Episode 8 - Eliphas Levi

Hello! In episode 8 I discuss the great french occultist, Eliphas Levi! I touch on his life, legacy and influence in music and modern culture. Explore this topic and more with me as we dive into the great abyss. Take a listen now and don't forget to have some fun. Enjoy!! ☆

"Do what though wilt shall be the whole of the law" - Aleister Crowley

"Discover that which makes you shine, always and forever into infinity"

-Joseph Matthew 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

welcome one and all to the magic music podcast i'm your host joseph matthew and in this series we will be discussing various occult and esoteric practices in music art and culture so sit back relax and let's explore the unknown together enjoy Welcome, guys, to episode number eight. Today, we're going to be discussing Eliphas Levi. Who exactly was Eliphas Levi? It was actually a pen name of Alphonse Louis Constant, who was born in 1810 and died in 1875. He was a French occultist, a writer, ceremonial magician he had a major influence on the modern revival of western esotericism so this is a guy that yeah was extremely influential to people like alistair crowley and other you know modern cultists from you know the 1900s and and beyond his influence definitely lives on so some key facts about him In his early life, he originally studied for the Roman Catholic priesthood, but left the seminary before ordination. His break from Orthodox religion led him to explore mysticism and esoteric traditions. That's interesting. So, I'm sure he started out, you know, growing up in the church like I did, and then maybe saw it for what it truly was, or maybe that... specific sect that he was in, and he just didn't vibe with it. He was like, nah, I'm good. I'm gonna just take this, I'm gonna go somewhere else with it, and just find the truth. The truth for himself. So his magnum opus, his most influential work, is The Dogma and Ritual of High Magic, which he wrote between 1854 and 1856. In this book, he lays out a comprehensive theory of how to practice ceremonial magic, and he also integrated ideas from the Kabbalah, Hermeticism, and other traditions. So the Kabbalah and Hermeticism, that's something we'll touch on in later episodes, for sure. We'll go into more details for those practices and my thoughts on those. His legacy, Levi is credited with popularizing the image of Baphomet, which he described as a symbolic representation of the equilibrium of opposites. So for example, male and female, or good and evil. His influence, his ideas deeply influenced later occult groups, like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. And of course, Aleister Crowley considered Levi a spiritual predecessor. So just kind of continuing down the same esoteric path, that pathway to find your true inner self, your true inner knowledge that no one else can do for you except you. So his philosophy was that he saw magic as a science of the imagination and willpower, deeply moral and symbolic, Not just a system of spells or rituals. So, yeah, not just wizards and witches performing magic or trying to, you know, curse somebody or hex somebody. It was a lot deeper than that and just integrating all of these things together that was very, very smart of him to do in his time. I'm sure it was pretty frowned upon, you know, but he probably didn't care. He just wanted to push through and, you know, just find what it meant to him personally and probably didn't care about anyone else. So I'm going to talk about some of his key ideas and beliefs. So magic as science and morality. Levi believed that magic is both a spiritual science and a moral practice, grounded in the balance of natural forces and universal principles. So, you know, just look around you. There are things that occur daily that should kind of make you question how reality works. there's you know certain geometric patterns that are found in nature the sun rises and then you have the moon at night so kind of just blending all these things and just taking a look at nature itself so for him true magic involved mastery of will imagination and knowledge not just superstition or spell casting So he kind of went deep with this. Enacting your will on something is using your own life force to push through and to find what you truly believe in. Imagination is just completely limitless. You can think of so many different things and Whether or not you choose to create something out of that, that's totally up to you. But there are no boundaries. And knowledge. Knowledge is just necessary for, I think, becoming a stronger person mentally and physically. You can strengthen your mind and strengthen your body with knowledge. The more you soak in and the more bullshit that you filter out, You can achieve very, very amazing things in life. The power of the will. He emphasized the human will as a divine force capable of shaping reality when properly focused and aligned with universal laws. Just taking that step, pushing yourself to do that thing you've always wanted to do. And you might fail many times. But if you pick yourself back up each time, you might have a different outcome at the end. Correspondences and symbolism. Levi promoted the idea of symbolic correspondences between the natural world, the human soul, and divine archetypes, drawing on Hermeticism, Astrology, and Kabbalah. And so the Kabbalah, he integrated Jewish mysticism, especially the Sephirotic Tree of Life, into his magical system. Levi saw the