In my last column, I suggested that the western magical tradition can be seen as a response to Plato’s theory of Ideas. If we imagine that magic interacts with a world of more primary forms than our physical senses can detect, we are Neoplatonic. If we argue the opposite, that there is no such Ideal world, we are Aristotelian and, usually, materialists who do not do magic at all. However, even if we are Chaos Mages who suggest that magic is mostly a matter of internal belief, and that there is no world of Ideas external the mind of individual magicians, we’re still responding to Plato.

If Plato is right, and there is an essential world of Ideas, for magic to be real would mean that it must appeal to that essential world. If such an essential world exists, its essential truths must be universal. Perhaps the shape of those truths would be different, but any culture of any time that perceives that truth, will perceive the same.

For example, every culture that looks into the geometry of a circle will discover that the diameter of the circle encircles the circumference of the circle 3.14 times. If they have sufficient mathematical sophistication, they will even recognize that this number is irrational and continues an infinite number of nonrepeating digits after the decimal point. It doesn’t matter if we call this number pi, or Liu Hui’s constant, or the Archimedes Constant. It remains true, regardless of our ideas about it. We cannot legislate pi.

Even though we cannot know pi in its totality, we do not propose that there is not, for example, a ten billionth digit of pi. In fact, we know there is, and we know that it is one of ten numerals, although we may not know which one. And since there is no perfect circle in the physical world, we also know that it does not rely on any physical object whatsoever to calculate.

Similarly, if magic is real and we believe in the Platonic ideal, then we know that there should be some things about magic that are essential, and some that are incidental or contingent. Those contingent things will change, from society to society or even from practitioner to practitioner. But the essential things, for real magic, for magic that works, will remain the same. Of course, some people may do magic that doesn’t work, just as someone might try to calculate the area of a large circle using the approximation that pi = 3, and find themselves receiving an incorrect answer. At the same time, we cannot suggest that the essentials of magic boil down to a popularity contest. If a million people think that pi = 3, they will be wrong, no matter how persuasive they are. It doesn’t matter how many votes it gets: pi is not a popularity contest.

Yet we can say, with some certainty, that diverse cultural practices operating on the same principles may be pointing to an underlying essential truth to magic. Of course, they could also point, as a skeptic would argue, to an underlying flaw in the capabilities of human reason.

For my purpose I am content to point out a few of the similarities across cultures as possible pointers toward an essential truth about magic. I am not pretending to be exhaustive, and certainly there is room for argument.

Fortunately, my work is done for me by Sir James George Frazer, whose The Golden Bough (1922) was one of the most influential books of the twentieth century. Frazer pointed out several similarities between the magical practices of diverse peoples. He did not suggest, as I do, that these may point to some underlying truth about magic, but he did suppose that it represented an underlying structure of culture.

Frazer identifies two principles of the practice of sympathetic magic: the law of similarity and the law of contagion. The law of similarity says that any two items that appear the same are, in some sense, the same. This recalls Iamblichus’s practice of using symbols of divine forces to direct those forces. A hawk is Horus, because the two are similar. Similarly, gold is the sun, because they partake of similar signatures. In non-western magic, we see the same thing: a plant with a human-shaped root might stand for a person, or a mantra might be regarded as the God it invokes. Contagion suggests that any two objects in contact remain in contact. We see this practice in the Christian mass: the bread that Jesus broke is still in contact with all other bread, which is itself in contact with the flesh of Christ, and therefore is the flesh of Christ. In nonwestern practices, it’s common enough to require hair or other leavings of someone for or against whom one wishes to work magic. Frazer regards both of these ways of thinking as “mistakes,” of course, but really they represent the very basis of fundamental symbolic thought.

Symbolic thought is that ability of abstraction that allows us to say “this word ‘water’ represents this substance.” Moreover, it allows us to say “this substance in this cup is the same as the substance in the ocean; I can abstract them with the same symbol.” We find, then, that one of the roots of magical practice, the world over, is symbolic thought. Magic cannot work unless the world is abstracted into ideas.

It’s worth noting that it is the process of abstraction, not the result of the abstraction, that matters. In other words, it doesn’t matter what collection of sounds you choose to use to represent the concept of water: “water” or “agua” or “mayim.” What matters is that you do the abstraction and that you share that abstraction with others. Of course, if you say “mayim” and no one around you speaks Hebrew, you’ll be in trouble. But “agua” isn’t an inherently better word than “mayim.”

Looking back, I find it interesting that I ended up using language as my metaphor. Of course, it makes sense: what are words but symbols? And what are symbols for, if not to communicate? The importance of communication brings me to the next universal of magic: magic operates on the principle that we are communicating with something or someone outside of our physical perception. Ancient Greeks threw tablets down wells to communicate with the chthonic gods, while medieval European magicians conjured angels. Yoruba magicians make offerings to gods. Tantrikas invoke protector deities. Even our etymologies betray the magical importance of communication: evoke and invoke both contain the root “vocare,” meaning “to call,” and “enchant” means “to sing into.”

We also, in looking at magical practices the world over, find the notion of separation nearly everywhere. The Shaman is separated from society, the medieval wizard draws a circle, and the “hedgewitch” lives on the border (the hedge) of the village. This separation amounts to a cutting off not just of society but of the physical world; there is a turning inward which is in its final analysis a turning outward into the world of ideas, a mental world no less real than the physical. Physical objects are merely means to that end, symbols that are meant to stir something in the mind.

Few magical practices fail to emphasize the importance of mental preparation. Even medieval magic focused on mental preparation, although the grimoires we have seem more concerned with the proper furniture and clothes in the temple. If one looks farther, at the works of — for example — Giordano Bruno, one quickly finds that there’s an emphasis on mental training. That mental training is not simply trance work, either, although that is certainly present. There’s also training of memory and philosophical training.

It’s easy to imagine that our culture’s practices are, in essence, absolute. But obviously we must have some ways of thinking of things that are curtains on the window, and not the light itself. We must have decorative notions that are not essential to magic. It’s worth while, in looking at the commonalities, to look at what is not common to all cultures as well.

The first thing that sticks out for me is “energy.” Few cultures recognize the concept of energy as essential to magic. Certainly, Chinese magic has qi and Polynesian magic has mana, but neither of these are energy. Qi literlly means “breath,” and could probably better be translated “life force.” Force is not a synonym of energy, as any basic physics student could tell you. Similarly, mana means something a lot more like “embodied authority” than “energy.” And if you doubt that our ancient predecessors lacked a term for energy, do try to translate the term into Latin. You may find yourself stymied: the closest similarities to the word in even its mundane sense fall short of what we mean by it. The ancients did not have the concept of energy divorced from work or power (which are, again, distinct concepts).

So why do so many magicians in modern America talk about “magical energy?” It’s not ignorance and it’s not laziness. Just as the word “agua” means “water” in Spanish, the word “energy” represents, in a magical context, one of the essential characteristics of magic. It’s not some mystical energy that any physicist will ever discover in any lab, be her instruments ever so advanced. But “energy” in western magic fulfills a simple role, easy to determine if you read this signifier in context. Every time a book on magic mentions “energy,” it hastens to point out that this energy responds to intention. It’s not like electricity, or light, or heat, or kinetic energy, or anything else, because unlike those kinds of real literal energies, it pays attention to what we want. In fact, it represents a quality essential to magic: willful action.

Magic, always and everywhere, is not an accident; it is a willful action. Of course, there are accidental powers that we would classify as magical, and seem to share some similarities. For example, in Timor some people believe in a malignant power which comes out of an unsuspecting woman and does harm to the community. And of course there are spirits or other entities who might act according to their own wills. But, like fire, while it may get out of hand and do damage, magic is a technology that we use, like all technologies, deliberately.

Energy is a symbol of that intentionality. Other cultures provide other symbols. Ainu shamans sit under cold waterfalls, for example, as a sign of their willingness to suffer to heal others and speak for the dead. And we can see that mana and qi are, then, similar to the symbol of energy in that they represent, in culturally specific and different ways, the intentionality of magic.

Obviously, there may be more essential shared characteristics; it would take a book to examine them all. But we can sum it up in a simple definition: magic is an intentional and symbolic act of communication with a nonphysical reality.

If magic were only the wishful thinking of deluded people, we would not expect it to share any similarities across culture. And we can expect the trappings to differ, as long as the essence remains the same, just as we can expect the name of “pi” to change from culture to culture, while its value remains the same. At the same time, one could argue that magic is delusion, but that delusion has some essential quality, and so shares similarities from culture to culture. This possibility, while perhaps appealing to skeptics, would be hardly any less amazing than magic itself. Both possibilities point toward some essential quality of the human mind, or perhaps of consciousness itself.

©2009 by Patrick Dunn.
Edited by Sheta Kaey.

I’m pleased to offer myself as a regular columnist on these august though entirely electronic pages. As those who have read my books or know me personally know, I’m an academic through and through, and so my conversations have a tendency to turn to lectures, and my dinner parties often become seminars. This column therefore will play to my strengths. My goal, ultimately, is to trace the connections between occult practice and schools of academic thought. I’m hoping to make this less boring than it sounds on its face, and at the same time offer something practical that the working occultist can take away.

It’s fitting that this first column begin at the beginning, the foundation of most Western occultism. Many people will tell you that Western occultism began in Egypt, and even the ancients thought so. But really, most of western occultism began in a cave, and not even a real cave but an allegorical one.

Socrates was perhaps the first professor. He liked to walk around and profess his own innocence and ignorance, and ask probing questions that quickly revealed that everyone around him was just as ignorant. He was eventually asked to kill himself, possibly because he was tedious at curriculum committee meetings. One of his students, Aristocles, a jock who no doubt offered a letter from his wrestling coach every other Friday excusing him from class, ended up rising to the top and writing quite a few books of his own. We know him by his wrestling nickname: “Fatty,” or, in Greek, “Plato.”

