THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES - Equinox Vol. I No. X Hermetic.com » Aleister Crowley » Equinox » Vol I No x searchaddforuminfo Bookmark this page on these social networks The javascript bookmark tool appears to not be working or you have javascript disabled Like this page on Facebook Like THL on Facebook +1 this page on Google +1 THL on Google The javascript metadata tool appears to not be working or you have javascript disabled Join the Hermetic Library discussions at the Hrmtc Underground BBS Ads by Project Wonderful! Your ad could be here, right now. The Key of the Mysteries (La Clef des Grands Mystères) By Eliphas Levi THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES ACCORDING TO ENOCH, ABRAHAM, HERMES TRISMEGISTES AND SOLOMON BY ELIPHAS LEVI TRANSLATED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALEISTER CROWLEY {Illustration on this page described (located at the left): This is an elaborate symbol in the form of a barrel key. The shank is vertical and to the bottom. Three flat bits extend to the right, with three projections at the upper edge of each. There is a large circular ring at top. Down the shank, from top: “R” inverted, Sun, Moon, Mercury, circle (probably for Mars), Venus, Jupiter and Saturn. Above the top bit: “DEUS”, on that bit “rouge”. Above the middle bit: “HOMO”, on that bit “blanc”. Above the bottom bit: “TORA”, on that bit “bleu”. The ring has a “T” above the top, “A” to right and “O” to left (with the “R” on the shank, “TORA”). Outside at the upper left, a cup, upper right a Pantacle, lower right a dagger and lower left a wand. On the ring itself, the numbers from 1 to 20 arch over the top half, left to right and the Alphabet in capital letters on the lower half from left to right. Inside, the ring is quartered by horizontal and vertical diameters. The left upper quadrant has the sign of Aquarius, upper right the eagle head of Scorpio, lower right the sign of Leo and lower left the bull’s head of Taurus. In the center there is a hexagram made up of two triangles, one apex to bottom and the other to top. The outer three triangular points of the inverted triangle are shaded. In the heptagon formed in the center is HB:Yod-Heh-Vau-Heh} “Religion says: — ‘Believe and you will understand.’ Science comes to say to you: — ‘Understand and you will believe.’ “At that moment the whole of science will change front; the spirit, so long dethroned and forgotten, will take its ancient place; it will be demonstrated that the old traditions are all true, that the whole of paganism is only a system of corrupted and misplaced truths, that it is sufficient to cleanse them, so to say, and to put them back again in their place, to see them shine with all their rays. In a word, all ideas will change, and since on all sides a multitude of the elect cry in concert, ‘Come, Lord, come!’ why should you blame the men who throw themselves forward into that majestic future, and pride themselves on having foreseen it?” (J. De Maistre, Soirées de St. Petersbourg.) TRANSLATOR’S NOTE IN the biographical and critical essay which Mr. Waite prefixes to his Mysteries of Magic he says: ”A word must be added of the method of this digest, which claims to be something more than translation and has been infinitely more laborious. I believe it to be in all respects faithful, and where it has been necessary or possible for it to be literal, there also it is invariably literal.” We agree that it is either more or less than translation, and the following examples selected at hazard in the course of half-an-hour will enable the reader to judge whether Mr. Waite is acquainted with either French or English: “Gentilhomme” — “Gentleman.” “The nameless vice which was reproached against the Templars.” “Certaines circonstances ridicules et un procès en escroquerie” — “Certain ridiculous processes and a swindling lawsuit.” “Se mêle de dogmatiser” — “Meddles with dogmatism.” “La vie pour lui suffisait à l’expiation des plus grands crimes, puis qu’elle etait la consequence d’un arrêt de mort” — “According to him life was sufficient for the greatest crimes, since these were the result of a death sentence.” “Vos meilleurs amis ont dû concevoir des inquiétudes” — “Your best friends have been reasonably anxious.” (The mistranslation here turns the speech into an insult.) {v} “Sacro-sainte” — “Sacred and saintly.” “Auriculaire” — “Index.” “N’avez vous pas obtenu tout ce que vous demandiez, et plus que vous ne demandiez, car vous ne m’aviez pas parlé d’argent?” — ”Have you not had all and more than you wanted, and there has been no question of remuneration?” (This mistranslation makes nonsense of the whole passage.) “Eliphas n’etait pas a la question” — “Eliphas was not under cross- examination.” “Mauvais plaisant” — “Vicious jester.” “Si vous n’aviez pas … vous deviendriez” — “If you have not … you may become.” (This mistranslation turns a compliment into an insult.) “An awful and ineffaceable tableaux.” “Peripeties” — ”Circumstances.” “Il avait fait partie du clerge de Saint Germain l’Auxerrois” — “He was of the Society of St. Germain l’Auxerrois.” “Bruit de tempete” — “Stormy sound.” We are obliged to mention this matter, as Mr. Waite (by persistent self- assertion) has obtained the reputation of being trustworthy as an editor. On the contrary, he not only mutilates and distorts his authors, but, as demonstrated above, he is totally incapable of understanding their simplest phrases and even their commonest words. {vi} INTRODUCTIONTHIS volume represents the high-water mark of the thought of Eliphas Levi. It may be regarded as written by him as his Thesis for the Grade of Exempt Adept, just as his Ritual and Dogma was his Thesis for the grade of a Major Adept. He is, in fact, no longer talking of things as if their sense was fixed and universal. He is beginning to see something of the contradiction inherent in the nature of things, or at any rate, he constantly illustrates the fact that the planes are to be kept separate for practical purposes, although in the final analysis they turn out to be one. This, and the extraordinarily subtle and delicate irony of which Eliphas Levi is one of the greatest masters that has ever lived, have baffled the pedantry and stupidity of such commentators as Waite. English has hardly a word to express the mental condition of such unfortunates. Dummheit, in its strongest German sense, is about the nearest thing to it. It is as if a geographer should criticize Gulliver’s Travels from his own particular standpoint. When Levi says that all that he asserts as an initiate is subordinate to his humble submissiveness as a Christian, and then not only remarks that the Bible and the Qur’án are different translations of the same book, but treats the Incarnation as an allegory, it is evident that a good deal of submission will be required. When he agrees with St. Augustine that a thing is not just because God wills it, but God wills it because it is just, he sees perfectly well that he is reducing God to a poetic image reflected from his own moral {vii} ideal of justice, and no amount of alleged orthodoxy can weigh against that statement. His very defence of the Catholic Hierarchy is a masterpiece of that peculiar form of conscious sophistry which justifies itself by reducing its conclusion to zero. One must begin with one, and that one has no particular qualities. Therefore, so long as you have an authority properly centralized it does not really matter what that authority is. In the Pope we have such an authority ready made, and it is the gravest tactical blunder to endeavour to set up an authority opposed to him. Success in doing so means war, and failure anarchy. This, however, did not prevent Levi from ceremonially casting a papal crown to the ground and crying ”Death to tyranny and superstition!” in the bosom of a certain secret Areopagus of which he was the most famous member. When a man becomes a magician he looks about him for a magical weapon; and, being probably endowed with that human frailty called laziness, he hopes to find a weapon ready made. Thus we find the Christian Magus who imposed his power upon the world taking the existing worships and making a single system combining all their merits. There is no single feature in Christianity which has not been taken bodily from the worship of Isis, or of Mithras, or of Bacchus, or of Adonis, or of Osiris. In modern times again we find Frater Iehi Aour trying to handle Buddhism. Others again have attempted to use Freemasonry. There have been even exceptionally foolish magicians who have tried to use a sword long since rusted. Wagner illustrates this point very clearly in Siegfried. The Great Sword Nothung has been broken, and it is the {viii} only weapon that can destroy the gods. The dwarf Mime tries uselessly to mend it. When Siegfried comes he makes no such error. He melts its fragments and forges a new sword. In spite of the intense labour which this costs, it is the best plan to adopt. Levi completely failed to capture Catholicism; and his hope of using Imperialism, his endeavour to persuade the Emperor that he was the chosen instrument of the Almighty, a belief which would have enabled him to play Maximus to little Napoleon’s Julian, was shattered once for all at Sedan. It is necessary for the reader to gain this clear conception of Levi’s inmost mind, if he is to reconcile the “contradictions” which leave Waite petulant and bewildered. It is the sad privilege of the higher order of mind to be able to see both sides of every question, and to appreciate the fact that both are equally tenable. Such contradictions can, of course, only be reconciled on a higher plane, and this method of harmonizing contradictions is, therefore, the best key to the higher planes. It seems unnecessary to add anything to these few remarks. This is the only difficulty in the whole book, though in one or two passages Levi’s extraordinarily keen sense of humour leads him to indulge in a little harmless bombast. We may instance his remarks on the Grimoire of Honorius. We have said that this is the masterpiece of Levi. He reaches an exaltation of both thought and language which is equal to that of any other writer known to us. Once it is understood that it is purely a thesis for the Grade of Exempt Adept, the reader should have no further difficulty. — A. C. {ix} PREFACE On the brink of mystery, the spirit of man is seized with giddiness. Mystery is the abyss which ceaselessly attracts our unquiet curiosity by the terror of its depth. The greatest mystery of the infinite is the existence of Him for whom alone all is without mystery. Comprehending the infinite which is essentially incomprehensible, He is Himself that infinite and eternally unfathomable mystery; that is to say, that He is, in all seeming, that supreme absurdity in which Tertullian believed. Necessarily absurd, since reason must renounce for ever the project of attaining to Him; necessarily credible, since science and reason, far from demonstrating that He does not exist, are dragged by the chariot of fatality to believe that He does exist, and to adore Him themselves with closed eyes. Why? — Because this Absurd is the infinite source of reason. The light springs eternally from the eternal shadows. Science, that Babel Tower of the spirit, may twist and coil its spirals ever ascending as it will; it may make the earth tremble, it will never touch the sky. God is He whom we shall eternally learn to know better, and, consequently, He whom we shall never know entirely. The realm of mystery is, then, a field open to the conquests of the intelligence. March there as boldly as you will, never will you diminish its extent; you will only alter {xi} its horizons. To know all is an impossible dream; but woe unto him who dares not to learn all, and who does not know that, in order to know anything, one must learn eternally! They say that in order to learn anything well, one must forget it several times. The world has followed this method. Everything which is to-day debateable had been solved by the ancients. Before our annals began, their solutions, written in hieroglyphs, had already no longer any meaning for us. A man has rediscovered their key; he has opened the cemeteries of ancient science, and he gives to his century a whole world of forgotten theorems, of syntheses as simple and sublime as nature, radiating always from unity, and multiplying themselves