CHAPTER IV

HERMETIC MAGIC

It is in Egypt that Magic attains the grade of completion as an universal science and is formulated as a perfect doctrine. As a summary of all the dogmas which obtained in the ancient world, nothing surpasses and indeed nothing equals those few paragraphs graven on precious stone by Hermes and denominated the Emerald Tablet. Unity of being and unity in the harmony of things, according to the ascending and descending scales; progressive and proportional evolution of the Word; immutable law of equilibrium and graduated progress of universal analogies; correspondence between the idea and its expression providing a measure of likeness between Creator and created; essential mathematics of the infinite, proved by the dimensions of a single angle in the finite: all this is expressed by the one proposition: “that which is above is like that which is below, and that which is below is like that which is above, for the fulfilment of the wonders of the one thing.” Hereunto are added the revelation and illuminating description of the creative agent, the pantomorphic fire, the great medium of occult force—in a word, the Astral Light.

“The sun is its father and the moon its mother; the wind has borne it in the belly thereof.” It follows that this light has emanated from the sun and has received form and rhythmical movement from the influences of the moon, while the atmosphere is its receptacle and prison. “The earth is its nurse”—that is to say, it is equilibrated and set in motion by the central heat of the earth. “It is the universal principle, the TELESMA of the world.”

Hermes goes on to set forth in what manner this light, which is also a force, can be applied as a lever, as an universal dissolvent and as a formative and coagulative agent; how also this light must be extracted from the bodies in which it lies latent in order to imitate all the artifices of Nature by the aid of its diverse manifestations as fire, motion, splendour, radiant gas, scalding water or finally igneous earth. The Emerald Tablet contains all Magic in a single page.[46] The other works attributed to Hermes,[47] such as the _Divine Pymander_, _Asclepius_, _Minerva of the World_, &c. are generally regarded by critics as productions of the School of Alexandria; but they contain notwithstanding the Hermetic traditions which were preserved in theurgic sanctuaries. For those who possess the keys of symbolism the doctrines of Hermes can never be lost; amidst all their ruin, the monuments of Egypt are as so many scattered leaves which can be collected and the book of those doctrines thus reconstructed entirely. In that vast book the capital letters are temples and the sentences are cities punctuated with obelisks and by the sphinx.

The physical division of Egypt was itself a magical synthesis, and the names of its provinces corresponded to the ciphers of sacred numbers. The realm of Sesostris was divided into three parts; of these Upper Egypt, or the Thebaid, was a type of the celestial world and the land of ecstasy; Lower Egypt was the symbol of earth; while Middle or Central Egypt was the land of science and of high initiation. Each of these parts was subdivided into ten provinces, called Nomes, and was placed under the particular protection of a god. There were therefore 30 gods and they were grouped by threes, giving symbolical expression in this manner to all possible conceptions of the triad within the decad, or otherwise to the threefold material, philosophical and religious significance of absolute ideas attached primitively to numbers. We have thus the triple unity or the first triad, the triple binary[48] formed by the first triad and its reflection, being the Star of Solomon; the triple triad or the complete idea under each of its three forms; the triple quaternary, being the cyclic number of astral revolutions, and so onward. The geography of Egypt under Sesostris is therefore a pantacle or symbolical summary of the entire magical dogma originating with Zoroaster and rediscovered or formulated more precisely by Hermes.

In this manner did the land of Egypt become as a great volume and the instructions contained therein were multiplied by translation into pictures, sculptures, architecture through the length and breadth of the towns and in all temples. The very desert had its eternal teachings, and its word of stone was set squarely on the foundations of the pyramids. The pyramids themselves stood like boundaries of the human intelligence, in the presence of which the colossal sphinx meditated age after age, sinking by insensible degrees into the desert sand. Even at this day its head, defaced by the work of time, still emerges from its sepulchre, as if waiting expectantly the signal for its complete entombment at the coming of a human voice revealing to a new world the problem of the pyramids.

Egypt from our standpoint is the cradle of science and of wisdom, for it clothed with images the antique dogma of the first Zoroaster more exactly and more purely, if not more richly, than those of India. The Sacerdotal Art and the Royal Art made adepts by initiation in Egypt, and such initiation was not restricted within the egotistic limits of caste. We know that a Jewish bondsman himself attained not only initiation but the rank of minister in chief, perhaps even of Grand Hierophant, for he espoused the daughter of an Egyptian priest, and there is evidence that the priesthood in that country tolerated no misalliance. Joseph realised in Egypt the dream of communism; he established the priesthood and the state as sole proprietors and thus sole arbiters of labour and wealth. In this way he abolished distress and turned the whole of Egypt into a patriarchal family. It is a matter of common knowledge that his elevation was due to skill in the interpretation of dreams, a science which even devout Christians now refuse to credit, though they recognise that the Bible, which narrates the wonderful divinations of Joseph, is the word of the Holy Spirit. The science of Joseph was none other than a comprehension of the natural analogies which subsist between ideas and images, or between the Word and its symbols. He knew that the soul when immersed by sleep in the Astral Light, perceives the reflections of its most secret thoughts and even of its presentiments; he knew further that the art of translating the hieroglyphics of sleep is the key of universal lucidity, seeing that all intelligent beings have revelations in dreams.