Kabbalah as a universal key to unlocking hidden truths. I'm going to have a series that's just dedicated to that, because I'm actually reading a book right now. I believe I mentioned it in another episode previously, but it's called The... moon and serpent bumper book of magic by alan moore who wrote uh the watchman a graphic novel and swamp thing a bunch of other amazing comic books so you have alan moore and then steve moore they're not related to one another even though they have the same last name but steve moore was a mentor to alan moore actually and steve moore is no longer with us but alan moore He recently put out a masterclass on writing and storytelling. And Alan Moore, I would love to do an episode just on Alan Moore because he's big into the occult and mysticism and just using your own, the human spirit, the human will to create art. whether it's music or a book or a script. But yeah, that book really, really goes into the Kabbalah and explains each specific group of spheres that's there. It does a very, very good job of going in depth with those. So I will have an episode where I'm going to just touch on all of those things because it's just so fascinating. And I have just recently discovered it. I've always known about it, but I never really looked into it too much. It just seemed too big for me to comprehend. I was like, whoa, this is fucking huge. How am I supposed to process this? But I'm slowly going through it. I think I'm on like the eighth or ninth sphere in the book. So I'm going to try to finish it and then, yeah, make an episode on it in the future. So... Yeah, he utilized the Kabbalah. Duality and balance. Central to Levi's worldview was the unity of opposites. Light and dark, male and female, spirit and matter. Harmony came from balancing these forces. And I think life is a balancing act. It's trying to find what is going to make you shine. What's going to make you shine? Is it dancing? Is it singing? Is it playing an instrument? Is it doing stand-up comedy? Is it driving really fast in your car, like being a NASCAR driver or motorcycle? Whatever's going to bring you some element of joy, but also knowledge, then maybe, just maybe, you keep that knowledge with you. And if you believe in past lives or even future lives, maybe you take that knowledge with you into the next life. Or you're born just a completely clean slate with no memory of your past lives whatsoever. Who knows? But maybe the more knowledge you consume, maybe it sticks with you. So the Baphomet. The Baphomet, throughout history, is regarded... at least in, you know, popular culture as evil. When people see that image of the Baphomet, you know, the demon with the goat's head and the inverted pentagram, everyone's like, Jesus Christ, like, like, I mean, the power of Christ can tell you, like, throw fucking holy water on it. And it's like, well, instead of just like, you know, turning away from it. You could try to learn about it a little bit. Not that I worship any satanic forces or anything like that. Personally, I don't. I'm sure there are a lot of satanists out there and people who worship evil things. Whatever. Go crazy. I mean, as long as you're not harming anybody, or if you're doing it in private, whatever. That's fine. I don't care. Just do you. Levi actually drew the image of the Baphomet in 1856. It's one of the most iconic images in modern occultism. And here's what it represents. Androgyny. The figure has both male and female characteristics, symbolizing duality and unity. You know, men have testosterone, women have estrogen. I have a little bit of estrogen in me. you have things that once, if they're pushed forward, like testosterone, I have a lot more testosterone than I do estrogen. So, I have a little bit of estrogen in me, but that doesn't make me a woman, you know, but it's just kind of like we have certain things in us that we, you know, sometimes forget. The goat head represents the animal nature of humans, but under control of of divine reason yeah humans are even though we don't like to think that we are like we're definitely more savage than we would like to think if evolution is correct and we come from from apes or chimpanzees then you know we we have remnants of that If you get really angry or frustrated, you know, that's kind of an animalistic behavior. And if your intention is to harm somebody, then that's not good. If someone did you wrong or you're trying to defend yourself, that's one thing. But sometimes people really lay into that really savage nature. And maybe they don't mean to, but maybe they just can't control it. Torches and pentagrams, the torch on the head symbolizes illumination and divine light. The upright pentagram on the forehead represents spiritual sovereignty. Caduceus, the serpent staff, on the abdomen, symbolizing life force, healing, and balance of opposing energies, like yin and yang, or masculine and feminine. One arm points up, the other one points down. Accompanied by the phrase, solve et coagula, dissolve and coagulate. The principle of alchemy referring to breaking things apart and recombining them in a pure form. In hermeticism or in alchemy, way back when you had individuals trying to turn lead into gold, to turn these different elements into something else, right? If you compare a human to an insect, we're made of the same atoms. It's just represented differently and expressed differently. Expression is a big thing. Like, how do you express yourself? Yeah, this is fascinating because I