like numbers with proportions so exact, that the known demonstrates and reveals the unknown. To understand this science, is to see God. The author of this book, as he finishes his work, will think that he has demonstrated it. Then, when you have seen God, the hierophant will say to you:—“Turn round!” and, in the shadow which you throw in the presence of this sun of intelligences, there will appear to you the devil, that black phantom which you see when your gaze is not fixed upon God, and when you think that your shadow fills the sky,—for the vapours of the earth, the higher they go, seem to magnify it more and more. To harmonize in the category of religion science with revelation and reason with faith, to demonstrate in philosophy the absolute principles which reconcile all the antinomies, and finally to reveal the universal equilibrium of natural forces, is the triple object of this work, which will consequently be divided into three parts. {xii} We shall exhibit true religion with such characters, that no one, believer or unbeliever, can fail to recognize it; that will be the absolute in religion. We shall establish in philosophy the immutable characters of that Truth, which is in science, reality; in judgment, reason; and in ethics, justice. Finally, we shall acquaint you with the laws of Nature, whose equilibrium is stability, and we shall show how vain are the phantasies of our imagination before the fertile realities of movement and of life. We shall also invite the great poets of the future to create once more the divine comedy, no longer according to the dreams of man, but according to the mathematics of God. Mysteries of other worlds, hidden forces, strange revelations, mysterious illnesses, exceptional faculties, spirits, apparitions, magical paradoxes, hermetic arcana, we shall say all, and we shall explain all. Who has given us this power? We do not fear to reveal it to our readers. There exists an occult and sacred alphabet which the Hebrews attribute to Enoch, the Egyptians to Thoth or to Hermes Trismegistus, the Greeks to Cadmus and to Palamedes. This alphabet was known to the followers of Pythagoras, and is composed of absolute ideas attached to signs and numbers; by its combinations, it realizes the mathematics of thought. Solomon represented this alphabet by seventy-two names, written upon thirty-six talismans. Eastern initiates still call these the “little keys” or clavicles of Solomon. These keys are described, and their use explained, in a book the source of whose traditional dogma is the patriarch Abraham. This book is called the Sepher Yetzirah; with the aid of the Sepher Yetzirah one can penetrate the {xiii} hidden sense of the Zohar, the great dogmatic treatise of the Qabalah of the Hebrews. The Clavicles of Solomon, forgotten in the course of time, and supposed lost, have been rediscovered by ourselves; without trouble we have opened all the doors of those old sanctuaries where absolute truth seemed to sleep, — always young, and always beautiful, like that princess of the childish legend, who, during a century of slumber, awaits the bridegroom whose mission it is to awaken her. After our book, there will still be mysteries, but higher and farther in the infinite depths. This publication is a light or a folly, a mystification or a monument. Read, reflect, and judge. {xiv} THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES (LA CLEF DES GRANDS MYSTÉRES) BY ELIPHAS LEVI {xv} PART I RELIGIOUS MYSTERIES PROBLEMS FOR SOLUTION I.—To demonstrate in a certain and absolute manner the existence of God, and to give an idea of Him which will satisfy all minds. II.—To establish the existence of a true religion in such a way as to render it incontestable. III.—To indicate the bearing and the raison d’être of all the mysteries of the one true and universal religion. IV.—To turn the objections of philosophy into arguments favourable to true religion. V.—To draw the boundary between religion and superstition, and to give the reason of miracles and prodigies. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS WHEN Count Joseph de Maistre, that grand and passionate lover of Logic, said despairingly, “The world is without religion,” he resembled those people who say rashly ”There is no God.” The world, in truth, is without the religion of Count Joseph de Maistre, as it is probable that such a God as the majority of atheists conceive does not exist. Religion is an idea based upon one constant and universal {1} fact; man is a religious animal. The word “religion” has then a necessary and absolute sense. Nature herself sanctifies the idea which this word represents, and exalts it to the height of a principle. The need of believing is closely linked with the need of loving; for that reason our souls need communion in the same hopes and in the same love. Isolated beliefs are only doubts: it is the bond of mutual confidence which, by creating faith, composes religion. Faith does not invent itself, does not impose itself, does not establish itself by any political agreement; like life, it manifests itself with a sort of fatality. The same power which directs the phenomena of nature, extends and limits the supernatural domain of faith, despite all human foresight. One does not imagine revelations; one undergoes then, and one believes in them. In vain does the spirit protest against the obscurities of dogma; it is subjugated by the attraction of these very obscurities, and often the least docile of reasoners would blush to accept the title of “irreligious man.” Religion holds a greater place among the realities of life than those who do without religion — or pretend to do without it — affect to believe. All ideas that raise man above the animal — moral love, devotion, honour — are sentiments essentially religious. The cult of the fatherland and of the family, fidelity to an oath and to memory, are things which humanity will never abjure without degrading itself utterly, and which could never exist without the belief in something greater than mortal life, with all its vicissitudes, its ignorance and its misery. If annihilation were the result of all our aspirations to {2} those sublime things which we feel to be eternal, our only duties would be the enjoyment of the present, forgetfulness of the past, and carelessness about the future, and it would be rigorously true to say, as a celebrated sophist once said, that the man who thinks is a degraded animal. Moreover, of all human passions, religious passion is the most powerful and the most lively. It generates itself, whether by affirmation or negation, with an equal fanaticism, some obstinately affirming the god that they have made in their own image, the others denying God with rashness, as if they had been able to understand and to lay waste by a single thought all that world of infinity which pertains to His great name. Philosophers have not sufficiently considered the physiological fact of religion in humanity, for in truth religion exists apart from all dogmatic discussion. It is a faculty of the human soul just as much as intelligence and love. While man exists, so will religion. Considered in this light, it is nothing but the need of an infinite idealism, a need which justifies every aspiration for progress, which inspires every devotion, which alone prevents virtue and honour from being mere words, serving to exploit the vanity of the weak and the foolish to the profit of the strong and the clever. It is to this innate need of belief that one might justly give the name of natural religion; and all which tends to clip the wings of these beliefs is, on the religious plane, in opposition to nature. The essence of the object of religion is mystery, since faith begins with the unknown, abandoning the rest to the investigations of science. Doubt is, moreover, the mortal enemy of faith; faith feels that the intervention of {3} the divine being is necessary to fill the abyss which separates the finite from the infinite, and it affirms this intervention with all the warmth of its heart, with all the docility of its intelligence. If separated from this act of faith, the need of religion finds no satisfaction, and turns to scepticism and to despair. But in order that the act of faith should not be an act of folly, reason wishes it to be directed and ruled. By what? By science? We have seen that science can do nothing here. By the civil authority? It is absurd. Are our prayers to be superintended by policemen? There remains, then, moral authority, which alone is able to constitute dogma and establish the discipline of worship, in concert this time with the civil authority, but not in obedience to its orders. It is necessary, in a word, that faith should give to the religious need a real satisfaction, — a satisfaction entire, permanent and indubitable. To obtain that, it is necessary to have the absolute and invariable affirmation of a dogma preserved by an authorized hierarchy. It is necessary to have an efficacious cult, giving, with an absolute faith, a substantial realization of the symbols of belief. Religion thus understood being the only one which can satisfy the natural need of religion, it must be the only really natural religion. We arrive, without help from others, at this double definition, that true natural religion is revealed religion. The true revealed religion is the hierarchical and traditional religion, which affirms itself absolutely, above human discussion, by communion in faith, hope, and charity. Representing the moral authority, and realizing it by the efficacy of its ministry, the priesthood is as holy and infallible as humanity is subject to vice and to error. The priest, {4} qua priest, is always the representative of God. Of little account are the faults or even the crimes of man. When Alexander VI consecrated his bishops, it was not the poisoner who laid his hands upon them, it was the pope. Pope Alexander VI never corrupted or falsified the dogmas which condemned him, or the sacraments which in his hands saved others, and did not justify him. At all times and in all places there have been liars and criminals, but in the hierarchical and divinely authorized Church there have never been, and there will never be, either bad popes or bad priests. ”Bad” and ”priest” form an oxymoron. We have mentioned Alexander VI, and we think that this name will be sufficient without other memories as justly execrated as his being brought up against us. Great criminals have been able to dishonour themselves doubly because of the sacred character with which they were invested, but they had not the power to dishonour that character, which remains always radiant and splendid above fallen humanity.1 1 A dog has six legs. Definition. It is no answer to this to show that all dogs have four.