Eliphas Levi: Magic

“Magic is the traditional science of the secrets of Nature which has been transmitted to us from the Magi.”

Miscellaneous Quotes On the Subjects of Magic and Magicians
Source: Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magi Part I: The Doctrine of Transcendental Magic By Eliphas Levi (Alphonse Louis Constant), Translated by A. E. Waite, England, Rider & Company, England, 1896, p.3

“Magic is the science of the ancient magi; and the Christian religion, which silenced the counterfeit oracles and put a stop to the illusions of false gods, does, this notwithstanding, revere those mystic kings who came from the East, led by a star, to adore the Saviour of the world in His cradle. They are elevated by tradition to the rank of kings, because magical initiation constitutes a true royalty; because also the great art of the magi is characterised by all adepts as the Royal Art, as the Holy Kingdom — Sanctum Regnum. The star which conducted the pilgrims is the same Burning Star which is met with in all initiations. For alchemists it is the sign of the quintessence, for magicians it is the Great Arcanum, for Kabalists the sacred pentagram.”

Eliphas Levi

Introduction
The History Of Magic (1860)

“Magic has been confounded too long with the jugglery of mountebanks, the hallucinations of disordered minds and the crimes of certain unusual malefactors. There are otherwise many who would promptly explain Magic as the art of producing effects in the absence of causes; and on the strength of such a definition it will be said by ordinary people — with the good sense which characterises the ordinary, in the midst of much injustice — that Magic is an absurdity.”

Eliphas Levi

Introduction
The History Of Magic (1860)

“Bloody and hideous facts; acts of revolting superstition, arrests, and executions of stupid ferocity. "Burn every body!" the Inquisition seemed to say — God will easily sort out His own! Poor fools, hysterical women, and idiots were roasted alive, without mercy, for the crime of "magic."”

Eliphas Levi book Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie

But, at the same time, how many great culprits escaped this unjust and sanguinary justice! This is what Bodin makes us fully appreciate.

Quoted in Isis Unveiled, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. II, Chapter III (1877)
Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1856)

“Magic is an instrument of divine goodness or demoniac pride, but it is the annihilation of earthly joys and the pleasures of mortal life.”

Eliphas Levi

Miscellaneous Quotes On the Subjects of Magic and Magicians
Source: Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magi Part I: The Doctrine of Transcendental Magic By Eliphas Levi (Alphonse Louis Constant), Translated by A. E. Waite, England, Rider & Company, England, 1896, p. 53

“ALL religions have preserved the remembrance of a primitive book, written in hieroglyphs by the sages of the earliest epoch of the world. [...] The tradition in question rests altogether on the one dogma of Magic: the visible is for us the proportional measure of the invisible.”

Eliphas Levi

Miscellaneous Quotes On the Subjects of Magic and Magicians
Source: Friedrich Nietzsche, H.L. Mencken (Translator), The Anti-Christ, Chicago, Sharp Press, 1999, p. 144.</

“Magic is the divinity of man conquered by science in union with faith; the true Magi are Men-Gods, in virtue of their intimate union with the divine principle.”

Eliphas Levi

Miscellaneous Quotes On the Subjects of Magic and Magicians
Source: [Lévi, Éliphas, Blavatsky, H. P., Paradoxes of the Highest Science, 2007, Wildside Press LLC, 9781434401069, 15, https://books.google.com/books?id=oIglEl6BJFoC&q=The%20Paradoxes%20of%20the%20Highest%20Science&pg=PA5]

“To practice magic is to be a quack; to know magic is to be a sage.”

Eliphas Levi

Source: Miscellaneous Quotes On the Subjects of Magic and Magicians

“In Black Magic, the Devil means the employment of the Grand Magical Agent for a wicked purpose by a perverted Will.”

Eliphas Levi

Miscellaneous Quotes On the Subjects of Magic and Magicians
Source: The Magical Ritual of the Sanctum Regnum, Eliphas Levi, Translated by W. Wynn Westcott, London, George Redway, 1896, p. 60.

“There is a true and a false science, a Divine and an Infernal Magic – in other words, one which is delusive and tenebrous.”

Eliphas Levi

Miscellaneous Quotes On the Subjects of Magic and Magicians
Source: Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magi Part I: The Doctrine of Transcendental Magic By Eliphas Levi (Alphonse Louis Constant), Translated by A. E. Waite, England, Rider & Company, England, 1896, p. 3

“Magic, or rather magical power, comprehends two things, a science and a force: without the force the science is nothing, or rather it is a danger.”

Eliphas Levi

Miscellaneous Quotes On the Subjects of Magic and Magicians
Source: Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magi Part I: The Doctrine of Transcendental Magic By Eliphas Levi (Alphonse Louis Constant), Translated by A. E. Waite, England, Rider & Company, England, 1896, Introduction p. 11

“Necromancy, and Goetia, which is Evil Magic, do produce such shells and demons, apparitions of deceit.”

Eliphas Levi

Miscellaneous Quotes On the Subjects of Magic and Magicians
Source: The Magical Ritual of the Sanctum Regnum, Eliphas Levi, Translated by W. Wynn Westcott, London, George Redway, 1896, p. 51.