Original subtitles

Throughout history,

the power of prophecy has captivated the human mind.

For some, this power is connected

to the healing energy of the universe itself.

Edgar Cayce was known as the Sleeping Prophet

who could slip into hypnotic states.

According to many,

he correctly predicted the Wall Street Crash of 1929,

the Second World War, the assassination of JFK,

and his most frightening prediction of all,

the end of the world.

The power of prophecy is ancient,

helping guide civilizations for millennia.

The Oracle of Delphi is the premier oracle

of the ancient world,

and these words shaped history.

Scholars have offered some scientific explanations

of the kinds of prophecies

people are receiving from the Oracle.

And in 19th century France,

a radical occult thinker is branded as a devil worshiper.

But the truth could be even stranger.

When modern audiences see Levi's Baphomet,

they see something

that seems to have a connection to darkness.

What it actually is is a complex symbol

of the connection of all things.

A man lies down on his couch,

resting his head on a pillow.

He closes his eyes, entering a deep trance.

Suddenly visions flood his mind.

The earth shutters violently.

Oceans surge over continents.

Volcanoes erupt simultaneously.

He witnesses cities crumbling,

and humanity engulfed in chaos.

The sheer magnitude of destruction overwhelms him.

As he emerges from this trance, a profound dread grips him.

The weight of the impending doom

shakes him to his very core.

The man who sees this vision of doom is Edgar Cayce,

and to many, he is considered the greatest prophet

in American history.

Edgar Cayce is the 20th century's most famous psychic,

and some consider him the father of holistic medicine.

He makes predictions that run the gambit,

from the personal health of his clients,

to business advice,

to predicting world-changing events

such as the end of the world itself.

Edgar Cayce is known as the Sleeping Prophet,

and he diagnoses his patients

while in this unconscious state.

In this state, he speaks of people's past lives

and of things that are yet to come.

Cayce gave over 14,000 readings apparently

during his life,

and most of these had to do with health.

But he's also interested

in a wide variety of related phenomena

including prophecy, lost civilizations,

especially the lost civilization of Atlantis.

Cayce predicts a magnetic pole reversal

that would bring about

a monumental cataclysm within the world,

and according to Cayce, we're due one very soon.

But who is Edgar Cayce?

The man who many believe

has accurately predicted the end of our world?

Edgar Cayce is born in 1877 in Hopkinsville, Kentucky

to a farming family,

and from a very young age, he claims that he can see spirits

and engage with these psychic abilities.

Cayce's connection to supernatural forces

is an element that will influence his entire life,

but it is the manifestation of his psychic abilities

that sets Cayce apart from most mediums.

According to Cayce, when he is still a child,

he doses off while resting his head on a school textbook.

Cayce claims that when he wakes up from his slumber,

he has miraculously absorbed all the information

from the textbook into his mind,

as if through psychic osmosis.

It seems as if he's able to tap an insight

that he's just not able to manifest while awake.

There's a very interesting part of sleep

that we call consolidation,

and basically if you've been learning things,

exposed to things during the day,

when you sleep, it seems like certain parts

of the sleep sequence support consolidation,

which strengthens the memory

and makes it a little more robust.

The idea of just being able to sleep on a textbook,

where you're never really getting direct exposure

to that information but somehow absorbing it,

that seems a little outside the realm.

Cayce continues to have strange things occur

throughout his youth.

In his early adulthood,

Edgar reports that he lost his voice.

He puts himself into something like a hypnotic trance,

and reportedly heals his throat and recovers his voice.

Realizing his powers

have the ability to help others,

he begins giving readings,

using trance states to provide medical insights

and remedies to patients.

In 1910, "The New York Times" runs with the headline,

"Illiterate Man Becomes Doctor When Hypnotized."

Now, Cayce was illiterate,

but such press generated interest in his practices.

As Cayce's practice grows,

people are intrigued by his unorthodox methods.

Cayce is kind of doing self-hypnosis,

and this is pretty likely that when he's in that state,

the imagery that he's experiencing is much more vivid,

and his thought processes

might be what we call more diffuse,

so less sort of focused,

but more able to wander.

And so you can imagine that sort of notion

of seeing visions coming and going

consistent with that state of being.

