Note 141 — Chapter VI · SOME KABALISTIC PAINTINGS AND SACRED EMBLEMS

This statement requires to be checked by a French authority of the period, with whom Éliphas Lévi could not fail to be acquainted. I refer to Jacques Matter and his Histoire Critique du Gnosticisme, a second and enlarged edition of which was published in 1843. According to the testimony of this writer: (a) Some Gnostics rejected the Eucharist entirely; (b) Those who preserved it never taught the real communication of man in the flesh and blood of the Saviour; (c) for them it was an emblem of their mystic union with a being belonging to the Pleroma; (d) The wonder-working Eucharist was particular to Marcos, but according to St. Irenæus it was the result of trickery; (e) He filled chalices with wine and water, pronounced over them a formula of his own, and caused these liquids to appear purple and ruby in colour. Op. cit., vol. ii. pp. 344-346.