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Eliphas Levi - Dogma Et Rituel (Part I)
Eliphas Levi - Dogma Et Rituel (Part II)
Eliphas Levi - The Key of the Mysteries
Eliphas Levi - The Magical Ritual of the Sanctum Regnum

“Eliphas Levi” was the mystic name of French occultist Alphonse Louis Constant (1810-1875), an important figure in the occult movement of the 19th century and a major influence upon Aleister Crowley, who claimed to be born in the same year and day that Constant died and also claimed to be the reincarnation of Levi.

Constant was the son of a Paris shoemaker who was early on intrigued by the occult and religious studies, so much so, in fact, that he did in fact become a Catholic priest for a time, only to be excommunicated for his radical political writing view and challenges in regards to chastity, For his writings he served three short jail sentences. Constant was also influenced by Francis Barrett, whose work The Magus (1800) is still in print today.

He was quickly attracted to an eccentric old man named Ganneau, who said he was a prophet and the reincarnation of Louis XVII. Ganneau’s wife claimed she was the reincarnation of Marie Antoinette. Constant became a follower of Ganneau and was drawn deeper into the worlds of magic and the occult.

He married Noemie Cadot,18, in 1846. The one daughter bore from the marriage died very young. The marriage ended in 1853 and was annulled in 1865. Soon enough, Constant was doing his own writing and teaching and at this point he found it necessary to take on a new name and christened himself with the Hebraic name Eliphas Levi.

Constant visited London in 1854 and undertook his first experiment in practical necromancy, conjuring up the shade of the renowned Appollonius of Tyana for the benefit of an English female adept. Constant, like Crowley after him, spared little expense and exerted great effort in preparation for this ritual, modifying his diet and engaging in prolonged meditation for several weeks. The actual invocation was performed in a mirror-walled chamber (a common accoutrement for certain modern-day magicians) occupied by central altar-table covered in white lambskin, perhaps symbolizing purity, with Constant bearing a consecrated ritual sword. He performed his invocation for upwards of twelve hours or more in this glittering chamber lit only by the fires of two brass bowls placed on the tables. Ultimately, he was successful in conjuring some sort of spirit, but details are vague at best.Constant visited England again, and in the 1860s became associated with the writer Edward Bulwer-Litton, with whom he became involved in an occult order which was to influence the Golden Dawn.

Constant’s works include The Dogma and Ritual of High Magic (1861), A History of Magic, Transcendental Magic, and other volumes, most of which are still available today in reprints. His work, like Crowley’s, was short on historical accuracy but long on imaginative invention and innovation. Constant is believed to be the first occultist to associate the 22 trump cards of the Tarot with the 22 Hebrew letters. While more understandable works are available to magicians these days, one cannot ignore the influence that Eliphas Levi had upon occult students of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Rudolf Steiner - An Outline of Occult Science
Rudolf Steiner - The Occult Significance of Blood

Rudolf Steiner was born in 1861 in a small village in an area which is now part of Croatia but which, at the time, was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. His father was the village stationmaster, which set  him apart from the other boys in the village, and he soon re-enforced this difference by showing an extraordinary appetite for learning and mathematics.

He attended the village schools, and then the modern school in Wiener Neustadt. His father was a freethinker and saw his son as a railway engineer rather than as a priest. Steiner took a degree in mathematics, physics and chemistry, and later wrote a philosophical thesis for a doctorate. He supported himself through university and afterwards by tutoring. He was drawn into literary and scholarly work. The famous Goethe scholar, Professor Karl Julius Schroer, who has befriended the young man, arranged for him to edit the scientific works of Goethe for a new complete edition. He participated actively in the rich cultural life of Vienna. Then he was invited to Weimar, to the famous Goethe archive, where he remained for seven years, working further on the scientific writings, as well as collaborating in a complete edition of Schopenhauer. The place was a famous center, visited by the leading lights of Central European culture, and Steiner knew many of the major figures of the artistic and cultural life of his time. In 1894 he published The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, but was disappointed by its reception, as the end of the century approached, he left the settled world of Weimar to edit an avante-garde literary magazine in Berlin. Here he met playwrights and poets who were seeking, often desperately, for alternatives of various kinds. The city was a focus for many radical groups and movements. Steiner was invited to lecture at the Berlin Workers Training School, sponsored by the trade unions and social democrats. Most of the teaching were manrist, but he insisted on a freehand approach. He gave courses on history and natural science, and practical exercises on public speaking. His appeal was such that he was invited to give a festival address to 7,000 printers at the Berlin circus stadium on the occasion of the Gutenberg jubilee. But his refusal to toe any party line does not endear him to the political activists, and soon after the turn of the century, he was forced to drop this work.

