ON THIS DAY IN OCCULT HISTORY May 31 The Lever of Archimedes: The Life & Death of Éliphas Lévi (Affiliate disclosure: Some links on this blog may earn us a small commission at no cost to you. Every bit helps keep the lantern lit.) He described himself as “a poor and obscure scholar” who had “found the lever of Archimedes.” In exchange, Éliphas Lévi continued, he required nothing; his discoveries were “for the good of humanity alone, asking nothing whatsoever in exchange.” The “lever” of which Lévi spoke, of course, was magic. The legendary occultist was born Alphonse Louis Constant on February 8, 1810 in Paris, and died in the same city on this day in 1875. He was sixty-five years old, and had spent nearly his entire life bringing a modernity to occultism. And as for being both “poor” and “obscure,” he died as he lived: modestly, surrounded by manuscripts, having spent the last quarter century writing books that no respectable publisher particularly wanted. Followin...