The history of magic: Including a Clear and Precise Exposition of Its Procedure, Its Rites and Its Mysteries

About this book

The work is a nineteenth‑century historical survey of occult theory, written by Alphonse Louis Constant under his celebrated pseudonym Éliphas Lévi. The opening pages present the author’s own assessment of his book as “the most arresting, entertaining and brilliant of all studies on the subject,” while acknowledging its historical inaccuracies. It proceeds to outline Lévi’s purpose: to offer a comprehensive, philosophically grounded account of magic’s claims, rites and mysteries, and to expose the delusions that have surrounded occult practice. The preface sketches Lévi’s biography, from his modest Parisian origins and brief seminary career to his later emergence as a public figure of “Transcendental Magic”, and sets the stage for a discussion of his doctrines, especially the concept of the Astral Light as a universal medium for magical work.

The narrative voice is that of a learned, self‑conscious scholar steeped in the Romantic‑Victorian fascination with hidden knowledge. Lévi’s prose is dense, richly allusive, and occasionally polemical, reflecting the academic and mystical currents of mid‑1800s France. Readers who enjoy detailed intellectual histories of esotericism, the interplay of theology and occultism, or the original writings of a pivotal figure in Western magic will find this volume rewarding, while those seeking a practical grimoire or a light‑hearted overview should look elsewhere.

Opening lines

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. …

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