—O.M. We have said that there is no religion without mysteries; let us add that there are no mysteries without symbols. The symbol, being the formula or the expression of the mystery, only expresses its unknown depth by paradoxical images borrowed from the known. The symbolic form, having for its object to characterize what is above scientific reason, should necessarily find itself without that reason: hence the celebrated and perfectly just remark of a Father of the Church: “I believe because it is absurd. Credo quia absurdum.” If science were to affirm what it did not know, it would {5} destroy itself. Science will then never be able to perform the work of faith, any more than faith can decide in a matter of science. An affirmation of faith with which science is rash enough to meddle can then be nothing but an absurdity for it, just as a scientific statement, if given us as an article of faith, would be an absurdity on the religious plane. To know and to believe are two terms which can never be confounded. It would be equally impossible to oppose the one to the other. It is impossible, in fact, to believe the contrary of what one knows without ceasing, for that very reason, to know it; and it is equally impossible to achieve a knowledge contrary to what one believes without ceasing immediately to believe. To deny or even to contest the decisions of faith in the name of science is to prove that one understands neither science nor faith: in fine, the mystery of a God of three persons is not a problem of mathematics; the incarnation of the Word is not a phenomenon in obstetrics; the scheme of redemption stands apart from the criticism of the historian. Science is absolutely powerless to decide whether we are right or wrong in believing or disbelieving dogma; it can only observe the results of belief, and if faith evidently improves men, if, moreover, faith is in itself, considered as a physiological fact, evidently a necessity and a force, science will certainly be obliged to admit it, and take the wise part of always reckoning with it. Let us now dare to affirm that there exists an immense fact equally appreciable both by faith and science; a fact which makes God visible (in a sense) upon earth; a fact incontestable and of universal bearing; this fact is the manifestation in the world, beginning from the epoch when the {6} Christian revelation was made, of a spirit unknown to the ancients, of a spirit evidently divine, more positive than science in its works, in its aspirations, more magnificently ideal than the highest poetry, a spirit for which it was necessary to create a new name, a name altogether unheard2 in the sanctuaries of antiquity. This name was created, and we shall demonstrate that this name, this word, is, in religion, as much for science as for faith, the expression of the absolute. The word is CHARITY, and the spirit of which we speak is the spirit of charity. Before charity, faith prostrates itself, and conquered science bows. There is here evidently something greater than humanity; charity proves by its works that it is not a dream. It is stronger than all the passions; it triumphs over suffering and over death; it makes God understood by every heart, and seems already to fill eternity by the begun realization of its legitimate hopes. Before charity alive and in action who is the Proudhon who dares blaspheme? Who is the Voltaire who dares laugh? Pile one upon the other the sophisms of Diderot, the critical arguments of Strauss, the “Ruins” of Volney, so well named, for this man could make nothing but ”ruins,” the blasphemies of the revolution whose voice was extinguished once in blood, and once again in the silence of contempt; join to it all that the future may hold for us of monstrosities and of vain dreams; then will there come the humblest and the simplest of all sisters of charity, — the world will leave there all its follies, and all its crimes, and all its dreams, to bow before this sublime reality. {7} 2 Who, however, had the word laid aside against the time when Paul should give it a meaning.—O.M. Charity! word divine, sole word which makes God understood, word which contains a universal revelation! Spirit of charity, alliance of two words, which are a complete solution and a complete promise! To what question, in fine, do these two words not find an answer? What is God for us, if not the spirit of charity? What is orthodoxy? Is it not the spirit of charity which refuses to discuss faith lest it should trouble the confidence of simple souls, and disturb the peace of universal communion?3 And the universal church, is it any other thing than a communion in the spirit of charity? It is by the spirit of charity that the church is infallible. It is the spirit of charity which is the divine virtue of the priesthood. Duty of man, guarantee of his rights, proof of his immortality, eternity of happiness commencing for him upon the earth, glorious aim given to his existence, goal and path of all his struggles, perfection of his individual, civil and religious morality, the spirit of charity understands all, and is able to hope all, undertake all, and accomplish all. It is by the spirit of charity that Jesus expiring on the cross gave a son to His mother in the person of St. John, and, triumphing over the anguish of the most frightful torture, gave a cry of deliverance and of salvation, saying, “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit!” It is by charity that twelve Galilean artisans conquered the world; they loved truth more than life, and they went without followers to speak it to peoples and to kings; tested by torture, {8} they were found faithful. They showed to the multitude a living immortality in their death, and they watered the earth with a blood whose heat could not be extinguished, because they were burning with the ardours of charity. 3 Sublime houmour of sophistry! Levi asserts, “Any lie will serve, provided every one acquiesces in it,” and reprehends Christianity for disturbing the peace of Paganism. “Or,” indicates that Christianity is but syncretic-eclectic Paganism, and defends it on this ground.—O.M. It is by charity that the Apostles built up their Creed. They said that to believe together was worth more than to doubt separately; they constituted the hierarchy on the basis of obedience — rendered so noble and so great by the spirit of charity, that to serve in this manner is to reign; they formulated the faith of all and the hope of all, and they put this Creed in the keeping of the charity of all. Woe to the egoist who appropriates to himself a single word of this inheritance of the Word; he is a deicide, who wishes to dismember the body of the Lord. This creed is the holy ark of charity; whoso touches it is stricken by eternal death, for charity withdraws itself from him. It is the sacred inheritance of our children, it is the price of the blood of our fathers! It is by charity that the martyrs took consolation in the prisons of the Caesars, and won over to their belief even their warders and their executioners. It is in the name of charity that St. Martin of Tours protested against the torture of the Priscillians,4 and separated {9} himself from the communion of the tyrant who wished to impose faith by the sword. 4 The Priscillianist heresy was disturbing the Church, especially in Spain. The Emperor Maximus, a Spaniard, was inclined to put it down with a strong hand and confiscate the heretics’ property. The Gallic clergy hounded him on, and the Councils of Bordeaux and Saragossa encouraged him. Two Spanish priests, Ithacus and Idacus, clamoured for the heretics’ punishment by the secular arm. But St. Martin of Tours, stalwart champion of orthodoxy as he was, resisted, and in 385 he went to Trèves to plead for the persecuted Priscillianists. He prevailed. So long as Martin stayed at court the Ithacan party was foiled. When he left they had the upper hand again, and Maximus gave the suppression of the heretics into the hands of the unrelenting Evodious. Priscillian was killed. Exile and death were the fate of his followers. Heresy blazed the stronger, and a worse persecution was threatened. Then St. Martin left his cell at Marmontier, and set out a second time to Trèves. News of the old man coming along the road on his ass reached his enemies. They met him at the gate and refused him entrance. “But,” said Martin, “I come with the peace of Jesus Christ.” And such was the power of this presence that they could not close the city gates against him. But the palace doors were closed. Martin refused to see the Ithacans or to receive the Communion with them, and their fury at this is eloquent testimony of their sense of his power. They appealed to Maximus, who delivered over Martin bound to them. But in the night Maximus sent for Martin, argued, coaxed, persuaded him to compromise. The schism would be great, he persisted, if Martin continued to exasperate the Ithacans. Martin said he had nothing to do with persecutors. In wrath the Emperor let him go, and gave orders to the Tribunes to depart to Spain and carry out a rigorous Inquisition. Then Martin returned to Maximus and bargained. Let this order be revoked, and he would receive Communion with the Ithacans next day at the election of the new Archbishop. The order was revoked, and Martin kept his word. But when he knew the cause of Humanity safe, he departed, and on his way back to Tours experienced a great agony. Why had he had dealings with the Ithacans? In a lonely place he pondered sadly. An angel spoke to him. “Martin, you do right to be sad, but it was the only way.” Never again did he go to any council. He was wont to say with tears that if he had saved the heretics he himself had lost power over men and over demons. They have outraged the meaning of the episode who explain Martin’s protest as merely against the surrender of the Church to Secular Power. It was lèse-humanité of which he held the Ithacans guilty. St. Martin of Tours was often called Martin the Thaumaturgist. He was noted for his power over animals. It is by charity that so great a crowd of saints have forced the world to accept them as expiation for the crimes committed in the name of religion itself, and the scandals of the profaned sanctuary. It is by charity that St. Vincent de Paul and Fenelon compelled the admiration of even the most impious centuries, and quelled in advance the laughter of the children of Voltaire before the imposing dignity of their virtues. (10} It is by charity, finally, that the folly of the cross has become the wisdom of the nations, because every noble heart has understood that it is greater to believe with those who love, and who devote themselves, than to doubt with the egotists and with the slaves of pleasure. {11} FIRST ARTICLE SOLUTION OF THE FIRST PROBLEM THE TRUE GOD GOD can only be defined by faith; science can neither deny nor affirm that He exists. God is the absolute object of human faith. In the infinite, He is the supreme and creative intelligence of order. In the world, He is the spirit of charity. Is the Universal Being a fatal machine which eternally grinds down intelligences by chance, or a providential intelligence which directs forces in order to ameliorate minds? The first hypothesis is repugnant to reason; it is pessimistic and immoral. Science and reason ought then to accept the second. Yes, Proudhon, God is an hypothesis, but an hypothesis so necessary, that without it, all theorems become absurd or doubtful. For initiates of the Qabalah, God is the absolute unity which creates and animates numbers. The unity of the human intelligence demonstrates the unity of God. The key of numbers is that of creeds, because signs are {12} analogical figures of the harmony which proceeds from numbers. Mathematics could never demonstrate blind fatality, because they are the expression of the exactitude which is the character of the highest reason. Unity demonstrates the analogy of contraries; it is the foundation, the equilibrium, and the end of numbers. The act of faith starts from unity, and returns to unity. THE SIGN OF THE GRAND ARCANUM G∴ A∴ {Illustration on page 13 described: This is titled below: “THE SIGN OF THE GRAND ARCANUM G∴ A∴” The figure is contained within a rectangle of width about half height. The main element is a circle, bottom half shaded, pierced through on the vertical diameter from below by a vertical sword or baton. The “sword” has a right hand holding the pommel below, issuing from a cloud to lower right. The hilt is not evident simply, but suggested by two tails of serpents crossing just below the lower limit of the circle. To either side of the pommel beneath the snake tails are the letters “FIN” to left and “AL” to right. The point of the sword above the upper limit of the circle is buttoned by a fleur-de-lis. The two serpents are entwined about the sword to form a caduceus with two circles vertically circumscribed within the greater circle. These serpents are billed. There are two shaded bands on the two horizontal diameters of the serpent circles. Five Hebrew letters are along the sword, only the topmost upon the blade and the others beneath: Top quarter — HB:Yod , next quarter — HB:Aleph , center — HB:Shin , next quarter is probably but not certainly HB:Mem , bottom quarter is an inverted HB:Heh . The upper half of the upper serpent circle has Aleph-Heh-Yod-Heh just above the diameter bar, and the lower quarter of the lower serpent circle has the same inverted just below the diameter bar. There is an “X” of thin line diameters across the large circle. At the horizontal diameter of the large circle, just above to the left “THROSNE” and to the right “DE JVSTICE”. Oriented about the circle to be read from the center are the following words: At left outside ”COVRONNE”, at top and split “MED” “IATE”, at right “ECLESIASTIQVE”, at bottom and split “DIR” “ECTE”. Two words in italics extend just above the horizontal diameter in invisible extensis and through the rectangle: to left ”HARMONIE”, to right “CEELESTE”. Above the button of the sword is a small circle, and to the left of that “Tzaddi-Dalet-Qof”, to the right “Peh-Lamed-Kophfinal” (possibly “Mem-Lamed-Kophfinal” or “Samekh-Lamed-Kophfinal”). Below this, interrupted by the button are two texts: to the right: “(?)Aleph-Samekh-Peh-Kophfinal Bet-Shin-Vau-Shin-Nunfinal Heh-Bet-Yod-Resh ” (First word doubtful, text referred to Dan. 8, where it must be altered from Dan. 8, 2: “Vau-Aleph-Nun-Yod Bet-Shin-Vau-Shin-Nunfinal Heh-Bet-Yod-Resh-Heh” “I was in Shushan castle”. This variant could be translated as “sheath in Shushan castle”.) Beneath this: “DANIEL ch. 8.” The text to the left cannot be rendered accurately owing to similarity of letter shapes and no direct bearing to the text cited. It looks like: “Aleph-Taw-Tet-Dalet-Resh-Vau-Shin Samekh-Resh-Vau-Koph-Yod”, but that is not likely to be even close. Beneath this is the citation “Nehemie ch.1 v.1” which does not contain any part of this versicle, but which does mention the castle at Shusah, cited in the versicle to the right. Possibly the whole thing is a continuation of a paraphrase of Daniel 8, 2, with the text unclear because of letter shapes poorly written. Lastly, to the left outside of the upper serpent circle: “SENS”; and to the right inside the same: “RASON” — both oriented to be read from the center.