It's just said that there are hundreds of people

throughout the United States

who will testify to the accuracy of his diagnosis,

and the efficacy of his suggestions for treatment.

While Cayce's abilities seem extraordinary,

many are puzzled as to the source of his psychic powers.

In his sleep-like hypnotic state,

he maintains that he's able to connect

with the super-conscious mind,

a universal consciousness

which transcends time and space.

Cayce claims he's able to ask it all sorts of questions.

That could be anything from,

"How do I treat this child's asthma?"

through to, "When will there be another war?"

While Cayce's powers

seem to be at odds with mainstream religion,

he's a very devout Christian,

and credits his faith for his abilities.

Cayce was deeply spiritual.

In fact, he believed that the Bible

was the source of a rich religious experience

that gave him special knowledge.

Cayce, when he was asked how to become a psychic, he said,

"You have to become more spiritual."

While he is a devoted Christian,

Cayce's spiritual world is anything but orthodox,

and he incorporates many New Age spiritual concepts

into his work.

Cayce, during the 1920s

began to expand his knowledge of religious traditions,

and was drawing on new concepts,

such as karma and reincarnation,

to inform his role as a psychic and a healer.

It's during the stage of his career

that we find Cayce making sweeping prophecies

that stretch back to the era

of the mythical state of Atlantis

right through to the present day in the future.

Cayce is really enamored with this idea of Atlantis

and the idea that many people are reincarnated Atlanteans.

This role of sleep is really important

in the way that Cayce is expressing his growing beliefs

outside of his conservative Christian framework,

but it's through this moment of sleep

in which he's able to freely express these views,

rather than in his waking hours.

You have people

who have thousands of years in biblical texts

that tell them exactly how to be,

what to believe in,

what is sin, what is good

that goes in direct conflict

with many other spiritualities on the Earth,

indigenous people,

more eastern meditation and natural medicine,

real spirituality that is based

on not healing only from God,

but healing from spirits.

Cayce's more spiritualist turn

brings many detractors,

but also many new supporters,

including a wealthy financier.

In the 1920s, Cayce meets a stockbroker from New York

named Morton Blumenthal,

who receives a reading from Cayce,

and is so impressed with his abilities

that he offers to financially support him

in building a more formalized practice

to make use of his gifts.

Together they found

the Association of National Investigators,

an organization that will be situated

in a specially designed facility

known as the Cayce Hospital in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Blumenthal funds the construction of the hospital,

which costs an estimated $200,000,

which would be about 3.7 million in today's money.

Here, Cayce continues to explore

the New Age spiritual trends

that had already begun to manifest in his career,

including work with an esoteric religious movement

that had taken root years earlier.

At this point, he attracts the attention

of members of the Theosophical Society,

which is in the process

of spreading and developing new chapters.

You would see this movement

growing across the kind of Western world at this time,

and growing numbers of people

looking for things like mediums and seances,

and engaging with new spiritual practices

in a way that they hadn't before.

Cayce is approached by a Theosophist from Ohio

named Arthur Lammers,

and the two of them decide to collaborate.

In 1923,

Cayce begins working with Lammers in Alabama.

Their partnership will soon see Cayce

transcend the role of a medical guide,

launching him into a realm of deep metaphysical exploration.

Lamers, as a theosophist

who's steeped in esoteric thought,

claims that Cayce is a psychic conduit

who can tap into a universal consciousness,

enabling him to see deeper spiritual truths.

Cayce's teachings now seek to marry

a Christian moral outlook

with the cycles of karma and reincarnation

central to Hindu and Buddhist ways of thought,

as well as the hermetic and esoteric concept of man

as an extension of the divine.

Cayce creates what he calls a cosmic philosophy,

and this brings together a New Age thought,

Christian Science, and mental healing.

A key to Cayce's new spiritual understanding

is connected to a deep esoteric concept

known as the Akashic Records.

The Akashic Records are all things

that have happened past and future,

and so in entering his hypnotic state,

Cayce believes that he's able to access

the magnitude of human experience.

He really is following the tradition

and the beliefs popularized by Madame Blavatsky

and the Theosophists,

which is really where we see the birthplace

of New Age Western tradition

and the Akashic Records.