thought it had a more satanic connotation, but Levi did not see the Baphomet as a satanic figure. but rather as a symbol of spiritual balance and esoteric truth. And it was later misinterpreted and associated with Satanism by others. So again, throughout history, just human error, human misunderstanding, that's what's gonna get the human race destroyed one day. Hopefully not, but it's better to just communicate and have an open mind about this stuff. So like I said, I'm not pushing for people to like really, really look into this stuff. But just that iconic image of the Baphomet and what it symbolizes, you know, it can really shock people. It's like, oh, it's not evil. I thought that I thought it was evil. But you were programmed to think that way through popular culture, through movies, through songs, through visuals. You see an upright pentagram. It's like, oh God, got to get away from that. Yeah, the illustration is really... is incredible i mean it's been drawn so many times i'm sure before but yeah just you know if you guys are curious you know you can google and just image of the baphomet let's see and you know the image is often referred to as the sabbatic goat is rich in symbolism and has become one of the most iconic representations in western occultism so it was intended as a symbol of equilibrium illustrating the harmony between opposing forces Okay. So yeah, Levi greatly inspired Aleister Crowley, which in turn, we discussed, he has inspired Jimmy Page. And Jimmy Page also, by the way, I forgot to mention this in episode one, is that he had written a different like musical pieces for a director known as Kenneth Anger, who was really, really big on just doing kind of like satanic films. And yeah, just really, he had these weird sounds and synths and guitar parts. I think he called it Lucifer Rising. So, I mean, it was pretty clear that, you know, he was going for something really dark and unsettling. And I believe he featured in the film at some point. I think he makes like a cameo appearance, which is pretty cool. Also, you know, inspiring musicians as well. So to tie this in with music, David Bowie apparently referenced the Kabbalah and mysticism and in his song, Quicksand. And he was known to read occult texts and explore esoteric themes. Now, to touch on this a little bit, Bowie had an album. His last album was called Black Star. And the title track, it's one of my favorite songs of his because there are a lot of esoteric themes in that song. If you're curious, just look up the lyrics. I mean... The way he paints this picture and, you know, he died of cancer. So maybe he knew that he was going to die soon. He knew his own mortality. So he was like wrestling with all of these themes of life and death. And where do I go after this? What's next for me? Iron Maiden, Number of the Beast, draws on imagery from Crowley and occult traditions rooted in Levi's writings. And then you got, you know, metal and occult rock. So Black Metal, Doom, so bands like Behemoth, Coven, and Ghost, you know, kind of take it to that dark edge, if you will. Marilyn Manson as well. He frequently used occult and esoteric symbolism in his persona and stage design. Though it was more pop culture driven, the roots traced back to Levi's Baphomet. and ideas of moral inversion and spiritual rebellion. In his most famous work, he talks about the magician's role a little bit. And he states that the magician must be 1. Moral and disciplined 2. Knowledgeable in natural and spiritual law and 3. Capable of controlling the imagination and will. Magic can be dangerous if practiced without wisdom and ethics, and it can destroy as easily as it can create. So I just want to say this, is that if you are setting your orientation on anything that is going to harm somebody or, you know, just fuck them over in some way, shape, or form to get what you want, I think it may backfire eventually. Maybe not, but I think that if you set your intention, you need to set your intention before you start practicing. And I've dabbled with ceremonial magic here and there. I actually have tarot cards, and I'm going to go through all the tarot cards with you guys. And I did a reading a couple months back and it was, I can't remember the actual cards off the top of my head, but the trajectory, I drew three separate cards. There's all different kinds of ways to play, but there's like, you know, you can draw one card, you can draw three for past, present, and future, or I think you can draw yet multiple cards. You can kind of just, you know, freeform with it, just kind of experiment. It's fun. But when I drew those three cards, the trajectory was going upward. You know, it was going from my past was like, you know, not so great present, you know, it's getting better and future is going to be filled with just wonder and excitement and love and positivity. And that's what kind of inspired me, that reading to start the Magic Music Podcast. I was like, okay, well, how can it get better than this? What if I start creating again? What if I start being truthful with myself? What if I just start speaking the truth and then it resonates? Who knows? I mean, I'm just babbling to the ether right now, but that means the universe is listening. I mean, the universe is always listening to you, whether that's dropping hints or like synchronicities or... I keep seeing the number 726 for some reason. You know what, let me look up, let's see. What is the meaning of the number 726? Let's see what Google says. So