} {13} We shall now sketch out an explanation of the Bible by the aid of numbers, for the Bible is the book of the images of God. We shall ask numbers to give us the reason of the dogmas of eternal religion; numbers will always reply by reuniting themselves in the synthesis of unity. The following pages are simply outlines of qabalistic hypotheses; they stand apart from faith, and we indicate them only as curiosities of research. It is no part of our task to make innovations in dogma, and what we assert in our character as an initiate is entirely subordinate to our submission in our character as a Christian.5 5 This passage is typical of the sublime irony of Levi, and the key to the whole of his paradoxes.—TRANS. SKETCH OF THE PROPHETIC THEOLOGY OF NUMBERS I UNITY UNITY is the principle and the synthesis of numbers; it is the idea of God and of man; it is the alliance of reason and of faith. Faith cannot be opposed to reason; it is made necessary by love, it is identical with hope. To love is to believe and hope; and this triple outburst of the soul is called virtue, because, in order to make it, courage is necessary. But would there be any courage in that, if doubt were not possible? Now, to be able to doubt, is to doubt. Doubt is the force {14} which balances faith, and it constitutes the whole merit of faith. Nature herself induces us to believe; but the formulae of faith are social expressions of the tendencies of faith at a given epoch. It is that which proves the Church to be infallible, evidentially and in fact. God is necessarily the most unknown of all beings because He is only defined by negative experience; He is all that we are not, He is the infinite opposed to the finite by hypothesis. Faith, and consequently hope and love, are so free that man, far from being able to impose them on others, does not even impose them on himself. “These,” says religion, “are graces.” Now, is it conceivable that grace should be subject to demand or exaction; that is to say, could any one wish to force men to a thing which comes freely and without price from heaven? One must not do more than desire it for them. To reason concerning faith is to think irrationally, since the object of faith is outside the universe of reason. If one asks me:—“Is there a God?” I reply, “I believe it.” “But are you sure of it?”—“If I were sure of it, I should not believe it, I should know it.” The formulation of faith is to agree upon the terms of the common hypothesis. Faith begins where science ends. To enlarge the scope of science is apparently to diminish that of faith; but in reality, it is to enlarge it in equal proportion, for it is to amplify its base. One can only define the unknown by its supposed and supposable relations with the known. {15} Analogy was the sole dogma of the ancient magi. This dogma may indeed be called “mediator,” for it is half scientific, half hypothetical; half reason, and half poetry. This dogma has been, and will always be, the father of all others. What is the Man-God? He who realizes, in the most human life, the most divine ideal. Faith is a divination of intelligence and of love, when these are directed by the pointings of nature and of reason. It is then of the essence of the things of faith to be inaccessible to science, doubtful for philosophy, and undefined for certainty. Faith is an hypothetical realization and a conventional determination of the last aims of hope. It is the attachment to the visible sign of the things which one does not see. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” To affirm without folly that God is or that He is not, one must begin with a reasonable or unreasonable definition of God. Now, this definition, in order to be reasonable, must be hypothetical, analogical, and the negation of the known finite. It is possible to deny a particular God, but the absolute God can no more be denied than He can be proved; He is a reasonable supposition in whom one believes. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” said the Master; to see with the heart is to believe; and if this faith is attached to the true good, it can never be deceived, provided that it does not seek to define too much in accordance with the dangerous inductions which spring from personal ignorance. Our judgments in questions of faith apply to {16} ourselves; it will be done to us as we have believed; that is to say, we create ourselves in the image of our ideal. “Those who make their gods become like unto them,” says the psalmist, ”and all they that put their trust in them.” The divine ideal of the ancient world made the civilization which came to an end, and one must not despair of seeing the god of our barbarous fathers become the devil of our more enlightened children. One makes devils with cast-off gods,6 and Satan is only so incoherent and so formless because he is made up of all the rags of ancient theogonies. He is the sphinx without a secret, the riddle without an answer, the mystery without truth, the absolute without reality and without light. Man is the son of God because God, manifested, realized, and incarnated upon earth, called Himself the Son of man. It is after having made God in the image of His intelligence and of His love, that humanity has understood the sublime Word who said “Let there be light!” Man is the form of the divine thought, and God is the idealized synthesis of human thought. Thus the Word of God reveals man, and the Word of man reveals God. Man is the God of the world, and God is the man of heaven. Before saying “God wills,” man has willed. In order to understand and honour Almighty God, man must first be free. Had he obeyed and abstained from the fruit of the tree of knowledge through fear, man would have been innocent and {17} stupid as the lamb, sceptical and rebellious as the angel of light. He himself cut the umbilical cord of his simplicity, and, falling free upon the earth, dragged God with him in his fall. 6 Christianity has fallen, and so Christ has already become the ‘devil’ to such thinkers as Nietzsche and Crowley.—O.M. And therefore, from this sublime fall, he rises again glorious, with the great convict of Calvary, and enters with Him into the kingdom of heaven. For the kingdom of heaven belongs to intelligence and love, both children of liberty. God has shown liberty to man in the image of a lovely woman, and in order to test his courage, He made the phantom of death pass between her and him. Man loved, and felt himself to be God; he gave for her what God had just bestowed upon him—eternal hope. He leapt towards his bride across the shadow of death. Man possessed liberty; he had embraced life. Expiate now thy glory, O Prometheus! Thy heart, ceaselessly devoured, cannot die; it is thy vulture, it is Jupiter, who will die! One day we shall awake at last from the painful dreams of a tormented life; our ordeal will be finished, and we shall be sufficiently strong against sorrow to be immortal. Then we shall live in God with a more abundant life, and we shall descend into His works with the light of His thought, we shall be borne away into the infinite by the whisper of His love. We shall be without doubt the elder brethren of a new race, the angels of posterity. Celestial messengers, we shall wander in immensity, and the stars will be our gleaming ships. {18} We shall transform ourselves into sweet visions to calm weeping eyes; we shall gather radiant lilies in unknown meadows, and we shall scatter their dew upon the earth. We shall touch the eyelid of the sleeping child, and rejoice the heart of its mother with the spectacle of the beauty of her well-beloved son! II THE BINARY THE binary is more particularly the number of woman, mate of man and mother of society. Man is love in intelligence; woman is intelligence in love. Woman is the smile of the Creator content with himself, and it is after making her that He rested, says the divine parable. Woman stands before man because she is mother, and all is forgiven her in advance, because she brings forth in sorrow. Woman initiated herself first into immortality through death; then man saw her to be so beautiful, and understood her to be so generous, that he refused to survive her, and loved her more than his life, more than his eternal happiness. Happy outlaw, since she has been given to him as companion in his exile! But the children of Cain have revolted against the mother of Abel; they have enslaved their mother. The beauty of woman has become a prey for the brutality of such men as cannot love. Thus woman closed her heart as if it were a secret sanctuary, and said to men unworthy of her: “I am virgin, {19} but I will to become mother, and my son will teach you to love me.” O Eve! Salutation and adoration in thy fall! O Mary! Blessings and adoration in thy sufferings and in thy glory! Crucified and holy one who didst survive thy God that thou mightst bury thy son, be thou for us the final word of the divine revelation! Moses called God “Lord”; Jesus called Him ”My Father,” and we, thinking of thee, may say to Providence, ”You are our mother.” Children of woman, let us forgive fallen woman! Children of woman, let us adore regenerate woman! Children of woman, who have slept upon her breast, been cradled in her arms, and consoled by her caresses, let us love her, and let us love each other! III THE TERNARY THE Ternary is the number of creation. God creates Himself eternally, and the infinite which He fills with His works is an incessant and infinite creation. Supreme love contemplates itself in beauty as in a mirror, and It essays all forms as adornments, for It is the lover of life. Man also affirms himself and creates himself; he adorns himself with his trophies of victory, he enlightens himself with his own conceptions, he clothes himself with his works as with a wedding garment. {20} The great week of creation has been imitated by human genius, divining the forms of nature. Every day has furnished a new revelation, every new king of the world has been for a day the image and the incarnation of God! Sublime dream which explains the mysteries of India, and justifies all symbolisms! The lofty conception of the man-God corresponds to the creation of Adam, and Christianity, like the first days of man in the earthly paradise, has been only an aspiration and a widowhood. We wait for the worship of the bride and of the mother; we shall aspire to the wedding of the New Covenant. Then the poor, the blind, the outlaws of the old world will be invited to the feast, and will receive a wedding garment. They will gaze the one upon the other with inexpressible tenderness and a smile that is ineffable because they have wept so long. IV THE QUATERNARY THE Quaternary is the number of force. It is the ternary completed by its product, the rebellious unity reconciled to the sovereign trinity. In the first fury of life, man, having forgotten his mother, no longer understood God but as an inflexible and jealous father. The sombre Saturn, armed with his parricidal scythe, set himself to devour his children. Jupiter had eyebrows which shook Olympus; Jehovah wielded thunders which deafened the solitudes of Sinai. {21} Nevertheless, the father of men, being on