There's this basic idea that maybe Cayce was accessing

the Akashic Records in his sleep.

And the Akashic Records

are connected to one of Cayce's most controversial beliefs,

that he has had contact

with the lost civilization of Atlantis.

He describes Atlantis as a continent

that existed thousands of years ago,

and eventually sank

due to the misuse of power by its inhabitants.

Cayce believed that many of those who perished in Atlantis

would be reborn again in modern bodies

to fulfill their karmic purpose.

Cayce, in the course of his sleep excursions

believes that he has found information about Atlantis,

and says that in The Bahamas, a temple will rise.

Now what's really interesting is that in The Bahamas

we find this underwater collection of stones

that seem to look like a road,

and it's called the Bimini Road.

People don't relate to it necessarily as the Bimini Road,

though they think it is a road to Atlantis.

Though many of Cayce's prophecies

offer potential leads to lost knowledge,

others harken troubling times on the horizon.

By 1929, Cayce is thriving.

He has his private practice.

He has his institute.

He's very well known,

and then he predicts that a financial disaster

is going to befall the United States.

Six months later, we see the Great Wall Street Crash

that ushers in the Great Depression.

After the Great Depression,

Cayce faces significant financial trouble,

as many of his wealthy patrons lose all of their money.

Cayce is forced to close his hospital,

and money for his research institute dries up.

He shifts his focus

to the Association of Research and Enlightenment

where he hopes to preserve his readings for the future.

With the help of a personal secretary

and stenographer,

Cayce continues to amass a growing catalog

of hundreds upon hundreds of readings

preserved and disseminated

by the followers of his association.

And among them is a dark vision of a coming conflict

that will define the 20th century.

Cayce has a vision of a great war on the horizon.

Four years later, in 1939,

Germany invades Poland,

triggering the Second World War.

Many of Cayce's defenders will point to these predictions

as proof of Cayce's powers.

During the Second World War,

Cayce saw a major uptake in interest in his readings.

During times of uncertainty, people will reach out

to try to find some purpose through the divine.

People who can prophesize the future

can offer some comfort and stability

in an otherwise chaotic world.

His dedication ultimately takes a toll,

leading to a decline in his wellbeing

toward the end of the war.

On January 3rd, 1945, at the age of 67,

the Sleeping Psychic Edgar Cayce

dies at a home in Virginia Beach.

But the legacy of Cayce would live on,

and his work and predictions

would continue to fascinate and horrify

the public for decades.

When President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in 1963,

many in the United States

turn to records of Cayce's readings,

pointing out that he had predicted

two presidents would die in office,

the first being Franklin D. Roosevelt,

and the second JFK.

Watching these whispers come to fruition,

many of Cayce's predictions

are increasingly believed across America,

and the one prediction

that has his followers the most terrified

revolves around significant changes to planet Earth

that could result in the end of the world

that we recognize today.

In his vision,

it's going to be caused by a magnetic pole shift,

which is going to trigger

a series of volcanic eruptions around the world

that will then create these tidal waves

that will decimate coastal cities,

including New York, Tokyo, and London.

But how likely is Cayce's doomsday prediction

to come true?

Magnetic pole reversals are not uncommon,

at least according to geological time.

Scientists predict

that the Earth's last reversal

happened approximately 780,000 years ago,

and that reversals have occurred hundreds of times

in the history of the planet.

Edgar Cayce predicted this would happen in 1998,

and of course, as we know, this did not happen.

What we have in this case is Cayce making a prediction

that's very specific and very wrong,

and one would think that might make people think,

"Oh, I don't wanna trust this guy anymore."

If you're spreading something

that speaks to the end of the world,

that's pretty enticing,

and people feel this kind of need

to know about something so magnificent.

Edgar Cayce is part of a long tradition

of prophetic revelation that dates back to ancient times.

And one of the most famous in this tradition

can be found in the rocks, mountains, and temples

of an ancient Greek city.

The sun hovers above Mount Parnassus

as King Croesus of Lydia ascends the rugged path

to the temple of Apollo.

He clutches his offerings close to his chest.

The scent of burning incense grows stronger

as he approaches the grand marble columns.

His heart pounds.

Shadows dancing on ancient walls.

