Eliphas Lévi
The pseudonym of Alphonse Louis Constant (1810-75), one of the leaders of the French Occult revival of the 19th century and a prolific author, whose books on magic continue to exert a wide influence, both in France and abroad. He was born in Paris, the son of a poor shoemaker, and, showing a precocious intelligence, was educated at a free school run by the clergy. Later he entered the theological college of Saint-Sulpice to train for the priesthood, but abandoned the intention before taking his final vows. He toyed with the idea of re-entering holy orders, but finally renounced them in 1844, though he remained outwardly a loyal Catholic for the rest of his life.
After leaving Saint-Sulpice he entered on a period of radical political activity and writing, for which he was three times imprisoned,. In 1847 he married an eighteen-year-old girl, Noémi Cadot. Their daughter died while still young, but an illegitimate son by a previous affair survived, and lived until the First World War. The marriage broke up in 1853 and was declared null and void in 1865. Soon after the separation Constant began to write works on magic and occultism, adopting the name of Eliphas Lévi, the Hebrew equivalent of his two Christian names. His first magical Treatise was the Dogma de la Magie. His occult mentor was the Polish mathematician and occultist HOENE-WRONSKI. Lévi twice visited England and was a friend of the novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, later Lord Lytton, who had a deep interest in the occult. On his first visit to England, Lévi carried out, in a house in London, an invocation of the ancient Greek wonder-worker Apollonius of Tyana.
He gathered about him a small nucleus of personal pupils, but it was through his writings that he exercised the greatest influence. After his death, his works became the inspiration of a new generation of occultists who included the leaders of the French Cabalistic Order of the Rosy Cross (see ROSICRUCIANS). His main works are the Degme et Rituel de la haute magie, first published as
one volume in 1856, Histoire de la magie, 1860, and La Clé des Grandes Mystères, 1897. C. M.