occasion drunken like Noah, let the world perceive the mysteries of life. Psyche, made divine by her torments, became the bride of Eros; Adonis, raised from death, found again his Venus in Olympus; Job, victorious over evil, recovered more than he had lost. The law is a test of courage. To love life more than one fears the menaces of death is to merit life. The elect are those who dare; woe to the timid! Thus the slaves of law, who make themselves the tyrants of conscience and the servants of fear, and those who begrudge that man should hope, and the Pharisees of all the synagogues and of all the churches, are those who receive the reproofs and the curses of the Father. Was not the Christ excommunicated and crucified by the synagogue? Was not Savonarola burned by the order of the sovereign pontiff of the Christian religion? Are not the Pharisees to-day just what they were in the time of Caiaphas? If any one speaks to them in the name of intelligence and love, will they listen? In rescuing the children of liberty from the tyranny of the Pharaohs, Moses inaugurated the reign of the Father. In breaking the insupportable yoke of mosaic pharisaism, Jesus welcomed all men to the brotherhood of the only son of God. When the last ideals fall, when the last material chains of conscience break, when the last of them that killed the {22} prophets and the last of them that stifled the Word are confounded, then will be the reign of the Holy Ghost. Then, Glory to the Father who drowned the host of Pharaoh in the Red Sea! Glory to the Son, who tore the veil of the temple, and whose cross, overweighing the crown of the Caesars, broke the forehead of the Caesars against the earth! Glory to the Holy Ghost, who shall sweep from the earth by His terrible breath all the thieves and all the executioners, to make room for the banquet of the children of God! Glory to the Holy Ghost, who has promised victory over earth and over heaven to the angel of liberty! The angel of liberty was born before the dawn of the first day, before even the awakening of intelligence, and God called him the morning star. O Lucifer! Voluntarily and disdainfully thou didst detach thyself from the heaven where the sun drowned thee in his splendour, to plow with thine own rays the unworked fields of night! Thou shinest when the sun sets, and thy sparkling gaze precedes the daybreak! Thou fallest to rise again; thou tastest of death to understand life better! For the ancient glories of the world, thou art the evening star; for truth renascent, the lovely star of dawn. Liberty is not licence, for licence is tyranny. Liberty is the guardian of duty, because it reclaims right.7 Lucifer, of whom the dark ages have made the genius of {23} evil, will be truly the angel of light when, having conquered liberty at the price of infamy, he will make use of it to submit himself to eternal order, inaugurating thus the glories of voluntary obedience. 7 Right—’droit’— a word much in evidence at the time, with no true English equivalent, save in such phrases as ‘the right to work.’ By itself it is only used in the plural, which will not do here, and throughout this treatise.—TRANS. Right is only the root of duty; one must possess in order to give. This is how a lofty and profound poetry explains the fall of the angels. God hath given to His spirits light and life; then He said to them: “Love!” “What is—to love?” replied the spirits. “To love is to give oneself to others,” replied God. ”Those who love will suffer, but they will be loved.” “We have the right to give nothing, and we wish to suffer nothing,” said the spirits, hating love. “Remain in your right,” answered God, ”and let us separate! I and Mine wish to suffer and even to die, to love. It is our duty!” The fallen angel is then he who, from the beginning, refused to love; he does not love, and that is his whole torture; he does not give, and that is his poverty; he does not suffer, and that is his nothingness; he does not die, and that is his exile. The fallen angel is not Lucifer the light-bearer; it is Satan, who calumniated love. To be rich is to give; to give nothing is to be poor; to live is to love; to love nothing is to be dead; to be happy is to devote oneself; to exist only for oneself is to cast away oneself, and to exile oneself in hell. Heaven is the harmony of generous thoughts; hell is the conflict of cowardly instincts. {24} The man of right is Cain who kills Abel from envy; the man of duty is Abel who dies for Cain for love. And such has been the mission of Christ, the great Abel of humanity. It is not for right that we should dare all, it is for duty. Duty is the expansion and the enjoyment of liberty; isolated right is the father of slavery. Duty is devotion; right is selfishness. Duty is sacrifice; right is theft and rapine. Duty is love, and right is hate. Duty is infinite life; right is eternal death. If one must fight to conquer right, it is only to acquire the power of duty: what use have we for freedom, unless to love and to devote ourselves to God? If one must break the law, it is when law imprisons love in fear. “He that saveth his life shall lose it,” says the holy Book; ”and he who consents to lose it will save it.” Duty is love; perish every obstacle to love! Silence, ye oracles of hate! Destruction to the false gods of selfishness and fear! Shame to the slaves, the misers of love! God loves prodigal children! V THE QUINARY THE Quinary is the number of religion, for it is the number of God united to that of woman.8 {25} 8 Almost too visible a sneer of the Atheist and woman-despiser.—O.M. Faith is not the stupid credulity of an awestruck ignorance. Faith is the consciousness and the confidence of Love. Faith is the cry of reason, which persists in denying the absurd, even in the presence of the unknown. Faith is a sentiment necessary to the soul, just as breathing is to life; it is the dignity of courage, and the reality of enthusiasm. Faith does not consist of the affirmation of this symbol or that, but of a genuine and constant aspiration towards the truths which are veiled by all symbolisms. If a man rejects an unworthy idea of divinity, breaks its false images, revolts against hateful idolaters, you will call him an atheist! The authors of the persecutions in fallen Rome called the first Christians atheists, because they did not adore the idols of Caligula or of Nero. To deny a religion, even to deny all religions rather than adhere to formulae which conscience rejects, is a courageous and sublime act of faith. Every man who suffers for his convictions is a martyr of faith. He explains himself badly, it may be, but he prefers justice and truth to everything; do not condemn him without understanding him. To believe in the supreme truth is not to define it, and to declare that one believes in it is to recognize that one does not know it. The Apostle St. Paul declares all faith contained in these two things:—To believe that God is, and that He rewards them who seek Him. {26} Faith is a greater thing than all religions, because it states the articles of belief with less precision. Any dogma constitutes but a belief, and belongs to our particular communion; faith is a sentiment which is common to the whole of humanity. The more one discusses with the object of obtaining greater accuracy, the less one believes; every new dogma is a belief which a sect appropriates to itself, and thus, in some sort, steals from universal faith. Let us leave sectarians to make and remake their dogmas; let us leave the superstitious to detail and formulate their superstitions. As the Master said, “Let the dead bury their dead!” Let us believe in the indicible truth; let us believe in that Absolute which reason admits without understanding it; let us believe in what we feel without knowing it! Let us believe in the supreme reason! Let us believe in Infinite Love, and pity the stupidities of scholasticism and the barbarities of false religion! O man! Tell me what thou hopest, and I will tell thee what thou art worth. Thou dost pray, thou dost fast, thou dost keep vigil; dost thou then believe that so thou wilt escape alone, or almost alone, from the enormous ruin of mankind—devoured by a jealous God? Thou art impious, and a hypocrite. Dost thou turn life into an orgie, and hope for the slumber of nothingness? Thou art sick, and insensate. Art thou ready to suffer as others and for others, and hope for the salvation of all? Thou art a wise and just man. To hope is to fear not. To be afraid of God, what blasphemy! {27} The act of hope is prayer. Prayer is the flowering of the soul in eternal wisdom and in eternal love. It is the gaze of the spirit towards truth, and the sigh of the heart towards supreme beauty. It is the smile of the child upon its mother. It is the murmur of the lover, who reaches out towards the kisses of his mistress. It is the soft joy of a loving soul as it expands in an ocean of love. It is the sadness of the bride in the absence of the bridegroom. It is the sigh of the traveller who thinks of his fatherland. It is the thought of the poor man who works to support his wife and children. Let us pray in silence; let us raise toward our unknown Father a look of confidence and of love; let us accept with faith and resignation the part which He assigns to us in the toils of life, and every throb of our hearts will be a word of prayer! Have we need to inform God of what we ask from Him? Does not He know what is necessary for us? If we weep, let us offer Him our tears; if we rejoice, let us turn towards Him our smile; if He smite us, let us bow the head; if He caress us, let us sleep within His arms! Our prayer will be perfect, when we pray without knowing whom we pray. Prayer is not a noise which strikes the ear; it is a silence which penetrates the heart. {28} Soft tears come to moisten the eyes, and sighs escape like incense smoke. One feels oneself in love, ineffably in love, with all that is beauty, truth, and justice; one throbs with a new life, and one fears no more to die. For prayer is the eternal life of intelligence and love; it is the life of God upon earth. Love one another—that is the Law and the Prophets! Meditate, and understand this word. And when you have understood, read no more, seek no more, doubt no more—love! Be no more wise, be no more learned—love! That is the whole doctrine of true religion; religion means charity, and God Himself is only love. I have already said to you, to love is to give. The impious man is he who absorbs others. The pious man is he who loses himself in humanity. If the heart of man concentrate in himself the fire with which God animates it, it is a hell which devours all, and fills itself only with ashes; if he radiates it without, it becomes a tender sun of love. Man owes himself to his family; his family owes itself to the fatherland; and the fatherland to humanity. The egoism of man merits isolation and despair; that of the family, ruin and exile; that of the fatherland, war and invasion. The man who isolates himself from every human love, saying, “I will serve God,” deceives himself. For, said St. John the Apostle, if he loveth not his neighbour whom he hath see, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen? One must render to God that which is God’s, but one must not refuse even to Caesar that which is Caesar’s. {29} God is He who gives life; Caesar can only give death. One must love God, and not fear Caesar; as it is written in the Holy Book, “He that taketh the sword shall perish by the sword.” You wish to be good? Then be just. You wish to be just? Then be free. The vices which make man like the brute are the first enemies of his liberty. Consider the drunkard, and tell me if this unclean brute can be called free! The miser curses the life of his father, and, like the crow, hungers for corpses. The goal of the ambitious man is—ruins; it is the delirium of envy! The debauchee spits upon the breast of his mother, and fills with abortions the entrails of death. All these loveless hearts are punished by the most cruel of all tortures, hate. Because—take it to heart!