Seated upon a tripod, the Pythia sways gently,

her eyes closed in deep trance.

Summoning his courage, he kneels before her,

seeking guidance.

The Oracle of Delphi is hugely important

in the Greco-Roman world,

because it is the home of the god Apollo,

and Apollo is the god of the sun

and the god of prophecy.

So if you are going to get an indication

of what's gonna happen in your future,

you want to be speaking directly to Apollo.

But the petitioners at Delphi

were not speaking directly to Apollo,

but through his agent on Earth, the Pythia.

The Pythia is a priestess of the Oracle at Delphi,

and she leads the life of a nun in some ways.

She is chaste.

She's a woman of virtue, a woman with wisdom as well.

And these are women who have high status,

who are respected,

whose insights are venerated.

The people who would consult

with the Pythias at the Oracle

covered the entire breadth of society.

You would have farmers looking for guidance

on their planting and harvesting schedules.

You would find young people

seeking counsel for personal relationships,

and you would also find kings and heads of state

seeking guidance for some of those important choices.

Greeks believed the Oracle of Delphi

existed since the dawn of time,

and accurately predicted various historical events,

including the Argonauts' expedition and the Trojan War.

But what are the true origins of this holy site?

The origin of the Pythia

actually comes from a myth of Apollo slaying a giant snake

that was at the site that would become the temple.

But who are the Pythia?

How are they chosen, and why?

They were historically women

who were from the Delphi area.

They came from good families,

which is not to say

they were necessarily from elite families.

We know that the Pythia were very important,

because in the histories written by Herodotus,

one of the most important historians of the ancient world,

they're mentioned over 40 times.

The Pythia that emerges in the histories

is a confident woman,

someone who is capable of engaging

with the most powerful men of her time.

The first thing that the Pythia does

before seeing anyone else

is engage in an act of ritual purification.

That would be bathing in a spring.

She dons a wreath of laurel.

A laurel, of course, is sacred to Apollo.

The priests then recruit a small animal,

such as a goat,

to appease the god.

They would interpret either the animal's behavior

or the entrails in order to have an understanding

of what would be taking place throughout the day.

If the goat's behavior

indicates Apollo's cooperation,

the animal is then sacrificed at the temple altar.

A Pythia is a really great example of channeling.

People who are highly active in their spirituality

often are the ones who are used as channels.

For me, as an indigenous person,

we believe that you'll come as a spirit vessel.

The human body is just a vessel for spirit.

The Pythia serves at the Temple of Apollo,

part of a large temple complex.

You enter the temple,

you encounter the Pythia herself,

who sits on a bronze tripod flanked by two statues.

They would burn laurel leaves.

The air is filled with a particular fragrance.

And when you ask your question

and the Pythia channels divine energy

in order to provide you with an answer.

The experience is really a communion with the gods.

The revered Pythia, however,

is at most only available for these formal consultations

on one day each month for nine months of the year.

A strict hierarchy determines the order

in which people are seen.

It was first the citizens of Delphi who had a right to go.

They would be at the front of the line.

Then the citizens from other Greek states.

And at the very back would be foreigners.

According to some historians,

there was one group of people

excluded from seeing the Pythia,

other women.

It's a highly segregated society.

Women are not allowed to enter the temple

unless they are serving in the role of the Pythia.

When they are in their role as oracles,

the Pythia are not people,

they have been elevated to this other position.

Their femininity is what endows them with the capacity

to have this specialized communion with divine spirits.

And the word of the Pythia is so revered

it can change world history.

The Pythia consulted with some of the most important

political figures of the time,

including Lycurgus, the king of Sparta,

and Solon, the famous lawgiver of Athens.

Kings of great realms,

such as Croesus of Lydia and Alexander the Great,

visit the oracle,

often seeking advice on expanding their empires.

With the Pythia,

there's often a sting in the tale of the prophecy,

and a good example of this is King Croesus of Lydia,

who consults the Pythia, who says that,

"If you cross with your army the River Hellas,

a great empire will be destroyed."

Croesus immediately jumps to conclusion

that the great empire that will be destroyed is Persia,

and so he gets armed up and off into battle.

Unfortunately, the great empire to be destroyed is his own.

