Italics are represented thus _italic_, and superscripts thus y^{en}. Duplicate headings of the seven BOOKS have been removed. THE HISTORY OF MAGIC [Illustration: ÉLIPHAS LÉVI _Frontispiece_] THE HISTORY OF MAGIC INCLUDING A CLEAR AND PRECISE EXPOSITION OF ITS PROCEDURE, ITS RITES AND ITS MYSTERIES BY ÉLIPHAS LÉVI (ALPHONSE LOUIS CONSTANT) _Opus hierarchicum et catholicum_ (Definition of the Great Work, according to Heinrich Khunrath) TRANSLATED, WITH A PREFACE AND NOTES, BY ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE THE ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS ARE INCLUDED AND PORTRAITS OF THE AUTHOR _Second Edition_ LONDON WILLIAM RIDER & SON, LIMITED CATHEDRAL HOUSE, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. 1922 _Copyright_ PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION In several casual references scattered through periodical literature, in the biographical sketch which preceded my rendering of _Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie_ and elsewhere, as occasion prompted, I have put on record an opinion that the _History of Magic_, by Alphonse Louis Constant, written—like the majority of his works—under the pseudonym of Éliphas Lévi, is the most arresting, entertaining and brilliant of all studies on the subject with which I am acquainted. So far back as 1896 I said that it was admirable as a philosophical survey, its historical inaccuracies notwithstanding, and that there is nothing in occult literature which can suffer comparison therewith. Moreover, there is nothing so comprehensive in the French language, while as regards ourselves it must be said that—outside records of research on the part of folk-lore scholarship—we have depended so far on a history by Joseph Ennemoser, translated from the German and explaining everything, within the domain included under the denomination of Magic, by the phenomena of Animal Magnetism. Other texts than this are available in that language, but they have not been put into English; while none of them has so great an appeal as that which is here rendered into our tongue. Having certified so far regarding its titles, it is perhaps desirable to add, from my own standpoint, that I have not translated the book merely because it is entertaining and brilliant, or because it will afford those who are concerned with Magic in history a serviceable general account. The task has been undertaken still less in the interests of any who may have other—that is to say, direct occult—reasons for acquaintance with “its procedure, its rites and its mysteries.” I have no object in providing unwary and foolish seekers with material of this kind, and it so happens that the present History does not fulfil the promise of its sub-title in these respects, or at least to any extent that they would term practical in their folly. Through all my later literary life I have sought to make it plain, as the result of antecedent years spent in occult research, that the occult sciences—in all their general understanding—are paths of danger when they are not paths of simple make-believe and imposture. The importance of Éliphas Lévi’s account at large of the claims, and of their story throughout the centuries, arises from the fact (_a_) that he is the authoritative exponent-in-chief of all the alleged sciences; (_b_) that it is he who, in a sense, restored and placed them, under a new and more attractive vesture, before public notice at the middle period of the nineteenth century; (_c_) that he claimed, as we shall see, the very fullest knowledge concerning them, being that of an adept and master; but (_d_) that—subject to one qualification, the worth of which will be mentioned—it follows from his long examination that Magic, as understood not in the streets only but in the houses of research concerning it, has no ground in...