—the expiation is implicit in the sin. The man who does evil is like an earthen pot ill-made; he will break himself: fatality wills it. With the debris of the worlds, God makes stars; with the debris of souls He makes angels. VI THE SENARY THE Senary is the number of initiation by ordeal; it is the number of equilibrium, it is the hieroglyph of the knowledge of Good and Evil. {30} He who seeks the origin of evil, seeks the source of what is not. Evil is the disordered appetite of good, the unfruitful attempt of an unskilful will. Every one possesses the fruit of his work, and poverty is only the spur to toil. For the flock of men, suffering is like the shepherd dog, who bites the wool of the sheep to put them back in the right way. It is because of shadow that we are able to see light; because of cold that we feel heat; because of pain that we are sensible to pleasure. Evil is then for us the occasion and the beginning of good. But, in the dreams of our imperfect intelligence, we accuse the work of Providence, through failing to understand it. We resemble the ignorant person who judges the picture by the beginning of the sketch, and says, when the head is done, “What! Has this figure no body?” Nature remains calm, and accomplishes its work. The ploughshare is not cruel when it tears the bosom of the earth, and the great revolutions of the world are the husbandry of God. There is a place for everything: to savage peoples, barbarous masters; to cattle, butchers; to men, judges and fathers. If time could change the sheep into lions, they would eat the butchers and the shepherds. Sheep never change because they do not instruct themselves; but peoples instruct themselves. Shepherds and butchers of the people, you are then {31} right to regard as your enemies those who speak to your flock! Flocks who know yet only your shepherds, and who wish to remain ignorant of their dealings with the butchers, it is excusable that you should stone them who humiliate you and disturb you, in speaking to you of your rights. O Christ! The authorities condemn Thee, Thy disciples deny Thee, the people curses Thee, and demands Thy murder; only Thy mother weeps for Thee, even God abandons Thee! “Eli! Eli! lama sabachthani!” VII THE SEPTENARY THE Septenary is the great biblical number. It is the key of the Creation in the books of Moses and the symbol of all religion. Moses left five books, and the Law is complete in two testaments. The Bible is not a history, it is a collection of poems, a book of allegories and images. Adam and Eve are only the primitive types of humanity; the tempter serpent is time which tests; the Tree of Knowledge is ‘right’; the expiation by toil is duty. Cain and Abel represent the flesh and the spirit, force and intelligence, violence and harmony. The giants are those who usurped the earth in ancient times; the flood was a great revolution. The ark is tradition preserved in a family: religion at this period becomes a mystery and the property of the race. Ham was cursed for having revealed it. {32} Nimrod and Babel are the two primitive allegories of the despot, and of the universal empire which has always filled the dreams of men,—a dream whose fulfilment was sought successively by the Assyrians, the Medes, the Persians, Alexander, Rome, Napoleon, the successors of Peter the Great, and always unfinished because of the dispersion of interests, symbolized by the confusion of tongues. The universal empire could not realize itself by force, but by intelligence and love. Thus, to Nimrod, the man of savage ‘right,’ the Bible opposed Abraham, the man of duty, who goes voluntarily into exile in order to seek liberty and strife in a strange country, which he seizes by virtue of his Idea. He has a sterile wife, his thought, and a fertile slave, his force; but when force has produced its fruit, thought becomes fertile; and the son of intelligence drives into exile the child of force. The man of intelligence is submitted to rude tests; he must confirm his conquests by sacrifices. God orders him to immolate his son, that is to say, doubt ought to test dogma, and the intellectual man should be ready to sacrifice everything on the altar of supreme reason. Then God intervenes: universal reason yields to the efforts of labour, and shows herself to science; the material side of dogma is alone immolated. . This is the meaning of the ram caught by its horns in a thicket. The history of Abraham is, then, a symbol in the ancient manner, and contains a lofty revelation of the destinies of the human soul. Taken literally, it is an absurd and revolting story. Did not St. Augustine take literally the Golden Ass of Apuleius? Poor great men! {33} The history of Isaac is another legend. Rebecca is the type of the oriental woman, laborious, hospitable, partial in her affections, shrewd and wily in her manoeuvres. Jacob and Esau are again the two types of Cain and Abel; but here Abel avenges himself: the emancipated intelligence triumphs by cunning. The whole of the genius of the Jews is in the character of Jacob, the patient and laborious supplanter who yields to the wrath of Esau, becomes rich, and buys his brother’s forgiveness. One must never forget that, when the ancients want to philosophize, they tell a story. The history or legend of Joseph contains, in germ, the whole genius of the Gospel; and the Christ, misunderstood by His people, must often have wept in reading over again that scene, where the Governor of Egypt throws himself on the neck of Benjamin, with the great cry of “I am Joseph!” Israel becomes the people of God, that is to say, the conservator of the idea, and the depositaries of the word. This idea is that of human independence, and of royalty, by means of work; but one hides it with care, like a precious seed. A painful and indelible sign is imprinted on the initiates; every image of the truth is forbidden, and the children of Jacob watch, sword in hand, around the unity of the tabernacle. Hamor and Shechem wish to introduce themselves forcibly into the holy family, and perish with their people after undergoing a feigned initiation. In order to dominate the vulgar, it is already necessary that the sanctuary should surround itself with sacrifices and with terror. The servitude of the children of Jacob paves the way for their deliverance: for they have an idea, and one does not enchain an idea; they have a religion, and one does not {34} violate a religion; they are, in fine, a people, and one does not enchain a real people. Persecution stirs up avengers; the idea incarnates itself in a man; Moses springs up; Pharaoh falls; and the column of smoke and flame, which goes before a freed people, advances majestically into the desert. Christ is priest and king by intelligence and by love. He has received the holy unction, the unction of genius, faith and virtue, which is force. He comes when the priesthood is worn out, when the old symbols have no more virtue, when the beacon of intelligence is extinguished. He comes to recall Israel to life, and if he cannot galvanize Israel, slain by the Pharisees, into life, he will resurrect the world given over to the dead worship of idols. Christ is the right to do one’s duty. Man has the right to do his duty, and he has no other right. O man! thou hast the right to resist even unto death any who prevents thee from doing thy duty. Mother! Thy child is drowning; a man prevents thee from helping him; thou strikest this man, thou dost run to save thy son! … Who, then, will dare to condemn thee? Christ came to oppose the right of duty to the duty of right. ’Right,’ with the Jews, was the doctrine of the Pharisees. And, indeed, they seemed to have acquired the privilege of dogmatizing; were they not the legitimate heirs of the synagogue? They had the right to condemn the Saviour, and the Saviour knew that His duty was to resist them. {35} Christ is the soul of protest. But the protest of what? Of the flesh against the intelligence? No! Of right against duty? No! Of the physical against the moral? No! No! Of imagination against universal reason? Of folly against wisdom? No, a thousand times No, and once more No! Christ is the reality, duty, which protests eternally against the ideality, right. He is the emancipation of the spirit which breaks the slavery of the flesh. He is devotion in revolt against egoism. He is the sublime modesty which replies to pride: “I will not obey thee!” Christ is unmated; Christ is solitary; Christ is sad: Why? Because woman has prostituted herself. Because society is guilty of theft. Because selfish joy is impious. Christ is judged, condemned, and executed; and men adore Him! This happened in a world perhaps as serious as our own. Judges of the world in which we live, pay attention, and think of Him who will judge your judgments! But, before dying, the Saviour bequeathed to His children the immortal sign of salvation, Communion. Communion! Common union! the final word of the Saviour of the world! “The Bread and the Wine shared among all,” said He, “this is my flesh and my blood.” {36} He gave His flesh to the executioners, His blood to the earth which drank it. Why? In order that all may partake of the bread of intelligence, and of the wine of love. O sign of the union of men! O Round Table of universal chivalry! O banquet of fraternity and equality! When will you be better understood? Martyrs of humanity, all ye who have given your life in order that all should have the bread which nourishes and the wine which fortifies, do ye not also say, placing your hands on the signs of the universal communion: “This is our flesh and our blood”? And you, men of the whole world, you whom the Master calls His brothers; oh, do you not feel that the universal bread, the fraternal bread, the bread of the communion, is God? Retailers of the Crucified One! All you who are not ready to give your blood, your flesh and your life to humanity, you are not worthy of the Communion of the Son of God! Do not let His blood flow upon you, for it would brand your forehead! Do not approach your lips to the heart of God, He would feel your sting! Do not drink the blood of the Christ, it will burn your entrails; it is quite sufficient that it should have flowed uselessly for you! VIII THE NUMBER EIGHT THE Ogdoad is the number of reaction and of equilibrating justice. {37} Every action produces a reaction. This is the universal law of the world. Christianity must needs produce anti-Christianity. Antichrist is the shadow, the foil, the proof of Christ. Antichrist already produced itself in the Church in the time of the Apostles: St. Paul said:—“For the mystery of iniquity doth already work; only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked One be revealed. …”9 The Protestants said: “Antichrist is the Pope.” The Pope replied: “Every heretic is an Antichrist.” The Antichrist is no more the Pope than Luther; the Antichrist is the spirit opposed to that of Christ. It is the usurpation of right for the sake of right; it is the pride of domination and the despotism of thought. It is the selfishness, self-styled religious, of Protestants, as well as the credulous and imperious ignorance of bad Catholics. The Antichrist is what divides men instead of uniting them; it is a spirit of dispute, the obstinacy of the theologians and sectarians, the impious desire of appropriating the truth to oneself, and excluding others from it, or of forcing the whole world to submit to the narrow yoke of our judgments. The Antichrist is the priest who curses instead of blessing, who drives away instead of attracting, who scandalizes instead of edifying, who damns instead of saving. It is the hateful fanaticism which discourages good-will. It is the worship of death, sadness, and ugliness. {38} 9 2 Thess. ii. 7,8. This passage is presumably that referred to by the author. Cf. 1 John iv. 3, and ii, 18.—TRANS. “What career shall we choose for our son?” have said many stupid parents; ”he is mentally and bodily weak, and he is without a spark of courage:—we will make a priest of him, so that he may ‘live by the altar.’” They have not understood that the altar is not a manger for slothful animals. Look at the unworthy priests, contemplate these pretended servants of the altar! What do they say to your heart, these obese or cadaverous men with the lack-lustre eyes, and pinched or gaping mouths?10 Hear them talk: what does it teach you, their disagreeable and monotonous noise? They pray as they sleep, and they sacrifice as they eat. They are machines full of bread, meat and wine, and of senseless words. And when they plume themselves, like the oyster in the sun, on being without thought and without love, one says that they have peace of soul! They have the peace of the brute. For man, that of the tomb is better: these are the priests of folly and ignorance, these are the ministers of Antichrist. The true priest of Christ is a man who lives, suffers, loves and fights for justice. He does not dispute, he does not reprove; he sends out pardon, intelligence and love. The true Christian is a stranger to the sectarian spirit; he is all things to all men, and looks on all men as the children of a common father, who means to save them all. The whole cult has for him only a sense of sweetness and of {39} love: he leaves to God the secrets of justice, and understands only charity. 