King Leonidas of Sparta,

in preparation for battle with the Persians

asks the Pythia about this battle, about the outcome

and receives the message

that either Sparta or the king of Sparta must fall.

He takes this as accurate information

about what it is that he has to face,

and then famously leads his troops

into this legendary last stand.

Later in the Persian Wars,

when the Athenians go to the Oracle

to ask about their upcoming encounter with the Persians,

the advice that they receive

is that only wooden walls will protect you,

which the Athenians interpret to mean

that they should stick to their boats.

They have a very powerful navy.

They allow the Persians to move in on land

in order to overtake the Persian navy,

which they successfully do.

Over its 1,000-year history,

the Oracle is a powerful force in the Greek world.

But for some rulers,

the Pythia's cryptic words will not do.

The status of the Pythia as truth-tellers

was so revered in the Greek world

that when news spread that the king of Sparta, Cleomenes,

was attempting to bribe them,

it became a massive scandal.

Here was someone trying to defy the words of the god Apollo,

one of the most powerful in the pantheon.

When we reflect on the story of Cleomenes,

his name was infamous after this time.

While the word of the Pythia

is sacred to the Greeks,

there are some who cast doubts

on their ability to predict the future.

The Pythia gains her insights

through what is considered divine inspiration,

channeling the will of the god Apollo.

Whether her predictions are right, wrong, or ambiguous

often depends on the interpretations

of those who receive them.

But their impact on decision making in the ancient world

is undeniably profound.

While the ancients believed

the Pythia had a direct line to the god Apollo,

modern scholars have attempted to find

a rational explanation for her powers of prediction.

Can we attribute it to truly divine inspiration,

or is there a scientific reason?

Maybe it is from ethylene gas entering the space,

and that the kind of ethereal nature

of the prophecies themselves

is the result of speaking from a kind of drug-induced haze.

We do know that with enough ethylene

that can create hallucinations

and various other sort of extreme psychological states,

but we also know at that level it tends to also cause death.

And we know that at this site, while there were traces,

it probably was not enough

to induce any kind of psychological impact on her.

The ethylene gas explanation

is one of many that modern scholars have come up with

to explain the Pythia's powers.

It may have been achieved through some kind of narcotic,

chewing on a bay leaf or some other herb

that induced a kind of hallucinogenic state,

and this was definitely something

that was done in various religions

at that time by shaman and priests.

If you are here to see something spiritual,

you expect something non-normal, non-typical,

and a person who's taking a hallucinogenic,

and maybe behaving in very strange erratic ways,

that almost suggests

they they've stepped between here and somewhere else.

And there is another theory,

that the Pythia suffered from a psychological condition.

In a case like Pythia, where she could have schizophrenia,

and she could even be using other psychedelics,

or other things that actually create these visions,

for her those visions will feel quite real.

That means she will describe them and talk about them

as though they are real.

And that's what's needed for the recipient

to really believe that message, and to take it to heart.

Schizophrenia itself, by the way,

tends to produce auditory hallucinations, mostly,

voices, hearing things like that.

The psychedelics could add

visual hallucinations to that mix,

but again, the schizophrenic mind can combine these two

and see it as all as part of a bigger picture,

and feel really confident

that they've got at something true.

Who knows, if we went back then

with the knowledge we have now,

or what we think we know about mental health,

I wonder what we would say about these same people.

Would we say that they just had mental health issues,

or would we instead look at them with reverence,

and see something else?

We may never know

how the Pythia gained their powers of prophecy,

but we do know their impact on human history.

While these ancient priestesses

channeled forces beyond understanding,

centuries later another European mystic

would seek to master them,

creating a new unified occultic system.

France 1850s.

Eliphas Levi sits before a single candle,

the smoke of incense curling around him.

A man who was once bound to the church

is now drawn to the arcane.

Levi seeks answers not found in Scripture,

but in symbols.

His trembling hands shuffle a worn Tarot deck,

a sacred tool of revelation.

He draws the Magician, self-mastery,

the will to shape the invisible forces of the universe.

Next, the High Priestess, veiled knowledge,

beckoning him deeper into the mysteries

that lie beyond reason.

