FOREWORD TO THE 2001 EDITION

IT IS A TESTAMENT TO ÉLIPHAS LÉVI that his major writings are still available nearly 150 years after their first publication in French, Lévi's native language. This new printing of Lévi's The History of Magic joins several recent paperback editions of Lévi titles from Weiser Books: The Great Secret; Mysteries of the Qabalah; and The Book of Splendours.

The period from 1850—forty years after Lévi's birth—to the turn of the century was teeming with works on all aspects of occultism. However, while much was written during what is commonly called the French Occult Revival, most of these writings have never been translated into English. Lévi is one of the few occultists of his era who continues to be a major influence in the English-speaking occult world.

First printed in 1860 in Paris, The History of Magic tells the story of magic from Egyptian antiquity to the mid-19th century, (his earlier writing, Transcendental Magic, offers the reader Lévi's own system of magic). Our gratitude for the first and only English translations of these works must go to Arthur E. Waite, who was so impressed with Éliphas Lévi that he translated them for his own studies. Not long after, these seminal works were published by Rider in 1913 (History of Magic) and by Redway in 1896 (Transcendental Magic). Waite said of History of Magic that “there is nothing in occult literature to compare with it,” indicating that every aspect of esoteric doctrine and practice is exhaustively dealt with. While many writers have since attempted the task, and there are many books today that claim to outline the history of magic, no other similar volume has become so important.

Waite wasn't the only famous occultist to notice Lévi. Aleister Crowley, who was born in 1875, the year of Lévi's death, took the opportunity to claim that he was the reincarnation of Éliphas Lévi. It's not surprising that Crowley may have been, or wished to be his reincarnation, as by that time, Lévi had achieved almost legendary status as an expositor of magical lore. And if Crowley's claim was true, it may have made it easier for Crowley to translate The Key of the Mysteries, another of the most popular of Lévi's presently available titles. Less notably, but no less important, was Lévi's influence on other important occult writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Both Papus (Gerard Encausse), well-known for his Ta rot of the Bohemians, Qabalah and Initiation into Astrology, and Stanislav de Guaita, author of Essais des Sciences Maudites, were influenced by Lévi.

When I first began my bookselling career—too long ago to mention the date—the many people I met who were students of magic turned my attention to Éliphas Lévi. When my father, Samuel, and I expanded into publishing in 1956 under the name of Samuel Weiser, Inc., those same students influenced my decisions to regularly print the Lévi titles that had been translated into English. In the mid-1970s we arranged, with Thorsons Publishing in the United Kingdom, to have translated into English several Lévi titles previously available only in French: The Book of Splendours, The Great Secret, and Mysteries of the Qabalah. I am happy to pass on the satisfaction of keeping these remarkable writings alive and to have the opportunity to introduce this new printing of The History of Magic.

—Donald Weiser
October, 2001