Eliphas Levi

- A source document of magical ritual instruction.- Insight into the occult symbolism of the tarot trumps.

By the time of his death in 1875, Eliphas L vi was recognized in both Europe and America as the greatest occultist of the 19th century. In life, his work was the inspiration for Albert Pike's Morals and Dogma, the most influential American Masonic book of its day, and in death, it proved to be a seminal influence on figures as diverse as Madame Blavatsky, A. E. Waite, and Aleister Crowley--but during his lifetime none of his writings appeared in English. The Paradoxes of the Highest Science first appeared in 1883 in Calcutta as a pamphlet in the Theosophical Miscellanies series. In it, L vi makes an appeal for a balance between science and religion by addressing seven paradoxical statements including "Religion is magic sanctioned by authority," "liberty is obedience to the Law," and "reason is God." Included in this edition are the extensive and illuminating footnotes that were added to L vi's text. Some of these are by the anonymous translator, and some by the "Eminent Occultist" who seems to have been Madame Blavatsky herself. L vi could have asked for no better commentator upon his work.

This text presents a classic history of magic and occultism, and is a book of which A. E. Waite said there is nothing in the occult literature to compare with it... The History of Magic is the most arresting, entertaining and brilliant of all studies on the subject.

Eliphas Le'vi was steeped in the Western occult tradition and a master of the Rosicrucian interpretation of the Qabalah, which forms the basis of magic as practiced in the West today. The Key of the Mysteries represents the culmination of Le'vi's thoughts and is written with subtle and delicate irony. It reveals the mysteries of religion and the secrets of the Qabalah, providing a sketch of the prophetic theology of numbers. The mysteries of nature, such as spiritualism and fluidic phantoms, are explored. Magical mysteries, the Theory of the Will with its 22 axioms are divulged. And finally it offers "the great practical secrets." The true greatness of this work, however, lies in its ability to place occult thought firmly in Western religious traditions. For Le'vi, the study of the occult was the study of a divine science, the mathematics of God.