The Tower follows, sudden and violent,

a symbol of upheaval, of dogmas collapsing.

And finally, the World, completion, unity,

the alchemical marriage of spirit and matter.

The cards speak to Levi's path and future

to reconcile ancient wisdom with modern thought,

and to bring light where once there was only blind belief.

From Kabbalah to Tarot card readings,

to the infamous occultist Aleister Crowley,

to the contemporary Satanic Temple,

many owe a great debt to the legacy of Eliphas Levi.

His complex esoteric frameworks

are credited as providing the bedrock

to many occult organizations to this day.

Unfortunately for Levi,

he will be best known for the creation

of one of the most misunderstood occult symbols in history,

and be branded as a servant of Satan.

While Levi is often said to have been involved

in rather unsavory acts and demonolatry,

and what is sometimes termed as black magic,

his legacy is actually far more complicated

and far more nuanced.

The story of Eliphas Levi

begins in post-revolutionary France,

a time of great upheaval and change.

Born Alphonse Louis Constant in 1809 or 1810

to a humble family in Paris,

he initially joined a Catholic seminary,

intending to become a priest,

but he soon became disillusioned

with the Orthodox teachings of the church.

He was convinced that there were these deep-seated,

unifying truths out there,

that he believed that the Catholic Church

was aware of this knowledge,

but was deliberately keeping it hidden from them

and was suppressing it.

Levi would find his inspiration

in the occult's traditions of the West.

He is combining so many different mainstays

of Western esotericism,

Christian mysticism, Kabbalah, Renaissance magic,

and many other things,

in order to come up with his particular practice path.

To fully understand Levi,

we must understand the core traditions

that influenced his life and work.

The first of these traditions is the Kabbalah.

Kabbalah is a Jewish mystic tradition,

which centers on Scripture and the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

Kabbalah views creation as layered,

and each level of that layer

offers insight into the mystery of God, and God's creation.

The Kabbalah serves as the key framework

from which Levi will anchor thought.

But a very important aspect of Levi's concepts

manifest from the mysterious cards we know as the Tarot.

Tarot cards are used for divination to this day.

They're enormously popular.

They draw upon this old arcane knowledge,

which we associate with alchemy and astrology

in terms of the symbols that they use.

They're most famous for some of these images,

like the Fool, and the Hermit, and the Empress.

These are tools of divination.

Other keystones in Levi's esoteric study

are alchemy and Hermeticism.

Alchemy is a tradition which is really centering

on the basic idea of transformation.

Whether we're dealing

with the transformation of base metals,

such as lead into gold,

or whether we're dealing with the transformation

of one's spirit.

By bringing together the best

of these esoteric traditions,

he was doing something that had never been done before.

Through his work,

Levi is looking to become

the most important and powerful occultist in the world.

Soon he begins to gain attention,

sometimes of the wrong people.

In the early 1840s,

his writings had drawn the ire of French authorities.

He composed radical, religious-tinged pamphlets

that challenged the social order.

Considered blasphemous and seditious,

he was dragged before a tribunal.

His writings were considered a thought crime

against the state.

Ultimately, he was convicted and briefly imprisoned.

In 1841,

he's thrown in jail for his incendiary writings

and radical left political activism.

At trial, he makes the following statement:

"As a child of the people, I have suffered with the people

and have dared to speak in the name of the people.

My only crime has been a deep loving of mankind."

Eliphas Levi, his real name is Alfonse Louis Constance,

and when he first starts propagating his ideas,

these were considered so dangerous and so radical

that he kept finding himself in prison.

He realized at a certain point

that he had to take on a pen name

if he really wanted to circulate his ideas,

and this was when he took the name Eliphas Levi.

He is really shaken by his imprisonment.

He's sidelined by mainstream spiritual society,

while at the same time the socialists

also view him with disdain.

At the time they were very wedded to rational materialism.

His embrace of spiritualism

was completely at odds with their belief system.

While many at his time

saw him as a threat to Christianity,

Levi thought differently.

He saw the occult not as a force against Christianity,

but as a deeper symbolic interpretation of divine truths.

Divine truths he would publish in his words

in the coming decades.

His breakthrough doctrine is really what establishes him

as an authority on the topic

of Western esotericism and occultism.

