The Book of ceremonial Magic

alone." Ib. Aph. 11. "Before all things, be watchful in this, that your name be written in
heaven." Ib.
139:2 The secret of this Regeneration is promised to the adept in Arbatel, Aph. 24.
140:1 "To overcome and subjugate the elementary spirits, we must never yield to their
characteristic defects. . . . In a word, we must overcome them in their strength without
ever being overcome by their weaknesses."--Éliphas Lévi, Rituel de la Haute Magie, c. 4.
140:2 Book I. c. 1.
140:3 An adapted rendering of The Key of Solomon, Book I. c. 1.
141:1 Grand Grimoire, Book I. c. i.
141:2 To do evil because it is pleasing to the Prince of Evil did not enter into the
conception of Sorcery. Refinements of this kind are of late date, and mostly of French
invention. The sorcerer who sought to do evil and had recourse for assistance to Satan
was actuated by no recondite motive; he ministered merely to his own propensities for
lust, wealth or revenge. He used Satan as an instrument, treated him and his inferiors as
slaves, and always reckoned ultimately to elude the dangers of such dealings.
141:3 The doctrine is summarised in a sentence by Éliphas Lévi, when he declares that
the virtue of things has created words. Cornelius Agrippa refers it to Platonic teaching,
affirming that a certain power or life belonging to the idea underlies the "form of the
signification," p. 142 that is, the voice or word, whence he also says that Magicians regard
words as the "rays of things." De Occulta Philosophia, Book I. c. 70. Compare also his
rendering of the Platonic doctrine that the form comes first from the idea. Ibid., c. 13.
§ 2. Concerning. Fortitude
The spiritual intention of the operator being thus determined, his next step was the
acquisition of the mental attitude appropriate to his future work. We may picture him in
the traditional state of the sorcerer--poor, proscribed, envious, ambitious, and having no
capacity for legitimate enterprises, Unable to earn money, he hankers after hidden
treasures, and haunts those spots up and down the country-side which are reputed to
conceal them. He has done this presumably for
p. 143
a long time before determining to betake himself to Magic, but the earth will not yield up
her hoards, for the gnomes and the Earth-Spirits, the Alastors and the Demons of the
Solitudes, stand guard over the secrets of dead misers when the human ghost has ceased
to walk in the neighbourhood. He does not long hesitate when he learns that the
Grimoires of Black Magic are full of darksome rites and fell, mysterious words which
compel or expel those guardians. The Church and State may threaten him with a fire for
his flesh and a fire for his soul, but by watchfulness and secrecy he hopes to elude the