The basis of absolute hieroglyphical science was an alphabet in which deities were represented by letters, letters represented ideas, ideas were convertible into numbers, and numbers were perfect signs. This hieroglyphical alphabet was the great secret which Moses enshrined in his Kabalah; its Egyptian origin is commemorated in the _Sepher Yetzirah_, in which it is referred to Abraham. Now this alphabet is the famous Book of Thoth, and it was divined by Court de Gebelin that it has been preserved to our own day in the form of Tarot cards. It passed later on into the hands of Etteilla, who interpreted it in the wrong sense, for even a study extending over thirty years could not atone for his want of common sense or supply deficiencies in his education. The record exists still among the drift and waste of Egyptian monuments; and its most curious, most complete key is found in the great work on Egypt by Athanasius Kircher. It is the copy of an Isiac tablet which belonged to the celebrated Cardinal Bembo. The tablet in question is of copper with figures in enamel, and it has been unfortunately lost. The copy supplied by Kircher is, however, exact.[49] The learned Jesuit divined that it contained the hieroglyphic key of sacred alphabets, though he was unable to develop the explanation. It is divided into three equal compartments; above are the twelve houses of heaven and below are the corresponding distributions of labour throughout the year, while in the middle place are twenty-one sacred signs answering to the letters of the alphabet. In the midst of all is a seated figure of the pantomorphic IYNX, emblem of universal being[50] and corresponding as such to the Hebrew _Yod_, or to that unique letter from which all other letters were formed. The IYNX is encircled by the Ophite triad, answering to the Three Mother Letters of the Egyptian and Hebrew alphabets.[51] On the right are the ibimorphic and serapian triads; on the left are those of Nepthys and Hecate, representing

## active and passive, fixed and volatile, fructifying fire and generating

water. Each pair of triads in conjunction with the centre produces a septenary, and a septenary is contained in the centre. The three septenaries furnish the absolute number of the three worlds, as well as the complete number of primitive letters, to which a complementary sign is added, like zero to the nine numerals. The ten numbers and the twenty-two letters are termed in Kabalism the Thirty-two Paths of Wisdom, and their philosophical description is the subject of that venerated primæval book known as the _Sepher Yetzirah_, the text of which will be found in the collection of Pistorius and elsewhere.[52] The alphabet of Thoth is the original of our Tarot only in an indirect manner, seeing that the latter is of Jewish origin in the extant copies and that its pictures are not older than the reign of Charles VII. The cards of Jacquemin Gringonneur are the first Tarots of which we have any knowledge, but they reproduce symbols belonging to the highest antiquity. The game in its modern form was an experiment on the part of astrologers to restore the king, who has been mentioned, to reason.[53] The oracles of the Tarot give answers as exact as mathematics and measured as the harmonies of Nature. Such answers result from the varied combination of the different signs. But it requires a considerable exercise of reason to make use of an instrument belonging to reason and to science; the poor king, in his childish condition, saw only the playthings of an infant in the artist’s pictures and he turned the mysterious Kabalistic alphabet[54] into a game of cards.

[Illustration: EXPLANATORY DIAGRAM OF THE ASTRONOMICAL AND ALPHABETICAL TABLET OF BEMBO]

We are told by Moses that the Israelites carried away the sacred vessels of the Egyptians when they came out of the land of bondage. The account is allegorical, for the great prophet would scarcely have encouraged his people in an act of theft; the sacred vessels in question were the mysteries of Egyptian knowledge, acquired by Moses himself at the court of Pharaoh. We are by no means suggesting that the miracles of this man of God are referable to Magic; but we know on the authority of the Bible that Jannes and Mambres, who were the magicians of Pharaoh and consequently grand hierophants of Egypt, began by performing in virtue of their art wonders which were similar to those of Moses. They transformed wands into serpents and serpents again into wands, which might be explicable by prestige or fascination; they changed water into blood; they produced a swarm of frogs in a moment; but they could not cause flies to appear or other parasitic insects, for reasons which we have explained already, as also the manner in which they were forced to confess themselves vanquished.

Moses triumphed and led the Israelites out of the land of bondage. It was at this period that true science became lost to Egypt, for the priests, abusing the implicit confidence of the people, allowed that knowledge to degenerate into brutalising idolatry. Such is the rock of peril for esoteric science; the truth must be veiled, yet not hidden from the people; symbolism must not be disgraced by a lapse into absurdity; the sacred veil of Isis must be preserved in its beauty and dignity. It was over this that the Egyptian priesthood failed; the vulgar and the foolish understood the hieroglyphic forms of Isis and Hermanubis as real things, so that Osiris was understood to be an ox, while the wise Hermes was a dog. The transformed Osiris masqueraded in the fantastic guise of the bull of Apis, nor did the priests hinder the people from adoring flesh intended for their kitchens. It was time to save the holy traditions; Moses established a new nation and forbade all worship of images; but the people unfortunately had dwelt long among idolaters and memories of the bull of Apis remained with them in the desert. We know the history of that Golden Calf to which the children of Israel have been always a little addicted. Moses, however, did not wish the sacred hieroglyphics to pass out of memory, and he sanctified them by their consecration to the purified worship of the true God. We shall see how all objects which entered into the cultus of Jehovah were symbolic in character and recalled the venerable signs of primæval revelation. But we must first finish with the Gentiles and follow through pagan civilisation the story of materialised hieroglyphics and of ancient rites degenerated.

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