In 1899, Steiner’s life begun to change quite rapidly. On August 28, 1899 he published in his magazine a surprising article about Goethe’s mysterious ‘fairy tale’ The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. The essay is entitled ‘Goethe’s Secret Revelation’, and points definitely, if discreetly, to the esoteric significance of this story. The article attracts the attention of a Count and Countess Brockdorff, who invite Steiner to speak to one of their weekly gatherings. The Brockdorffs are Theosophists. They give Steiner the first opportunity to realize the decision he had come to during the last years of the century, namely to speak openly and directly of the inner facilities of spiritual perception he had known since childhood and that he had been quietly nurturing, developing and disciplining ever since. Soon, Steiner was speaking regularly to groups of Theosophists, which upset and bewildered many of his former friends. This caused uproar at a lecture on the medieval scholastics which he delivered to the Giordano Bruno Society. The respectable if often radical scholar, historian, scientist, writer and philosopher was emerging as an ‘esotericist’, this was truly shocking to many of those around him. Steiner knew he was running the risk of isolation. Only in the fringe culture, the Theosophist now had an ear for what he wanted to say, Yet he saw around him a culture in decay, and profound crises to come. Steiner’s decision to speak directly of his own spiritual research was not prompted by a desire to set up as a spiritual teacher, to feed curiosity or to revive some form of ancient wisdom.It took Steiner nearly two decades to create a basis for the renewing impulses in daily life that he sought to initiate. At first he worked mainly through lectures to Theosophists and others, and through articles and books. Within quite a short period of years, Steiner surveyed with clarity and intimacy the spiritual realities at work in the kingdoms of nature and in the cosmos, the inner nature of the human soul and spirit and their potential for further development, the nature and practice of meditation, the experiences of the soul before birth and after death, the spiritual history and evolution of humanity and the earth, and detailed studies of the workings of reincarnation and karma.

After seven or eight years, Steiner began to add to his work in ’spiritual science’ a growing activity in the arts. Between 1910 and 1913 he wrote four Mystery Plays, which follow the lives of a group of people through successive incarnations, and include scenes in the soul and spiritual worlds as well as on earth.  In 1913 the foundation stone was laid for the first Goetheanum at Dornach in Switzerland. This extraordinary building in wood, with its vast interlocking cupolas, gradually took shape during the years of the First World War, when an international group of volunteers collaborated with local builders and craftsmen to shape the unique carved forms and structures Steiner designed. The building stimulated much innovation in the use of form and color and is now increasingly recognized as a landmark in twentieth century architecture. An arsonist caused this building to burn to the ground during the night of December 31, 1922. There survived only the great sculpture of The Representative of Humanity’ on which Steiner had been working in a neighborhood workshop with the English sculptress Edith Maryon. Steiner soon designed another building that was completed after his death and now serves as a center for the world-wide Anthroposophical Society and its School of Spiritual Science.

As the First World War neared its end, Steiner began to find ways to work more widely and deeply for a renewal of life and culture in many spheres. Europe was in ruins and could have been ready for quite new impulses. Attempts to realize a ‘threefold social order’ as a political and social alternative at that time did not succeed, but the conceptual basis Steiner developed exists as a seed that is even more relevant for today.

Rudolf Steiner died on March 30, 1925 at the age of 64, surrounded by new beginnings. The versatility and creativity he revealed in his later years are phenomenal by any standards. Along this path, Steiner sought to develop a spiritual science that was a further development of the true spirit of natural science.