Excerpt from Transcendental Magic, Its Doctrine and Ritual
Eliphas Levi Zahed is a pseudonym which was adopted in his occult writings by Alphonse Louis Constant, and it is said to be the Hebrew equivalent of that name. The author of the Dogma et Rituel de la Haute Magie was born in humble circumstances about the year 1810, being the son of a shoemaker. Giving evidence of unusual intelligence at an early age, the priest of his parish conceived a kindly interest for the obscure boy, and got him on the foundation of Saint Sulpice, where he was educated without charge, and with a view to the priesthood. He seems to have passed through the course of study at that seminary in a way which did not disappoint the expectations raised concerning him. In addition to Greek and Latin, he is believed to have acquired considerable knowledge of Hebrew, though it would be an error to suppose that any of his published works exhibit special linguistic attainments. He entered on his clerical novitiate, took minor orders, and in due course became a deacon, being thus bound by a vow of perpetual celibacy. Shortly after this step, he was suddenly expelled from Saint Sulpice for holding opinions contrary to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. The existing accounts of this expulsion are hazy, and incorporate unlikely elements, as, for example, that he was sent by his ecclesiastical superiors to take duty in country places, where he preached with great eloquence what, however, was doctrinally unsound; but I believe that there is no precedent for the preaching of deacons in the Latin
Church. Pending the appearance of the biography which has been for some years promised in France, we have few available materials for a life of the "Abbe" Constant.
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