Now, Fatty had a problem, aside from an embarrassing nickname. He couldn’t figure out perception. It was common knowledge, of course, that we perceived the world by engaging it with our senses, but Plato had learned from his old professor to question common knowledge. And in doing so, he dug up a few problems that have plagued philosophy ever since. For one thing, he realized, we can’t really see the whole of anything we look at, touch, taste, or smell. We get only a momentary perception. Sure, we could turn a pot over and over in our hands really fast, but how do we know that the side away from us doesn’t turn another color, or even disappear entirely? Common sense, of course, but how do we come by that common sense, and how is it that everyone has it?

Plato said, or rather reported that his teacher said, Imagine a cave. In it, you are chained next to a group of like people, all facing a wall. You grew up in this cave, chained up thus, and no, Xenophon, it doesn’t matter how that happened, just shut up and listen. Now, behind you is a big fire, and people walk between you and the fire holding objects. But you are chained such that you cannot see behind you, so all you see are shadows. Now, being raised in this cave, all you know of the shape called “elephant” or “horseshoe” or “vase” are the shadow shapes on the wall, and if you could be freed and look suddenly at the real thing, you would be amazed that it looked as it did, not to mention how they fit an elephant into the cave.

This allegory describes perception. We seem to see things, but really we see their shadow, and another, more perfect world than this contains those real items. So we know that the pot continues around to the other side not because we can perceive that it does, but because we remember the ideal pot, the Form of pots, of which all other pots are mere shadows. And that’s how we can also recognize the pot-ness of a squat pot, a tall pot, a wide pot, a purple pot, and a blue pot. We know that they are all pots because, just like the shadows on the wall, much depends upon how we look upon that ideal.

Plato had a student of his own, Aristotle, who threw the whole thing into the soup by saying that there was no such perfect, ideal world. Aristotle argued that we know the Form of pots only because we have seen a heck of a lot of pots and called them all “pot.”

Thus began the epistemological (meaning, the study of knowledge) split between magic and what would eventually become empiricism. But I’ve written about that before, and so will let it go for now.

Aristotle opened a school and wrote some deeply influential books of his own, and eventually we hit two interesting fellows who founded much of what we now imagine to be magic. Conveniently, these two figures stand as symbols for two paths of magic, two ways of knowing the unseen, ideal world. We call them “Neoplatonists,” because they began with Plato’s idea that there was such an ideal world, a world of Forms, and pushed it to its natural edge: if such a world existed, and we could perceive it, could we also perhaps interact with it? Could we, in fact, use it to change this world? Could we reach behind us, as it were, and grab that elephant and yank it around, so that we could make its shadow in this world dance?

Plotinus answered, essentially, in the negative. That ideal world was perfect, and perfection by its very nature cannot change. But what we could do, according to Plotinus, is change ourselves to rise up to that world, and thus gain a clearer image of ultimate reality. If we understood what was going behind us, we could manipulate things in this world of shadows more sagaciously.

For Plotinus, and his student Porphyry, the way to do this consisted of contemplation. Sadly, we lack descriptions of what to contemplate specifically, but we can reconstruct some of it by understanding what he taught. He taught that all reality, this world of shadows, was an emanation from a perfect reality. The highest perfect reality was the One. This One was beyond all characteristics, because all characteristics imply their opposite. If the One is big, then it’s not small and therefore not perfect — by which he meant something closer to “complete.” It has to be beyond bigness or smallness. From the One comes the Nous, or Mind. This is the first thing that can be given characteristics, and the characteristic it has is “goodness.” From Mind comes the rest of the world of shadows in a successive series or ladder of emanations.

This contemplative approach survives in a lot of practices we might regard as Eastern. One contemplation, in the spirit of Plotinus and Porphyry, would be to take one’s perception of oneself and begin deleting things. For example, try to remove your sense of physical position by sitting very still. Then try to remove your emotional feelings. Then abandon mental activity and remain as pure awareness. In other words, we climb the ladder of emanations back upward to the One.

We also see Plotinus’ influence in the contemporary understanding of the Qabala, and there’s some convincing evidence that the Qabala was Neoplatonic before it was strictly Jewish. Whether you believe that or not, it cannot be denied that a ladder of emanations really does describe most understandings of the sephiroth. And the practices of traditional Qabala — recitation of names, permutation of letters, and so on — smack of the contemplative practices of Plotinus.

On the other end of the teeter totter we have Iamblichus, one of Porphyry’s students, who suggested that contemplation was fine and good, but also difficult and impractical. Most people, he said, are so engrossed in the shadows that they simply can’t get anywhere with contemplation; it’s like trying to grow eyes in the back of your head. Better, he suggested, to turn around, and the way we do that is through ritual action. That ritual action, of course, was accompanied by contemplation, but contemplation alone could never apprehend what was not rational. If you tried the previous contemplation, you may have found it incredibly difficult; Iamblichus would say, “exactly.” Ritual provided an easier way.

Ritual action for Iamblichus consisted of recognizing the symbolic relationship between ideas. After all, if we can recognize a picture of a pot as a pot, it must be partaking of some bit of pot-ness from the world of ideas. If we manipulate this symbolic image, we can begin to train our minds to perceive and perhaps manipulate the ideal Form as well. How this worked exactly we don’t really know, but certain objects were thought to embody the ideal more intensely than other objects, just as a profile of an elephant is easier to recognize in a shadow. These objects or symbols included such things as the tools of ritual sacrifice, as well as — probably — various objects held sacred to deities. By ritually manipulating these objects, one could gain a clearer view of the ideal world.

A ritual in the style of Iamblichus might involve a series of ritual sacrifices of bread or wheat, each of which represents a return of some faculty to the One. So we might symbolically enact a sacrifice of our passions so that we can more easily contemplate the One as an Ideal without passions. Of course, we don’t know exactly what Iamblichus’s rituals looked like, but we can imagine that they looked quite a lot like the ordinary religious rituals of the time, but accompanied with appropriate contemplations.

Now, of course, most occultists mix these two approaches, the contemplative and the ritual. But the old argument between the two schools still exists. Some contemplatives talk scornfully of rituals as “crutches,” for example, an idea that might well have come out of Porphyry. And even those occultists who do not profess an ideal world of forms still engage in ritual actions in which a concrete object (the athame, say) represents a mental idea (will, or defense). Finally, most occultists will decry mindless ritual for ritual’s sake. We are to remember, as Iamblichus would argue, that every ritual action is an action in the world of Ideas as well.

No matter which approach you take to magic, whether you regard it as a contemplative practice or a ritual one, you are — if you’re involved in the western magical tradition — a Neoplatonist. Of course, chaos magicians might argue that there is no actual world of ideals, and a postmodern magician might argue that ideals are just clumps of self-referential symbols, and not meanings in themselves. Yet every school of western magic must situate itself in regards to Neoplatonism; they must begin by affirming or denying the central insights of that chubby wrestler.

The root of the whole endeavor of magic is in Plato, as is the root of all Western philosophy. Magic, then, rather than being a fringe effort of a few strange men and women, is a branch of philosophy itself, with its own epistemological and ontological claims. We diverged from philosophy in the same way that chemistry and alchemy diverged, or where mathematics and engineering diverged. Where philosophy began to dedicate itself to the analysis of ideas, we began to learn the practical arts of manipulating them. In future columns, I hope to explore some of those issues of knowledge and being, with an eye toward the practical implications of the philosophical positions we take.

©2009 by Patrick Dunn
Edited by Sheta Kaey

The study of magic is, by and large, the study of paradigms. The Witch — by whatever title she or he may adopt — steps beyond the default worldview presupposed by the surrounding society, and instead cultivates a unique paradigm which resonates with her or his deepest intuitions. This line of inquiry constitutes an ever present challenge for the practicing Witch. Our sisters and brothers who practice Chaos Magic may well find this interpretation of magic resonates with their approaches. For the Chaos Magician, paradigms are tools which the enlightened soul can adopt and abandon at will. Dancing from one worldview into the next, ever light of step, the Chaos Magician draws from some particular paradigm what she or he requires before moving on. Key to this approach is the conviction that all paradigms are merely artificial constructs by which we organize and render intelligible an essentially ineffable cosmos, yet herein we discover the key dilemma of Chaos Magic: If all paradigms are ultimately expendable, then where can we hope to ground the very conviction all paradigms are expendable interpretations? Thus presented, the argument becomes paradoxical, which may prove no obstacle for the practicing Chaos Magician — or for the Mystic, should we care to explore beyond the boundaries of the purely rational.

Still, the rationalist inside me, who has yet to surrender all hope for an intelligible universe, questions whether Chaos Magic simply sets up one meta-paradigm that encompasses all other possible paradigms. My concern here is simple: If the meta-paradigm thus proposed resolves into an essentially existentialist position, and I fear Chaos Magic indeed reverts back into existentialism, then how do we overcome or sidestep — or even incorporate — existential angst into our magical paradigms?

Allow me one step back. For those less versed in postmodern philosophy, existentialism proposes that existence precedes essence. That is, there is the world, eternally cold and mechanical in its manifold operations. These operations are pure existence, subsisting without reference to meaning or essence. Essence is what we add, the significance which conscious thought projects into the mechanical process. This essence can be thoroughly uplifting and optimistic — witness Soren Kirkegaard’s essentially Christian answer to the existentialist question! — yet whenever one takes up the mantle of existentialism, there lurks the spectre of nihilism. If all the universe is cold, mechanical process, devoid of any meaning apart from what we decide, then there can be no intrinsic meaning subsisting within anything. The universe simply grinds along, oblivious towards even the possibility of some deeper meaning. This scenario, as presented by existentialist philosophers like Sartre and Camus, becomes the source of existential angst, the pervasive and disquieting suspicion that any significance or teleology to things remains, at bottom, false.

It may remain possible that the Chaos Magician can refer all lesser paradigms back towards one primary reality which has meaning, transcending the merely mechanical. Certainly the irrepressible ebullience of Discordian thought suggests the possibility of one such meta-paradigm. Still, the question of whether reality is truly devoid of meaning — apart from what we add — remains.