the AI overview says the number 726 is often interpreted as an angel number, suggesting a message of prosperity, peace, and harmony. That's interesting. seen as a positive sign, encouraging optimism and faith while also hinting at the power to create a balanced and fulfilling life. All right. In numerology, the individual digits also carry symbolic meaning. Seven is associated with spirituality and intuition. Two with balance and harmony. And six with love, home, and family. That's crazy. That kind of describes what I'm about. Wow, that's interesting. Spirituality. balance and and love basically good stuff man good stuff whether whether or not you believe in that stuff it's it's cool to you know um yeah a lot of a lot of wiccans do that um they're very in touch with nature so on and so forth so to move on ritual and ceremonial practice the book includes outlines of rituals symbols tools and magical alphabets Levi believed in the power of ceremonial magic to invoke spiritual forces, for example, angels, planetary spirits, but warned against summoning demons irresponsibly. I've said this once, I'll say it again. If you open a door, you have to close it, man. Don't leave your front door wide open because some guy is just going to walk into your house. And you don't know him. You don't know what he's going to do to you or your family. He might be nice. He might be a nice guy. Or he might be the most evil motherfucker on the planet. So, again, you wouldn't leave your front door to your house open or your back door. Or any door or window for that matter. Unless you live in a safe neighborhood, whatever. You open the window. Summertime. Sweating your ass off. Feel the cool breeze. So, yeah, the same thing applies with trying to talk to the universe. and trying to summon something that it might harm you or your friends or your family. You might want it to harm somebody else because they cut you off in traffic or they did something horrific to you. It's hard. It's hard to not react back. Like, oh, like eye for an eye. Like you hurt me, I'm going to hurt you. But I would advise against that. Just take a deep breath, sit back, And think. Just think before you act because it can get you into a very, very bad situation very quickly. As above, so below. A central hermetic maxim in the book. What happens in the spiritual realm reflects and influences the material world and vice versa. Yeah, whatever you do, there is some intention behind it. Whether it's good or bad. Whether there are angels and demons or ghosts, aliens, what have you. We're connected to some divine plane. Like if you think of your brain as maybe like an antenna to another place. It's like a receiver. It's a radio. It picks up on things. Like what is like, you know, making me talk right now? Like what is that will that I'm enacting? It's just kind of flowing through me. I don't really have a script, I just kind of go freeform. But yeah, where does that come from? Where does that drive come from? Does it come from the spiritual realm? Anything we do affects the spiritual realm and the spiritual realm affects us. Even though we can't really see it or perceive it, it's probably there in some way, shape, or form. Sol et coagula. This alchemical phrase, dissolve and recombine, Represents the constant spiritual process of breaking down impurities and rebuilding the self It's as if you're you're at the gym and you're working out and you're you're on the the chest press or something You know you break down your muscle to have it grow back Bigger and stronger it has to rip it has to tear and then it just comes back together that that's life the more active you are the more sharper that you'll be mentally and physically. And this appears on the arms of Levi's Baphomet and symbolizes personal transformation. Every day you're transforming, like every single day you are becoming someone else. I don't really want to be my past self. Would I want to go back 10 years? I'm probably not. Would I want to go forward 10 years? Probably not. I'm kind of content where I am now. I just focus on the present moment. as of right now so the astral light mysterious force akin to the modern idea of an energy field or collective unconscious which we've discussed with carl jung so even he before carl jung you know was thinking about this levi claimed it was the medium through which magical operations take effect spiritual ether binding everything maybe dreams this idea of this dream world, this fantasy world that we just have trouble perceiving in our waking lives. We only have seven senses, right? So just imagine if you could perceive these other realms and see all these beings that may or may not be there. It's a wild thought. It really is. Just to... touch on this a little bit. We mentioned this in the beginning, but Levi clashed between orthodoxy and esotericism. There was this internal struggle within him that he probably just needed to get something out. Maybe he was living a lie. Maybe he was forced into something that he didn't want to do. Being drawn to mysticism and philosophy... and political reform, those things, at least in his time, were seen as like incompatible with the church teachings. They didn't wanna even talk about that stuff. It wasn't open to discussion. It was like, this is our way, which is fine if you wanna be a part of that group and you wanna go down that path into priesthood. There's nothing wrong with that. But he just didn't vibe with it, apparently. know he sympathized with