The Magical Ritual of The Sanctum Regnum
Eliphas Levi
XIII. Death - La Mort
An effort must now be made to learn the truth concerning the greatest and most consoling, yet also the most formidable of the Minor Arcana - concerning Death. Now, in truth, Death is but a phantom of your ignorance and fear. Death has no existence in the Sanctum Regnum of existence. A change, however awful, demonstrates movement, and movement is life; those only who have attempted to check the disrobing of the spirit have tried to create a real death. We all are dying and being renewed every day, because every day our bodies have changed to some extent. Be troubled lest you soil and tear your bodily raiment, your coat of skin, but fear not to leave it aside when the time has come for a period of repose from the work of this world.
Leave not your material garment for ever, until the time for your departure has come; that is, destroy not your own life, for it may be that you would awake to find yourself naked, chill, and ashamed: it may be too that such a corpse feels its own necropsy. Do not attempt to preserve the bodies of the dead, let nature do her work at once; let there be no worship of a dead body, for it represents but the ragged old clothes of a life.
Do not grieve for the beloved dead, for they are even more alive than you. If you regret the loss of their affection and support, you may still love their memory, and waft messages to them, and perchance may receive an answer; for by the aid of the Keys of Solomon the barriers of the thither world, the plane of disembodied beings, and even of the heaven, may be raised for a moment.
Understand well that the life-current of the progress of souls is regulated by a law of development, which carries the individual ever upward, and there is no tendency to a natural fall. Souls shall only fall who elect to descend and choose the evil rather than the good. The material plane on which you live is a prison to you, and if souls fall and come back to it, they become again imprisoned.
If you desire to communicate with those who have passed on, you must.
But be warned in time against many deceptions, for your fancied souls in heaven may be but phantoms of the air; elementaries, shadows of humanity energised by elemental beings; mere senseless astral forms, and of no more value than the mirage of dreams.
Necromancy, and Goetia, which is Evil Magic, do produce such shells and demons, apparitions of deceit. If, however, you are an adept of the True White Higher school, you will at all times condemn and challenge the practice of such fatal science.
The only possible mode of communion with souls of a higher sphere, who have passed beyond the terrestrial aura by reason of the change called Death, is by dream or ecstasy; but on waking to common consciousness there will be no recollection present in the mind of what has passed, because, owing to the change of plane, each idea necessarily suffers a change of form - a recurrence of the dream, or a return to the ecstasy, recalls what has gone before.
It is a curious fact that most persons fail to remember anything of good and happy dreams, even althought they do often recall dreams of sin and folly and absurdity; the reason being that these latter are more closely, and good ideals are less closely, related to our very materially minded lives on earth.
Now if the purely minded adept and pupil of the Higher Magic does seriously aspire to communion with a soul on the plane above him, the true way is as follows.
But again you must take warning that unless the aspirant is pure, and the strong with health, and wise in procedure, there will be grave risk of disordering the mind, or of catalepsy, or even of death.
Every puerile and commonplace thought must be banished from the mind, for if this be not done, and if a ceremony of such awful solemnity be entered upon lightly, frivolously, or from a vain curiosity, there will come a moment when the dread "King of Earth" will appear and punish. The mind and emotions must then be raised to a pitch of sublime exaltation proceeding from a pure and disinterested love. Bring to remembrance all the sweet sayings of the departed one, formuate her aims and good efforts, collect around you all that belonged to her and reminds you of her face, form, and personality. Observe the dates of her birth and death (and of any special events which have drawn you two together); choose such a day. Prepare for this date by daily retiring to a quiet room, if possible where she has lived, or where she has been, and pass an hour there in darkness, or at least with the eyes shut, pondering over her words and ideas, conversing in imagination with her as listening to her conceived answers. When the day comes near you must for seven days, and should for even fourteen days, abstain rigorously from useless communications with other persons, from follies, from demonstrations of affection to all others, and from every form of physical and mental excess; take but one meal a day, and drink no stimulant nor narcotic liquids.
When the fateful day has come, take a portrait of the beloved one, a sun picture is the best (photograph), or if a painting, it should be one executed with the greatest care and detail. With great care and delicacy prepare the room and the collected objects which have belonged to the deceased, make them all spotlessly clean, and give especial care to the portrait; place it in a good position, and decorate the frame with the flowers she loved. During the day you should pass several hours in the chamber alone, seated in contemplation of the portrait and the ideas and reminiscences of the dead friend.
When the even has come you must bathe, and clothe yourself in clean linen, and put on a white mantle. Enter the sacred chamber, fasten the door and perform the Conjuration of the Four Elements. Upon a chafing-dish you then burn wood of the laurel, with aloes and incense. There must be no other light in the room. When the wood and incense have burned down and the fire is at the point of extinction, then in a deep and solemn voice call three times in succession upon the name of the beloved dead one. This you must do with all your force of heart and of spirit, with intense will power; close the eyes, cover them with the hands, sink on your knees and pray.
Then at last, after a solemn pause, call softly and with sweet voice the name of the loved one three times; and open your eyes, and see -.
The Tarot Trump, No. XIII., is named Death, and represents a human skeleton, armed with a scythe, mowing the grassy soil, upon which are seen human remains. To this Levi in his Rituel assigns the meanings dominion and power, rebirth, creation, and destruction.
P. Christian writes: "In the Divine World the meanings is constant change of form; in the Intellectual World, the ascent of human spirit to divine spheres; and in the Physical World, natural death following decay of the material envelope."