eating at the same table as the condemned, and if they are forced to sit at that table, they should neither accept nor offer him salt.» — y la única abstención material que exige, sobre la mesa compartida
«They are then persuaded (and often with reason) that the victim of their odious operations goes through as many tortures as though they actually had all those points stuck into their heart.» — su explicación de la eficacia de la figura acribillada, que sitúa en la persuasión del operador
«Enchantment is more infallible if one can procure the hairs, the blood, and best of all a tooth from the enchanted person.» — los soportes que declara más infalibles para el encantamiento
«But enchantment through threats produces an effect absolutely contrary to the intentions of the operator when the threat is obviously vain, when it revolts the legitimate pride of he who is threatened and in consequence provokes his resistance, and lastly when it is ridiculous because it is overly terrible.» — su ley sobre la amenaza vana, que produce el efecto contrario al buscado
«This is said, not with dogmatic intentions, which could never be our motivation, but to indicate the reasonable and moral remedy for enchantments of conscience through the terrors of the next life.» — declara que lo que expone no tiene intención dogmática sino de remedio moral
«The primary means is to be reasonable and just, and to never offer an opportunity or reason for anger.» — el primer medio que da contra el encantamiento
«A legitimate anger is something to be very afraid of.» — con su advertencia sobre la cólera legítima
«If the anger persists after that, it certainly derives from a vice: look to find which vice, and strongly unite yourself with the contrary virtue.» — y su método para rastrear el vicio detrás de una cólera persistente
«A great means of resisting enchantment is to not fear it:» — su segundo medio, que es no temerlo
«enchantment acts in the manner of contagious sicknesses.» — con la analogía del contagio que lo explica
«I strongly advise nervous persons, the weak, the credulous, hysterics, the superstitious, the sanctimonious, idiots, the lazy, and those who lack willpower never to open a book on magic,» — la lista de personas a las que desaconseja abrir un libro de magia, que es su advertencia más explícita al lector
«One must get the enchanted person to do something good for the enchanter, render him a service which he cannot refuse, and work towards bringing him, either directly or indirectly, to the communion of salt.» — su contramagia principal: hacer que el encantado preste un servicio al encantador
«For an enchantment by pierced heart, one must make the sickened person eat the heart of a lamb seasoned with sage and verbena, and have him carry a talisman of Venus or of the Moon in a small bag filled with camphor and salt.» — el remedio concreto contra el encantamiento por corazón atravesado
«For enchantment by wax figurine, one must make a more perfect figurine, give it everything of the enchanted person they can give it, put the seven talismans around its neck, place it in the middle of a large pentacle representing the pentagram, and rub it lightly every day with a mix of balm oil after having pronounced the Conjuration of the Four to divert the influence of the elementary spirits.» — y el de la figurilla de cera, con los siete talismanes
«It is never permitted for a man to do violence to destiny, even less so to impose constraints on the legitimate use of liberty.» — su prohibición sobre forzar el destino y la libertad ajena
«This is not something we would seriously dare to affirm.» — su abstención sobre la generación espontánea del hombre, dicha en la misma página en que la expone
«A few ancient alchemists, struck by this idea, dreamed of a cultivation of mandrakes, and looked to artificially reproduce a sludge which was fertile enough and a Sun active enough to humanize this root again and thus create men without the need for women.» — y lo que atribuye a algunos alquimistas antiguos, que soñaron con cultivar mandrágoras
«Albertus Magnus’s android was the Aristotelian theology of the primitive scholastic, which was broken by the Summa of Saint Thomas, that bold innovator who was the first to replace divine arbitrariness with the absolute law of reason by daring to formulate this axiom, which we do not fear to repeat here as often as we like, since it emanates from a great master: a thing is not just because God wills it; but God wills it because it is just.» — su lectura alegórica del autómata de Alberto Magno como la teología aristotélica de la escolástica primitiva
«The real android, the serious android of the ancients, was a secret they hid from everyone and which Mesmer was the first to dare divulge in our time: it was the extension of the will of the mage in another body, organized and used by an elementary spirit; in other more modern and intelligible words, it was a magnetic subject.» — y lo que declara autómata verdadero de los antiguos, con Mesmer como primer divulgador
«I believe in eternal life! Such is the last article of the symbol of the Christians,463 and that article, all by itself, is an entire profession of faith.» — el artículo del símbolo cristiano que declara profesión de fe entera por sí solo
«The Cabalist Gaffarel, whom we have already cited more than once, erected a planisphere where all the constellations formed the Hebrew letters; but we admit that this configuration often seems to us as more than arbitrary, and that we do not understand why, on the indication of a single star, for example, Gaffarel draws a rather than a or a ; four stars equally suggest either a , a , or a , rather than a .» — consigna el planisferio de Gaffarel con las constelaciones formando letras hebreas, y le pone reparo
«The scholars, incidentally, are not in agreement regarding the configuration of the letters of the primordial alphabet.» — su registro del desacuerdo entre los eruditos sobre el alfabeto primordial
«Since one should not guess haphazardly regarding erudite matters, we will wait, to fix our judgment, for new and more conclusive discoveries.» — y su abstención declarada de fijar juicio hasta que haya descubrimientos concluyentes
«In regard to the alphabet of the stars, we believe that it is a subjective choice, just like the configuration of clouds, which seem to take on all the kinds of forms that our imagination lends them.» — su tesis sobre el alfabeto de las estrellas, que declara elección subjetiva
«Thus a Cabalist familiar with mystic hieroglyphs will see things in the stars which would not be discovered by a simple shepherd; but the shepherd, from his viewpoint, will find combinations which would escape the Cabalist.» — con la consecuencia que saca: el cabalista y el pastor leen cosas distintas en el mismo cielo
«It is for this reason,” says he, “that the ancients figured on these northern parts of the sky a serpent or a dragon right beside the bears, because these animals are the true hieroglyphs of tyranny, of pillage and all type of oppression.» — cita a Gaffarel sobre la serpiente y el dragón junto a las osas en el norte del cielo. La letra es de Gaffarel
«Yet the Verb , which we translate by pandetur, also means depingetur or scribetur,470 and the prophecy also means: all the evils of the world are written in the northern part of the sky.”» — y la doble traducción del verbo hebreo que Gaffarel propone para la profecía del mal septentrional
«We transcribed this entire passage from Gaffarel because it is not without resonance in our time, where the north seems to menace Europe again;471 but it is also the destiny of cold fogs to be vanquished by the Sun, and the darkness must dissipate on its own when it arrives in the light.» — su razón declarada para transcribir entero ese pasaje, con la política de su tiempo por medio
«He declares, for the rest, to have borrowed these predictions from a Hebrew Cabalist called Rabbi Chomer, which he does not flatter himself by claiming to understand well.» — y la cadena de fuentes que Gaffarel mismo declara, con el rabino Chomer y su propia reserva de comprensión
«The sage who wishes to read the sky must also observe the days of the Moon, whose influence is very great in astrology.» — su regla de observar los días de la Luna, cuya influencia declara muy grande
«The Moon by turns attracts and repels the magnetic fluid of the Earth, and it is thus that is produced the flux and reflux of the sea: one must therefore know the phases well and know how to discern the days and the hours.» — con la mecánica que le atribuye, atracción y repulsión del fluido magnético terrestre
«The fourth day is ill-fated: it was that of the birth of Cain; but it is favorable for unjust and tyrannical undertakings.» — del calendario lunar que expone: el cuarto día, nacimiento de Caín, aciago pero favorable a las empresas tiránicas
«The fifth day is fortunate: it was the day of Abel’s birth.» — y el quinto, nacimiento de Abel
«The sixth day is the day of pride: it was the day of Lamech’s birth, the one who said to women: I killed a man who had hit me and a young man who had hurt me.» — el sexto como día del orgullo, con la sentencia de Lamec que transcribe del Génesis
«The visions on this day will be misleading, but it is a day of good health and longevity for children born on it.» — su acotación sobre las visiones de ese día, que declara engañosas
«Prophetic and Cabalistic day, favorable for the accomplishment of the Great Work.» — el día profético favorable a la Gran Obra
«The threats the prophets made to various empires of the world were founded on the characters of the stars that they found vertically above them in the regular relationship of the celestial sphere with the terrestrial sphere.» — su explicación de las amenazas proféticas contra los imperios por los caracteres estelares en la vertical de cada uno
«According to Rabbi Chomer, the destinies of the Ottoman power in Constantinople were fixed in advance and announced by four stars, which, arranged in the word , caah, signify to be weak, sick, to be close to one’s end.» — lo que atribuye al rabino Chomer sobre el destino del poder otomano en Constantinopla
«The three letters together make 1,025, which one must start counting since Constantinople was taken by Mehmed II, a calculation which promises a few more centuries of existence to the weak empire of the sultans, now supported by all of Europe.» — con el cálculo que resulta y los siglos que promete
«The “MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN” that Belshazzar, in his drunkenness, saw written on the wall of his palace by the rays of the torches, was an onomantic intuition like that of the rabbis.» — su lectura del MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN como intuición onomántica
«We have said, and we repeat as a conclusion to this chapter; that magnetic intuitions are alone what give value and reality to all these Cabalistic and astrological calculations, they are perhaps puerile and completely arbitrary if done without inspiration, through cold curiosity and without a powerful will.» — y la acotación con que cierra el capítulo, que subordina todos esos cálculos a la intuición magnética
«but here again magnetism played the most important role, because excitatory or narcotic plants, cursed and unhealthy animal substances, take all their power from enchantments, that is to say the sacrifices accomplished by witches and the words they pronounced while preparing their potions and drinks.» — su explicación de las plantas y sustancias de Tesalia, cuyo poder remite al encantamiento y no a la sustancia
«It is through a similar influence that one can protect oneself, and it is to provide weapons for the weak that we write this chapter.» — declara el propósito del capítulo: dar armas a los débiles
«He who wishes to make someone fall in love with him (we only attribute such illegitimate maneuvers to a man, on the assumption that a woman never has the need to do so), he, then, who wishes to make someone love him must first have himself be noticed and produce some kind of impression upon the imagination of the person he desires.» — su presentación de las maniobras amorosas, con la salvedad sobre las mujeres que él mismo introduce
«The role of a man of great principles and of rigid character can only have power over women whom we never have any need to seduce; all the others without exception adore the bad guys.» — su afirmación sobre el poder del hombre de principios rígidos, formulada como paradoja
«We could say that love, especially for women, is a veritable hallucination.» — su definición del amor, sobre todo en la mujer, como alucinación
«Given this transcendental knowledge of women, there is a second maneuver one can operate to attract her attention: this is to ignore her, or only to pay attention to her in a manner which humiliates her self-esteem, by treating her like a child and by throwing the idea of ever courting her very far away.» — la segunda maniobra que describe, que consiste en ignorar o humillar