This question turns especially vexing if we regard magic as something essential — that is, an essence — as opposed to something purely mechanical. If magic consists of the meaning we add into otherwise purely mechanical motions, then magic seemingly has no truck with reality at its most really real. (I recognize that if you do not perceive magic as the art of paradigm bending, I may have long since lost your attention, and if you regard magic as straightforwardly mechanical process, then existential angst constitutes no threat towards your magical paradigm. For those few readers as crazy as me, or for the morbidly curious, I shall continue this line of inquiry just a little further.)

While I am not deeply opposed to the existentialist project, I do regard their central proposition as essentially misleading. To assume that existence precedes essence means to assume an unobservable existence, for all observation imparts some meaning or essence, however slight and however poorly articulated. We simply cannot observe without becoming drawn into the connection between observer and observed. We are inexplicably entangled with the things we observe, and from this entanglement we derive the essence of the observed. Indeed, we might just as well say this entanglement — the way we think and feel about the observed — actually constitutes the essence in question. And there can be no unobserved existence.

Let me reiterate this point: There can be no unobserved existence. To say an existence is unobserved constitutes a manifest contradiction, since the supposition of the existence in question is itself an observation. Moreover, everything exists precisely by the virtue of being observed, by itself in the barest sense if nothing else. (For those familiar with my metaphysical views, my pantheism does allow for other forms and degrees of perception, but these I shall pass over presently in the interests of constructing the simplest argument possible.) Within everything there is essence, both the essence from self-perception and the essence from an outside observer. Existence and essence are forever and inescapably entwined, just as every being has both material and spiritual aspects. (Indeed, existence and essence are respectively much the same things!)

If spiritual essence always and everywhere coexists with perceived existence, then our next set of questions must revolve around what kind of essence we will or should intermingle with matter. Essence, consisting of a qualitative connection between observer and observed, depends in large part upon the choices we make when interpreting our world. Kirkegaard makes this very point in Works of Love when he suggests we are forever confronted with the choice between belief and mistrust. Love, argues Kirkegaard, is unique among the virtues in this: Love can only thrive within us when we believe in — indeed, unconditionally presuppose — the presence of love within others, from the first moment clear unto the last. Forever the mistrust endemic to nihilism raises the terrible possibility that there is no love within others, and whenever we choose this mistrust, we remove from ourselves the very possibility of finding love. Believe, and we find love, perhaps within others, yet more crucially — more gracefully — within ourselves. The tension between these two possibilities, between which we are eternally poised, lies at the root of existential angst.

Something of this same dilemma confronts the practicing Witch, I should think, for the quality of being magical, much like the quality of being loving, turns precisely upon finding without that which we seek within. To be magical means finding the magic inside those things around us, discovering the connections of meaning and correspondence which empower our spells. I’m not unaware that this position seemingly inverts the traditional formulation of the “Charge of the Goddess” — though in seeming only! Near the end of the Charge, the Goddess observes, “If that which you seek you find not within yourself, you will never find it without.” These are powerful words, words which counsel the Witch to look inward for genuine power and wisdom. To suggest we should seek the magical in the world around us, should we hope to discover the magic within, seems at odds with this Wiccan saying. Still, the choice to discover the magical inside things is itself a choice which dwells within the Witch, the same choice between belief and mistrust which Kirkegaard proposed nearly two hundred years ago. Magic is an essence, and essence depends upon the relationship between observer and observed that we ourselves choose. “Seek and ye shall find,” says the Christian. “As above, so below,” answers the occultist. And so our world takes shape. Seek love, and you will find love within. Seek magic, and magic you will surely possess. Seek the coldly mechanical universe, of course, and this you’ll find, as well.

Kirkegaard suggests we have no more reason to doubt the goodness within the world than we have to believe in things life-affirming, and I see no reason to doubt this essentially hopeful position. Indeed, the Chaos Magician can happily accept this argument, and then skip between the two positions as she or he desires, perhaps a little more mindfully than most everyone else who blend belief and mistrust in daily life. Still, this paradigm bending fails to escape the spectre of angst that existentialism suggests, and while I’m hesitant to jettison this pervasive sense of angst entirely, I am eager to arrive at workable terms with this metaphysical uneasiness. My solution returns to the central issue of ontological primacy. Simply stated, does existence precede essence? As an idealist, I simply don’t grant matter any existence independent of our ideas of matter. (Taking a page from George Berkeley, “To be is to be perceived.”) Furthermore, I believe every perception includes some qualification, some interpretation — in sum, some essence. Therefore, I cannot grant that existence precedes essence in any meaningful sense. This break from existentialism, however, becomes perhaps the greatest boon for the Witch, because every last sensible thing thus becomes pregnant with the possibility of magic. With every interaction, indeed with every bare perception, there arises the question of essence, whether this especial thing is something magical. And to this question, we Witches can answer with a resounding YES!

The nihilist will suggest we are simply fooling ourselves, choosing to make meaningless qualifications of an impersonal and mechanical universe. They will argue the underlying angst of existentialism points towards the one great truth, that everyone ultimately suffers alone within the cold void of reality. I don’t suggest we should remove all doubt about the nature of things, for such not only blinds us against genuine interaction with the world, but also removes the very emotional urgency which gives our Craft its power. In truth, the nihilist perceives reality through filters just as obscuring as those adopted by their magical brethren; the nihilist cannot cheat around our fundamental inability to grasp directly the ineffable nature of reality. All reality — everything that is — constantly forces us to choose between belief and mistrust, between the magical and the mundane, and this choice speaks most of all towards what we seek within ourselves. I choose to walk with belief, to walk with the magic around and within me. Such is the choice — and the power — of the Witch. And so with this choice I leave you, my dear readers.

Blessed Be!

©2009 Grey Glamer
Edited by Sheta Kaey

The teacher heaved himself from his stone seat. “Enough sitting. My knees are aching. Let’s walk and talk together,” he said to his few disciples. Other teachers had more — some as many as thirty students — but Aristotle took his pleasure in selecting the six or seven students who could best understand his teachings.

Used to their teacher’s habit of wandering while he lectured, the students gathered together styli and wax tablets and a few closely spaced sheets of lecture notes painstakingly copied from their teacher’s own notes. They gathered in a close circle around their teacher as he walked, trying as best they could to prick out a few salient notes on their tablets. Walking, talking, and juggling the material of learning forced them to listen carefully to their teacher.

“An object falls through the air,” the teacher says. “Imagine two objects — a section of that column here,” he tapped it with his staff, “and a blade of grass dropped from a height. They fall toward the earth. Why?”

“Both contain Earth in their nature, and so are drawn to the greatest concentration of that element,” said Eudemus.

“And why does the column fall faster?” Aristotle asked.

“It is heavier,” blurted out Phanias.

“Which just means that it contains more Earth than the grass,” Eudemus put in.

“And Earth is another name of mass, so we can say that objects of greater weight fall faster than objects of lesser weight. Yes?”

The students tossed their heads back in agreement.

“But why do they fall at any speed at all? Why not simply contact the ground instantly as they leave the hand? What holds them back from their affinity with Earth?”

The students thought for a while, and finally Phanias ventured an answer, hoping to redeem himself from his earlier stupidity. “The element of Air pushes against them, and Air is inimical to Earth. Every falling object is a war between Air and Earth.”

“Exactly so. Now, reason this out. If there were no Air to push against falling objects, how fast would they fall?”

“Infinitely fast,” put in Eudemus. “Which is an absurdity.”

“Therefore?” Aristotle’s “therefore” was always devastating. It meant you hadn’t finished your chain of reasoning.

“Therefore there can be no place without air. There can be no void.”

“Because if there were?”

“It would lead to a logical absurdity, and the universe is rational.”

Aristotle smiled, pleased. “Exactly so. So now let us explore this idea of the rational . . . ” And the students walked with their wise teacher into two thousand years of fame.

* * *

Galileo huffed his way up the stairs of the tower, his secretary in tow lugging not only the necessary writing equipment but a heavy bag that made a low clunking noise with every step.

Galileo had done the arithmetic and it had all worked out, but for it to work out required something nearly unthinkable. Aristotle had to have been wrong. And not just Aristotle, but everyone else stretching back between that time and this — and that of course included the holy church.

Finally, at the top, he fished two cannon balls out of his bag. Aristotle was right about the air, at least partially — air resistance would slow down an object as it fell, which is why a feather did, indeed, fall slower than a cannon ball. But two cannon balls, one of a large caliber, another of a smaller caliber, should cut through the air at more or less the same speed, being spherical. He sent his secretary to the bottom to watch as he dropped the two objects, and call out whether they hit the earth at the same moment, or different moments.

He conducted the experiment over and over, with both him and his secretary watching on the ground, and in every instance, the two balls struck the ground at the same instant.

Rather than being elated, he found himself a bit disappointed. He felt cut adrift, like a boat whose rope has finally frayed beyond control. But no, that was the wrong analogy. He was more like a horse who has realized that the line that seemed to be securely tied was, in reality, merely draped over a twig. From here, he could go anywhere.

* * *

I’ve fictionalized these two incidents because they illustrate an important shift in the way that humans thought, and this story is one central to the history of science and — I wish to argue — magic. Because I wish to argue that contrary to magic being a science, magic and science are both two ways of knowing, compatible, but independent.

But the stories I’ve told are not stories of compatible ways of knowing, but two warring systems of knowledge.

Aristotle began with the commonly held assumption that our senses can be deceived. In fact, we know this to be not simply common sense, but quite true. A simple optical illusion can reveal that our eyes don’t always see what we think they do. Our ears can hear things that aren’t there, or mistake things that are; even our taste and touch can be confused. We can drink a soda and believe we’re tasting cherry, when really we’re drinking sugar and apple juice colored red and flavored with chemicals. Our senses are inadequate.

