Synopsis:
Book Description:
"This was the first of Levi's books to be translated into English. The original French version was published in 1856. This translation (by an unknown hand) was first published in 1883 by the Theosophical Society, and re-issued in 1922, with additional extensive footnotes by 'an Eminent Occultist' (herein, E.O.). The identity of E.O. is unknown, but it is believed from the style and views expressed that it was none other than Helena P. Blavatsky." (Quote from sacred-texts.com)
Table of Contents:
Publisher's Preface; Preface To The 1922 Second Edition; Foreword To The 1922 Second Edition; Religion Is Magic Sanctioned By Authority; Liberty Is Obedience To The Law; Love Is The Realisation Of The Impossible; Knowledge Is The Ignorance Or Negation Of Evil; Reason Is God; The Imagination Realises What It Invents; The Will Accomplishes Everything, Which It Does Not Desire; Magic And Magism; The Great Secret; Endnotes
About the Publisher:
Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, Esoteric and Mythology. www.forgottenbooks.org
Forgotten Books is about sharing information, not about making money. All books are priced at wholesale prices. We are also the only publisher we know of to print in large sans-serif font, which is proven to make the text easier to read and put less strain on your eyes.
About the Author:
About the Author:
"Eliphas Levi, born Alphonse Louis Constant, (February 8, 1810 - May 31, 1875) was a French occult author and magician.
"Eliphas Levi," the name under which he published his books, was his attempt to translate or transliterate his given names "Alphonse Louis" into Hebrew.
Levi was the son of a shoemaker in Paris; he attended a seminary and began to study to enter the Roman Catholic priesthood. However, while at the seminary he fell in love, and left without being ordained. He wrote a number of minor religious works: Des Moeurs et des Doctrines du Rationalisme en France ("Of the Moral Customs and Doctrines of Rationalism in France", 1839) was a tract within the cultural stream of the Counter-Enlightenment. La Mere de Dieu ("The Mother of God", 1844) followed and, after leaving the seminary, two radical tracts, L'Evangile du Peuple ("The Gospel of the People," 1840), and Le Testament de la Liberte ("The Testament of Liberty"), published in the year of revolutions, 1848, led to two brief prison sentences.
In 1854, Levi visited England, where he met the novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who was interested in Rosicrucianism as a literary theme and was the president of a minor Rosicrucian order. With Bulwer-Lytton, Levi conceived the notion of writing a treatise on magic. This appeared in 1855 under the title Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, and was translated into English by Arthur Edward Waite as Transcendental Magic, its Doctrine and Ritual. Its famous opening lines present the single essential theme of Occultism and gives some of the flavor of its atmosphere:
Behind the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegories of ancient doctrines, behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the seal of all sacred writings, in the ruins of Nineveh or Thebes, on the crumbling stones of old temples and on the blackened visage of the Assyrian or Egyptian sphinx, in the monstrous or marvelous paintings which interpret to the faithful of India the inspired pages of the Vedas, in the cryptic emblems of our old books on alchemy, in the ceremonies practised at reception by all secret societies, there are found indications of a doctrine which is everywhere the same and everywhere carefully concealed. (Introduction)
In 1861, he published a sequel..." (Quote from wikipedia.org)
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