«A magician who has spirit needs no other love potions than these; he also disposes of flattering words, magnetic breath, a light but voluptuous touch, along with a sort of hypocrisy, as though he had not planned it.» — y los recursos que atribuye al mago con espíritu, sin necesidad de filtros
«We will not speak here about the dirty tricks of black magic regarding potions; we have finished with the kitchens of Canidia.» — se abstiene de exponer los filtros de la magia negra y declara la abstención
«The use of tobacco, either sniffed or smoked, is a dangerous auxiliary to stupefying potions and poisonings of reason.» — su advertencia sobre el tabaco como auxiliar de los envenenamientos de la razón
«The history of the Church speaks of a heresiarch named Marcus,485 who rendered all the women mad for him by blowing on them; but his power was destroyed by a courageous Christian woman who blew on him first, while saying to him: May God be your judge!» — el caso del heresiarca Marcus, vencido por una cristiana que le sopló a él
«The priest Gaufridi, who was burned as a sorcerer, claimed to make any woman who was touched by his breath fall in love with him.» — el del sacerdote Gaufridi, quemado por hechicero, y lo que pretendía de su aliento
«The all too famous Father Girard, Jesuit, was accused by the damsel Cadière, her confessor, of having made her totally lose her judgment by blowing on her.» — y el del padre Girard con la señorita Cadière
«She well needed that excuse to attenuate the horror and ridicule of her accusations against this father, whose culpability has otherwise never been proven but who, for good or evil, had certainly inspired a shameful passion in that miserable girl.» — con su reserva sobre la culpabilidad de Girard, que declara nunca probada
«Mlle Ranfaing, having become a widow in 16——,” says Dom Calmet486 in his Treatise on Apparitions, “was courted by a doctor called Poirot.» — abre el caso Ranfaing citando el Tratado de las apariciones de Dom Calmet. El relato es de Calmet
«the doctors declared that they could not understand anything regarding her state, and recommended her to the exorcisms of the Church.» — y la remisión a los exorcismos de la Iglesia por parte de los médicos, dentro de ese mismo relato
«certificate provided by Nicolas de Harley, very skilled in the Hebrew language, who recognizes that Mlle Ranfaing was truly possessed and responded to him only through the movement of his lips, without him actually pronouncing any words, and that she provided him with several proofs of possession.» — el certificado de Nicolas de Harley sobre la posesión y la respuesta al movimiento de los labios
«not in any way doubt the sincerity of the witnesses named by Calmet; I am merely surprised that such serious men had not remarked upon the difficulty this so-called demon had in responding to them in a language unknown to the patient.» — su objeción al caso Ranfaing, que no ataca a los testigos sino a lo que no observaron
«she would not only have understood Greek, but she would have also spoken Greek:» — y el criterio que propone para distinguir posesión de sugestión: hablar la lengua, no solo entenderla
«He wanted to preach for a crusade against sorcerers, with which he believed Europe was full; in desperation for not being believed on his word when he claimed that almost everyone was guilty of magic, he ended up declaring that he himself was a sorcerer and was burnt at the stake by his own confession.» — su lectura del motivo de un demonólogo que quería predicar una cruzada contra los hechiceros
«All fanatics are more or less mad, and one dominates a madman by taking him by his folly.» — y la regla que deriva sobre cómo se domina a un fanático
«You see all around you effects proportionate to their causes, you see causes which are directed and modified in man’s domain by intelligence; in summary, you see good as being stronger and more esteemed than evil:» — su argumento del orden visible como base de la fe
«Faith is confidence; have confidence, not in men who speak badly of reason, because they are madmen and impostors, but in the eternal reason which is the divine Verb, that veritable light offered like the sun to the intuitions of all human creatures of this world.» — su definición de la fe como confianza, con la advertencia contra los que hablan mal de la razón
«What mostly contributes to rendering women irrational is the flaccid and hypocritical education they are given.» — su acusación sobre la educación que se da a las mujeres
«If they did more mental work, if they were taught about the world in a more frank and liberal manner, they would be less capricious, less vain, less futile, and in consequence less accessible to evil seductions.» — y lo que espera de otra educación, que es su remedio contra el encantamiento
«Heal first the intelligence of the sick person.» — el orden terapéutico que prescribe: curar primero la inteligencia
«As to narcotics or other poisons which may have been administered to you, that is a matter for medicine and the law; but we do not think that such enormities occur very often in our day.» — su reserva sobre los venenos, que remite a la medicina y a la ley y declara raros en su tiempo
«The philosopher’s stone, say the masters, should not be exposed to air or the gaze of the profane; one must always keep it hidden and conserve it with care, in the most secret place in one’s laboratory, and always keep on one’s person the key to the place where it is contained.» — la prohibición de exponer la piedra al aire y a la mirada del profano, que atribuye a los maestros
«He who possesses the Grand Arcanum is a veritable king and more than a king, because he is inaccessible to all fears and vain hopes.» — lo que declara del que posee el gran arcano
«Raymond Lully, one of the great, sublime masters of the science, has said that to make gold one must first have some gold.» — lo que atribuye a Raymond Lully sobre la necesidad de tener oro para hacer oro
«Nothing can be made from nothing; one does not create wealth absolutely: one augments and multiplies.» — con el principio que lo funda: no se crea riqueza, se multiplica
«Thus aspirants of science well understand that one must not ask of the adept either sleights of hand or miracles.» — su advertencia a los aspirantes: al adepto no se le piden prestidigitaciones ni milagros
«Salt, sulfur, and mercury are but accessory elements and passive instruments in the Great Work.» — su relegación de sal, azufre y mercurio a instrumentos pasivos de la Gran Obra
«There is only one important operation in the work: it consists of sublimation, which is nothing other, according to Geber,492 than the elevation of the thing which is dry through the means of fire, with adherence to its proper vessel.» — y la única operación importante que reconoce, la sublimación, con la definición de Geber
«The hermetic gold is not just a true doctrine, a light without shadows, a truth without alloy or lies; it is also material gold, real, pure, and the most precious gold that could be found in the mines of the Earth.» — su afirmación sobre el oro hermético, que declara a la vez doctrina y oro material
«All matter contains salt, and all salt can be converted to pure gold by the combined action of sulfur and of mercury, which sometimes act so rapidly that the transmutation can be done in an instant, in an hour, without tiring the operator and almost without cost;» — su tesis sobre la sal contenida en toda materia y convertible en oro
«To know how to extract the pure salt hidden in all matter is to possess the secret of the stone.» — y la reducción del secreto de la piedra a saber extraer esa sal
«When, through initiation, one disposes of the absolute forces of the universal agent, one always has this stone at one’s disposition because the extraction of the stone is then a simple and easy operation very distinct from projection or metallic realizations.» — con la condición que la hace fácil o imposible: disponer por iniciación de las fuerzas absolutas del agente universal
«The sage prefers to keep it within its natural envelopes, in the knowledge that he can extract it in a single effort of his will and with a single application of the universal agent to its envelopes, which the Cabalists call husks.» — su preferencia por dejar la piedra en sus envolturas naturales
«The immediate action of the human will on the body, or at least that action as exercised without visible means, constitutes a miracle in the physical realm.» — su definición del milagro en el orden físico, por acción inmediata de la voluntad sin medios visibles
«The common error, with regard to miracles, is to see them as effects without causes, contradictions to nature, sudden fictions of the divine imagination; and we concede that a single miracle of this type would break the universal harmony and plunge us into a universe in chaos.» — su objeción al error común sobre el milagro como efecto sin causa, con la concesión que él mismo hace
«There are miracles that are impossible for God himself: they are absurd miracles.» — su límite a la omnipotencia divina, que es de los pasajes más citables del libro
«To expect of divine arbitrariness an effect whose cause we ignore or whose cause does not even exist is what is termed tempting God; it is to leap into the abyss.» — su definición de tentar a Dios
«Thus in the circle of action of angels, angels can do all which is possible for God to do; and in the circle of action of men, men also dispose of the divine omnipotence.» — el reparto de círculos de acción entre ángeles y hombres, con la omnipotencia que atribuye a cada uno en el suyo
«In the heaven of human conceptions, it is humanity who created God, and men think that God made them in his image because they make him in his.» — su inversión sobre la imagen de Dios, dicha en el cielo de las concepciones humanas
«The absolute in reason and in will is the greatest power which is given to man to attain, and it is through the means of this power with which he performs those things that the multitudes admire under the name of miracles.» — lo que declara mayor poder al alcance del hombre
«The most perfect purity of intention is indispensable to the thaumaturge, and then he requires a favorable current and unlimited confidence.» — y las tres condiciones que exige al taumaturgo
«When the sage says: I will, it is God himself who will, and all that he commands is accomplished.» — su fórmula sobre la voluntad del sabio
«That which is commonly called charlatanism is a great means of real success in medicine if that charlatanism is skillful enough to inspire great confidence and form a circle of faith.» — su rehabilitación parcial del charlatanismo médico, si sirve para formar un círculo de fe
«Father Thiers, priest of Vibraye, in his curious Treatise on Superstitions, reports that a woman, affected by an apparently incurable eye disease, having been suddenly and mysteriously cured, had come to confess to a priest about having taken recourse to magic.» — el caso que toma del Tratado de las supersticiones del padre Thiers, con la mujer curada de los ojos
«The poor gardener, unnerved by the sarcasms of this miscreant, then began to doubt himself: the miracles ceased, and the thaumaturge, deprived and despairing, died insane.» — y el desenlace que consigna: el jardinero taumaturgo, minado por el sarcasmo, dejó de curar y murió loco
«Thus, to cure an inflamed eye, one must warmly insufflate the healthy eye, and then practice cold insufflations on the irritated eye at a distance and proportion which is exactly the same as the hot breaths.» — su técnica para el ojo inflamado, con insuflación caliente en el sano y fría en el irritado
«Hot breath must be done transversely or from bottom to top; cold breath has more strength if it is directed from top to bottom.» — la dirección que prescribe para cada aliento
«Physical contact is good and even necessary for preventing hallucinations at the beginning of a hypnotism.» — su acotación sobre el contacto físico al iniciar el hipnotismo
«If absolute and prolonged contact is useful in certain cases, the actions one will exercise on the subject will be more similar to an incubation or a massage than to magnetism, properly speaking.» — y su distinción entre contacto prolongado y magnetismo propiamente dicho
«We do not only breathe through the nostrils and the mouth: the universal porosity of our body is a veritable respiratory apparatus, insufficient, no doubt, but very useful to life and health.» — su doctrina de la porosidad del cuerpo como aparato respiratorio
«Occult medicine is essentially sympathetic. There must be a reciprocal affection or at least a sense of good will which is established between the doctor and the patient.» — la condición afectiva que declara esencial de la medicina oculta
«Oil and wine are considered the best of medicines in the evangelical tradition.» — el aceite y el vino como mejores medicinas según la tradición evangélica
