Eliphas Levi,
the Tarot and Monsieur Philippe revisited
We began this series of chats about occultism
in France during the belle époque by concentrating upon Eliphas Levi, and
indeed it is only as we have progressed – looking at those he influenced – that
I have realised what an important figure he was. Even if he didn’t get all his
facts right he was convincing enough to persuade others to follow his vision;
and so the movement grew, inspiring enthusiastic organisers, publicists and researchers such as Papus
and the rest. It is thus a little surprising that he comes rather late
in the sequence of memoirs by Victor-Émile Michelet – but when he does his life
story illustrates some of the deeper effects of initiation.
As Michelet records, Eliphas Levi
died on 31st May 1875, after a turbulent life ranging from
priesthood to imprisonment, wandering actor and popular portraitist, socialist
agitator and guest of English lords, all the while coming to terms with ‘the
astral light’ over years of meditation and experiment. As Michelet remarks, while
it is true that ‘the spirit bloweth where it listeth’ it also brings testing times
to those who seek to reveal its secrets; and after his initiation, from
whatever source, he seemed sustained by an interior occult force, and became an
excellent and compelling writer.
The contemporary poet Catulle Mendès
used to recite sentences from Levi’s Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie that
he had memorised for their beauty. But before his ‘second birth’ the political
and religious pamphleteer Alphonse-Louis Constant was only a mediocre writer. Michelet
puts the sudden change down to his inspiring ‘daimon’ in the Socratic sense,
and reckons that one can see a similar case in the playwright Corneille, who
wrote very ordinary plays in his early period, until suddenly, after Le Cid,
he wrote masterpiece after masterpiece.
It was the same with Eliphas Levi, who
in his early period wrote books and pamphlets with no more value than their
generous intention, but in the light of initiation wrote several where the most
profound knowledge was expressed in the language of a consummate artist. He may
have written between times at a lower level, but in Michelet’s estimation,
books written in the final period of his life attain the heights of his best. In
my view this is probably more easily discerned in the original French rather
than the somewhat ponderous English translations by A.E.Waite.
This has led to Eliphas Levi’s interpretations being taken as
the one and only true by the French, despite some gross and discernable errors
of fact – picked up from Court de Gebelin’s earlier speculations – but
nonetheless, honestly pursued, the system works, as systems usually will. In
latter years, study of the Tarot has increased so exponentially and in so many
directions that early differences of interpretation, once thought infallible,
can now be realised for what they are; and for what an individual or a group
can get out of them by sustained meditation and contemplation.
One can imagine however, how
disconcerted earlier generations of occultists have felt when confronted with
such differences of interpretation. No reason to wonder why Papus should have resigned so quickly from the French branch of the Golden Dawn when
it was first set up in Paris. No excuse for differences from perceived or
claimed authority in those days!
So anyone who wants to get the best
out of French occultism had best decide to follow Eliphas Levi – most of
the rest of that nation have, from Oswald Wirth to Marc Haven to name but two respected
later writers on the subject. In my own books on Tarot I have pursued a number
of alternative lines, in the hope of broadening rather than confusing minds.
One of them, Tarot & Magic, written some years ago, has just been
translated into Italian; its latest incarnation being named Tarocchi e
Magia, which gives me something of a warm glow to think that in a sense the
Tarot is returning home on a ticket provided by me – for according to the best
scholarship Italy is where the wondrous system started from in the form that most
of us know it, (cf A Wicked Pack of Cards and A History of the Occult
Tarot, by Professor Michael Dummett and his friends).
Marc Haven, by the way, was a
Christian Qabalist like myself, and also had the best of both worlds – magical
and mystical – in having married Victoria, the daughter of Maïtre Philippe, the
remarkable thaumaturge, referred to by Michelet as “the little peasant of the
Lyonnais” Philippe Nizier Vachod, whom they called ‘Monsieur Philippe’ whose
role in secret history has never been
accurately told, and perhaps never will.
What seems certain to Michelet is that if the French government of the day and its
diplomats had been less stupid, they
would have helped Philippe instead of persecuting him, the last imperial couple
in Russia would not have fallen into the power of Rasputin, and the inevitable
Bolshevik revolution would have been delayed.
So who was this Philippe? A great
thaumaturge, a saint, some say, a popular charlatan the official world replies.
But the official mind understands nothing of anything that does not fall into
the narrow confines of rational belief. Truly, Philippe seems to have been an
excellent ordinary kind of man but gifted with real powers as a healer and
visionary . No doubt he would have spent the rest of his life in his house at
Arbresle near Lyons attending to the needs of the sick if Papus had not
precipitated him into political adventures.”
We will return to this educative but
depressing story at a later date. For much hangs upon it.
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