Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #319470 in Books
• Published on: 1968-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 438 pages

Customer Reviews

A classic of magical literature.
Transcendental Magic was first published in 1856 under the title "Dogme et Ritual de la Haute Magie". It is one of Eliphas Levi's best works and definitely his most influential. Noted admirers included Aleister Crowley and S L Mathers. The book is made up of two parts. The Dogma and The Ritual. In part one Levi delves into the theory of magic. Lots of important information is revealed here but the modern student of magic must be warned that Levi left many intentional blinds and red herrings in this work. The most obvious of which is the false attribution of the Hebrew letters to the trumps of the Tarot at the head of every chapter. Levi also uses many terms that the modern student might not immediately recognise. Despite this and the fact that some of what Levi says must be taken with a large pich of salt the diligent reader will find much of value in this book. This book is a facsimile of A E Waites translation and also includes his extensive notes. Most of which can be ignored. Although he does shine light on one or two points his notes more often than not just confuse the issue.

An arcane work of Art
The French poet Catulle Mendes extolled Eliphas Levi as ' a thinker of singular ideas and uneven style, but a prodigious artist' and this sums up the perennial appeal of this seminal work on Magic borne of the French Occult Revival of the 18th and 19th centuries. Levi's mid-19th century vision of the universe of Magic and the Mysteries of Hermes is for sure an opulent exercise in florid gothicism and highly coloured romanticism, forming a kind of vivid medium through which Levi unfolds his 'Occultism' basing himself upon the fundamental principles of the Astral Light (Levi's restatement of the classical Pneuma, Paracelsian 'Spiraculum Vitae' & Yliaster or the Spiritus Mundi of medieval-renaissance Magicians)and the Neoplatonic doctrine of the Microcosm and Macrocosm. Levi's Kabbalistic and Hermetic symbolisms are often idiosyncretic, sometimes eccentric, but for those able to read between the lines there are real secrets embedded through Levi's text and in persevering with Levi's more opaque passages one is invariably rewarded with some true flashes of magical insight and some very profound insights are contained in these pages. Levi was a true master of the Sacerdotal Art and this great treatise, the 'Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic' is an undoubted masterwork and classic of the Royal Path. The wondrous engravings of Levi's designs which adorn the text encapsulate the arcane beauty and mysterious seductions of the Magical Art and its elusive secrets of knowledge and power. 'Transcendental Magic' is not a rationalistic academic work or some such arid linear-minded effusion - it is nothing less than a rich work of art and a text which invites a special reading involving heightened symbolic sensitivity and intuitive knowledge to fully appreciate the wonders of Levi's hermetic doctrines.