10 Actual priests. Levi’s ideal priest, of whom ‘bad; is an impossible epithet, is not to be looked for in the Church. He is in that ‘Church’ which is also Ark, Rose, Font, Altar, Cup, and the rest. He is that Word of Truth which is ‘established’ by two witnesses.—O. M. He looks on the wicked as invalids whom one must pity and cure; the world, with its errors and vices, is to him God’s hospital, and he wishes to serve in it. He does not think that he is better than any one else; he says only, “So long as I am in good health, let me serve others; and when I must fall and die, perhaps others will take my place and serve.” IX THE NUMBER NINE THIS is the hermit of the Tarot; the number which refers to initiates and to prophets. The prophets are solitaries, for it is their fate that none should ever hear them. They see differently from others; they forefeel misfortunes. So, people imprison them and kill them, or mock them, repulse them as if they were lepers, and leave them to die of hunger. Then, when the predictions come true, they say, “It is these people who have brought us misfortune.” Now, as is always the case on the eve of great disasters,11 our streets are full of prophets. I have met some of them in the prisons, I have seen others who were dying forgotten in garrets. The whole great city has seen one of them whose silent {40} prophecy was to turn ceaselessly as he walked, covered with rags, in the palace of luxury and riches. 11 This is the true clairvoyant Levi. The Levi who prophesied Universal Empire for Napoleon III was either the Magus trying to use him as a tool, or a Micaiah unadjured.—O. M. I have seen one of them whose face shone like that of Christ: he had callosities on his hands, and wore the workman’s blouse; with clay he kneaded epics. He twisted together the sword of right and the sceptre of duty; and upon this column of gold and steel he placed the creative sign of love. One day, in a great popular assembly, he went down into the road with a piece of bread in his hand which he broke and distributed, saying: “Bread of God, do thou make bread for all!” I know another of them who cried: “I will no longer adore the god of the devil! I will not have a hangman for my God!” And they thought that he blasphemed. No; but the energy of his faith overflowed in inexact and imprudent words. He said again in the madness of his wounded charity: “The liabilities of all men are common, and they expiate each other’s faults, as they make merit for each other by their virtues. “The penalty of sin is death. “Sin itself, moreover, is a penalty, and the greatest of penalties. A great crime is nothing but a great misfortune. “The worst of men is he who thinks himself better than his follows. “Passionate men are excusable, because they are passive; passion means suffering, and also redemption through sorrow. “What we call liberty is nothing but the all-mightiness of divine compulsion. The martyrs said: ‘It is better to obey God than man’.” {41} “The least perfect act of love is worth more than the best act of piety.” “Judge not; speak hardly at all; love and act.” Another prophet came and said: “Protest against bad doctrines by good works, but do not separate yourselves. “Rebuild all the altars, purify all the temples, and hold yourselves in readiness for the visit of the Spirit. “Let every one pray in his own fashion, and hold communion with his own; but do not condemn others. “A religious practice is never contemptible, for it is the sign of a great and holy thought. “To pray together is to communicate in the same hope, the same faith,and the same charity. “The sign by itself is nothing; it is the faith which sanctifies it. “Religion is the most sacred and the strongest bond of human association, and to perform an act of religion is to perform an act of humanity.” When men understand at last that one must not dispute about things about which one is ignorant, When they feel that a little charity is worth more than much influence and domination, When the whole world respects what even God respects in the least of His creatures, the spontaneity of obedience and the liberty of duty, Then there will be no more than one religion in the world, the Christian and universal religion, the true Catholic religion, which will no longer deny itself by restrictions of place and of persons. “Woman,” said the Saviour to the woman of Samaria, {42} ”Verily I say unto thee, that the time cometh when men shall no longer worship God, either in Jerusalem, or on this mountain; for God is a spirit,12 and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” 12 A mistranslation by monotheists. The Greek is πνευμα ο Θεοσ “Spirit is God.”—TRANS X THE ABSOLUTE NUMBER OF THE QABALAH THE key of the Sephiroth. (Vide Dogme et rituel de la haute magie.) XI THE NUMBER ELEVEN ELEVEN is the number of force; it is that of strife and martyrdom. Every man who dies for an idea is a martyr, for in him the aspirations of the spirit have triumphed over the fears of the animal. Every man who falls in war is a martyr, for he dies for others. Every man who dies of starvation is a martyr, for he is like a soldier struck down in the battle of life. Those who die in defence of right are as holy in their sacrifice as the victims of duty, and in the great struggles and revolutions against power, martyrs fell equally on both sides. Right being the root of duty, our duty is to defend our rights. What is a crime? The exaggeration of a right. Murder {43} and theft are negations of society; it is the isolated despotism of an individual who usurps royalty, and makes war at his own risk and peril. Crime should doubtless be repressed, and society must defend itself; but who is so just, so great, so pure, as to pretend that he has the right to punish? Peace then to all who fall in war, even in unlawful war! For they have staked their heads and they have lost them; they have paid, and what more can we ask of them? Honour to all those who fight bravely and loyally! Shame only on the traitors and cowards! Christ died between two thieves, and He took one of them with Him to heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force. God bestows His almighty power on love. He loves to triumph over hate, but the lukewarm He spueth forth from His mouth. Duty is to live, were it but for an instant! It is fine to have reigned for a day, even for an hour! though it were beneath the sword of Damocles, or upon the pyre of Sardanapalus! But it is finer to have seen at one’s feet all the crowns of the world, and to have said, “I will be the king of the poor, and my throne shall be on Calvary.” There is one man stronger than the man that slays; it is he who dies to save others. There are no isolated crimes and no solitary expiations. There are no personal virtues, nor are there any wasted devotions. {44} Whoever is not without reproach is the accomplice of all evil; and whoever is not absolutely perverse, may participate in all good. For this reason an agony is always an humanitarian expiation, and every head that falls upon the scaffold may be honoured and praised as the head of a martyr. For this reason also, the noblest and the holiest of martyrs could inquire of his own conscience, find himself deserving of the penalty that he was about to undergo, and say, saluting the sword that was ready to strike him, “Let justice be done!” Pure victims of the Roman Catacombs, Jews and Protestants massacred by unworthy Christians! Priests of l’Abbaye and les Carmes,13 victims of the Reign of Terror, butchered royalists, revolutionaries sacrificed in your turn, soldiers of our great armies who have sown the world with your bones, all you who have suffered the penalty of death, workers, strivers, darers of every kind, brave children of Prometheus, who have feared neither the lightning nor the vulture, all honour to your scattered ashes! Peace and veneration to your memories! You are the heroes of progress, martyrs of humanity! 13 Monasteries in Paris which were used as prisons in the Reign of Terror.—TRANS XII THE NUMBER TWELVE TWELVE is the cyclic number; it is that of the universal Creed. {45} Here is a translation in alexandrines of the unrestricted magical and Catholic creed:— I do believe in God, almighty sire of man. One God, who did create the universe, his plan. I do believe in Him, the Son, the chief of men, Word and magnificence of the supreme Amen. He is the living thought of Love’s eternal might, God manifest in flesh, the Action of the Light. Desired in every place and every period, But not a God that one may separate from God. Descended among men to free the earth from fate, He in His mother did the woman consecrate. He was the man whom heaven’s sweet wisdom did adorn; To suffer and to die as men do He was born. Proscribed by ignorance, accused by envy and strife, He died upon the cross that He might give us life. All who accept His aid to guide and to sustain By His example may to God like Him attain. He rose from death to reign throughout the ages’ dance; He is the sun that melts the clouds of ignorance. His precepts, better known and mightier soon to be, Shall judge the quick and dead for all eternity. I do believe in God’s most Holy Spirit, whose fire The heart and mind of saints and prophets did inspire. He is a Breath of life and of fecundity, Proceeding both from God and from humanity. I do believe in one most holy brotherhood Of just men that revere heaven’s ordinance of good. I do believe one place, one pontiff, and one right, One symbol of one God, in one intent unite. I do believe that death by changing us renews, And that in man as God life sheds immortal dews. XIII THE NUMBER THIRTEEN THIRTEEN is the number of death and of birth; it is that of property and of inheritance, of society and of family, of war and of treaties. {46} The basis of society is the exchange of right, duty and good faith. Right is property, exchange is necessity, good faith is duty. He who wants to receive more than he gives, or who wants to receive without giving, is a thief. Property is the right to dispose of a portion of the common wealth; it is not the right to destroy, nor the right to sequestrate. To destroy or sequestrate the common wealth is not to possess; it is to steal. I say common wealth, because the true proprietor of all things is God, who wishes all things to belong to everybody. Whatever you may do, at your death you will carry away nothing of this world’s goods. Now, that which must be taken away from you one day is not really yours. It has only been lent to you. As to the usufruct, it is the result of work; but even work is not an assured guarantee of possession, and war may come with devastation and fire to displace property. Make then good use of those things which perish, O you who will perish before they do! Consider that egoism provokes egoism, and that the immorality of the rich man will answer for the crimes of the poor. What does the poor man wish, if he is honest? He wishes for work. Use your rights, but do your duty: the duty of the rich man is to spread wealth; wealth which does not circulate is dead; do not hoard death! A sophist14 has said, “Property is robbery,” and he {47} doubtless wished to speak of property absorbed in itself, withdrawn from free exchange, turned from common use. 14 Proudhon.