Quotes from Éliphas Lévi

Everything is possible to him who wills only what is true! Rest in Nature, study, know, then dare; dare to will, dare to act and be silent!

In olden times gold was manufactured by science; nowadays science must be renewed by gold. We have fixed the volatile and we must now volatilize the fixed—in other words, we have materialized spirit, and we must now spiritualize matter.

Weakness ever sympathizes with vice, because vice is a weakness which assumes the mask of strength. Madness holds reason in horror, and on all subjects it delights in the exaggerations of falsehood. The cause of all bewitchments, the poison of all philtres, the power of all sorcerers are there.

It must be pleasant to be occasionally guilty of a small abomination.

Like all magical mysteries, the secrets of the Great Work have a triple meaning: they are religious, philosophical and natural. Philosophical gold in religion is the Absolute and Supreme Reason; in philosophy, it is truth; in visible nature, it is the sun: in the subterranean and mineral world, it is the purest and most perfect gold. Hence the search after the Great Work is called the Search for the Absolute, and this work itself is termed the operation of the sun.

Everything lives by movement, everything is maintained by equilibrium, and harmony results from the analogy of contraries; this law is the form of forms.

When Christianity proscribed the public exercise of the ancient worships, the partisans of the latter were compelled to meet in secret for the celebration of their mysteries. Initiates presided over these assemblies and soon established a kind of orthodoxy among the varieties of persecuted worships, this being facilitated by the aid of magical truth and by the fact that proscription unites wills and forges bonds of brotherhood between men.

Man's greatest wisdom is to choose his obsession well.

Cuando se ama no se razona. Cuando se razona parece que no se ama. Cuando se razona después de haber amado, se comprende por qué se amaba. Cuando se ama después de haber razonado, se ama mejor. He aquí el sendero del progreso de las almas

You, therefore, who are undertaking the study of this book, if you persevere to the end and understand it, you will be either a monarch or a madman. Do what you will with this volume, you will be unable to despise or to forget it.

love is nothing but a desire and an enjoyment,it is mortal.

Todos los males del alma humana provienen del temor y del deseo. Las amenazas y las promesas son los grandes medios de corromper y embrutecer a los hombres. El dogma que anuncia el privilegio y que amenaza con un castigo exorbitante, monstruoso y sin fin a las multitudes ignorantes no es ni divino, ni humano, ni razonable, ni civilizador

It is undoubtedly contagious to breathe the same air as diseased persons, and to be within the circle of attraction and expansion which surrounds the wicked.

All miracles are promised to faith, and what is faith except the audacity of will which does not hesitate in the darkness, but advances towards the light in spite of all ordeals, and surmounting all obstacles? It

To be able to do and to abstain from doing, is to be twice able.

Weak people talk and do not act, strong people act and keep silent.

To be sucked down by this whirling stream is to fall into abysses of madness, more frightful than those of death; to expel the shades of this chaos and compel it to give perfect forms to our thoughts - this is to be a man of genius; it is to create, it is to be victorious over hell! The

La vie nous habitue à la mort par le sommeil. La vie nous avertit qu'il existe une autre vie par le rêve.

Occult Medicine is essentially sympathetic. Reciprocal affection, or at least real goodwill, must exist between doctor and patient. Syrups and juleps have very little inherent virtue; they are what they become through the mutual opinion of operator and subject; hence homoeopathic medicine dispenses with them and no serious inconvenience follows.

All miracles are promised to faith, and what is faith except the audacity of will which does not hesitate in the darkness, but advances towards the light in spite of all ordeals, and surmounting all obstacles?

To know all is an impossible dream; but woe unto him who dares not to learn all, and who does not know that, in order to know anything, one must learn eternally!

Religion realizes philosophy by adapting it to the weaknesses of the vulgar....

Showing the light to birds of the night is like hiding it from them, because it blinds them and becomes for them more obscure than darkness.

El cristianismo no debía odiar a la magia; pero la ignorancia humana siempre tiene miedo de lo desconocido.