The Mysteries of Magic: A Digest of the Writings of Éliphas Lévi

With a tardy but permanent reputation in the country of their origin and an increasing celebrity among the occultists of Europe and America, the elucidations of the Mysteries of Magic published under the pseudonym of Eliphas Levi Zahed, possess great authority without much being known of their author. Indeed, the materials for a biography of Alphonse Louis Constant are meagre and unsatisfactory in the extreme. As occasionally happens, the latest and fullest information, such as it is, comes from a hostile source, and from the pen of an unknown writer. M. Charles Chauliac, a friend, however, of the well-known Pere de la Porte and also of Gougenot des Mousseaux, who in the third quarter of the present century obtained some notoriety as an exponent of diabolism in spirit manifestations, and published, says Eliphas Levi, des gros livres innombrables. Thirty years since, M. Chauliac was further, or claims to have been, an acquaintance of the magus himself, and though many of his statements must be received with extreme caution, he undoubtedly clears up certain confused points. Alphonse Louis Constant was born in an obscure street of Paris; he was the son of a shoemaker in a small way of business, and apparently in meagre circumstances. The exact date of his birth I am unable to state, but it was at or about the year 1810. He was delicate in his childhood, and received no regular education, “but his aptitude for learning and his avidity for picking up stray bits of knowledge were so great that at last the neighbours used to talk of him as “ the clever lad.” This precocity introduced him to the notice of the Cure of his parish, who obtained him a gratuitous education at the Seminary of Saint Sulpice, where he entered on his studies for the priesthood, and in addition to more than the common proficiency expected of an average ecclesiastic in the two classical languages of antiquity, he is said to have become “ a first-rate Hebrew scholar,” in which case, and during this probationary period, he laid the foundations for that Kabbalistic knowledge which eventually led him through the darkest paths of esoteric inquiry to his bold attempt at the reconciliation of religion and science. Grave doubts on matters of religious belief presented themselves at an early period to his mind, but there is good reason to refer them to an acquaintance with Voltairean free-thought, which largely underlies his occult philosophy, and not to a juvenile initiation into the mysteries of magical art. His friend and disciple, the once famous chiromancist Desbarrolles, speaks of his religious exaltations, and of those doubts and scruples which led him to relinquish the sacerdotal career when on the point of engaging himself definitely and irrevocably therein. Madame Gebhard, who, in the advancing years of his life, was another pupil and confidant of the magus, tells us a curious, and perhaps partly apocryphal, story in this connection: —