«This divine therapeutic was progressively lost, and people took on the habit of seeing extreme unction as a religious formality which is required before death.» — su diagnóstico de la pérdida de esa terapéutica, reducida a formalidad previa a la muerte
«What healed most of all among the first Christians was faith and charity.» — lo que declara que curaba entre los primeros cristianos
«Divination, in its widest meaning and according to the grammatical signification of the word, is the exercise of divine power and the realization of the divine science.» — su definición etimológica de la adivinación como ejercicio del poder divino
«The perfect initiate does not even need these clues; he sees the truth in the light, he senses an impression which manifests the whole man to him, he traverses hearts with his gaze, and must even feign ignorance, so as to disarm the fears or the hatred of the wicked whom he knows all too well.» — lo que atribuye al iniciado perfecto, que ve sin indicios
«The public exercise of divination cannot be, in our era, suitable to the character of a true adept, because he will often be obliged to have recourse to trickery and sleight of hand in order to keep his clientele and astound his public.» — su objeción al ejercicio público de la adivinación en su época, que obliga al truco
«Professional seers always have spies who inform them of certain things relative to the personal life or habits of those who consult them.» — y lo que declara de los videntes profesionales y sus informantes
«Divination of events to come is only possible for those events whose realization are already in some way contained in their cause.» — el límite que pone a la adivinación de lo futuro: solo lo ya contenido en su causa
«It is for this reason that children, the ignorant, shepherds, even idiots, have more of a disposition for natural divination than scholars and intellectuals.» — su tesis sobre quién adivina mejor, con niños, ignorantes y pastores por delante de los sabios
«The perceptions of instinct are often as reliable as those of the science; the least clairvoyant in the astral light are those who reason the most.» — y su formulación de esa misma ley
«Somnambulism is a state of pure instinct: also somnambulists have need to be directed by a seer of the science; skeptics and reasoners can only mislead them.» — su definición del sonambulismo como estado de puro instinto que necesita ser dirigido
«Divinatory vision only operates in a state of ecstasy, and to arrive at that state one must render doubt and delusion impossible by enchaining thought or putting it to sleep.» — la condición del éxtasis para la visión adivinatoria: encadenar o adormecer el pensamiento
«The instruments of divination are thus simply the means of magnetizing yourself and distracting yourself from the exterior light in order to render yourself attentive solely to the interior light.» — y la función que asigna a los instrumentos de adivinación, que es magnetizar al operador
«It is for this reason that Apollonius enveloped himself entirely in a coat of wool and in the darkness fixed his gaze on his navel.» — el ejemplo de Apolonio envuelto en lana y con la mirada fija en el ombligo
«The magical mirror of du Potet513 is an analogous means to that of Apollonius.» — con el espejo mágico de du Potet como medio análogo
«Geomancy and cartomancy are other means of arriving at the same ends: combinations of symbols and numbers, being both fortuitous and necessary at the same time, give a relatively true image of the probabilities of destiny so that the imagination can see the realities occasioned by the symbols.» — su explicación de la geomancia y la cartomancia por lo fortuito y lo necesario a la vez
«Casting geomantic points haphazardly or drawing cards thoughtlessly is to play at the lottery like children.» — su advertencia contra echar los puntos o las cartas sin más
«Random draws are oracular only when they are magnetized by intelligence and directed by faith.» — y la condición que hace oracular un sorteo
«Of all the oracles, the Tarot is the most surprising in its responses, because all the possible combinations of this universal key of the Cabala provide scientific and truthful oracles as their solutions.» — su preferencia por el Tarot entre todos los oráculos
«She knew neither high magic nor the Cabala, and her head was stuffed with a misdirected scholarship, but she was intuitive by instinct, and that instinct was rarely wrong.» — su semblanza de una vidente sin Cabala pero intuitiva por instinto
«Those who like the color blue are idealists and dreamers; those who like red are materialists and prone to anger» — su clave de caracteres por colores preferidos
«Flowers have sympathies analogous to those of animals and colors, and since magic is the science of universal analogies, a single preference, a single disposition of a person, allows one to divine all the others.» — su regla general: una sola preferencia permite leer a la persona entera, porque la magia es la ciencia de las analogías universales
«It is the application of Cuvier’s analogical anatomy521 to phenomena of the moral realm.» — con la analogía científica que invoca, la anatomía comparada de Cuvier
«A modern observer, the Chevalier d’Arpentigny,523 provided chiromancy with a new degree of certitude with his remarks on the analogies which really exist between a person’s character and the form, either complete or in its details, of their hands.» — lo que atribuye al caballero d Arpentigny sobre la quiromancia y las formas de la mano
«One must also ask the consultant about his habitual dreams: dreams are reflections of life, either interior or exterior.» — su regla de interrogar al consultante sobre sus sueños habituales
«The ancient philosophers paid a great deal of attention to them, the patriarchs saw assured revelations in them, and the majority of religious revelations occurred in dreams.» — y la autoridad que invoca para los sueños, con los patriarcas y la mayoría de las revelaciones religiosas
«His rigorous calculations go up to the month of November of the year 1879, the era of the reign of Michael and the foundation of a new universal kingdom.» — la fecha exacta a la que llegan los cálculos que atribuye a Tritemio
«This kingdom has been prepared for by three and a half centuries of anguish and three and a half centuries of hope:» — con los dos periodos de tres siglos y medio que la preparan
«We see then, after this calculation, that in 1879, that is to say in twenty-four years, a universal empire which will be founded and which will provide universal peace to the world.» — y el cómputo desde su propio presente, que fecha implícitamente la redacción en 1855
«The next universal empire, being under the reign of the Sun, will belong to him who holds the keys to the Orient,» — lo que augura del próximo imperio universal, bajo el reino del Sol
«Perhaps it will have to suffer a crucifixion and a martyrdom analogous to those of the God-man;» — con la pasión analógica que le anuncia
«its spirit will triumph, and all the peoples of the world will recognize and follow the standard of France, always victorious or miraculously resuscitated.» — y el papel que reserva a Francia en esa profecía
«Such is the prophecy of Trithemius, confirmed by all our predictions and backed by our resolutions.» — su declaración de autoría de la profecía, que adjudica a Tritemio y respalda con las suyas
«The universal key of the magical arts is the key to all the ancient religious doctrines, the key to the Cabala and to the Bible, it is the Clavicle of Solomon.» — su definición de la clave universal como Clavícula de Salomón
«Among the ancients, the use of this key was permitted only to the high priests, and they did not even entrust the secret to elite initiates.» — y su historia del secreto, reservado a los sumos sacerdotes
«and then a scale of ten numbers multiplied by four symbols and linked together by twelve figures representing the twelve signs of the zodiac, plus four spirits, those of the four cardinal points.» — la estructura numérica que le atribuye, con la escala de diez multiplicada por cuatro
«The scholar Gaffarel does not doubt that the Teraphim of the Hebrews, through the means of which they consulted the oracles of urim and thummim, were the figures of the four animals of the Cabala, whose symbols were summarized, as we shall soon explain, by the sphinx or cherubim of the Ark.» — lo que Gaffarel sostiene sobre los Teraphim y los oráculos de urim y thummim
«Thus he says (Philo the Jew), speaking of a hidden history in a chapter entitled Judges, that Micah made from fine gold and silver three figurines of young boys and three young calves, as many of a lion, an eagle, a dragon, and a dove: so that if anyone came to ask him to discover some secret regarding their wife, he would ask the dove;» — el pasaje de Filón sobre las figurillas de Miqueas, que él toma por revelación del origen sacerdotal del Tarot. La letra es de Filón citado por Gaffarel
«Note that they did not pronounce the sacred word; they spelled it and said it in four words, which are the four sacred words: YOD HEH VAU HEH.» — y su observación sobre cómo se deletreaba el nombre sagrado en cuatro palabras
«We see in the Bible that the high priests consulted the Lord on the golden table of the holy Ark, between the cherubim or sphinxes with the body of a bull and the wings of an eagle, and that they consulted with the aid of the teraphim, with the urim, with the thummim and with the ephod.» — su lectura de la consulta al Señor sobre la mesa de oro del Arca entre los querubines
«Thus when the grand priest wished to make the oracle speak, he drew at random the teraphim or golden strips which had the images of the four holy words on them, and placed them three by three around the rationale or ephod, between the urim and thummim, that is to say between the two onyx gems which served as clips for the chains of the ephod.» — y el procedimiento que reconstruye para hacer hablar al oráculo, tirando al azar las láminas
«He who wishes to prove too much proves nothing, says an axiom of logic; Etteilla provides another example of this, and yet his efforts brought him to a certain understanding of the Cabala, as we can see in a few rare passages from his generally unreadable books.» — su juicio sobre Etteilla, con el axioma lógico que le aplica y la concesión que le hace
«Etteilla would certainly have done better in not editing the errors of which he speaks: his work resulted in the ancient book discovered by Court de Gébelin falling into the domain of vulgar magic and fortunetelling.» — y lo que le imputa como daño: hizo caer el libro antiguo en el dominio de la cartomancia vulgar
«Etteilla, or Alliette, was solely preoccupied with his system of divination and with the material profit he could extract from it; an exbarber, having never learned French nor even spelling, pretended to reform and thus claim ownership over the book of Thoth.» — su semblanza más dura de Alliette, que aquí llama exbarbero, frente al expeluquero de otro pasaje. Las dos versiones coexisten en el libro
«The true initiates, we were saying, who held the secret of the Tarot among their greatest mysteries, made no complaint about Etteilla’s errors, and allowed him not to unveil, but to re-veil the arcanum of the true clavicle of Solomon.» — su explicación de por qué los iniciados verdaderos no protestaron por los errores de Etteilla
«Without the Tarot, the magic of the ancients is a book which is closed for us, and it is impossible to penetrate any of the great mysteries of the Cabala.» — lo que declara imposible sin el Tarot
«The Tarot alone provides for the interpretation of the magical 369» — y la exclusividad que le atribuye para interpretar la magia
«We have said that the twenty-two keys of the Tarot are the twenty-two letters of the Cabalistic primordial alphabet.» — la correspondencia entre las veintidós llaves y las veintidós letras del alfabeto primordial
«Your author disagrees with a so-called account of Pope Joan534 and has found and made use of, for better or for worse, regarding his thesis, two curious and ancient figures which he found of the papesse or high priestess of the Tarot.» — su desacuerdo con Court de Gébelin sobre la papisa Juana, que él rechaza para esa lámina
«I feel deeply sorry for the misguided erudite who only wished to see in this ancient symbol a monumental portrait of his supposed Pope Joan.» — con su comentario sobre el erudito que solo vio en ese símbolo un retrato monumental
«It is the mystical quintessence of the ternary, it is spirituality, it is immortality, it is the queen of heaven.» — y lo que él lee en su lugar, quintaesencia mística del ternario
«In effect, the columns are necessity or law; the heads are liberty or action.» — su lectura de las columnas como necesidad y de las cabezas como libertad
«This hieroglyph, of which we provide here the exact figure, is the most beautiful and perhaps the most complete of all the hieroglyphs which make up the clavicule of the Tarot.» — el jeroglífico que declara el más completo de la clavícula del Tarot