—TRANS If such were his thought, he might go further, and say that such a suppression of public life is indeed assassination. It is the crime of monopoly, which public instinct has always looked upon as treason to the human race. The family is a natural society which results from marriage. Marriage is the union of two beings joined by love, who promise each other mutual devotion in the interest of the children who may be born. Married persons who have a child, and who separate, are impious. Do they then wish to execute the judgment of Solomon and hew the child asunder? To vow eternal love is puerile; sexual love is an emotion, divine doubtless, but accidental, involuntary and transitory; but the promise of reciprocal devotion is the essence of marriage and the fundamental principle of the family. The sanction and the guarantee of this promise must then be an absolute confidence. Every jealousy is a suspicion, and every suspicion is an outrage. The real adultery is the breach of this trust: the woman who complains of her husband to another man; the man who confides to another woman the disappointments or the hopes of his heart,—these do, indeed, betray conjugal faith. The surprises which one’s senses spring upon one are only infidelities on account of the impulses of the heart which abandons itself more or less to the whispers of pleasure. Moreover, these are human faults for which one must blush, {48} and which one ought to hide: they are indecencies which one must avoid in advance by removing opportunity, but which one must never seek to surprise: morality proscribes scandal. Every scandal is a turpitude. One is not indecent because one possesses organs which modesty does not name, but one is obscene when one exhibits them. Husbands, hide your domestic wounds; do not strip your wives naked before the laughter of the mob! Women, do not advertise the discomforts of the conjugal bed: to do so is to write yourselves prostitutes in public opinion. It needs a lofty○.of courage to keep conjugal faith; it is a pact of heroism of which only great souls can understand the whole extent. Marriages which break are not marriages: they are couplings. A woman who abandons her husband, what can she become? She is no more a wife, and she is not a widow; what is she then? She is an apostate from honour who is forced to be licentious because she is neither virgin nor free. A husband who abandons his wife prostitutes her, and deserves the infamous name that one applies to the lovers of lost women. Marriage is then sacred and indissoluble when it really exists. But it cannot really exist, except for beings of a lofty intelligence and of a noble heart. The animals do not marry, and men who live like animals undergo the fatalities of the brute nature. They ceaselessly make unfortunate attempts to act {49} reasonably. Their promises are attempts at and imitations of promises; their marriages, attempts at and imitations of marriage; their loves, attempts at and imitations of love. They always wish, and never will; they are always undertaking and never completing. For such people, only the repressive side of law applies. Such beings may have a litter, but they never have a family: marriage and family are the rights of the perfect man, the emancipated man, the man who is intelligent and free. Ask also the annals of the Courts, and read the history of parricides. Raise the black veil from off all those chopped heads, and ask them what they thought of marriage and of the family, what milk they sucked, what caresses ennobled them. … Then shudder, all you who do not give to your children the bread of intelligence and of love, all you who do not sanction paternal authority by the virtue of a good example! Those wretches were orphans in spirit and in heart, and they have avenged their birth. We live in a century when more than ever the family is misunderstood in all that it possesses which partakes of the august and the sacred: material interest is killing intelligence and love; the lessons of experience are despised, the things of God are hawked about the street. The flesh insults the spirit, fraud laughs in the face of loyalty. No more idealism, no more justice: human life has murdered both its father and its mother. Courage and patience! This century will go where great criminals should go. Look at it, how sad it is! Weariness {50} is the black veil of its face … the tumbril rolls on, and the shuddering crown follows it. .. Soon one more century will be judged by history, and one will write upon a mighty tomb of ruins: “Here ends the parricide century! The century which murdered its God and its Christ!” In war, one has the right to kill, in order not to die: but in the battle of life the most sublime of rights is that of dying in order not to kill. Intelligence and love should resist oppression unto death—but never unto murder. Brave man, the life of him who has offended you is in your hands; for he is master of the life of others who cares not for his own… Crush him beneath your greatness: pardon him! “But is it forbidden to kill the tiger which threatens us?” “If it is a tiger with a human face, it is finer to let him devour us,—yet, for all that, morality has here nothing to say.” “But if the tiger threatens my children?” “Let Nature herself reply to you!” Harmodius and Aristogiton had festivals and statues in Ancient Greece. The Bible has consecrated the names of Judith and Ehud, and one of the most sublime figures of the Holy Book is that of Samson, blind and chained, pulling down the columns of the temple, as he cried: “Let me die with the Philistines!” And yet, do you think that, if Jesus, before dying, had gone to Rome to plunge his dagger in the heart of Tiberius, He would have saved the world, as He did, in forgiving His executioners, and in dying for even Tiberius? {51} Did Brutus save Roman liberty by killing Caesar? In killing Caligula, Chaerea only made place for Claudius and Nero. To protest against violence by violence, is to justify it, and to force it to reproduce itself. But to triumph over evil by good, over selfishness by selfabnegation, over ferocity by pardon, that is the secret of Christianity, and it is that of eternal victory. I have seen the place where the earth still bled from the murder of Abel, and on that place there ran a brook of tears. Under the guidance of the centuries, myriads of men moved on, letting fall their tears into the brook. And Eternity, crouching mournful, gazed upon the tears which fell; she counted them one by one, and there were never enough to them to wash away one stain of blood. But between two multitudes and two ages came the Christ, a pale and radiant figure. And in the earth of blood and tears, He planted the vine of fraternity; and the tears and the blood, sucked up by the roots of the divine tree, became the delicious sap of the grape, which is destined to intoxicate with love the children of the future. XIV THE NUMBER FOURTEEN FOURTEEN is the number of fusion, of association, and of universal unity, and it is in the name of what it represents that we shall here make an appeal to the nations, beginning with the most ancient and the most holy. Children of Israel, why, in the midst of the movement of {52} the nations, do you rest immobile, guardians of the tombs of your fathers? Your fathers are not here, they are risen: for the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, is not the God of the dead! Why do you always impress upon your offspring the bloody sigil of the knife? God no longer wishes to separate you from other men; be our brethren, and eat with us the consecrated Bread of peace on altars that blood stains never. The law of Moses is accomplished: read your books and understand that you have been a blind and hard-hearted race, even as all your prophets said to you. You have also been a courageous race, a race that persevered in strife. Children of Israel, become the children of God: Understand and love! God has wiped from your forehead the brand of Cain, and the peoples seeing you pass will no longer say, “There go the Jews!” They will cry, ”Room for our brethren! Room for our elders in the Faith!” And we shall go every year to eat the passover with you in the city of the New Jerusalem. And we shall take our rest under your vine and under your fig-tree; for you will be once more the friend of the traveller, in memory of Abraham, of Tobias, and of the angels who visited them. And in memory of Him who said: “He who receiveth the least of these My little ones, receiveth Me.” For then you will no longer refuse an asylum in your {53} house and in your heart to your brother Joseph, whom you sold to the Gentiles. Because he has become powerful in the land of Egypt where you sought bread in the days of famine. And he has remembered his father Jacob, and Benjamin his young brother, and he pardons you your jealousy, and embraces you with tears. Children of true believers, we will sing with you: “There is no God but God, and Mohammed is His prophet!” Say with the children of Israel: “There is no God but God, and Moses is His prophet!” Say with the Christians: “There is no God but God, and Jesus Christ is His prophet!” Mohammed is the shadow of Moses. Moses is the forerunner of Jesus. What is a prophet? A representative of humanity seeking God. God is God, and man is the prophet of God, when he causes us to believe in God. The Old Testament, the Qur’an, and the Gospel are three different translations of the same book. As God is one, so also is the law. O ideal woman! O reward of the elect! Art thou more beautiful than Mary? O Mary, daughter of the East! caste as pure love, great as the desire of motherhood, come and teach the children of Islam the mysteries of Paradise, and the secrets of beauty! Invite them to the festival of the new alliance! There, upon three thrones glittering with precious stones, three prophets will be seated. {54} The tuba tree will make, with its back-curving branches, a dais for the celestial table. The bride will be white as the moon, and scarlet as the smile of morning. All nations shall press forward to see her, and they will no longer fear to pass AL Sirah; for, on that razor-edged bridge, the Saviour will stretch His cross, and come to stretch His hand to those who stumble, and to those who have fallen the bride will stretch her perfumed veil, and draw them to her. O ye people, clap your hands, and praise the last triumph of love! Death alone will remain dead, and hell alone will be consumed! O nations of Europe, to whom the East stretches forth its hands, unite and push back the northern bear!15 Let the last war bring the triumph of intelligence and love, let commerce interlace the arms of the world, and a new civilization, sprung from the armed Gospel, unite all the flocks of the earth under the crook of the same shepherd! Such will be the conquests of progress, such is the end towards which the whole movement of the world is pushing us. Progress is movement, and movement is life. To deny progress is to affirm nothingness, and to deify death. Progress is the only reply that reason can give to the objections which the existence of evil raises. {55} 15 Written about the time of the Crimean War, this indicates Levi’s attempt to use Imperialism as his magical weapon, just as Allan Bennett tried to use Buddhism. All these second-hand swords break, as Wagner saw when he wrote Siegfried, and invented a new Music, a Nothung which has shorn asunder more false sceptres than Wotan’s.—O.M. All is not well, but all will be well one day. God begins His work, and He will finish it. Without progress, evil would be immutable like God. Progress explains ruins, and consoles the weeping of Jeremiah. Nations succeed each other like men; and nothing is stable, because everything is marching towards perfection. The great man who dies bequeathes to his country the fruit of his works; the great nation which becomes extinguished upon earth transforms itself into a star to enlighten the obscurities of History. What it has written by its actions remains graven in the eternal book; it has added a page to the Bible of the human race. Do not say that civilization is bad; for it resembles the damp heat which ripens the harvest, it rapidly develops the principles of life and the principles of death, it kills and it vivifies. It is like the angel of the judgment who separates the wicked from the good. Civilization transforms men of good will into angels of light, and lowers the selfish man beneath the brute; it is the corruption of bodies and the emancipation of souls. The impious world of the giants raised to Heaven the soul of Enoch; above the Bacchanals of primitive Greece rises the harmonious spirit of Orpheus. Socrates and Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle, resume, in explaining them, all the aspirations and all the glories of the ancient world; the fables of Homer remain truer than history, and nothing remains to us of the grandeur of Rome {56} but the immortal writings which the century of Augustus broug