So Aristotle joined the tradition that, since senses are faulty, we must rely on reason. This idea led to mathematics, where senses are not only faulty but useless. One cannot see “two” — the best one can do is see symbols about twoness, or two of something. But arithmetic, not to mention the higher branches of mathematics, is abstract well beyond the range of sense. So we must rely on pure reason. We know that 2 + 2 = 4, to employ the hackneyed example, because if it doesn’t everything else we know about mathematics falls apart. In mathematics, we can have certain knowledge. Of course, that certain knowledge is of an abstract system, and as later mathematicians discovered, if you start with slightly different assumptions it’s easy to end up with a different system, in which 2 + 2 does not equal four but, perhaps, eight. Yet Aristotle would argue that the real world, while not the perfection of mathematics, clearly partook of it. After all, maybe the idea of right triangles is all just an abstraction, but just try to erect a house without it. The very concrete and sensory house is built of abstract numbers.

If pure reason led to truth in mathematics, Aristotle reasoned, and mathematics led to truth in matter, then surely we could come to truth about the physical world without relying on our senses at all. We could simply reason it out from first principles. Select the right set of first principles, apply rigorous reason, and knowledge would result like a nice buttery baklava. And if we avoid the engagement of the senses, we avoid the faults that senses are heir to.

Galileo began with a different set of assumptions. While accepting that senses could be deceived, he worked from the premise that this deception could be evened out by having multiple people observe at different times. In the fictionalized (and probably apocryphal) account above, both he and his secretary make observations, and they do not stop with just one but do it again and again. In addition to building up excellent calf muscles by lugging cannon balls up the leaning tower of Pisa, this method has the benefit of certainty. We know it works because we can see it working.

I’m not a philosopher, so what I’m attempting here is a bit arrogant of me, but we can summarize Aristotle’s underlying assumptions about knowledge and compare them to Galileo’s. For Aristotle, observation is secondary to reasoning. For Galileo, reasoning is secondary to observation. For Aristotle, we make a prediction based on reasoning from first principles. For Galileo, we define principles by reasoning from observation.

The scientific revolution was a war between these two ways of knowing the world. In the end, the latter system of reasoning conquered the former, usurping it to its own purposes. Pure reasoning still has a place in the sciences — mathematics, after all, is core to all sciences and still employs reasoning that Aristotle could understand, although he might not follow all the advanced concepts of modern mathematics. Now, scientists observe the physical world and create models of reasoning to explain and predict the behavior of that world. These models are called theories. It’s easy, therefore, to laugh at Aristotle’s naiveté. He simply had the incorrect method for gaining knowledge about the world, and now we have the correct method, and so we’re done. Give us enough time and observations, and we’ll figure it all out. And, in fact, we’ve come quite far in just a few hundred years after the scientific revolution. We know — with some certainty — more about the structure of reality than Aristotle could have imagined, and we even understand how to manipulate it to some degree. Aristotle’s explanation of a magnet from first principles was clumsy and inadequate. Scientific explanations of electromagnetism allow me to use this computer to write this essay, which some of you may be reading on an electric screen that would baffle Aristotle.

The problem is, the above isn’t entirely true. Aristotle didn’t have the wrong method, because Aristotle is still quite relevant. Virtue ethics as Aristotle described them, for example, are still relevant, and literary criticism classes still often begin with his works on the structure of tragedy. Obviously, those fields have advanced in volume of books if nothing else, but we still read Aristotle there not to ridicule him but to appreciate his insights. Yet physics classes rarely — if ever — begin with Aristotle’s Phusis. It seems he got some things right — in ethics, literary criticism, and other areas — and other things wrong. We cannot simplify then and say, “this system of knowledge is the right one, and his was the wrong one.”

The war between Aristotle and Galileo was misguided on all sides. On the side of Aristotle stood the church, which had long since reconciled that pagan philosopher with their understanding of the world. On the side of Galileo stood — at first — Galileo. Then the Royal Society of London and other groups of scientists who struggled mightily and won (the Church recently surrendered by apologizing to Galileo). The Church was wrong in that indeed Galileo had the right idea about gravity and the right notion about planetary motion (with some fuzzy details). But the church wasn’t arguing that — they were arguing about his method. If human observation could discover truth, what purpose remained for God? Their error was assuming that the truth of planetary motion is the same truth as the nature of the divine. Similarly, newly minted scientists made the same error, assuming that religion existed only to explain what science has not yet gotten around to on their grand to-do list.

The reality is more complicated.

The current state of this war is between two fronts: science and religion. Science, represented (or perhaps more accurately co-opted) by militant atheists like Richard Dawkins, argues that religion is inherently absurd and even deluded. Religion, on the other hand, argues that science cannot answer the questions that religion approaches. In this war of words, it is hard to tell who is winning, but the atheists are making some headway with the same sort of spurious and fallacious reasoning that they decry. It’s not my goal to enter this war in these pages; instead, I want to suggest another approach, as an inhabitant in that neutral country of magic. After all, we lost this war long ago — and yet a few of us still remain, quietly doing what the dominant culture no doubt regards as eccentric at best.

What magic offers is the model, not of war, but of a toolbox. Perhaps instead of imagining that one way of knowing the world is right and all the others are wrong, we could imagine that one way of knowing the world is very good at accomplishing a certain task, and other ways are good at accomplishing certain other tasks. The skeptic picks up magic and says “look at how empirical examination of astrology proves that it’s bunk. How can you still believe it?” This skeptic is like the do-it-yourselfer who picks up a wrench to pound in a nail. If you approach a system of knowledge, you must do so first by understanding its use.

Each system of knowledge begins with certain assumptions, axioms if you will, and has certain strengths. To understand and employ that system of knowledge you must understand its assumptions and strengths. Moreover, our toolbox must contain more than two means of knowledge about the world. In fact, magic teaches us a myriad of ways to understand the world. Most magicians pay their bills, do their taxes, and go to work like normal people living in an empirical world. But at the same time, they recognize that associational thinking — linking diverse symbols to create new ideas — can affect reality in a fundamental and concrete way.

If we imagine that associational thinking is the only tool in our box, we become superstitious and become paranoid at a world too fraught with meaning. On the other hand, if all we have is empiricism, we never examine our underlying assumptions about knowledge, our philosophical foundations, and so we can never move beyond a naive empirical view of the world into meaning. Meaning, if empiricism is the only tool in our toolbox, is reduced to data collection.

It’s clear, then, that different mental tools suit different life-tasks better. What is needed, in both science and magic, is cognitive flexibility and willingness to experiment meaningfully. I think that science can teach us something about magic, maybe even investigate some of its claims, just as magic can help us create meaning out of the discoveries of science. Yet science is not just magic that we’ve learned to understand, and magic is not just unexplained science. If that were the case, we would be the poorer for it. Our minds understand the world physically and metaphysically, and we need to honor both in order to make full use of our toolbox, and we must avoid the errors of both Aristotle and Galileo, while simultaneously respecting their unsurpassed contributions to human thought.

©2009 Patrick Dunn
Edited by Sheta Kaey

Air

(Alchemy) One of the Four Elements of alchemy believed to carry the archetypal properties of spirit into the visible world. It is linked to the process of Separation and corresponds to the metal Iron.

Cassock

(Ecclesiastic) A full-length gown with sleeves and collar worn priests, bishops and helpers.

Nephesh

(Qabalah) Hebrew The animal soul that corresponds to animal/ vegetable levels of consciousness. It is said to reside at the level of Yesod and Malkuth. It is mostly corresponds with the automatic bodily functions and ego. Also known as the automatic consciousness. This body does not survive death, as does the Ruach and Neshama. This really upsets people who practice Astral Travel as a way to cheat death, since the Astral Body is a projection of the Nephesh.

Neschama

(Qabalah) Hebrew Corresponds to the purest aspirations of the soul and the Soul itself and corresponds to Binah on the Tree of Life. It is where the individual Soul merges with the Oneness or God. From this plane we may approach the collective unconscious. The Neschama is composed of three parts: Yechidah, Chiah, and Neschama.

Omnipotence

(General religious, Philosophy) Omnipotence is all-powerfulness. Many religions view God as omnipotent. Descartes (and most Gnostics) postulated the possibility of an omnipotent demon who could manipulate our thoughts and deceive us.

Path of Zadek

(Qabalah) Hebrew A reference to the path illustrated by the Temperance tarot card between Yesod and Tiphareth. This path traverses the path of normal consciousness between Netzach and Hod. It is the border line between the ego and the true Self. It is called “the path of the honest man” because it is only accessible to those rare individuals who have liberated themselves of self-deception and psychological slothfulness.

Qlipha

pl. Qliphoth (Qabalah) Hebrew Literally, “shells” or “excrement.” A reference to the remnants of the previous, failed universes. The pieces of these shattered vessels are said to have fallen into Assiah, where Malkuth is now engrossed in them. In their present state, they serve to test and prove worthiness. The Qliphoth project the illusion of duality, making it so that we perceive one another as separate and isolated individuals. Largely due to superstition and a lack of understanding of the purpose of duality, the Qliphoth have been unfairly labeled as evil.

Ruach

(Qabalah) Hebrew Literally “breath.” It is one of the three parts of the human soul corresponding to personal self-awareness or false self, the emotional self, intellect and ego. It resides within Sephiroth 4 through 9, between Meschamah and Nephesh. The Neschamah seeps into the Ruach, but it is rarely noticed by the ego, which is a shame since the effects of the Neschamah can only observed by the Ruach.

Samadhi Yoga

(Yoga) Gives mastery over the self, and leads to the control of the powers of ecstasy.

Zodiac

(Astrology) An area of the sky (sometimes called a “belt”) divided into twelve parts through which most of the planets appear to move. Each part has a name and symbol, and is connected with an exact time of year. According to Hermes Trismigestus, “As Above, So Below” indicates that the direction of the stars correspond and allude to the course of human evolution.

©2009 Gerald del Campo
Edited by Sheta Kaey

Gerald del Campo is the author of A Heretic’s Guide to Thelema, New Aeon Magick: Thelema Without Tears, and New Aeon English Qabalah Revealed, among other works. You can visit his blog at http://solis93.livejournal.com and his website at http://thelemicknights.org. Gerald serves as Senior Managing Editor of Rending the Veil.

