Éliphas Lévi Quotes

“Fear is nothing but idleness of the will.”

“Hermeticism is the science of nature hidden in the hieroglyphics and symbols of the ancient world. It is the search for the principle of life, along with the dream (for those who have not yet achieved it) of accomplishing the great work, that is the reproduction by man of the divine, natural fire which creates and recreates beings.”

“If you wish to seduce an angel, you must play the part of a devil.”

“Life accustoms us to death through sleep. Life warns us that there is another life through the dream.”

“Love is nothing but a desire and an enjoyment,it is mortal.”

“Magic is the divinity of man achieved in union with faith.”

“Passing beauties are only the fugitive reflections of the eternal. All beauty alters and all life melts away; in short, everything passes with marvelous rapidity.

Beautiful Helen of Troy has become a toothless skull, then a handful of dust, then nothing.”

“Succeed in not fearing the lion, and the lion will fear you. Say to suffering, 'I will that you shall become a pleasure', and it will prove to be such – and even more than a pleasure, it will be a blessing.”

“There is nothing more to controlling demons than to do good and fear nothing.”

“To be rich is to give; to give nothing is to be poor; to live is to love; to love nothing is to be dead; to be happy is to devote oneself; to exist only for oneself is to damn oneself, and to exile oneself to hell.”

“What is more absurd and more impious than to attribute the name of Lucifer to the devil, that is, to personified evil. The intellectual Lucifer is the spirit of intelligence and love; it is the paraclete, it is the Holy Spirit, while the physical Lucifer is the great agent of universal magnetism.”

“When one creates phantoms for oneself, one puts vampires into the world, and one must nourish these children of a voluntary nightmare with one's blood, one's life, one's intellegence, and one's reason, without ever satisfying them.”

“When we die, our interior light in departing follows the attraction of its star, and thus it is that we live in other universes, where the soul makes for itself a new garment, analogous to the development or diminution of its beauty; for our souls, when separated from our bodies, resemble revolving stars; they are globules of animated light which always seek their centre for the recovery of their equilibrium and their true movement.

Before all things, however, they must liberate themselves from the folds of the serpent, that is, the unpurified Astral Light (physical realm) which envelops and imprisons them, unless the strength of their will can lift them beyond its reach.”

“When we love, we see the infinite in the finite. We find the Creator in the creation.”