The thesis of magic propagated by Éliphas Lévi was of significant renown, especially after his death. That Spiritualism was popular on both sides of the Atlantic from the 1850s contributed to this success. However, Lévi diverged from spiritualism and criticized it, because he believed only mental images and "astral forces" persisted after an individual died, which could be freely manipulated by skilled magicians, unlike the autonomous spirits that Spiritualism posited. In regard to the purported supernatural occurrences claimed by the practitioners of spiritualism, Levi was obviously credulous. He explained: "The phenomena which quite recently have perturbed America and Europe, those of table-turning and fluidic manifestations, are simply magnetic currents at the beginning of their formation, appeals on the part of Nature inviting us, for the good of humanity, to reconstitute great sympathetic and religious chains." His magical teachings were free from obvious fanaticisms, even if they remained rather murky; and he had nothing to sell (notwithstanding his publications). He did profess himself to be: "A poor and obscure scholar has found the lever of Archimedes, and he offers it to you for the good of humanity alone, asking nothing whatsoever in exchange." He did not pretend to be the initiate of some ancient or fictitious secret society. He incorporated the Tarot cards into his magical system, and as a result the Tarot has been an important part of the paraphernalia of Western magicians. He had a deep impact on the magic of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and later on the ex–Golden Dawn member Aleister Crowley. He was also the first to declare that a pentagram or five-pointed star with one point down and two points up represents evil, while a pentagram with one point up and two points down represents good. Lévi's ideas also influenced Helena Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society. It was largely through the occultists inspired by him that Lévi is remembered as one of the key founders of the 20th-century revival of magic.