“A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.” — Albert Einstein

The source of ethics is the subject of much controversy and debate, and I hope that it will always remain that way. The religionists say that ethics are divinely inspired, while the atheists insist that ethics come from being human, the ability to empathize, and a mindful recognition of the connection between himself and his fellow man. In other words, they claim being ethical is a human trait. While considering this, one might see this as a paradox: ethics as a uniquely human trait illustrate the divine nature of man on the one hand, and on the other we must question how human a quality can be when so very few humans seem to possess it. Perhaps this is what is meant by “let my servants be few and secret¹.” The Western Mystery Tradition has always been preoccupied with being more than human. If we look around, we can see why this is necessary.

The atheist blames religion for the world’s woes because he generally feels that people should do the right thing out of humanity or principle, rather than fear, and yet this is a terribly unfair assessment. Not all religion is fear-based, nor are all religious people acting out of fear when they do the right thing. One must learn to take the bad with the good. Despite the many instances when evil men have used religion to justify killing and torture, a lot of good has been done and continues to be done in its name. The notable movie personality Martin Sheen once said, “We shouldn’t be critical of Christianity, because it hasn’t been tried².” If Christianity hasn’t been tried, then how much less can we say of Thelema? Even more disturbing is the idea that 2,000 years can come and go with so very few people ever adhering to their chosen paradigm.

Adherents of Christianity have, for the most part, only given lip service to the teachings of Jesus. It is true that people are healed, fed, and taken care of in dire times, but at the cost of their soul — the motivation for this aid has always been to convert. This made me think of the hypocrisy inherent in so many religious zealots who insist on representing their sect because doing so gives them a feeling of superiority. They appear to be better than others, but their actions do their chosen paradigm a great disservice. In other words, it isn’t the religious paradigm that has failed, but the adherents (if, after all this, we can still call them that) for not being sufficiently sincere to subject themselves to the inconveniences imposed by their chosen beliefs. They are only adherents when it serves them to reach their desired goals.

The religionists blame atheism for the world’s problems, insinuating that a belief in God is necessary for ethical behavior. Again, this is misplaced blame. They believe that people are incapable of acting rightly or honorable unless they are motivated by fear. Atheists can have conviction. Neither Buddhism nor Taoism requires belief in a “god,” and yet right action is a great preoccupation for adherents of both of these religious paradigms.

The ethical atheist may be more genuine than his religionist counterpart since the atheist is generally motivated by compassion, love, and/or enlightened self-interest, while the other (at least if he subscribes to the concepts of hell and eternal damnation) is largely motivated by fear and selfish self-interest. Perhaps the best way to explain the problem with religion-based ethics is to reference the 2004 US elections, where many people voted for the person that supposedly exemplified “Christian values” such as homophobia and a hatred for anything they saw as “liberal.”³ Crowley was clearly right about the shortcomings of so-called democracy⁴.

While it is true that religion can advocate high ethical standards, we would err greatly if we were to identify ethics exclusively with religious conviction. If ethics were confined to religion, then we would only see them in the actions of religious people. If this were true, then how do we explain the ethics of the atheist? Ethics are not synonymous with religion.

So what are ethics? I define ethics as a standard of right and wrong that dictates what humans should do in terms of rights, duty, and commitment to society, justice, or specific virtues, such as the Eleven Virtues of Thelemic Knighthood⁵.

Most importantly, however, are ethics as the development of one’s personal standards. That is what an ethical person does. Feelings, laws, and social norms often stray from what is ethical, so we must constantly test our own standards to make sure that they are rational and well-founded. The study of ethics is the noble endeavor of scrutinizing our own beliefs and conduct, and the work of ensuring that the institutions we shape achieve the standards worthy of those chosen beliefs. This is an application of ethics that doesn’t seem to be getting much attention today. To say it a different way, the study of ethics is important because it will guide us away from decision making based on peer pressure and the desire for external validation, and help guide our lives in accordance with our own personal internal compass. It doesn’t get any more Thelemic than that.

Nietzsche and many of his contemporaries went to great lengths to show that there was no such thing as because all that we do, no matter how well intentioned, benefits us in one way or another. In other words, there are no selfless acts. But we already know that. Perhaps the English journalist Gilbert Chesterton said it best when he wrote:

“The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues[…] virtues gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians care only for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful⁶.”

Nietzsche explains that any altruistic act creates weakness because compassion and charity are insults to the individual to whom they are directed,⁷ and that those actions, as well intentioned as they may be, cause a sort of dependence rather than empowering the individual to rise up or fail on their own strength. Many Thelemites sincerely believe that this is what will cleanse the human race of all weakness of body and mind and create the ideal man, and that this sort of disregard to the suffering of one’s fellows is to be credited for the greatness that humanity has already attained.

Crowley seemed to subscribe to this idea as well, and if one reads through his comments on Liber Al
, this is how he has chosen to interpret some difficult passages of The Book of the Law
. It is somewhat ironic that very few people seem to follow Nietzsche’s or Crowley’s advice of questioning all things.

• Crowley was rather jaded toward the end of his life. His later comments reflect an attitude contradictory to what he wrote of the text when he was young and idealistic.
• His views were, unfortunately, very biased against every idea associated with Christianity. Given his parents’ strict, conservative household one can hardly blame him for this, but the reader should keep in mind that he obviously had trouble with this and it may have colored his interpretation of the message he was receiving.
• Neither Crowley nor Nietzsche have considered that compassion might be a human trait⁸ or that there may be a very good reason why people feel good when they do things for others. Nor have they considered how compassion, reverence, and empathy have contributed to human evolution. Humans help one another. As painful as it is for some to acknowledge, no man is an island, nor would we have developed communities, societies, or anything of lasting value without cooperating with others. Strength also comes in numbers.
• It is illogical to demonize compassion, reverence, and empathy simply because of the selfish nature of altruism, since compassion, reverence and empathy can come from other places. And as far as the “weak” are concerned — without people like Einstein, who had trouble spelling his name until he was eight⁹, or without Stephen Hawking we may not have dared to venture beyond already known ideas about the nature of time and the universe. John Merrick¹⁰ exemplified courage and inner strength. It is difficult to imagine never having heard a melody made by Chopin, or the teachings of Crowley himself, had they been allowed to die simply because of their debilitating illnesses. Strength comes in many forms, and often it only becomes apparent later in life. “Every man and every woman is a star¹¹.” This is not to say that everyone has something worthwhile to contribute to human evolution, but in an ideal world, everyone would have the opportunity.
• Christianity seems to dictate that altruism implies that a person’s primary ethical responsibility is to others first, while egoism holds that one’s primary obligation is to oneself, and toward advancing one’s own self-interest. Nietzsche, Crowley and others have categorized altruism as a “slave morality” without any redeeming qualities. I also concur. Both Nietzsche and Crowley have noted that what appears to be an altruistic act on the surface actually furthers one’s self-interest, and they say it like it is a bad thing. A person’s self-interest must come first, and there are many ways to further one’s self-interest. For example, the Order of Thelemic Knights does not engage in charitable campaigns because its members are trying to learn to be altruistic; we do so because it furthers our own personal growth. That others benefit from our work began as a wonderful coincidence we’d like to keep.

Different Ethical Paradigms, or Why Kant We Just Get Along?

The five examples listed below represent the most popular forms of ethics used today in everyday life. It will become apparent that each has its strength and weakness. There are numerous more which could not be included here due to the limited scope of this dissertation. There are approaches within approaches. To make matters more confusing, every method described below could be used to justify unethical behavior.

In the Utilitarian approach, for example, there is the Ethical Egoist, who concerns himself exclusively with his own benefit, while a Consequentialist Utilitarian works toward the good of all who are affected by an action or deliberation¹². Both look for a positive outcome or opportunity, but they differ on who should benefit.

Frequently, Utilitarianism will require that one do what is best for the greatest number of people, rather than what is good for oneself — but that isn’t to say that it cannot be used to justify something considered unethical by every other standard. For example, a Utilitarian could make the case that prisoners with life sentences should be used for medical experiments, arguing that discoveries could be made which would benefit millions of people of much higher character. This treatment of prisoners would not hurt the majority, and one could justify it by making the claim that the prisoners deserve to pay for their crimes in a way that would benefit society. If a prisoner should die in the experiments, then the scientists and doctors could endorse their experiments with the statement that, had they lived, they would be a burden to society since taxpayers have to pay to house, feed, and clothe them for life.

The bottom line is that whether we understand ethics or not, we still have the choice of doing the wrong thing or the right thing. Ultimately, we have to rely on our own self-knowledge, sense of self-worth, pride, integrity, and sincere effort to get us through tough decisions. You should also keep in mind, as you read this, that no one uses one method exclusively, but that they borrow what seems most comfortable to make their own ethical decisions.

The Utilitarian Approach

Utilitarianism was conceived by the English philosopher and political radical Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). Jeremy Bentham spent most of his life critiquing law and strongly advocating legal reform, and came up with the system to assist lawmakers in deciding which laws were the most ethical. In a nutshell, the Utilitarian approach dictates that the most ethical decisions are the ones that result in the least evil¹³.

United States politicians and lawmakers tend to be Utilitarian or Consequentialist¹⁴ in their problem solving. The most important consideration is what effect the policy will have on the average citizen.

When using Utilitarianism to look for an ethical course of action, we might approach the issue by first asking ourselves a few questions. It might go something like this:

What are the options available to us?

Who will be affected by our decisions?

What benefit or harm will each course of action lead us to?

After those questions have been answered, we chose an option that will cause the least amount of harm and benefit the greatest number of people. In Utilitarianism, the most appropriate action provides the most benefit to the greatest number.

One of the clear shortcomings of the Utilitarian approach is that there is a tendency to ignore justice. Apartheid in South Africa comes as a good example in recent history, when South African whites decided that all South Africans, black and white, would be better served under white leadership. Those arguing in favor of this view claimed that social conditions declined in African nations that exchanged exclusively white governments for black or mixed governance. The proponents of apartheid predicted civil war, financial decline, food shortages, and social instability following the establishment of a black majority government. These predictions did not occur when apartheid ended. If it had, then the white government of South Africa would have been ethically justified by utilitarianism, in spite of its discrimination.