And one of Levi's great contributions

to esoteric thought is the correlation he found

between the Kabalistic Tree of Life and the Tarot.

He associates the 22 cards of the Major Arcana

with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet,

and he also incorporates the Tree of Life

into his understanding of the story

that the cards of the Major Arcana are trying to tell,

and it just enriches the possibilities

of the Tarot deck.

Within his works,

Levi speculates about humanity's spiritual destiny.

He believes that societies will eventually evolve

toward greater harmony and understanding

as it reintegrates esoteric wisdom

into existing religious and moral frameworks.

Levi believed that each of these traditions

had something to add to our understanding,

and that could lead to a new age of universal enlightenment.

To reach this new spiritual understanding,

Levi believes humanity must transmute their souls

into a higher state of being.

Levi believes that alchemy is central

to this grand spiritual journey.

But instead of turning lead into gold,

alchemy, according to Levi,

is about the transformation of one's soul.

While traditionally alchemy was seen

as the art of transforming base metals into gold,

for him it was a form of spiritual transformation,

turning selfishness into altruism, and fear into hope.

While Levi's use of alchemical symbols

can be found in much of his work,

it is one symbol he is best known for.

The controversial Baphomet.

The demon Baphomet is first mentioned in the Middle Ages,

particularly with regards to the trials

of the Knights Templar,

where they are accused of worshiping this demon

called Baphomet.

In fact, many Templars confess that it's true

that they worship this demon,

but it's Eliphas Levi in the 19th century

who crystallizes Baphomet into what we understand

Baphomet to be today,

this half-man, half-goat sitting cross-legged.

Eliphas Levi really gives us the image of performance

that was then taken up by Satanists in the 20th century.

In Christian thought,

Baphomet is often seen as a manifestation of Satan,

but in more esoteric thought,

Baphomet is seen as an embodiment of wisdom, of knowledge,

of Hermetic thought, not something evil,

but actually a key to understanding.

However, many in history

have misunderstood Levi's Baphomet,

and believe it to be a symbol of evil,

a symbol of the devil itself.

Sensationalist authors and anti-Masonic propagandists

took the Baphomet completely out of context.

When you see the Baphomet,

the very first thing that comes to your mind is the devil.

It has become from modern people

the very image of the devil in all of its forms.

And one of the first instances

of the Baphomet being used as a symbol of evil

occurred during the infamous Taxil Hoax.

The French critic Leo Taxil,

who is critical of the Catholic Church,

used the Baphomet to suggest that it was an image of Satan,

and in particular to associate it

with the ceremonies of the Freemasons.

Now, this was intended to be a hoax

that he would use to discredit

the Catholic Church and the Freemasons,

but in many ways, that hoax took on a life of its own.

When the initial creation of this image is taking place,

it's a really different interpretation that he has in mind.

There's nothing devilish that's ascribed

to what he's creating.

It's really about this harmony and this duality

that he sees present.

It's this really complicated expression

of his own spiritual worldview.

Much like his most famous creation,

the Baphomet,

Levi has left a controversial

and often misunderstood legacy.

He was enormously influential in shaping esoteric ideas

and ceremonial magic practices

that we start to see become very popular

from this time forward,

influencing such writers as Crowley, Yeats, and others.

While many associate Levi with Crowley,

and indeed Crowley perpetuated that association,

Levi was actually a devout Christian,

whereas Crowley claimed that he was the devil incarnate.

Quite ironic, really.

Eliphas Levi has left us a complex legacy.

While many believe he was in league with the devil,

his writings and works show a much different character.

He was a person seeking higher spiritual truths,

and attempted to create tools

for people to reach these higher planes of understanding.

And through the Tarot, his legacy has taken its true bloom.

When we consider the influence of Levi, it's intriguing.

Tarot cards are part of popular culture.

There's enormous interest in the sort of natural magic.

He also changed the way in which people saw spirituality.

Today's occultists to see the various mainstream

and esoteric spiritual traditions

as facets of a single universal wisdom.

From mapping the roots of spiritual exploration

to channeling words of gods,

and uttering the ultimate doom of humankind,

the revelations of history's most prophets

have left us grappling with more questions

than they could ever promise to answer.