The impetus behind the modern revival of ceremonial magic in Western culture largely originated with the writings of Eliphas Levi, the pen name for Alphonse Louis Constant (1810-1875).

The son of a French shoe maker, Levi exhibited scholastic aptitude as a child, and declared his intention to devote his life in the service of the Catholic Church. He was educated by the Church, and in time attained the rank of deacon, but apparently decided that a celibate life was not for him. He left the seminary and soon became involved with a mixed group of mystics and socialists. In 1841 he wrote a forgettable tract titled The Bible of Liberty.

Perhaps Levi would have become an anarchist, but the lure of the occult was too strong. In 1854 he published the first half of his most famous work, The Dogma and Ritual of High Magic. Part two came out two years later. Together they constitute the single volume that goes under the English title Transcendental Magic. In 1860 his second most important work, The History of Magic, came forth from the press. It is largely upon these two books that Levi's fame rests.

It's difficult for modern readers to understand why Levi's writings exerted such a profound effect on young men and women of his period. To us, they appear somewhat vague and bombastic. Levi was much more comfortable with flowery rhetoric than cold, hard facts.

We must remember that in the middle of the 19th century there was very little literature of any kind available on the subject of practical ritual magic. Levi was able to transfer his religious zeal, and his enthusiasm as a political reformer, to his exposition of the art of magic. He proselytized it as a new, enlightened religion, and the bored, restless intelligentsia of Paris were eager to adopt his vision as their own.

Levi was not a working magician. He specifically states in one of his lesser known works (Paradoxes of the Highest Science, written in 1872) that he viewed himself as a theorist of magic.

Even so, the most famous story told about Levi involves his visit to London in 1854. At an urging of a friend of the novelist Bulwer-Lytton, who is best known in occult circles today as the writer of the occult novel Zanoni, Levi is supposed to have evoked to visible appearance the ghost of Apollonius of Tyana, one of the greatest magi of the ancient world. It seems unlikely that this evocation ever happened, let alone succeeded, in view of Levi's own assertion that he did not practice magic, but the story is inextricably bound up with Levi's legend.

Levi's fame became great even within his own lifetime. Numerous students clamored for his wisdom. Since he was not able to fully meet his needs through the earnings of his books alone, Levi charged large fees to a select number of disciples. Madame Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophical Society, once complained that she had paid Levi 40 francs for a mere one minute of conversation.

Much of Levi's teachings on practical magic are in error. This is particularly true in the areas of the Kabbalah and the Tarot. He based his books on very little solid information -- because so little was available at that time -- and filled them up with grandiose visions and sweeping, portentous statements about the dread and beautiful power of magic.

But it was these purple-penned volumes of fantasy and imagination that inspired an entire generation of magicians who came after Levi, men like Stanislas de Guaita and Oswald Wirth in France, and MacGregor Mathers and Aleister Crowley in England. This second generation of the modern magical revival was intelligent and well educated. It created the systems of ceremonial magic that are still being used, with very little alteration, in the present day.

Perhaps the truest tribute to Levi by a magician came from Aleister Crowley, who declared himself to be Levi's reincarnation. Crowley had very little use for those who pretended to a knowledge of magic which they did not possess. He fully recognized Levi's many shortcomings, but still regarded Levi as a great teacher, and believed his books to be filled with hidden mysteries and wonderful secrets.