«An admirable symbol, disfigured by Etteilla, who had replaced Typhon with a man, Hermanubis with a mouse, and the sphinx with a monkey.» — su objeción a Etteilla por sustituir a Tifón por un hombre, a Hermanubis por un ratón y a la esfinge por un mono
«We have explained this symbol of sacrifice and the accomplished work elsewhere; we will not repeat it here.» — se abstiene de repetir la explicación del símbolo del sacrificio, y lo declara
«This hieroglyph is the only one which Etteilla perfectly understood and properly interpreted.» — y la única lámina que concede que Etteilla entendió e interpretó bien
«Thus the mage, or the key of unity, explains the four aces with their quadruple and progressive signification in the three worlds and the first principle.» — su lectura del mago como clave de la unidad que explica los cuatro ases en los tres mundos
«It is a veritable philosophical machine, which prevents the spirit from becoming lost while allowing for its initiative and freedom; it is mathematics applied to the absolute, it is the alliance of the positive with the ideal, it is an assemblage of thoughts which are as rigorously correct as numbers, finally it is perhaps that which the human genius has ever conceived which is the most simple and the most grand.» — su definición del Tarot como máquina filosófica y alianza de lo absoluto con lo relativo
«Thus disposed, the Tarot is a true oracle and responds to all possible questions with more clarity and infallibility than the android of Albertus Magnus,» — y su comparación con el autómata de Alberto Magno, en favor del Tarot
«Who does not see in the golden tablet, crowned and supported by the cherubim, which covered the Ark of the Covenant and served as a propitiatory, the same symbols as those in the twenty-first key of the Tarot?» — su identificación de la lámina veintiuno con la mesa de oro del Arca sostenida por querubines
«Gaffarel skillfully proved that the cherubim or cherubs of the Ark were in the form of calves; but what he did not know was that instead of two there were four,» — lo que concede a Gaffarel sobre la forma de los querubines y lo que le corrige sobre el número
«The character of Enoch, author of the first sacred book, is effectively identical with that of Thoth for the Egyptians, of Cadmus for the Phoenicians, and of Palamedes for the Greeks.» — su cadena de identificaciones entre Enoc, Thoth, Cadmo y Palamedes
«We do not really know if we should mention that this medal and the place where we had found it was shown to us in a dream by the divine Paracelsus: whatever the case, the medal is in our possession.» — su reserva declarada sobre el sueño en que Paracelso le habría mostrado una medalla, que consigna sin defenderla
«We should remark that this alphabet has only twenty-two letters, the V and the N having been repeated twice, and that it is arranged in four quinaries and a quaternary as the key at the base.» — su observación sobre ese alfabeto de veintidós letras con la V y la N repetidas
«The book of the Tarot having such high scientific importance, it is worth hoping that it shall no longer be altered.» — y su voto de que el libro del Tarot deje de alterarse
«The Italian Tarot is, as we have said, the best conserved and the most faithful, but we could perfect it more with precious information borrowed from Spanish decks: the two of cups, for example, in Naibis is completely Egyptian, and we see therein two antique vases whose handles are formed by ibises,541 with a cow superimposed;» — su juicio comparado de las barajas: el Tarot italiano como el mejor conservado
«German Tarot decks are more altered, and we find little more than the numbers of the keys overloaded with bizarre or absurd figures.» — con los mazos alemanes como los más alterados
«The Chinese Tarot conserves several other primordial emblems, we can clearly distinguish the coins and the swords, but it is more difficult to find the cups and wands in them.» — y el Tarot chino, donde reconoce monedas y espadas y no copas ni bastos
«It was in the time of the Gnostic and Manichaean heresies that the Tarot must have become lost to the Church, and it is in that same era that the meaning of the Book of Revelation was also lost.» — su datación de la pérdida del Tarot por la Iglesia, en tiempo de las herejías gnósticas y maniqueas
«Thus the universal tradition of the unique religion was momentarily interrupted, the shadows of doubt were spread all over the earth, it resembled ignorance rather than true Catholicism, and the universal revelation had disappeared for a time.» — su lectura de esa pérdida como interrupción de la tradición universal
«The explication of the book of Saint John through the characters of the Cabala will be a new revelation, which has already been foreseen by several distinguished mages.» — y lo que anuncia: la explicación del libro de san Juan por los caracteres de la Cabala será una revelación nueva
«The poem of Revelation supposes of the young evangelist a complete system of traditions developed by him alone.» — su tesis sobre el Apocalipsis como sistema completo de tradiciones desarrollado por su autor
«The theory of the four ages544 is found in Revelation as it is found in the books of Zoroaster and the Bible.» — la teoría de las cuatro edades, que declara común al Apocalipsis, a Zoroastro y a la Biblia
«The gradual reestablishment of the primordial federations and the reign of God among the peoples, free of the tyrants’ yoke and the blindfold of error, is clearly prophesied for the end of the fourth age and the renovation of the cataclysm described, first in the distant future, with the consummation of time.» — lo que lee profetizado para el fin de los tiempos
«He is the first and the last, he who was and who must be, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.» — del texto joánico que transcribe, el alfa y la omega
«The author draws together Saint John’s allegory with that of Daniel’s, where the four forms of the sphinx are applied to the great periods of history, and where the man-sun, the Verb of light, consoles and instructs the seer.» — su acoplamiento de la alegoría de Juan con la de Daniel por las cuatro formas de la esfinge
«The first beast, symbol of the solar race of the seers, came from Africa; it resembled a lion and had eagle’s wings: it was given a human heart.» — la primera bestia de Daniel, que hace venir de África y liga a la raza solar de los videntes
«One must not completely lose hope for an epoch in which we are again occupied with serious and reasonable research: it is also with great relief and profound sympathy that we have just quoted from the pages of M. Xaho.» — su alivio declarado ante la investigación seria de su tiempo, y la cita en que se apoya
«It is a tendency towards a single faith, towards a single cult which must link all the future to all of the past; it is the rehabilitation of all the great men falsely accused of superstition and idolatry; lastly it is the justification of God himself, that sun of intelligences who is never veiled to upright souls and pure hearts.» — lo que ve como tendencia de la época, con la rehabilitación de los acusados de superstición
«Thus the priests of Egypt represented the spirit, intelligence, Kneph, with an egg laying on lips, to better express that the egg was only a comparison, an image, a manner of speaking.» — su lectura del huevo de Kneph entre los sacerdotes egipcios como comparación y no como cosa
«Shumontou, the philosopher of the Ezourvedam, explains to the fanatic Biache in the same manner what one must understand by the golden egg of Brahma.» — y el paralelo con el huevo de oro de Brahma según el Ezourvedam
«The man of our times is immutable by nature; he changes no more than the nature by which he is organized.» — su afirmación sobre la inmutabilidad del hombre
«The social conditions in which he finds himself placed, alone determine the degree of his perfectionment, which has as its limits virtue, the holiness of man and his happiness within the law.» — con lo que sí varía, que son las condiciones sociales y el grado de perfeccionamiento
«The devil is ignorance, it is darkness, it is incoherent thought, it is ugliness!» — su definición del diablo, que es la más escueta del libro y la que cierra este tramo
«Liberty is not given, it is taken, said a modern writer;» — la sentencia que toma de un escritor moderno sobre la libertad que se toma
«the same is true for science, and it is for this reason that the divulging of the absolute truth is never useful for the vulgar.» — y la extensión que le da a la ciencia, con su consecuencia sobre la divulgación
«I believed it my duty to pick up that key, and I offer it to he who will know how to take it: because that person will in his turn be a doctor of nations and a liberator of the world.» — su declaración de deber y su oferta al lector capaz de tomar la clave
«We need and we will always need fables and toys for children; but it must not be the case that those who hold up the toys are also children and listeners to fables.» — su regla sobre las fábulas, que admite para los niños y no para quienes las sostienen
«But if there is something in this world which is essentially free and inviolable, it is belief.» — su afirmación sobre la inviolabilidad de la creencia
«To define what we do not know is presumptuous ignorance; to positively affirm what we do not know is to lie.» — las dos faltas simétricas que enuncia sobre lo desconocido
«Ours is that of realism and positivism.» — la posición que reclama para sí mismo, y que rara vez se le adjudica
«To know is to be. Science and its object are identified in the intellectual life of he who knows.» — su identificación de saber y ser
«The laws of nature are algebraic.» — su afirmación sobre las leyes de la naturaleza
«The only reasonable faith is the student’s provisional acceptance of theorems: he does not ask about their correctness in and of themselves but whether their applications and their results have been sufficiently demonstrated to him.» — su definición de la única fe razonable por la aceptación provisional de teoremas
«Let us leave to religion the freedom of infinite aspirations, but let religion leave science its rigorous conclusions of absolute experimentalism.» — su reparto de dominios entre religión y ciencia
«Man is the son of his works: he is what he wants to be, he is the image of God who makes himself; he is the realization of his ideal.» — su fórmula sobre el hombre hijo de sus obras
«such was the philosophy of the Rosicrucians, inheritors of all the ancient wisdom;» — su adjudicación de esta filosofía a los Rosacruces, herederos de toda la sabiduría antigua
«such is the secret doctrine of those associations which were treated as dangerous to the public order and which have always been accused of conspiring against thrones and altars!» — con la acusación histórica que registra contra esas asociaciones
«The true adept, far from troubling the public order, is its firmest support, he respects liberty too much to desire anarchy;» — su defensa del adepto verdadero como sostén del orden público
«He wants universal orthodoxy, absolute Catholicism, hierarchical, apostolic, sacramental, incontestable, and uncontested.» — lo que declara querer en religión, con el término absoluto que él mismo usa
«He wants an experimental philosophy, real, mathematical, modest in its conclusions, indefatigable in its researches, scientific in its progress.» — y lo que declara querer en filosofía, que es su cierre programático
«Magnetism allows us to understand today the miracles of ancient magic: the occurrences of second sight, aspirations, sudden healings, penetrations of thought are now things which are recognized and familiar, even to our children.» — lo que declara que el magnetismo permite entender de la magia antigua, con la lista de fenómenos que da por reconocidos
«But we have lost the ancient traditions, we thought they were new discoveries; we searched for the latest word regarding the observed phenomena, heads have been troubled by manifestations without apparent cause, we were subjected to fascinations without understanding them.» — su diagnóstico del presente: se perdieron las tradiciones y se tomaron por descubrimientos nuevos
«These illusions are not new; you can operate even greater ones if you study the secret laws of nature.» — lo que dice haberles dicho a los que giraban mesas, con la condición que impone
«A new pathway opened to the activity and the intelligence of man, the combat of life organized anew with the most perfect weapons, and the possibility rendered unto elite intelligences to again become masters of all the destinies by providing the world to come with true priests and great kings!» — el resultado que anuncia del conocimiento renovado de esos poderes, y con el que cierra el Ritual
«Through the binary, the fish of the Zodiac sing the praises of God, the serpents of fire intertwine themselves around the caduceus, and the lightning becomes harmonious.» — del Nuctemerón que traduce y publica en el Suplemento: la hora del binario, con los peces del zodiaco
