Transcendental Magic

Welcome to the mind blowing world of Eliphas Levi’s writings. Transcendental Magic is a foundational volume on occult science, Kabbalah, ritual magic and absolute understanding of the universe through studying the numbers, letters, words and symbols which are said to have divine power able to be channeled according to an accomplished magician’s will. The idea behind the title is that, beyond religious microcosms like Christianity or Judaism, there is an underlying, or transcendental power that governs all things and ideas. It is not inherently good or bad, but exists in the form of will and consciousness and can be utilized in various ways by those who have been ‘initiated’ in the ways of magic. Levi discusses many famous and also lesser known occult phenomena, such as pentagrams, Baphomet, the Star of Solomon, alchemy and ancient orders of scientists and all-knowing magi.l will start off by saying that l do not fully grasp everything discussed in this book. lt is a very long, difficult book to read and covers many hard to understand ideas, wrapped up inside even more complicated concepts. Personally l would recommend having a dictionary and an encyclopedia handy when reading this book. That’s not meant to be funny; unless you’re already extremely well-read and educated, you will most likely have frequent difficulty understanding Levi’s meanings and the cumbersome wording he utilizes.Transcendental Magic is basically 2 books combined into a single volume: the first being Doctrine, and the second Ritual. The Doctrine half establishes the ideas themselves, such as how occult science came to be separate from formal religion, and the difference between high and low magic. What is the Absolute, the Astral Light, the significance of Hebrew letters and numbers, and does Satan exist? Doctrine is definitely the more confusing and perplexing half of the book. Your average reader could quickly lose interest and abandon the book before reaching the midway point. The Ritual half, while still not easy reading, does become more interesting as it delves into actual processes, materials, vestments and settings necessary for initiation and higher understanding through rituals. Levi’s attitude throughout is that the difference between light and black magic is essentially the magician’s intent and spirit behind their actions, as well as the items used to achieve them.This is not a fun book; it is a serious, in-depth treatise on the occult written in the 19th century. If you do plan on reading it, just prepare yourself for that fact. Put your nose to the grind, keep on reading and eventually some of it will start to sink in. l couldn’t give the book 5 stars, just due to the difficulty of comprehension and how daunting it was to get through the first half. However it is interesting if you stick with it, and the last half redeems it to a good extent. To fully grasp this kind of material will require a ton of extra reading and re-referencing, making notes, cross examining and pondering. I do plan on reading more books by Eliphas Levi and hope to get a better grip on his material that way.

This is a wonderful book...but do NOT buy this edition. The errors in the preface alone were enough to make me want to throw it out the window. The name of the author is butchered in 7 different ways in just the preface. There are spelling errors on every single page that a simple spell check could have resolved. Extremely disappointed.

I regret this purchase. This edition is nothing but a cheap reproduction done with a bad OCR scanner. Hebrew letters in the original text have been omitted or have been replaced by standard Latin letters or by unrelated special characters. To me this is worthless.I give you an example of how bad the OCR scanner worked from the original book and then form this Pantianos Classics edition.Original: "... and in his left the branch of the blossoming almond. א ALEPH - He beholds God face to face, ... "This edition: "... and in his left the Branch of the Blos-soming Almond. ` ALEPH - He beholds God face to face ..."Note the difference in capitalization, the unnecessary hyphen as well as the missing Hebrew letter.For a serious student of Levi's Transcendental Magic this edition is a piece of useless crap. I bought a different version on Amazon.

This is the book that started it all as for the ideas, theories, and practices we have in the west and our current magick, This is the book that inspired, The whole Golden Dawn, Crowley loved it so much he began to claim that he was actually the living reincarnation of my Levi...This is also the very first source that connected the Tree of life and the Tarot.

I have noticed before that Amazon has a problem making sure that reviews are about the actual product on offer. In the present case, there are enough references to a badly prepared OCR edition or internet translator to make me believe that other versions of this book have appeared, but the copy I received from Amazon is clearly exactly as described: a reproduction of the original 1958 London edition. Someone at Amazon should weed out irrelevant or misleading reviews, or reviews referencing earlier versions of a current product, as a service to its customers.So, yes, this is a good edition of the Waite translation of this classic work, which translation I much prefer to the one by Greer and Mikituk, which I have separately reviewed. As to the work itself, in spite of its abundant errors (carefully pointed out by the translator), it remains an original work of occult philosophy, rich with creative ideas illuminating many of the occult ideas comprising our heritage of ancient wisdom. The only other work I can compare it with is the classic work by Manly Palmer Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages. The difference here is that both Manly Hall and A. E. Waite are careful and brilliant scholars reviewing the field, whereas Eliphas Levi was an original Magus who wrote on his own authority. Levi’s work is an indispensable classic, and Waite’s translation does it justice.

Classic esoteric publication here. Levi was one of many that influenced later occult writers. You can learn a lot here that normally would take several modern books to cover. While I do not agree with all of Levi's views, I can admit that many of his points are accurate and well researched. It reads like a textbook, but is worthwhile to any genuine occult scholar. Highly suggest you read Levi's other works as well after this one.

Pompous obscurities, seems to have been written to impress colleagues and terrify the Catholic priesthood.

My 3 stars are nothing to do with the actual content of the book. it's the way it's been printed. I realised why it's so cheap - Pages 208 to 210 are unreadable due to the pages being folded in on themselves. The rest of the book is OK although clearly just a scan of a smaller edition.

From what ive read its not bad... not quite sure what Levi tried to imply abut magic over all... whether it is evil or not I am not sure what deemed it to be. Still lots more to read.

great deal

A classic.

this very good read a must for the collection