The Rights Approach

The Rights Approach¹⁵ is rooted in the philosophical works of Kant, whose focus was on the right to choose for oneself. This philosophy supposes that humans have a moral right to choose freely, and that this freedom of choice is what gives humans their dignity and separates us from objects that can or should be manipulated. In other words, every human should be respected and given the choice to live their life in accordance with that choice. To say it another way, it is unethical to demand that a person act in a fashion that they have not personally chosen.

“Every action is right which in itself, or in the maxim on which it proceeds, is such that it can coexist along with the freedom of the will of each and all in action, according to a universal law¹⁶.”

Some of the rights listed below might remind you of Liber OZ. In fact, Liber OZ is so close to the human rights this ethical approach dictates that it is entirely possible it might have come to Crowley as a result of Kant’s writings. See for yourself:

The right to truthful information. The right to be told the truth about matters that may affect our lives.

The right of privacy. The right to do, believe, and say whatever we choose, provided that we do not violate the rights of others.

The right not to be injured. The right not to be harmed unless we knowingly do something that warrants retribution, or we choose to risk such injury of our own free will.

The right to what is agreed. We are entitled to hold a reasonable expectation of what is promised to us by people with whom we have freely entered into a pact or covenant.

When using the Rights Approach to explore an ethical course of action, we only need ask ourselves one question: does our decision/action respect the rights of everyone?

We only need to look at the deceptively titled “Patriot Act“¹⁷ to see how our rights are violated in the USA. With the implementation of this act, Americans lost the following freedoms and rights:

Freedom of association. Government may now spy on religious and political institutions even if they are not suspected of criminal activity, discouraging individuals from pursuing their right to freedom of association. Specific groups have been branded “terrorist organizations,” making membership in them illegal.

Freedom of information. Government has closed immigration hearings and has held hundreds of people without charging them with criminal offense, and has applied pressure to public and civil servants to withhold once freely available information from the public.¹⁸

Freedom of speech. Government may subpoena information from public librarians (such as individual patron records, listing books that were checked out), and may punish them if they alert individuals.¹⁹

The right to legal representation. Government officials may monitor once protected attorney-client conversations in prisons, as well as denying legal assistance to Americans accused of crimes.

Freedom from unreasonable searches. Government may search and seize property and papers without probable cause.

The right to a speedy and public trial. Americans may be declared “enemy combatants” and imprisoned indefinitely without a trial.

Right to confront accusers. Not only can Americans be jailed without being charged of a crime, but also they do not have the right to confront their accusers.

In short, under the Rights Approach, it is clear that the provisions in the Patriot Act, which circumscribe citizens rights as described by Kant and enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, are unethical. Furthermore, the Patriot Act opens the door to future legislation further limiting or completely eliminating these and other rights. Government agencies are protected against accountability by way of increased secrecy and lack of judicial oversight, checks and balances.

The Fairness or Justice Approach

This method is very similar to the Rights Approach, but has its origins in the teachings of Aristotle, who states that favoritism and discrimination are unethical and unjust, because giving benefit to someone without a justifiable reason is unfair to those denied those benefits. He teaches that discrimination is unreasonable because it burdens people who are no different than those spared from the same burdens. The fundamental moral questions for using this method are:

How fair is an act?
Does it deal with everyone in a similar fashion?
Does it demonstrate preferential treatment or bias?

Consider ballot measure 36 in Oregon’s Spring 2005 elections. This measure amended Oregon’s constitution to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. It is a reaction to Oregon’s gay community in general (which rightly feels discriminated against), and specifically against Multnomah County’s ruling that denying marriage licenses to homosexual couples was a discriminatory practice that denied homosexual couples the same benefits available to married heterosexual couples.²⁰ These people pay taxes, and should receive the same treatment and benefits as other socially responsible taxpayers, regardless of sexual orientation. If a true separation existed between Church and State, this wouldn’t be an issue at all.

This political issue is a good example of a violation of The Fairness or Justice Approach and the Rights Approach described above as well as the rights declared in Liber OZ²¹.

Rules, such as the Equal Opportunity Act, the Fair Housing Act and the like will always exist, no matter how well we evolve, so long as someone is denied the same opportunities as others. I realize that these laws are rather arbitrary, and oftentimes when misused they can be a source of reverse discrimination.²² As a result, many shortsighted individuals have rallied to put an end to these protections, but if they succeed, we will never see the true geniuses rise up above the rest because they will not have an equal field on which to begin to prove themselves.

Consider this for a moment. On the one hand, we have the head of a corporation who had the best education money could buy, who never had to struggle with paying rent or putting food on the table, who inherited his father’s fortune and who took over as the figurehead of the organization. On the other hand, we have a foreigner (or single mother) who comes to this country with little more than a dream, who lives in one of the many shanty towns, ghettos or ‘projects,’ who attends the overcrowded and underfunded public school systems and grows up to have his or her own tailor shop. Who is the superior being? Is the accumulation of wealth the sole genetic trait for strength, or are there others?

The Common Good Approach

This approach to ethical problems began some 2,000 years ago with the writings of Plato, Aristotle and Cicero. It suggests that a person’s own good is inextricably connected to the good of the community. In other words, members of a community are duty-bound to the pursuit of common values and goals. In recent times, John Rawls has defined “common good” as “certain general conditions that are…equally to everyone’s advantage²³.”

This methodology approaches social problems by making certain that the policies, systems, institutions, and environments we so often take for granted are beneficial to all. Affordable health care, public safety, world peace, justice, and environmental issues are all subject to consideration.

Furthering the common good compels us to view ourselves as members of the same community and questions regarding of the kind of society, order, fraternity or neighborhood we want to develop and how we are to achieve it are the dominant considerations. This does not mean that the Common Good Approach disregards the rights of individuals, but rather, it provides us with the opportunity to look for the things we have in common instead of the things that make us different.

For example, if you feel that the children and loved ones of politicians who start wars should not be exempt from fighting those wars, or that politicians should send their kids to public schools, or that politicians should live in the neighborhoods where they work while earning the same salaries of the average citizen living in the area, then you might be using the Common Good Approach.

The Virtue Approach

The presumption made by the Virtue Approach is that some ideals that will accelerate our own personal and universal evolution, because when one of us rises up above the norm, the whole of humanity benefits from the evolutionary leap. They make us better people by helping us to develop. We begin to develop a sense of the required virtues by reflecting on our own potential.

Virtues empower us to behave and act in a manner that leads us to our highest personal potential. Virtues, once embraced, become a characteristic trait. Additionally, an individual who has accepted virtues will be predisposed to act in a manner consistent with his or her ethical principles because virtue relates to ethics. A virtuous person is an ethical person, and those few that truly and sincerely embrace The Eleven Virtues of Thelemic Knighthood can inspire amazing changes in character.

Most of the questions one might consider while using the Virtue Approach deal with the compromises one is making to their character. For example:

What sort of person will this action make me?
Will I be compromising my character or betraying my beliefs or myself?
Will this action reflect badly on my chosen philosophical/religious paradigm?
Will this choice of action promote, or interfere with, my development?
Is this behavior befitting of the sort of person I am trying to become?
Is this behavior and its consequences in line with my True Will?

The Virtue Approach concerns itself with self-worth. It holds that one’s integrity and honor are reflections of the individual’s true nature; therefore, there is an emphasis on action and works. This approach to ethics is a very popular substitute for rule-based (deontological) and results-based (consequentialist) ethics. In fact, the Virtue Approach to ethics was created out of frustration with ethical concepts of duty and obligation. It was a reactionary response to the use of convenient, but unbending and ineffective, moral rules and principles that are often used as standards to all moral situations²⁴.

How the Virtue Approach varies, from, say, the Utilitarian and Consequentialist Approach, becomes apparent when using the following classical ethical dilemma: A man’s wife becomes very sick, and he spends an astonishing amount of money to attempt to save her life. In fact, with the amount of money he spent trying to save one woman, he could have saved ten women he didn’t know. The utilitarian would say that the man should have used his money to save the greater number of people. A virtue ethicist would argue that placing the welfare of loved ones above the welfare of strangers is essentially good because it isn’t natural for humans to make life-and-death decisions based on some mathematical moral calculation. They would also argue that few people would want to live in a world where we forsake our own spouses to save strangers.

Applied Ethics, or Ethical Problem Solving

Unfortunately, no templates or guaranteed methods provide nice, squeaky-clean solutions to ethical dilemmas. Wouldn’t that be nice? Ultimately, we are all going to have to get our hands dirty, but maybe we can arm ourselves by looking at the facts, understanding ethics and choosing to be ethical so that we can minimize damage. First and foremost, cause no harm.

At the very least, ask yourself the following questions:

Do I have all the facts?
What are my options?
What option will lead to the most balanced end?
What benefits will my decision provide, and who will benefit?
Will my course of action violate anyone else’s rights?
Will my action show unwarranted favoritism or discrimination?
Which decision increases the common good most?
Is my chosen course of action harmonious with my own ethics?