«In the fourth hour the soul returns to visit the tombs, it is the moment when the magic lamps at the four corners of the circles are lit, it is the hour of enchantments and illusions.» — la cuarta hora, con las lámparas mágicas y los encantamientos
«A fire which gives life to all animated beings is directed by the will of pure men.» — la condición que el texto pone al fuego vivificante: la voluntad de los hombres puros
«The number which must not be revealed.» — la fórmula del secreto, que el texto repite sin explicar
«This is the key of the astronomical cycle and the circular movement of the lives of men.» — la clave del ciclo astronómico y del movimiento circular de las vidas
«First, taming wicked passions and strength, using the expression of the wise Hierophant, to make the demons themselves praise God.» — lo primero que el Hierofante prescribe, domar las pasiones malas
«Second, studying the balanced forces of nature so as to know how harmony results from the analogy of opposites.» — y lo segundo, el estudio de las fuerzas equilibradas de la naturaleza
«One must become one’s own doctor and judge in order to vanquish the evil spells of the necromancer.» — la regla de ser el propio médico y juez contra los maleficios del necromante
«The power of the mage is in his judgment, which allows him to avoid the confusion resulting from the antinomy and the antagonism of the principles; he practices the divination of the sages but he scorns the illusions of enchanters, who are slaves to fornication, artists of poisons, and the servants of animal love, he triumphs thus over fatalism, which is the spirit of games.» — lo que sitúa el poder del mago en el juicio, no en la fuerza
«Triumphant over the human infirmities, the mage is no longer the toy of fascination, he tramples beneath his feet the vain and dangerous practices of goetia, all of his power is in a dust that the wind carries off; but he possesses the stibium of the sages, he arms himself with all the creative forces of the quintessence and produces at will the harmony which results from the analogy and the marriage of opposites.» — con el desprecio explícito por las prácticas de la goecia
«The mage is free, he is the king of the occult and of the earth and he travels across it as though it were his domain.» — la definición del mago como libre y rey de lo oculto
«the Shamir is an allegorical diamond, which in the magical traditions represents the stone of the sages, or that force based on truth and which nothing can resist.» — y la explicación alegórica del Shamir como piedra de los sabios
«This number, says Apollonius, must be passed by in silence, because it encloses the great secrets of the initiate, the power which renders the earth fertile, the mysteries of the occult fire, the universal key to languages, the second sight before which wrongdoers do not know how to remain hidden.» — la abstención que el Nuctemerón impone sobre un número, con lo que dice encerrar
«The great laws of equilibrium and of luminous movement represented by the four symbolic animals in the Cabala and in the mythology of the Greeks by the four horses of the Sun.» — las leyes del equilibrio figuradas en los cuatro animales y en los caballos del Sol
«The key to the emancipation of the bodies and the souls which opens all the prisons and that force of eternal choice which completes the creation of man and fixes him in immortality.» — la llave de emancipación de cuerpos y almas, en la misma hora
«The numbers end with nine, and the distinctive sign of ten is the zero, without any value of its own, added to the unity.» — su explicación del cero como signo distintivo del diez
«The spirits of the tenth hour thus represent all which, being nothing on their own, receive great power from opinion and can in consequence set back the omnipotence of the sage.» — y lo que deriva de ahí sobre los espíritus de la décima hora, que nada son y todo lo pueden por la opinión
«We walk here upon burning ground, and you will allow me to not explain it to the profane nor the devil who is their master, nor the killer of children who is their love, nor to cupidity who is their god, nor to the dogs to whom we compare them, nor to the stone of onyx which escapes them, 407» — su negativa explícita a explicar ese tramo al profano, dentro del propio comentario
«Lightning obeys man, it becomes the vehicle of his will, the instrument of his force, the light of his torches, the oaks of the sacred forests which render oracles, the metals are transformed and change into gold, or become talismans, the rocks are detached from their base and, carried away by the lyre of the grand hierophant, touched by the mysterious schamir, they change into temples and palaces, the doctrines are formulated, the symbols represented by the pentacles become effective, the spirits are enchained by powerful sympathies and obey the laws of family and friendship.» — la undécima hora, con el rayo convertido en vehículo de la voluntad
«According to the Hebrews561 The Nuctemeron of Apollonius, borrowed from Greek theurgy, completed and explained by the Assyrian hierarchy of angels, corresponds perfectly with the philosophy of numbers as we find it presented in the most curious pages of the ancient Talmud.» — su adjudicación de fuentes para el Nuctemerón: teurgia griega completada por la jerarquía angélica asiria
«Thus the Pythagorean traditions rise higher than Pythagoras, thus Genesis is a magnificent allegory, which in the form of a story hides the 409» — y lo que concluye sobre Pitágoras y el Génesis
«Listen to what King Shlomo562 says: “The divine Chokmah, wisdom, the wife of God, built herself a house, she carved seven columns.» — cita el texto de Salomón sobre la Chokmah que talló siete columnas. La letra es de los Proverbios
«This wisdom who establishes her house according to regular and numerical architecture is the exact science which presides over the works of God.» — con su interpretación de esa sabiduría como ciencia exacta
«Everything lives through movement, everything maintains itself through equilibrium, and harmony results from the analogy of opposites; this law is the form of forms, it is the first manifestation of the activity and the fecundity of God.» — su ley del movimiento y la armonía por analogía de los contrarios, que llama forma de las formas
«The ternary comes of itself from the binary; the movement which produces two, produces three; three is the key to all numbers, because it is the first numeral synthesis, its geometry is the triangle, the first complete and enclosed figure, generator of an infinity of triangles, either dissimilar or the same.» — la derivación del ternario desde el binario, con el tres como clave de todos los números
«The number five is that of the soul symbolized by the quintessence which results from the equilibrium of the four elements, in the Tarot this number is symbolized by the grand-priest or the spiritual autocrat, symbol of the human will, that grand-priest who alone decides our eternal destinies.» — el cinco como número del alma, ligado a la quintaesencia y al gran sacerdote del Tarot
«In the Tarot eleven represents strength, yet strength is acquired through ordeals; God gives man suffering as the means for his salvation, one must thus struggle and suffer to conquer intelligence and life.» — y el once como fuerza adquirida en el padecimiento, con el sufrimiento como medio de salvación
«If these natural accidents merge with a perverse will, this sick person can become a great danger to his neighbors, especially if his organism has exclusively absorbent properties.» — su advertencia sobre el enfermo de organismo absorbente unido a una voluntad perversa
«These visions of men while still awake are real and frightful, and one should not laugh at our old Breton farmers when they recount what they have seen.» — su defensa de los campesinos bretones que cuentan lo que vieron, contra la burla
«That which superstition blindly believed in the past, science now observes and explains.» — su fórmula sobre la relación entre superstición y ciencia, que no descarta el hecho sino su explicación
«For it is certain and demonstrated by numerous experiments, first, that the magnetic influence of man directed by his will attaches itself to any object chosen and influenced by that will.» — la primera de las proposiciones que declara demostradas por experimentos: la influencia magnética se adhiere al objeto elegido
«Second, that human magnetism acts at a distance and its power is centered upon magnetized objects.» — la segunda, sobre la acción a distancia centrada en los objetos magnetizados
«Third, that the will to magnetize acquires even more power as it is multiplied by the expressive acts of that will.» — la tercera, sobre el poder multiplicado por los actos expresivos de la voluntad
«Fifth, that men alone, due to their free will, can resist human will, but that animals do not resist for long.» — la quinta, que reserva la resistencia al libre albedrío humano y se la niega duraderamente al animal
«It is thus that mortalities occur in the stables without anyone knowing why, and all precautions or remedies that are taken have no effect.» — y lo que explica con ella, las mortandades de establo sin causa aparente
«The effect is infallible; from that moment the flock begins to perish and the entire stable will soon be depopulated, unless the master of the stable opposes an energetic and victorious resistance towards the magnetism of his enemy.» — el efecto que atribuye al maleficio rural, con la resistencia como único remedio
«This resistance is easy when we make it using circles and currents, that is to say through the association of wills and efforts.» — y la forma de esa resistencia, por círculos y corrientes de voluntades asociadas
«Contagion hardly ever affects farmers who know how to make themselves liked by their neighbors.» — su observación sociológica sobre a quién no alcanza el contagio
«People in the Middle Ages also had recourse to conjurations and prayers, they blessed the stables and the animals, they said mass as a means of repelling, by the association of Christian wills in the faith and in prayer, the impiety of the enchanter.» — lo que consigna del recurso medieval: conjuros, bendiciones de establos y misas como asociación de voluntades cristianas
«These formulas, copied and recopied by ignorant hands, thereafter senselessly printed by exploiters of popular credulity, did not come into our hands without strange alterations.» — y su diagnóstico sobre esas fórmulas, copiadas por manos ignorantes e impresas por explotadores de la credulidad
«Our false scholars may now laugh at these rustic enchanters; but they knew well what they were doing and their instinct, directed by experience, guided them more surely than the poor science of the time could have.» — su defensa de los encantadores rústicos contra los falsos sabios, por instinto dirigido por la experiencia
«Now that faith has weakened in the countryside as elsewhere, these naive prayers have almost no power or prestige.» — y su constatación sobre el presente: debilitada la fe, esas oraciones ya casi no obran
«We can also see that in principle these formulas derive from an ardent and naive faith.» — su lectura del origen de esas fórmulas en una fe ardiente e ingenua
«We have extracted and provided here the conjurations which were considered the most effective.» — declara el criterio con que seleccionó las conjuraciones que reproduce
«May the Verb which had been made into flesh, and which had been attached to the cross, and which sits at the right hand side of the Father fulfill the prayers of those who believe in him,» — de las oraciones del Enchiridion que transcribe: la petición al Verbo hecho carne. La letra es de ese formulario, no suya
«flee then, adversaries, because I conjure you, demons of hell, and you malign spirits, whatever type you may be; whether you had been called or invoked, whether you come of your own will, or you were sent;» — la fórmula de expulsión dirigida a los demonios, dentro del mismo aparato
«O Adonai! O Savior through whom all things were liberated, deliver me from all evil.» — la invocación a Adonai como liberador, del mismo conjunto
«Illuminate my eyes, Lord, so that I may never fall asleep in death, and that my enemy does not say that he was stronger than me.» — de las oraciones diarias que reproduce: la petición de no dormirse en la muerte
«I know very truly, O Jesus, that on any day and hour that may be that I invoke you, I shall be saved.» — y la certeza de salvación por la invocación del nombre, en el mismo texto
«because, when we pronounce the name of your so sweet son, Jesus, we hear a sweet melody in our ears, honey is tasted on our lips, the demon flees, all knees kneel, the celestial spirits rejoice, evil intentions are uprooted, all infirmities are cured; we are granted several indulgences; the struggles between the world, the flesh, and the devil are exhausted, and many other good things follow, because whoever invokes the name of God shall be saved, that name that was named by an angel before he was conceived in the womb.» — la enumeración de los efectos del nombre dulce, que es el núcleo de esas oraciones
