Samizdat
Eliphas Lévi on the Four Words of the Magus.
by Estéban Trujillo de Gutiérrez
“The name was misspelled as Scrire. In occultistic lore, Scire is the first “power of the Sphinx” that the initiate needs to master.
The four powers are Scire, Velle, Audere, and Tacere, or To Know, To Will, To Dare, and To Keep Silent.
Eliphas Lévi wrote: “To attain to Sanctum Regnum, in other words, the knowledge and power of the magi, there are four indispensable conditions—an intelligence illuminated by study, an intrepidity which nothing can check, a will which cannot be broken, and a prudence which nothing can corrupt and nothing intoxicate.
TO KNOW, TO DARE, TO WILL, TO KEEP SILENCE—such are the four words of the magus, inscribed upon the four symbolical forms of the sphinx.”
–Lévi, Transcendental Magic (1896), 30. Quoted in:
–Henrik Bogdan, Western Esotericism and Rituals of Initiation, 2007, pg. 207.