Footnotes:

1. Liber Al Vel Legis — The Book of the Law I:10
2. It is a little absolutist to claim, “it hasn’t been tried,” without simultaneously discounting the work of some remarkable individuals, such as Mother Teresa, for example. But it is easy to agree since very few adherents of Christianity are actually doing the work of Christ.
3. Such as affordable healthcare, education, and scientifically-based research.
4. “The principle of popular election is a fatal folly; its results are visible in every so-called democracy. The elected man is always the mediocrity; he is the safe man, the sound man, the man who displeases the majority less than any other; and therefore never the genius, the man of progress and illumination.” —Liber 194 — An Intimation with Reference to the Constitution of the Order
5. Valor, Nobility, Discernment, Pride, Compassion, Fidelity, Passion, Strength, Discipline, Self-Reliance, and Hospitality.
6. Gilbert Chesterton, Orthodoxy, (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1959), page 30.
7. The Anti-Christ. Section 7. He uses the word “pity.” Many wrongly (and conveniently) lump pity with compassion.
8. Either as a natural occurring phenomena, something evolutionarily useful, or both. Current research may be on the verge of providing scientific data to support this view.
9. According to his mother, didn’t speak until he was three. Little Albert was terribly dyslexic.
10. The “Elephant Man.”
11. Liber Al Vel Legis — The Book of the Law — I:III
12. Always look for a way to benefit everyone… including oneself.
13. “Evil” is an emotionally loaded term, and this is why I have chosen to use it.
14. Consequentialism is a branch of Utilitarianism that dictates that we should do whatever increases the chances for good consequences. What one does to achieve these good consequences is irrelevant. What matters is that the good results are maximized. It’s a counterpart of deontological ethics.
15. I have refrained from criticizing The Rights Approach by referencing Liber OZ to make this point because I felt it would be redundant. Most anyone that reads this will already have first-hand experience of the tremendous potential for abuse in that document.
16. The Science of Right by Immanuel Kant, 1790.
17. The Patriot Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001. The name was carefully chosen in order to alienate those that disapprove of the gross restrictions and violations of constitutional rights proposed by the act.
18. The Freedom of Information Act.
19. Librarians have rebelled against this act by changing the way they keep records.
20. These benefits include, but are not limited to, medical benefits for their lovers, better opportunities for low interest home loans, the right to visit an ill partner in the hospital, the right to make end of life care decisions for partners, the right to inherit in cases of intestacy, the ability to adopt children, joint filing on income tax returns and other social benefits afforded to heterosexual couples.
21. But the most important philosophical issue in this debate is whether or not the State can determine who can and cannot marry in a country where the separation of Church and State is guaranteed. If that separation truly existed, then the argument would be between the heads of the churches, and not a matter for government.
22. Reverse discrimination takes place any time that well-qualified native applicants are overlooked for employment in favor of people of color or a certain sex just to meet some arbitrary criteria.
23. A Theory of Justice by John Rawls. Belknap Press; Revised edition (September 1, 1999)
24. Marriage, as it is today, would be considered unethical in this approach.

©2007 Gerald del Campo
Edited by Sheta Kaey.

Gerald del Campo is the author of A Heretic’s Guide to Thelema, New Aeon Magick: Thelema Without Tears, and New Aeon English Qabalah Revealed, among other works. You can visit his blog at http://solis93.livejournal.com and his website at http://thelemicknights.org. Gerald serves as Senior Managing Editor of Rending the Veil. He also writes music and plays in bands.

I used to term myself a Luciferian on top of the various other titles that could apply to me, such as magician, mystic, Hermetic, Rosicrucian, etc. The history behind my adoption of the title will be told shortly, but first I wish to establish that I no longer consider myself to be a Luciferian. The reasons will also be explained shortly. I have recently gone through what might be called a crisis of faith regarding my Luciferianism and have come to some powerful conclusions, which will be the main subject of this essay.

Years ago, I began to very seriously explore the ideas and practices of chaos magic, at first as a supplement to my more Hermetic and Kabbalistic magical training, but later as a replacement thereof. As part of my experiments, I adopted a somewhat sinister approach to magic and especially enjoyed demonology. I admit that my primary motivation in exploring these particular aspects of the occult were founded in simple lack of maturity. I believe now that I did not even understand the material I was working with; I was very much alone in the dark without a lantern. At the time I did not care. I arrogantly believed that my pseudo-nihilism and disrespect for all things “light” was the right way to go. Everybody who respected the light was deluded, but those of us who not only acknowledged but reveled in the darkness were as enlightened as anybody could truly be.

After several years of messing with chaos magic, I became disillusioned with it. While I still stand by the basic techniques as a great method of training the will, I cannot any longer condone the childish philosophy (or, as chaos magicians like to term it, the “metaparadigm”) behind it which is itself somewhat of a contradictory and weak attempt at transcendental nihilism. I returned, slowly at first, and then all at once, to Hermetics, Kabbalah, alchemy, and related subjects. I did not do so without bringing plenty of philosophical souvenirs back home.

I continued to call myself a Luciferian and maintained a mild fascination for all things sinister, though I now looked through the darkness and toward the Light. The culmination of the process, and what I so far believe to be its crescendo, was quite recent but has its roots almost exactly one year ago as of this writing (November 2006).

Last year I was working on my first book, The Four Powers (Megalithica Books, an imprint of Immanion Press, Staffordshire, England). I have always had ambitions of being a writer of one sort or another, though definitely more ambition than talent. To curb my self-doubt and ensure at least moderate success I decided to employ a bit of demonic magic. I planned it out, got everything prepared according to the instructions of King Solomon Grimorium Verum or the True Grimoire and, on October 31^st 2005, performed a full diabolical Pact operation in which I made an agreement in writing (on virgin goat skin, no less) with Lucifer himself. The details of the Pact are irrelevant, except to say that I agreed to write a book concerning a Luciferian approach to illumination (that is, mysticism and magical self-improvement) using a particular grimoire as the book’s practical foundation. This book was to serve as my payment for services rendered which, of course, involved getting at least one book successfully published.

In the intervening year, I began to do a lot of serious self-purification. I began an intensive daily ritual routine of performing the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Hexagram, the Middle Pillar Exercise, the Circulation of the Body of Light, the canticle of Light from the Golden Dawn Neophyte ceremony, the Adoration to the Lord of the Universe, followed by yet another LBRP — and all this upon waking up. Just prior to sleep, I would perform the Rose Cross Ritual. I followed this routine more or less for several months, at which time I made the grand discovery of Franz Bardon. I still thank my lucky stars, and my friends Taylor Ellwood and Frater Griff for guiding me to Bardon’s work. I have since been quite seriously and intensely involved in the practice of Franz Bardon’s first book, Initiation into Hermetics (available in a new translation from Merkur Publishing).

This entire intensive period of magico-mysticism led me to a great deal of self-discovery. Self-discovery, of course, led me to the realization of many facets of myself which I do not much like. Self-love is important, even vital, but so is a dedication to self-improvement. Quite nearly one year after the Pact was made, I found myself regretting it deeply. It may sound superstitious to some readers, but I found myself in a very serious fear for the health of my spirit and soul. I felt deceived and dirty, as if making that Pact were an irrevocable selling of myself. Lucifer truly became the Devil in my mind, and I felt wretched for having given so much of myself for so very little. Less than a day after I became aware of these feelings within, I destroyed all of my Luciferian paraphernalia and hacked the Pact and all of the attendant sigils and seals into small pieces and kept them in a small bag until Sunday evening when I burnt them in my fireplace and prayed intensely to the archangel Michael. You see, not only was Michael the one said to have defeated the Devil at the time of his Fall, but I had also a long time ago read a Kabbalistic legend (I cannot remember where or I would cite it) stating that at the Creation of Adam, Michael had knelt before the Throne of God in Heaven and pledged himself to stand by even the worst mortal as long as he or she had even the tiniest spark of goodness left. That Pact had become more than a rash and greedy act, more than a symbol — it had become the very physical embodiment of all of my iniquities, mistakes, and flaws. I asked Michael to be with me, to stand at my right hand, and to fight back the shades and demons long enough for me to clarify and fortify myself. I cannot cite a more successful operation than this, for Michael was with me for the time I needed him. For his faith in me I can never thank him enough. Even with Michael by my side, I was nonetheless terrified. I had read many times and in many places that there was no worse companion than a cheated demon. How could I expect to break a Pact with the great Emperor Lucifer without being severely punished for such a transgression against his devilish and unfathomable will?

Ever since I first began to study Hermetics and Rosicrucianism, I had an intuition that there were important and deep mysteries in Christianity. I still maintain that the mainstream sects and branches of religion which go by the title of Christian do not, in their vast majority, approach the real meaning behind the teachings which they claim as their own. Especially exemplified in that seemingly out of place and obviously esoteric book of Ezekiel and the book so arrogantly discounted (or fanatically taken literally) called the Revelation or Apocalypse, there are mysteries in the Bible which common Christians and Jews do not even begin to suspect. I am not a biblical scholar, however, and could not even begin to put together a lucid or knowledgeable argument concerning the meanings of the recondite symbols and signs given in those books. My lack of biblical lore will not stop me from composing a little apocalypse of my own.

Bits and pieces of information, legends and myths, theories and the wildest of hypotheses have continually come my way since that night when I burned the Pact, that night which I am sure I will always remember as a turning point in my magical career. Study, chance findings, and personal intuition have each done their part. Whether I have made this all up out of random scattered pieces or if it is truly a relevant magical allegory I do not know, but I present it nonetheless for it constitutes the closest thing I have to a conclusion of the present story.

I used to maintain that Lucifer and Christ were the same person, a being of spiritual effulgence who incarnated in order to bring to us an enlightened doctrine compatible with all the greatest of mystical systems. I believed that this being was like the Light shining in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not, but that it was only in enveloping ourselves in darkness that we could come to appreciate it. Now I see things quite differently.

Lucifer and Christ are as brothers, dual and opposite but both quite necessary. Christ is like the gentle North Star, guiding us through long nights toward our inevitable destination. Lucifer is like the blazing comet, seeming to shoot into our view from nowhere, burning brightly as it points us toward a momentary but important waypoint, then disappearing back into the ether. Christ is the faithful Son who does the bidding of His Divine Parents without question, not out of fear but out of good will toward His Parents and to we little children. He is in a sense the universal and ideal Older Brother, protective and gently guiding but willing at times to teach a harsh lesson or two. Lucifer has disobeyed just as our mythical ancestors but in a more dramatic way. Lucifer is the older brother even of Christ, created first amongst the angels. Lucifer’s rebellion was one not of hatred but of love, for without allowing Himself to Fall, free will would not have been available for the rest of creation. Lucifer will maintain His loving rebellion until such time as free will has become a universal constant uniting all consciousness in one pervasive liberty. He has sacrificed His own place in Heaven to grant each one of us the ability to make our own, while Christ has given up His to open the way before us.

