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:
THE GREAT MAGIC AGENT. 275
it preserves and reproduces all forms," as he does, is to enunciate truth
only in the second proposition. The first is erroneous; for if all that
exists was evolved through (or via) it, this is not the Astral Ught, since
the latter is not the container of all things but, at best, only the
reflector of this all. Eliphas Levi ver>' truly shows it "a force in
Nature," by means of which "a single man who can master it . . .
might throw the world into confusion and transform its face"; for it
is the "Great Arcanum of transcendent Magic." Quoting the words
of the great Western Kabalist in
their translated form,^-' we may, perhaps,
the better explain them by the occasional addition of a word or
two, to show the difference between Western and Eastern explanations
of the same subject. The author saj^s of the great Magic Agent:
This ambient and all-penetrating fluid, this ray detached from the [Central or
Spiritual] Sun's splendour . . . fixed by the weight of the atmosphere [ !] and
the power of central attraction . . . the Astral Light, this electro-magnetic
ether, this vital and luminous caloric, is represented on ancient monuments by the
girdle of Isis, which twines round two poles . . . and in ancient theogonies by
the serpent devouring its own tail, emblem of prudence and of Saturn [emblem of
infinity, immortality, and Cronus—Time—not the God Saturn or the planet]. It is
the winged dragon of Medea, the double serpent of the caduceus, and the tempter of
Genesis ; but it is also the brazen snake of Moses encircling the Tau . . . lastly,
it is the devil of exoteric dogmatism, and is really the blind force [it is not blind,
and L^vi knew it], which souls must conquer, in order to detach themselves from
the chains of Earth; for if they should not, the}- will be absorbed by the same
power which first produced them, and will return to the central and eternal fire.
This great Archseus is now publicly discovered by, and for, only one
man—^J.
W. Keely, of Philadelphia. For others, however, it is discovered,
yet must remain almost useless. "So far shalt thou go. . .
."
All the above is as practical as it is correct, save one error, which we
have explained. Eliphas Eevi commits a great blunder in alwaj^s
identifying the Astral Eight with what v^^e call Akasha. What it really
is will be expounded in Volume II.
Eliphas Levi further writes
The great Magic Agent is the fourth emanation of the life principle [we saj'—it is
the first in the inner, and the second in the outer (our) Universe], of which the Sun
is the third form ... for the day-star [the Sun] is only the reflection and
material shadow of the Central Sun of truth, which illuminates the intellectual
[invisible] world of Spirit, and which itself is but a gleam borrowed from the
Absolute.
So far he is right enough. But when the great authority of the
* The Mysteries of Magic, by A.. E. Waite.