socialist and utopian ideals advocating for social justice equality and the reform of religious institutions so maybe he thought that they had too much control or too much power and you know equality since he believed that as above so below things need balance so do men and women i think it's great that women um have the opportunity to to work now to contribute to society not just be like mothers and stay home some of them want to and that's amazing my wife always wanted to be a stay-at-home mother and uh it's tough when you live in a state where it's it's so expensive to live and this the economy right now it's it's tough you know so women really have it hard but so do men but what it needs to be a balancing act you gotta have everything in accordance with one another it's always the scales are always tipping but sometimes they kind of align his early writings were critical of the church's role in oppressing the poor which got him into trouble with religious authorities so he was directly criticizing the church it's almost like he was blind and then got his vision back once he started seeing okay this isn't what i thought it was this is not the priesthood that i want to be a part of so yeah they definitely you know when you criticize an institution they're going to come after you in some way shape or form that's what humans do they try to you know attack and maybe blackmail you sometimes it depends if they're they're that evil enough and that they care that much about protecting what they believe and what only they believe and no one else So Levi came to believe that all religions contain fragments of a universal truth, which could be synthesized through magic, symbolism, and esotericism. I think that religions, they do hint at some things that the occult touches on, even though they're kind of in separate categories. The occult is not a religion, per se. It's a practice. It's like a way of life. It's... you know theories like certain religions are like dead set okay this is what happened jesus rose from the grave on the third day like some people take this stuff like literally and that's that's fine but some people believe that you know the bible is like a big storybook but again who knows i didn't live in that time and the catholic church regarded this syncretic view as heretical yeah he was definitely blacklisted from the church. So maybe that was for the best. Maybe that's what he needed. Maybe he needed to get a little taste of his own, you know, his own lies that he believed, which set him on that path to a higher truth for himself. So the Kabbalah, Hermeticism, and the Tarot can all be ancient keys to divine knowledge and not evil. So let's just get that out of the vocabulary. It's not evil. It can be used for Good stuff. And the church condemned magic and occultism as satanic, which was probably, you know, a common thing of like, oh, this is the opposite of what we believe, so that must be evil. And now it's just another way of looking at it. So he likely felt that remaining in the church would force him to suppress his beliefs and intellectual curiosity. So he probably felt stifled there. couldn't be himself. And that's with a lot of places too. You get roped into this thing. You become part of like a toxic work environment and you're just not about it. You're like, I don't feel like myself here. This isn't my tribe. I have to find another tribe that I want to live with. So he chose instead to pursue a path that allowed him to freely explore spiritual truth through reason, symbolism, and personal revelation. So he just wanted to be himself, essentially. And there's nothing wrong with that at all. He just had to go through some tough shit to get there with the church. So yeah, the church just limited the deeper universal spiritual understanding that he sought. And I think we're going to stop there. But yeah, that's just a little overview. of Levi and what he believed. Yeah, those principles. I think his story can resonate with everyone. If you don't feel like yourself somewhere, then you gotta get out of there. You gotta try to pursue something. It's gonna make you happy. Whatever it is. Whatever it is. If you find comfort and joy in it, then just do that until the end of time. and don't don't compromise just keep keep pushing forward you might get knocked down you might get discouraged you might be like oh man like i my band only has like you know got a couple likes on this post on instagram well just just keep pushing through just keep being yourself and keep keep creating just keep creating all day whenever you have time sometimes it's hard you don't want to but just you know try to get up and And just be creative. Enact your own will on the day. Because that's all you have. Just your own will to create. That spark is in you. And with that, everybody, thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to episode number eight. Got a lot of cool stuff in store for you guys. So I'm super, super excited. Don't forget to like and subscribe to my Instagram. I have YouTube. I'm going to create some more social media. pages in the future um also on buzzsprout too you can shoot me a text i'll respond um there's a monthly donation page as well if you guys are interested i think the lowest amount is three dollars a month i don't expect anything from you guys but if you want to buy me a cup of coffee um i don't mind but thank you so much for all of your support and love and have a great week guys thank you so much see you next time