Everything lives by movement, everything is maintained by equilibrium, and harmony results from the analogy of contraries; this law is the form of forms.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of movement and balance in life, suggesting that harmony arises from the interplay of opposites.
Eliphas Levi's quote suggests that all living things thrive through constant movement and that a state of balance is essential for sustaining life. The idea of harmony, which he describes as resultant from the relationships between opposing forces, underscores a fundamental law of existence where contradictions coalesce to create a stable and dynamic reality.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of balance in personal and professional life.
What is more absurd and more impious than to attribute the name of Lucifer to the devil, that is, to personified evil. The intellectual Lucifer is the spirit of intelligence and love; it is the paraclete, it is the Holy Spirit, while the physical Lucifer is the great agent of universal magnetism.
All miracles are promised to faith, and what is faith except the audacity of will which does not hesitate in the darkness, but advances towards the light in spite of all ordeals, and surmounting all obstacles?
Succeed in not fearing the lion, and the lion will fear YOU. Say to suffering, 'I will that you shall become a pleasure,' and it will prove to be such-- and even more than a pleasure, it will be a blessing.
To practice magic is to be a quack; to know magic is to be a sage.
When we love, we see the infinite in the finite. We find the Creator in the creation.
The lawgiver ought to be gentle, lenient and humane. The lawgiver ought to be a skilled architect who raises his building on the foundation of self-love, and the interest of all ought to be the product of the interests of each.
I don't have any problem understanding why people flunk out of college or quit their jobs or cheat on each other or break the law or spray-paint walls. A little bit outside of things is where some people feel each other. We do it to replace the frame of family. We do it to erase and remake our origins in their own images. To say, I too was here.
It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.
We make choices. No one else can live our lives for us. And we must confront and accept the consequences of our actions.
Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.
Any hack can safely rail away at foreign powers beyond the sea; but a good writer is a critic of the society he lives in.
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