Éliphas Lévi

French occult writer and poet (1810–1875)

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Lived 1810–1875, aged 65France

France WritersWriter / Author

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38 languages
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Era
1810–1875
Aged 65

Summary

Updated 2026-06-21

A French ex-seminarian who walked away from the priesthood and spent the second half of his life writing ceremonial magic manuals under a Hebraic pen name. His 20-plus books on Kabbalah and occultism made him the go-to mystic for Parisian romantics and London symbolists in the mid-1800s.

Biography

About

Born Alphonse Louis Constant on 8 February 1810, he trained for the Catholic priesthood but abandoned it in his mid-twenties. At 40 he surfaced as a ceremonial magician, translating his baptismal name into Hebrew as "Éliphas Lévi" and publishing treatises on magic, alchemy, and Kabbalah. His best-known work, Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, drew on Joseph de Maistre, Paracelsus, Swedenborg, and the Rosicrucians. He joined and then quit the Grand Orient de France, arguing that Freemasonry had lost its symbolic core and refused to tolerate Catholicism. By the time he died on 31 May 1875, he ha…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Éliphas Lévi

Éliphas Lévi

said1868

Happy in the time of Jesus were those who wept!

— Book Two: The Royal Mystery or the Art of Subduing the Powers, Chapter V: The Outer Darkness

Éliphas Lévi

said1868

We want to be clearly understood on this point. We are not trying to say that signs and rites are a big piece of humbug.

— Book Two: The Royal Mystery or the Art of Subduing the Powers, Chapter XI: The Arcana of Solomon's Ring

Éliphas Lévi

said1868

Progress is a possibility for the animal: it can be broken in, tamed and trained; but it is not a possibility for the fool, because the fool thinks he has nothing to learn.

— Book Two: The Royal Mystery or the Art of Subduing the Powers, Chapter XII: The Terrible Secret

Éliphas Lévi

said1868

Father, forgive them," said Jesus, "for they know not what they do." – People of good sense, whoever you may be, I will add, do not listen to them, for they know not what they say.

— Book Two: The Royal Mystery or the Art of Subduing the Powers, Chapter XII: The Terrible Secret

Éliphas Lévi

said1860

Magic has been confounded too long with the jugglery of mountebanks, the hallucinations of disordered minds and the crimes of certain unusual malefactors.

— Introduction

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

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