The Magical Ritual of the Sanctum Regnum
by Eliphas Levi
1567

This translation of a previously unpublished work by the late Alphonse Louis Constant, or, as he preferred to call himself, Eliphaz Levi, is from the original manuscript which is in the handwriting of Levi himself. Along with Levi's explanation of the Tarot Trumps "the editor has given a short description of each Tarot Trump at the end of each chapter, and also a few notes on the mystical meanings assigned to the Tarots by Levi in his other works." This rare book is a must for students of the Tarot and Kabalah. A mystical insight into the TAROT.

Éliphas Lévi, born Alphonse Louis Constant, (1810-75) was instrumental in the revival of Western occultism in the nineteenth century, and published several influential books on magic that are also reissued in this series. This posthumous publication (1896) is a translation by William Wynn Westcott, co-founder of the 'Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn', of an unpublished French manuscript by Lévi, then owned by the spiritualist Edward Maitland. It includes eight of the author's drawings. Each short chapter outlines the meaning of one of the twenty-two tarot trumps and is followed by a brief editor's note describing the card's iconography and summarising interpretations (sometimes deliberately misleading) given in Lévi's earlier publications. The book ends with Kabbalistic prayers and rituals, praise of Jesus Christ as the great initiate, and a surprising assertion that Christianity has superseded ancient magic, revealing the life-long tension between Catholicism and magic in Lévi's personality and thought.