«Jesus is the way , Jesus is life , Jesus is the truth , Jesus suffered , Jesus was crucified , Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have pity on me.» — la letanía de los títulos de Jesús, tomada del Evangelio de Juan
«Evil spells are only dangerous for isolated individuals; it is thus important, especially for people from the countryside, to live in families, to have peace in their household, and to make numerous friends.» — su regla práctica que sigue a las oraciones: el maleficio solo es peligroso para el aislado
«Priests often pass for sorcerers in the countryside, and they are believed to be relatively capable of exercising an evil influence, which is unfortunately true in regards to evil priests; but a good priest, far from bringing bad luck for anyone, is a benediction for families and the regions.» — su observación sobre los sacerdotes tenidos por hechiceros en el campo, con la parte que concede al hecho
«To command the elementary forces, one must have pure morals and a strong sense of justice.» — la condición moral que impone para mandar sobre las fuerzas elementales
«The Desert Fathers were served by lions and by bears.» — el ejemplo de los Padres del Desierto servidos por leones y osos
«and, in fact, say the masters of the great art of the Cabala, ferocious beasts naturally respect men and only attack them when they take them for other animals who are hostile or inferior to them.» — y lo que atribuye a los maestros de la Cabala sobre el respeto natural de las fieras al hombre
«It is for this reason, according to the prophet Isaiah, that when justice will reign on earth, and when men will raise their families in true innocence, a little child will lead the tigers and the lions, and will play with impunity in their midst.» — con la profecía de Isaías que aduce
«Physical evil is often a consequence of moral evil, disorder necessarily follows unreason.» — su ley sobre el mal físico como consecuencia del moral
«A power, invincible if we wish it, was given to us to vanquish fatality: it is our moral liberty.» — el poder que declara dado al hombre contra la fatalidad
«That is why religion does not want us to consult the seers to know what will happen to us; it wants only that we learn from our pastors what we should do.» — y lo que deriva sobre la prohibición religiosa de consultar videntes
«If by serious Catholics you mean those who deny civilization and its progress, I certainly hope not.» — su respuesta a quien le pregunta si es católico serio, que empieza por definir el término
«Because I do not believe that we should even exclude Romans from the universal communion.» — y su criterio de comunión universal, que no excluye a los romanos
«I would like to bring back to the hierarchical unity, to the integrity of the doctrine and the effectiveness of the cult, the dissident Christian communions, and this is possible for the communions emancipated by the reform, since they accept civilization and progress.» — lo que declara querer para las comuniones cristianas disidentes
«If by miracles you mean works counter to nature or effects unjustified by their causes, no, I neither perform nor teach how to perform such miracles.» — su negativa formal a hacer o enseñar milagros contra la naturaleza
«God himself would not know how to do such things.» — con el argumento que le da fundamento, y que repite del Ritual
«I answer that they have not read my books or that, having read them, they did not understand them.» — su respuesta a quienes le atribuyen lo contrario
«It was thus that a Sir Tavernier, in a so-called critique of the Key to the Great Mysteries, was not afraid to write that I evoked Archaea, Azoth and Hyle, well known devils, he adds.» — el caso concreto que aduce: un crítico que le imputó evocar a Archaea, Azoth e Hyle como demonios
«I take care not to answer their offenses with more offenses, and feel sorry for them because they are subject to beliefs which translate into reckless judgments and insults.» — y la regla de conducta que declara ante la ofensa
«Count Joseph de Maistre,582 had foreseen this great event.» — cita a Joseph de Maistre como precursor de esa previsión
«“Newton,” he said, “brings us back to Pythagoras, and the analogy that exists between science and faith must sooner or later come closer together.» — con la sentencia que le atribuye sobre Newton y Pitágoras. La letra es de Maistre
«More than ever, science and religion, despotism and liberty seem to be fighting a relentless war and swearing irreconcilable hatred for each other.» — su diagnóstico del conflicto de su siglo entre ciencia y religión, despotismo y libertad
«The discovery of the great secrets of religion and of the primitive science of the Mages, in revealing to the world the unity of the universal dogma, annihilates fanaticism by proving the prophecies to be correct.» — y lo que espera del descubrimiento de la unidad del dogma universal: aniquilar el fanatismo
«The philosophy of the Verb is essentially the philosophy of action and of done deeds, and it is in this manner that we can distinguish a verb from a word.» — su definición de la filosofía del Verbo como filosofía de la acción
«This is because Napoleon’s mission was great and saintly; it is because the Verb of truth was in him.» — su adjudicación sobre Napoleón, a quien atribuye una misión santa y el Verbo de verdad
«Napoleon alone could, after the French Revolution, raise the altars of Catholicism, and it was Napoleon’s moral heir alone who had the right to bring Pius IX back to Rome.» — con el papel que le reconoce en el restablecimiento de los altares católicos
«Mathematics, thus understood, brings us to religion, because it becomes, in all its forms, the demonstration of the infinite generator of the firmament and proof of the absolute, from which emanates all the calculations of all the sciences.» — su elevación de las matemáticas al rango de demostración del generador infinito, en los términos del propio pasaje
«And thus, what we still call today the natural law will have all the authority and all the infallibility of a revealed law; and thus also, we will understand that the positive and divine law is at the same time a natural law, since God is the creator of nature and would be unable to contradict himself in his creations and his laws.» — y lo que deriva: la ley natural con la autoridad y la infalibilidad de una ley revelada
«From this reconciliation of the human Verb shall be born true morality, which does not yet exist in a complete and definitive manner.» — la moral verdadera que anuncia y que declara todavía inexistente
«But to constitute morality, the situation is different, because morality is as human as it is divine; and man must have the choice of consent to a pact which obliges him the most.» — su condición para constituir esa moral: que el hombre pueda consentir el pacto
«Catholic morality is not inhuman, but it is often superhuman; it is also not meant for men of the old world and is part of a dogma which sees as possible the destruction of old man and the creation of a new man.» — su juicio sobre la moral católica, que llama no inhumana pero a menudo sobrehumana
«High magic receives this dogma with enthusiasm and promises this spiritual renaissance to humanity during the future epoch of the rehabilitation of the human Verb.» — y lo que la alta magia hace con ese dogma, según él
«To create oneself, that is the sublime vocation of man reestablished in all his rights by the baptism of the spirit; and such a connection will manifest itself between immortality and morality that one will be the complement and the consequence of the other.» — su fórmula de la vocación del hombre, crearse a sí mismo
«The light of truth is also the light of life. But truth, for it to be fertile in immortality, wishes to be received by souls which are both free and submissive, that is to say voluntarily obedient.» — con la condición que impone a las almas para que la verdad sea fecunda: libres y sumisas a la vez
«In the order of the true morality, one must still do good according to the will of God, no doubt, but also for good itself.» — su corrección a la moral de la obediencia: hay que hacer el bien también por el bien mismo
«Here is what we wrote in a book published in 1845: “The time of blind faith has now passed, and we arrive at an epoch of intelligent faith and reasonable obedience, a time where we no longer only believe in God, but where we will observe him in his works, which are the exterior forms of his being.» — se cita a sí mismo de un libro publicado en 1845 sobre el paso de la fe ciega a la fe inteligente
«Here, now, is what one man says who was lucky enough to discover before us the demonstration of the absolute according to the ancient sages, but also unlucky enough to see in this discovery only an instrument of fortune and a pretext for cupidity.» — y consigna a otro que descubrió antes que él la demostración de lo absoluto, sin nombrarlo aquí
«Religion is reasonable. That is what one must tell philosophy, and» — lo que declara que hay que decirle a la filosofía
«Reason is holy. That is what one must tell the Church, and we will prove it to her by applying to the triumph of its doctrine of charity all the conquests of emancipation and all the glories of progress.» — y lo que hay que decirle a la Iglesia, con la simetría que da su programa entero
«The revolt of the human spirit against the Church, a revolt which was punished by a terrible negative success, was thus, from this point of view, a protest in favor of the doctrine of the whole, and the revolution, which has lasted for three centuries and a half, was only due to an immense misunderstanding!» — su lectura de la revuelta del espíritu humano contra la Iglesia como protesta a favor de una doctrina
«Yes, we call the French Revolution a divine experience, because God, at that time, allowed the human genius to measure itself against Him; a strange conflict which had to end up in a tight ligature; the downfall of the» — y su calificación de la Revolución Francesa como experiencia divina
«Authority and liberty, two opposites which are at bottom the same thing, since one cannot exist without the other.» — su pareja de opuestos que declara idénticos en el fondo, autoridad y libertad
«Religion and science, two contradictions which mutually destroy each other as contradictions, and reciprocally affirm each other if we consider them as two fraternal affirmations.» — y la de religión y ciencia, que llama afirmaciones fraternas
«The affirmation of the divine Verb by the human Verb, insisted upon by the latter right up to suicide, through abnegation and holy frenzy, that is the history of the Church since Constantine up until the Reformation.» — su lectura de la historia de la Iglesia desde Constantino como afirmación del Verbo divino por el humano
«The divine founder of Christianity was the Messiah of the revelation, because the divine Verb was incarnate in him, and we consider the emperor as the Messiah of the revolution, because the human Verb is summarized and manifested in him in all its power.» — su doble adjudicación mesiánica, con el emperador como mesías de la revolución
«The human Messiah came in a way to save God who offended the obscene cult of reason, and to save the Church, which was threatened by revolts of the human spirit and by saturnalias of false philosophy.» — y lo que le atribuye como misión, salvar a la Iglesia de las saturnales de la falsa filosofía
«That is the enigma of the Sphinx explained by the Oedipus of modern times, the Napoleonic genius.» — su lectura de Napoleón como el Edipo moderno que explica el enigma de la esfinge
«We have said that the objective of the revelation was the affirmation of the divine Verb, and that the affirmation of the human Verb was the transcendental and providential result of the European revolution started in the sixteenth century.» — y su formulación del objetivo de todo el tramo final
«JOHN MICHAEL GREER is a widely respected author, translator, and blogger in the occult field.» — la nota biográfica de la edición sobre el introductor y coeditor. Todas las notas de este tramo son del aparato moderno, no de Lévi, aunque el digest se las atribuya a él
«He is most recently the editor of the new, substantially revised seventh edition of Israel Regardie’s occult landmark The Golden Dawn (Llewellyn 2016).» — y su credencial editorial declarada, que sitúa a esta traducción en la línea Regardie y Golden Dawn
«Founder of the Zoroastrian religion, dates uncertain. From ancient Greek times on, he had a reputation in the Western world as a teacher of magic.» — nota del aparato sobre Zoroastro, con la reputación que le da la antigüedad griega y la datación que declara incierta
«Also known as Mani, a Persian prophet of the third century CE. He taught that there were two gods, one good and one evil.» — nota del aparato sobre Mani, con la doctrina de los dos dioses
