The Great Secret

So concludes what Levi considered to be his testament, his most important and final treatise, and a summation of his esoteric philosophy. This volume is the conclusion of the work he started as Book One, The Heiratic Mystery or the Traditional Documents of High Initiation, published as The Book of Splendours (Weiser, 1984). The Great Secret contains his final two works. In Book Two, The Royal Mystery or Art of Subduing the Powers, Levi discusses such topics as Evil, the Outer Darkness, the Great Secret, Magical Sacrifice, Evocations, the Arcana of Solomon's Ring, and the Terrible Secret. In Book Three, The Sacerdotal Mystery or the Art of being Served by Spirits, he expounds on the subjects of Aberrant Forces, the Chaining of the Devil, Sacred and Accursed Rites, Divination, Dark Intelligence, and the Great Arcanum. 

Alphonse Louis Constant, better know by his pen name Eliphas Levi, was a master of the traditional Rosicrucian interpretation of the Kabbalah. He was born in France in 1810, and through the offices of the parish priest, was educated for the church at SaintSulpice. He was later expelled from seminary for teaching doctrines contrary to those of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1824 Levi began studying the occult sciences, and wrote about magic and the Kabbalah for the next three decades. His other books include Transcendental Magic, Mysteries of the Qabalah, and The Book of Splendours.