There is a Hell, just as sure as there is an Earth, and if you were to find yourself there I assure you that there would be no escape from the eternity of torment awaiting you there. The Gates of Hell will not open until that final Revelation when the enlightened shall be gathered in joy and the ignorant shall be gathered in trembling fear. When the trumpets of the angels call forth the return of Christ, so too shall Lucifer appear and they together will throw open the Gates of Hell, nothing but severity showing upon their faces. Yet their eyes sparkle with a light which will be read at first by many as sadism, for how can the eyes of divine beings sparkle and shine at the prospect of eternal torment? Soon all will be made clear, however, and the twinkle in their Holy Eyes will be shared as one joke amongst us, for as the Gates swing open there will be no torrent of sulfurous fire nor waves of rotting flesh washing over us in hopes of consuming our own living tissue. Instead we will see behind those wide open gates… a gaping emptiness, a void awaiting its fill but receiving none, for Hell was, is, and ever shall be empty. Each one of us, in the fullness of time, shall find our salvation each in our own way, and we shall all be assumed into the Kingdom of Heaven. Hellfire awaits no man, woman, or child no matter how sinful they may have been or may be still, for all are given the limitless and eternal Grace of God by default, by the very fact of our existence! Hell is not there as a warning or punishment for mortal souls but as a grand reminder before the eyes of the Gods and Angels that if Hell were to find itself occupied by even one lone mortal it would be Their immense failure. As sure as effects have causes, and causes produce effects (though not always in the expected order), we are each responsible for our own mistakes. The Gods and Angels set over us, and those Ascended Masters who have come before us, are in charge of our guidance and redemption. While we must seek to right our own wrongs and prevent our own mistakes, it is the duty of the Gods and Angels to make certain that we are given every opportunity to do so. Let there be no mistake that God’s Justice is severe, but so too is Its Mercy infinite.

And so, having set out to abandon a Pact, I have ended up fulfilling it in spirit, if not in letter. Every current which we set up must run its course, and as magicians we must understand this principle intensely and intimately. Every opportunity is given us for our personal development and evolution. It is up to us merely to make the most of them.

©2006 Nicholas Graham
Edited by Sheta Kaey

Nicholas Graham is the author of The Four Powers. You can read his blog here.

This corner of the Witches’ Pyramid¹ is not only what it appears to be on the surface. It is not solely “book learning.” It is also knowing that you possess the skills to put what you have learned into a practical application, using the knowledge you have garnered to put your magic into practice, knowing the means to cast spells, and doing inner alchemy.

For example, there is the classic Greek admonition “gnothi seauton,” or know thyself. Carved at the entrance to the temple in Delphi, the Greeks inculcated this belief in their society, believing that each individual must know himself before he could dream of approaching the oracle. Otherwise, what he might learn on the journey of oracular discovery could well be catastrophic to the psyche.

This admonition is not a new one in the context of magical study. Many authors and classic magicians have said this through the ages, most notably in recent times Aleister Crowley. Heck, alchemy was all about self-discovery, and there have been many transcendental movements through the ages focused on discovering the self.

This journey of self-discovery remains at the core of similar movements to this day. The most natural thing in the world is to look for answers to questions like “who am I?” When one group, such as religion, doesn’t satisfactorily answer those questions, it is normal to look for groups who do. If that quest takes people into esoteric fields of study, then so be it.

Magic and religion are only two of many different ways to start this journey of self-discovery. Unfortunately, most of the other methods that society accepts are expensive or time-consuming, like psychologists or self-help books. I can think of only one other freely available method of self-exploration: the BDSM community. But that pathway demands its own price. It is also very far outside the norms of society, making it anathema to many.

This is how it should be. For any esoteric discipline, such as divination, a magician must start with knowledge of self. With that foundation, a magician can separate himself from the process he is calling into being. He then has the ability to see where his prejudices and his insecurities have influenced the process he hopes to create. Put simply, because of having this anchor point, he can be more efficient in his magical pursuits.

A starting place is important in this or any journey. Just like trying to navigate in space, you can find a destination easily enough, but you must have a beginning point.

In many classical references, we find that that this discovery is mandated. In Aeschylus I: Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides (The Complete Greek Tragedies) (Vol 1), Zeus lays down the law: mankind must suffer to be wise.² This theme repeats itself in the Gardnerian Wicca initiation and in many other groups’ initiations. Any practicing magician must understand that those who are unwilling to sacrifice will not have the knowledge they seek available to them.

There is a direct correlation between how much the student will learn and how much of his own pleasures he is willing to sacrifice to attain that knowledge. Those unwilling to pay the price demanded will not achieve the knowledge they seek. This means that the student must be totally aware of how much he is willing to give up and what he is willing to do without to attain his goal.

Then we come to another often-overlooked aspect of “To Know” — the consequences. Let us assume that the magician actually knows who he is, where he fits and so on. He also knows what kinds of prices he will be paying and has made the decision that those prices are reasonable to attain what he wants. He also knows the techniques involved in actually casting the spells and the theory behind that process. This same magician also has to be aware of what kinds of outcomes are most likely, as well as the potential unintended consequences.

Many think of magicians as amoral creatures, but this is simply not true. A magician has to be more aware and willing to take care of the unintended consequences of his actions, if only because of the “butterfly effect.” A corporation comes in and clear-cuts a forest. This tragedy will have global repercussions. It will have future consequences as well. But I know of no corporation that can affect the past by their actions. Magicians can affect the past and do, at times.

It is up to the magician in question to be self-policing and to deal with the messes he creates. It is only enlightened self-interest. If the magician wishes privacy to do his work, then he must be invisible. If he casts too wide a spell and it affects those other than the intended target(s), he must be willing and able to deal with the consequences. Time and experience will teach him to understand how to limit those effects. Personally, I don’t think he should be casting spells unless or until he can mitigate those effects.

The Military says, “Information is king.” In the battlefield, in magic, in growing up, knowledge is the whole battle. If you know something, you can deal with it, you can cope with it, you can assimilate and correct problems caused by it. But you cannot do that without knowing what “it” is.

All these factors combine to make this leg of the Witches’ Pyramid a very important one. To recap slightly, a magician must know himself, know the skills necessary to cast a spell and understand how to deal with unexpected outcomes of the use of those skills. It is helpful to be able to plan ahead and anticipate problems before they occur, as well.

Once the magician understands himself, he can take the step to understand others around them, since it is most likely that others want the same things he wants. Conversely, by seeing qualities in others he can also find those same qualities in himself and work to bring them out.

Robert Heinlein had a wonderful concept for this called “grok,” a verb that means, “to drink.” He defined this concept very well in Stranger in a Strange Land. Grokking something is to know it so deeply that the boundaries between you and it are lost. He then knows the other part of himself so deeply and so intimately that it is impossible to separate out those elements that are “other” and “self.”

Is it reasonable or possible for a magician to grok and simultaneously separate enough of himself so that he can see where the magical process is messing up due to some aspect he is projecting into it? I think it is.

We aren’t dealing with minor truths here, ones that are immutable and verifiable like 2 + 2 = 4. We are dealing with Great Truths that are mutable and subject to other factors, with the result that all answers are just as true. It is possible to be so intermingled with a spell as to have it profoundly impact and affect ourselves, indeed, why would you do a spell otherwise? At the same time it is possible to be objective enough to see where those factors of self that we don’t care for, but which are intermingled with the spell, are affecting the spell.

Once again, this mandates that we know ourselves, if simply so we don’t fall into Oedipus’ trap of dancing to a tune we neither hear nor understand. When he went to the Oracle at Delphi (the same oracle where “Know Thyself” was carved on the lintel), he was told that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Since he didn’t want to kill the people he knew as his parents, he left, argued with a man on the road, killed him and married that gentleman’s widow. This fulfilled the prophecy, as it turned out.

Had he known himself and his life, he would have discovered that the man he killed was his father. Thus, all of this could have been avoided had Oedipus known himself and the truth.

The skills necessary for this corner are obvious, but the knowledge of when to apply them is just as important. It does no good to spend years learning how to cast a spell if those skills are never used. It also makes no sense to go through all this training and sacrifice if the knowledge gained will only be used for the most mundane of purposes. Knowledge of where and when to apply those skills is paramount to a successful outcome.

When you know yourself, you are aware of the energy you are raising, what it feels like when it is static, when it is moving. You will understand how to give that energy shape and purpose. It’s very important to be able to recognize and separate your body’s reactions from those of the magic you are invoking. You also have to know when you have a situation where the bodily reaction you experience is caused by the energy you are using.

One of the basic exercises in my “Energy Work and Magic” class consists of taking in a massive amount of energy that the students have been gathering over the course of two months, and holding it in their bodies for 24 hours. This shows them very clearly what that energy feels like, what their bodies feel like and how they reacts. This exercise is critical so the students know how to operate despite having the energy overload, because that energy interferes with their perceptions and balance.

There are those of us who have medical problems, such as diabetes. I am on medication for my diabetes, but if I couldn’t separate myself from the magic I’m working with, I would never know if my spell was working or not. The energy of the magic is very similar to how I feel when I’m going into sugar overload.

This is a set of skills that the current crop of instant spellbooks seems to gloss over or skip altogether. The student is the one who suffers from this lack.

Knowledge is the key. Information is the key. To know. And knowing is half the battle.

Footnotes

1. It has been pointed out to me that this is known by another name, the Magician’s Pyramid. Since I have never heard of this before now, I did not include this fact in the article. I didn’t want to comment and speak on a subject of which I have no knowledge. But it does not surprise me that this meme or philosophy has been used in other groups, as it is another Great Truth.
2. Referenced from here.

©2006 Eric “Daven” Landrum
Edited by Sheta Kaey

Eric “Daven” Landrum is a Seax Wiccan and the author of Daven’s Journal.