INTRODUCTION
Tuis volume represents the high-water mark of the
thought of Eliphas Levi. It may be regarded as written by
him as his Thesis for the Grade of Exempt Adept, just as his
Ritual and Dogma was his Thesis for the grade of Major
Adept. He is, in fact, no longer talking of things as if their
sense was fixed and universal. He is beginning to see some-
thing of the contradiction inherent in the nature of things, or
at any rate, he constantly illustrates the fact that the planes
are to be kept separate for practical purposes, although in the
final analysis they turn out to be one. This, and the extra-
ordinarily subtle and delicate irony of which Eliphas Levi is
one of the greatest masters that has ever lived, have baffled
the pedantry and stupidity of such commentators as Waite.
English has hardly a word to express the mental condition of
such unfortunates. Dummzhezt, in its strongest German sense,
is about the nearest thing to it. It is as if a geographer
should criticize Gulliver's Travels from his own particular
standpoint.
When Levi says that all that he asserts as an initiate is
subordinate to his humble submissiveness as a Christian, and
then not only remarks that the Bible and the Qur’dn are
different translations of the same book, but treats the Incar-
nation as an allegory, it is evident that a good deal of
submission will be required. When he agrees with St.
Augustine that a thing is not just because God wills it, but
God wills it because it is just, he sees perfectly well that he is
reducing God to a poetic image reflected from his own moral
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