Eliphas Levi And The French Occult Revival
Ritual Magic Tarot Studies Occultism History of Magic 19th-Century Esotericism Kabbalah French Intellectual History New Age Reference
First-edition 1972 Rider paperback of Christopher McIntosh’s “Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival” is the book collectors and modern-magic students reach for when they want the definitive, scholarly map of nineteenth-century occultism. In 238 tightly-written pages McIntosh traces how Alphonse-Louis Constant—better known as Eliphas Lévi—re-injected Kabbalah, Tarot and ritual magic into European culture, sparking the fin-de-siècle French esoteric boom that still shapes Wicca, Thelema and contemporary witchcraft. Because the 1972 Rider imprint has been out of print for fifty years, a clean copy like this one is the cornerstone any occult library is built around.
What makes the title indispensable is McIntosh’s rare combination of academic distance and insider knowledge: he gives you Lévi’s biography, the full meaning of “Astral Light,” the birth of the modern Tarot de Marseille, and the hidden links between Lévi, Papus, Stanislas de Guaita and later Golden-Dawn thinkers—complete with bibliographic footnotes you can still chase down half a century later. Readers searching for a single volume that explains why today’s ceremonial grimoires quote Lévi, or why the pentagram became the default magic circle, will find those answers here in plain English.
This particular copy is remarkably well-preserved for a 1970s Rider paperback: only a few pin-hole flaws on the opening leaves and one tiny edge mark keep it from fine condition, while the uncreased spine, bright Rider colophon and unmarked text block make it shelf-ready for both reference work and display. For collectors, a first-issue 1972 paperback in this state is already scarce; for practitioners, owning the physical book means you can underline, cross-reference and work the rituals without the eye-strain of PDFs or the fragility of later glued reprints.
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