United States or Portugal ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I can find no Mason, of what grade or rite soever, who has ever heard of Pike's Sepher d'Hebarim, his book called Apadno, or lectures in which he imparted extracts unacknowledged from Éliphas Lévi; they may rank with triangular provinces, Lucifer chez lui, the skull of Molay, and the Palladium; in other words, they are lying myths.
The human figure at once reappeared, but Eliphas experienced such a sudden exhaustion in all his limbs that he was obliged to sit down. He fell into a deep coma, and dreamed strange dreams. But of these, when he recovered, only a vague memory remained to him. His arm continued for several days to be numb and painful.
Quite so, but my point is, that it has come to the Taxil documents through Éliphas Lévi. The proof is that part of the exorcisms are given in Latin and part in French, by the author of the Rituel, for arbitrary and unassignable reasons, and that Les Soeurs Maçonnes reproduces them in the same way. It is evident, therefore, that we must receive Leo Taxil's "divulgations" with severe caution.
Seeing then that Éliphas Lévi has been calumniously represented, and that he was not a Satanist, he could not have founded a Satanic society, nor could a Manichæan order have been developed out of his doctrines. Hence if a Palladian Society do exist at Charleston, it either owes nothing to Lévi, or its cultus has been falsely described.
Eliphas felt an intense cold, and when he sought to ask his questions found it impossible to speak. Thereupon, he placed his hand on the Pentagram, and directed the point of his sword toward the figure, adjuring it mentally by that sign not to terrify, but to obey him. The form suddenly grew indistinct and soon it strangely vanished.
The most curious feature of the performance is that here again it is from end to end a travesty of Éliphas Lévi, slice after slice from his chief writings, combined with interlineal additions, which give them a sense diametrically opposed to that of the great magus.
Sometimes the liquid was milky and troubled, sometimes flames rose from it as if there were a film of alcohol over the surface. Eliphas Levi explained the symbolism of these bottled volatiles as fully as he cared to, but abstained from giving the famous recipe for the grand magisterium.
The Lotus itself was preceded "by the organisation of some Areopagites of the Kadosch Grade of the French Rite and of the Ancient and Accepted Scotch Rite," who practised theurgy under the direction of Ragon and Éliphas Lévi, both of whom are represented as given over, body and soul, to all the practices of lawless diabolism, the latter being apparently the leader, after whose death the association met only infrequently, until it was revived by Phileas Walder, the friend, as we have already seen, of Albert Pike.
He took from one of the shelves of the library a manuscript which was none other than the Asch-Mezareph, the book of the Jew Abraham and of Nicolas Flamel, restored, translated, and annotated by Eliphas Levi. This manuscript had been lent him by Des Hermies, who had discovered it one day among some old papers.
'To my thinking it is plain that all these preparations, and the perfumes, the mirrors, the pentagrams, must have the greatest effect on the imagination. My only surprise is that your magician saw no more. 'Eliphas Levi talked to me himself of this evocation, said Dr Porhoët. 'He told me that its influence on him was very great.
Word Of The Day