To give a colourable aspect to their hypothesis, the witnesses affirm that Lévi was a high-grade Mason. He was nothing of the kind; he affirms most distinctly in his "History of Magic," that for any knowledge which he possessed about the mysteries of the fraternity, he owed his initiation only to God and to his individual studies. Secondly, the practice of ceremonial magic, which is what the witnesses understand by theurgy, is a practice condemned by Lévi, except as an isolated experiment to fortify intellectual conviction as to the truth of magical theorems. He attempted it for this purpose in the spring of the year 1854, and having satisfied himself as to the fact, he did not renew it. Thirdly, the philosophy of Éliphas Lévi is in direct contrast to Manichæan doctrine; it cannot be explained by dualism, but must be explained by its opposite, namely, triplicity in unity. He shows that "the unintelligent disciples of Zoroaster have divided the duad without referring it to unity, thus separating the pillars of the temple, and seeking to halve God" (_Dogme_, p. 129, 2nd edition). Is that a Manichæan doctrine? Again: "If you conceive the Absolute as two, you must immediately conceive it as three to recover the unity principle" (_Ibid._). Once more: "Divinity, one in its essence, has two fundamental conditions of being--necessity and liberty" (_Ibid._, p. 127). And yet again: "If God were one only, He would never be Creator nor Father. If He were two, there would be antagonism or division in the infinite, and this would be severance or death for every possible existence; He is therefore three for the creation by Himself, and in His image of the infinite multitude of beings and numbers. Thus He is really one in Himself and triple in our conception, by which we also behold Him triple in Himself and one in our intelligence and in our love. This is a mystery for the faithful and a logical necessity for the initiate of the absolute and true sciences" (_Ibid._, p. 138). And the witnesses of Lucifer have the effrontery to represent Lévi as a dualist! I will not discredit their understanding by supposing that they could misread so plain a principle, nor dissemble my full conviction that they acted with intentional bad faith. Fourthly, Éliphas Lévi regarded Lucifer as a conception of transcendental mythology, and the devil as an impossible fiction, or an inverted and blasphemous conception of God--divinity _à rebours_. He describes the Ophite heresy which offered adoration to the serpent and the Caïnite heresy which justified the revolt of the first angel and the first murderer as errors fit for classification with the monstrous idols of the anarchic symbolism of India (_Rituel_, pp. 13, 14). Is that diabolism? Is that the cultus of Lucifer? True, Lévi did not believe in the personal existence of a father of lies, and if it be Satanism not to do so, let us be content to diabolise with Lévi while the false witnesses illustrate the methods of their father.