«Assumed name of the Sicilian occultist and adventurer Giuseppe Balsamo (1743–95).» — nota del aparato que identifica a Cagliostro con Giuseppe Balsamo y lo data
«In French, verbe means both “verb” and “word,” and Lévi makes use of this ambiguity constantly.» — nota del traductor sobre la ambigüedad de verbe en francés, que explica una dificultad de todo el libro y advierte al lector de esta versión inglesa
«This book is, of course, the tarot deck.» — la nota que identifica el libro más oculto de todos que Lévi anuncia sin nombrar
«Lévi refers here to French scholar Antoine Court de Gébelin (c. 1728–84), who first proposed that the tarot was a relic of ancient Egyptian teaching.» — nota del aparato que adjudica a Court de Gébelin la primera propuesta del Tarot como reliquia egipcia, y lo data
«Written in the fifth century CE, these rephrased the magical Platonism of Iamblichus and Proclus in Christian terminology and had an immense influence both on Christian theology and on European magic.» — nota del aparato sobre el corpus dionisíaco, con su datación en el siglo V y su influencia sobre la magia europea
«Italian astrologer and mathematician Girolamo Cardano (1501–76), the inventor of the combination lock, was an influential writer on astrology.» — nota del aparato sobre Cardano, con su oficio de matemático y la invención de la cerradura de combinación
«The Knights Templar, many of whom were burnt at the stake as heretics between 1307 and 1314.» — nota del aparato que identifica a los templarios y fecha las hogueras
«The Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815) believed he had discovered a previously unknown life force he called “animal magnetism”— in Lévi’s view, another name for the magical agent discussed in this paragraph.» — nota del aparato sobre Mesmer, que le atribuye a Lévi la identificación del magnetismo animal con su agente mágico
«Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535), author of the most famous magical text of the late Renaissance, Three Books of Occult Philosophy.» — nota del aparato sobre Agrippa y su obra más famosa
«Dupuis and Volney both argued that Jesus Christ was not a historical person but an astrological myth.» — nota del aparato sobre lo que sostenían Dupuis y Volney, contra quienes Lévi argumenta en todo el libro
«Lévi uses the Thebaid as a generic title for the cycle of Greek legends surrounding the city of Thebes.» — nota del aparato sobre el uso que Lévi hace de Tebaida como título genérico
«Lévi is quite correct here; in Chinese lore, Fu Hsi is the traditional creator of the eight kua, or trigrams, that are the foundation of the I Ching, or Book of Changes, made of solid (yang) and broken (yin) lines.» — nota del aparato que confirma un punto de Lévi sobre Fu Hsi y los trigramas del I Ching. El aparato no siempre lo corrige
«Cteis is a Greek word for “vagina.” The sexual symbolism is quite deliberate, and appears throughout this book and Lévi’s other work.» — nota del traductor sobre cteis, con la advertencia de que el simbolismo sexual es deliberado en toda la obra
«Stauros is Greek for “cross.” The gnostics traditionally saw the cross as Tshaped.» — nota del traductor sobre stauros y la cruz en forma de te entre los gnósticos
«This is not quite true, but many European names of God do have this peculiarity; consider French Dieu, Spanish Dios, German Gott, Latin Deus, Greek Θεος (Theos), etc.» — nota del aparato que matiza una afirmación de Lévi sobre los nombres europeos de Dios
«Not literally true—the watch would run down due to friction—but the image Lévi offers will yield much to meditation.» — nota del aparato que corrige la imagen del reloj y aun así recomienda meditarla. Es el tono con que el aparato trata a su autor
«The first three are not the material substances usually so called. Alchemically, salt is the principle of solidity, mercury of fluidity, sulfur of volatility, and azoth is the universal solvent that permits their separation and recombination.» — nota del aparato que aclara que sal, mercurio y azufre no son las sustancias así llamadas, con la definición alquímica de cada principio
«The four Cabalistic worlds are Atziluth, the world of origination; Briah, the world of creation; Yetzirah, the world of formation; and Assiah, the world of action, which is the material world.» — nota del aparato con los cuatro mundos cabalísticos y sus nombres
«The Magical Calendar, attributed to the great Danish astrologer and astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), published in 1620, and reprinted with additions by Duchenteau in 1755. It is not a calendar in the modern sense of the word but a very extensive table of Renaissance occult symbolism.» — nota del aparato sobre el Calendario Mágico atribuido a Tycho Brahe, con sus fechas de publicación y reimpresión
«The labarum was a Roman standard bearing the Chi-Rho, a symbol made of the Greek letters ΧP (chi and rho), the first two letters of Χριστος, or Christ, which was used after the Christianization of the empire.» — nota del aparato sobre el lábaro y el crismón
«Insufflation is the magical art of communicating a force to a person or thing by breathing on it.» — nota del aparato que define la insuflación como arte mágico de comunicar una fuerza por el aliento
«That is, the sympathetic nervous system, of which the solar plexus is the most important center.» — nota del aparato que traduce a fisiología moderna el centro del que habla Lévi
«Renaissance magic made extensive use of animal substances in this way, though most modern Western magical traditions have found less problematic ways to invoke the septenary powers.» — nota del aparato sobre el uso renacentista de sustancias animales, con su distancia declarada respecto de la magia occidental moderna
«He did not have leprosy but rather a skin disease that was not well differentiated from leprosy by the medical authorities of Lévi’s time.» — nota del aparato que corrige un diagnóstico, atribuyéndolo a la medicina del tiempo de Lévi
«Written by James Macpherson but credited to an ancient Scots bard named Ossian, these poems were extraordinarily popular in the early nineteenth century, though they are almost forgotten today.» — nota del aparato sobre Ossian, que declara la obra de Macpherson y su atribución al bardo escocés
«These statements are far less absurd than they appear at first glance: what Lévi is saying, of course, is that Caesar was assassinated because his actions were too heavily influenced by his vanity, Napoleon fell from power because he mistook himself for the hero of an overblown romantic poem, and Louis Philippe was driven from the throne because he was unable to rekindle the mystique of monarchy in an age typified by the middle-class image of an umbrella tucked under the arm.» — nota del aparato que defiende un pasaje de Lévi contra la lectura literal
«French astrologer and linguist Jacques Gaffarel (1601–81), who was in fact employed by Cardinal Richelieu.» — nota del aparato sobre Gaffarel, con su empleo real al servicio de Richelieu
«French cartomancer Jean-Baptiste Alliette (1738–91), who published his books under the pseudonym Etteilla, his last name spelled backwards.» — nota del aparato que identifica a Etteilla con Jean-Baptiste Alliette y explica el seudónimo
«Teraphim are mentioned in several places in the Old Testament; most modern scholars consider them to be statues of household guardian spirits.» — nota del aparato sobre los teraphim, con lo que sostiene la mayoría de los estudiosos modernos frente a la lectura de Lévi
«The first chapter of Genesis, and the vision of the chariot in the book of Ezekiel, are the two main sources of the mystical symbolism of the Cabala.» — nota del aparato sobre las dos fuentes principales del simbolismo místico de la Cabala
«Gematria consists of adding up the number values of the letters of a word and using the resulting number as a key to its inner meaning.» — nota del aparato que define la gematría
«Temurah substitutes one set of letters for another using special rules.» — y la que define la temurá
«Manus is Latin for “hand,” and Strength is the eleventh tarot trump in the original order of the cards, though some modern decks switch the eighth and eleventh trumps, Justice and Strength.» — nota del aparato sobre el orden original de los triunfos, con el intercambio moderno de Justicia y Fuerza
«The Spiritualist movement, which began in the United States in 1848.» — nota del aparato que data el movimiento espiritista en Estados Unidos, contexto de las mesas parlantes que Lévi comenta
«The tomb of François de Pâris, in the cemetery of Saint-Médard in Paris, was a place of pilgrimage for believers in the Jansenist heresy in eighteenth-century France.» — nota del aparato sobre la tumba de François de Pâris en Saint-Médard y su peregrinación jansenista
«The Catalan polymath Ramon Llull, known as Raymond Lully, was credited with dozens of alchemical books he did not write.» — nota del aparato sobre Ramon Llull, a quien se le acreditaron decenas de libros alquímicos que no escribió. La atribución que Lévi da por buena, el aparato la retira
«This anecdote is not found in the actual text of the Sefer Toledot Yeshu but in the rabbinical commentaries about this work.» — nota del aparato que corrige la fuente de una anécdota que Lévi atribuye al Sefer Toledot Yeshu
«He published an account of the 1788 dinner party at which Cazotte is said to have accurately predicted the deaths of nearly all those present in the Terror.» — nota del aparato sobre La Harpe y la cena de 1788 en que Cazotte habría predicho las muertes del Terror
«Originally a secret court in the German province of Westphalia, the Free Judges, or Vehmgericht, came to play a role in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century conspiracy theories comparable to those surrounding the Bavarian Illuminati in the twentieth.» — nota del aparato sobre los Francos Jueces de Westfalia y su papel en las teorías conspirativas posteriores
«We have been unable to trace this figure.» — nota del aparato que declara no haber podido rastrear una figura citada por Lévi. La abstención se consigna en la propia edición
«English philosopher David Hume (1711–76), who rejected the possibility of miracles.» — nota del aparato sobre Hume y su rechazo de la posibilidad del milagro
«A rule of logic: “It is valid to proceed from the fact to the possibility,” or, in simpler language, if something exists, it’s reasonable to say that it’s possible for it to exist!» — nota del aparato que traduce la regla lógica que Lévi invoca
«The Pythagorean symbols are a collection of strange maxims, including the ones Lévi mentions, recorded in classical literature as teachings of Pythagoras himself.» — nota del aparato sobre los símbolos pitagóricos como máximas registradas en la literatura clásica
«Divus is “god,” and divinus is “belonging or relating to a deity.”» — nota del traductor que distingue divus de divinus, término del que depende la condición que Lévi exige para la Gran Obra
«The theory proposed by Dupuis and Volney held that the story of Christ was a misunderstood astronomical myth, with Jesus as the sun and the twelve apostles as the signs of the zodiac.» — nota del aparato que resume la teoría de Dupuis y Volney con Jesús como sol y los apóstoles como signos zodiacales
«The initials INRI, standing for Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum (Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews), play a central role in many schools of Christian Cabalism and occultism.» — nota del aparato sobre INRI y su papel en el cabalismo cristiano
«Hallucinogenic drugs were well known to the occultists of the past, as well as to the avant-garde of Lévi’s time.» — nota del aparato sobre el conocimiento de las drogas alucinógenas entre los ocultistas y la vanguardia del tiempo de Lévi
«The four sacred words, as noted above, on p. 171, are ADAM, HEVA, AZOT, and INRI.» — nota del aparato que enumera las cuatro palabras sagradas y remite a su primera mención
«The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola is a devotional manual written by the founder of the Jesuit order, and its exercises are regularly practiced by Jesuits and by many Catholic laypersons.» — nota del aparato sobre los Ejercicios espirituales de Ignacio de Loyola
«The Steganographia is primarily a manual of codes and ciphers, but it contains magical lore as well.» — nota del aparato sobre la Steganographia como manual de códigos que además contiene materia mágica
«The decad of Pythagoras is 10; multiplied by itself, this equals 100; add the sum of the letters in “abracadabra,” 66, and the result is 166. The location of the missing 500 is left, as Lévi intended, as an exercise for the reader.» — nota del aparato que rehace el cálculo de Lévi sobre la década pitagórica y el Abracadabra, y deja el resto sin resolver a propósito
«The English word “devil,” like the French diable, comes ultimately from the Greek words dia, “across,” and ballein, “to throw.” Lévi wryly interprets the word to mean “thrown out,” which is plausible if inaccurate.» — nota del aparato que da la etimología real de diablo y califica la de Lévi de plausible aunque inexacta
«The novel is Le Juif errant (The Wandering Jew), published in 1844. The character Lévi discusses is the Jesuit Rodin, who annihilates all the members of a very large family in an effort to get control of the family fortune.» — nota del aparato que identifica la novela de Eugène Sue y el personaje jesuita al que Lévi alude sin nombrar
«Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, the leader of the French Protestants, was one of many victims of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre in 1572.» — nota del aparato sobre Coligny y la matanza de San Bartolomé
«A famous grimoire, written by an anonymous author in France sometime in the early seventeenth century and falsely attributed to Leo III.» — nota del aparato que declara el Enchiridion un grimorio francés de comienzos del siglo XVII falsamente atribuido a León III. La ficha consignaba la atribución del texto; el aparato la retira
«An understatement—the Clavicle or Key of Solomon is among the most famous and widely copied magical handbooks of the Middle Ages.» — nota del aparato que corrige por defecto la modestia de Lévi sobre la Clavícula de Salomón
«The word “planet” comes from the Greek word planētēs, “wanderer.”» — nota del aparato con la etimología de planeta
«The great French polymath Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704) and the even more famous Isaac Newton both devoted much study to the Book of Revelation in attempts to calculate the date of the Second Coming.» — nota del aparato sobre Bossuet y Newton dedicados a calcular la fecha de la Segunda Venida
«An apparent miracle in the French town of Migné, where in 1826 a crowd assembled for an outdoor sermon saw a glowing cross appear in the air above them.» — nota del aparato sobre el prodigio de Migné en 1826
«This conjuration is composed of three passages in Greek from the writings of the Renaissance occultist Francisco Patrizi.» — nota del aparato que identifica la conjuración griega como tres pasajes de Francisco Patrizi, el ritual que Lévi declara haber usado para Apolonio
«These are the names YHVH, AGLA, AHIH, Amen.» — nota del aparato que descifra las iniciales de una fórmula
«The order of the Mopses was founded in Vienna in the early eighteenth century as an alternative to Freemasonry for Catholics, who had been barred» — nota del aparato sobre la orden de los Mopses, fundada en Viena como alternativa masónica para católicos
«Lévi was fooled here by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, whose Mysterium Baphometis revelatum (The Mystery of Baphomet Revealed), published in 1818, includes this among many other fake “discoveries” redefining the Baphomet of the Templars as a hermaphroditic idol.» — nota del aparato que declara a Lévi engañado por Hammer-Purgstall y su Mysterium Baphometis revelatum, entre otros falsos descubrimientos. Toca directamente lo que Lévi afirma sobre el Baphomet templario
«The “Good Goddess,” a Roman deity whose name was secret and remains unknown to this day.» — nota del aparato sobre la Bona Dea, cuyo nombre sigue siendo desconocido
«French journalist Louis Veuillot (1813–83), a conservative Catholic writer of Lévi’s time.» — nota del aparato sobre Louis Veuillot, publicista católico contemporáneo de Lévi
«Fans of American horror fiction will recognize this and the previous incantation as the spells used to summon the dead to life in H. P. Lovecraft’s novel The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.» — nota del aparato que remite dos conjuraciones de Lévi a la novela de H. P. Lovecraft. Fecha la voz del aparato sin lugar a duda: no puede ser de un texto de 1855
«A remarkably obscure French scholar of the nineteenth century; we have not been able to determine his dates or even his given name.» — nota del aparato que declara no haber podido determinar ni las fechas ni el nombre de pila de un erudito citado
«Jean de La Barre and Gaillard d’Etallonde, two young men tried in 1766 on trumped-up charges of disrespect for religion.» — nota del aparato sobre La Barre y d Etallonde, juzgados en 1766 por irreverencia religiosa
«A specific, in medieval and Renaissance medicine, is a drug used to treat a particular illness.» — nota del aparato que define específico en la medicina medieval y renacentista
«Lists of the days of the moon, each of which had its distinctive fortune or misfortune, were a commonplace in French folklore from ancient times through the early twentieth century.» — nota del aparato sobre los días de la Luna como lugar común del folclore francés hasta el siglo XX
«Also known as Nicholas Rémy, a fanatical witch hunter in sixteenth-century France, who was responsible for the execution of some nine hundred persons suspected of witchcraft. Lévi’s account of his death seems to be apocryphal, unfortunately.» — nota del aparato sobre Nicolas Rémy, cazador de brujas responsable de unas novecientas ejecuciones, con reserva sobre el relato que Lévi hace de su muerte
«This and the following paragraphs are intended as a direct challenge to the Enlightenment claim, first made by British philosopher David Hume, that miracles are by definition violations of natural law and therefore cannot take place.» — nota del aparato que declara el propósito polémico de un tramo: responder a Hume sobre el milagro como violación de la ley natural
«Readers are not encouraged to attempt this experiment.» — nota del aparato que desaconseja intentar un experimento del libro. El aparato interviene también como advertencia práctica
«In Mesmer’s system of animal magnetism, “passes”—that is, stroking movements of the hands, made several inches away from the patient’s body —play an important role.» — nota del aparato sobre los pases magnéticos en el sistema de Mesmer
«This is never said in so many words in the Bible but is a plausible interpretation of the fragmentary descriptions of priestly practice in the Old Testament, the writings of Josephus, and the Jewish Talmud.» — nota del aparato sobre una práctica sacerdotal que la Biblia no dice con esas palabras, y que declara interpretación plausible
«The text indicates “above,” but this is obviously a misprint.» — nota del aparato que declara errata un punto del texto
«The great French anatomist Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) was famous for being able to identify and describe an entire animal, living or extinct, from a single bone due to his exhaustive knowledge of anatomical form.» — nota del aparato sobre Cuvier, la analogía científica que Lévi invoca para su método
«Lévi’s patriotism and idealism here has overwhelmed his common sense.» — nota del aparato que objeta el patriotismo de Lévi. Es el juicio más duro que la edición emite sobre su autor
«According to legend, as already noted, this great medieval scholar had a brass sculpture of a head that spoke, giving answers to all questions.» — nota del aparato sobre la cabeza de bronce parlante atribuida por leyenda a Alberto Magno
«The ibis in Egyptian symbolism is sacred to the god Thoth, while the cow is sacred to the goddesses Isis and Hathor.» — nota del aparato sobre el ibis de Thoth y la vaca de Isis y Hathor
«Found in Hindu scriptures, the theory of four ages holds that all of time follows a repeating sequence of four periods, each of which is worse than the one before it; the fourth age ends in catastrophe, and then the first, golden, age recurs.» — nota del aparato sobre la teoría hindú de las cuatro edades, que Lévi da por común a Zoroastro y a la Biblia
«It was proved to be a fraud in 1822 but remained in circulation in French romantic circles for some time thereafter.» — nota del aparato que declara fraude probado en 1822 un texto que siguió circulando en los círculos románticos
«French priest Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire (1802–61), by many accounts the best preacher of the nineteenth century.» — nota del aparato sobre Lacordaire, tenido por el mejor predicador de su siglo
«In Lévi’s time, the different cultures of ancient Mesopotamia were still hopelessly confused by scholars, and it was quite common for writers to say “Assyrian” when they meant to refer to ancient Near Eastern cultures in general.» — nota del aparato que explica el uso confuso de asirio en tiempos de Lévi, y que afecta a cómo debe leerse el Nuctemerón asirio
«It deals primarily with issues and incidents relevant to Lévi’s own time, though, and so has been placed here as an appendix instead.» — nota del aparato que explica por qué un texto va como apéndice, decisión editorial de esta edición
«Napoleon III, the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, was the emperor of France at the time Lévi wrote, though he had practically nothing in common with his illustrious uncle but the name.» — nota del aparato que identifica al emperador reinante cuando Lévi escribía, con su juicio sobre él
«Quietism is the belief, common in some schools of mysticism, that salvation is obtained by abandoning all thought and action in a submergence of the self in God.» — nota del aparato que define el quietismo
About the work
15 entries — what the apparatus and scholarship say about itGreer sitúa la publicación: el Dogme en 1854 y el Rituel, su secuela, en 1855, luego reunidos en edición única.
«The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic brought Lévi immediate fame and played a key role in kick-starting a revival of magic.»
Greer traza la cadena de recepción: Blavatsky (Isis Unveiled), Albert Pike (Morals and Dogma), Yeats, y la Golden Dawn, que «basó su práctica en Lévi».
«one met everywhere young men of letters who talked of magic.» — el clima del revival, en el recuerdo de Yeats que Greer cita.
Greer enmarca la genealogía intelectual: Vico (llegado vía Michelet), Schopenhauer — On the Will in Nature como embrión de la magia levítica, y The World as Will and Representation legible «as Will and Imagination» — y Mesmer, que llamó «magnetismo animal» al medio sutil.
La lectura de Greer: «Magic as the manifestation of the trained and focused will» — un proceso psicológico donde actos simbólicos reprograman hábitos mentales.
El blanco polémico de Lévi según Greer: el literalismo ilustrado de Voltaire («Écrasez l'infâme!»), Dupuis y Volney.
«the astral light might well be an ancient name for the ether» — el puente de Greer con la física del XIX.
«is called the Great Work; it is the supreme secret of magic» — incomunicable, expresado solo en geometría sagrada: círculo (cuatro elementos), hexagrama (dos fuerzas), triángulo (ternario).
Recepción del siglo XX que Greer añade: Dion Fortune, Franz Bardon, Mouni Sadhu y el UR Group de Julius Evola.
Greer juzga que «English rendering by Arthur Edward Waite is profoundly unsatisfactory— pompous and turgid in style, full of errors and significant omissions».
«Lege, lege, lege, relege, ora, labora et invenies» — la máxima con que Greer enseña a leer la obra, que califica de «lusus serius», término de los alquimistas renacentistas.
«I had no skin in the game.» — Mikituk declara no pertenecer a orden esotérica alguna ni haber leído a Waite.
Mikituk declara el carácter de la obra: «intention to act upon the reader’s mind exactly like an initiatory experience» — «poetry for the mind»; su meta: presentarla «as Éliphas Lévi might have written it, had he done so in English».
La Golden Dawn lo reclama retrospectivamente entre sus «adeptos eminentes», junto a Ragon, Mackenzie y Hockley.
Concepts treated
Luz Astral — Fluido mágico universal saturado de imágenes, «world soul», llamado Azoth; se proyecta «through the eyes, through the voice, through the thumbs and the palm of the hands».
Pentagrama (estrella flamígera) — «The pentagram is what we call, in the Cabala, the sign of the microcosm»; la estrella flamígera de cinco puntas, signo de la omnipotencia intelectual, cuya orientación decide entre el Salvador y la cabra de Mendes.
Pentáculo (sello-síntesis) — «A pentacle is the perfect summary of a spirit»: categoría genérica del sello-síntesis — el sello de Salomón de seis puntas, el tridente de Paracelso y las ruedas de Pitágoras son pentáculos.
Baphomet — Ídolo jeroglífico que combina la cabra de Mendes y el Verbo gnóstico; «mera personificación del error», no un demonio real.
Tarot — Las 22 llaves ↔ letras hebreas; los cuatro palos ↔ Tetragrámaton; «el libro único de los antiguos magos» y el instrumento más perfecto de adivinación.
Voluntad — Primer arcano del mago, cultivada por hábito y perseverancia; «Nature will obey the sign and the word of one who feels strong enough not to doubt».
Gran Arcano — Conocimiento supremo cuya transmisión está prohibida; su fuente única es «the doctrine of Hermes».
Cadena Magica — La cadena magnética: «la ley de las corrientes magnéticas es la del movimiento de la luz astral misma».
Azoth — Nombre de la luz astral como agente; sinónimo de ROTA/TAROT según la clave de Postel.
Goetia (γοητεία, arte goético) — Práctica que la magia negra emplea: «she often makes use of goetia and necromancy».