Magic as Sui Generis

Theodor von Holst, The Wish, 1840.

However, ignoring for a moment the scholarly arena of understanding and representation, and instead seeking a path to dwell deeper into the esoteric dialectics of the arcane matrimony of the macrocosm and microcosm, it becomes apparent, and not always in a logical and pleasant fashion, that more is to be whispered, unveiled, and conjured in regards to worldviews and conditions of experience pertaining to the magic as a general designation. These can refer to correspondences and phenomena that remain elusive to mundane states of consciousness, an ignorance of the potential of the unseen forces of the cosmos, and positivistic passivity. Hence, the designation of the ‘magic’ can be employed as a fluid yet decisive category indicating both the theory and practice of specific fields of discourse involving a particular human awareness and performance within a worldview characterised by a resistance to the dominance of either sterile logic or doctrinal faith. Despite magic referring to vast array of grammars, what establishes occult paradigms with a unique character are the emic recognitions of degrees of established or willed relationships between seen and unseen realities, and the experience of them linked through a matrix of sympathetic and antipathetic correspondences, which in itself is clearly echoed in the Hermetic axiom, “That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above, corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracles of the One Thing” (quoted in Scully, 2003, 321). These correspondences, charged and vibrating with the pure forces of the cosmos, resonate and naturally manifest within nature as an ensouled state of being reflecting the idea of psyche kosmou of Platonic thought and the anima mundi within the awareness of magia naturalis during the Renaissance period. In the following, these are recognised and mediated through an active imagination corresponding to the mundis imaginalis, which is at times the initial point of departure and fundamental impetus for all esoteric workings collaborating with exoteric gestures. The final revelations can be experienced as a metamorphosis of inner and outer experiential dimensions. The experience of these elements of magical theory and practice manifest when an embodied altered state of consciousness, which can be understood as a shift in perception from a mundane state of consciousness, yet not ignoring the effects of unmediated occult participation within the mundane sphere of awareness and activity. is initiated, either temporarily or in a state of a fluctuating continuum, and has “an intrinsically subjective and sensory quality that is embodied and intuitive rather than purely reflective and intellectual, although the reflective and intellectual may be engaged with the intuitive and the embodied as there is no radical opposition” (Greenwood, 2005, 5). This can also be translated as gnosis, indicating ‘true knowledge of what is’ in contrast to mere sense perception, implying the act of knowing instead of just acquiring knowledge. Hence, gnosis can be understood as a specific modality of consciousness, a breaking down of the barriers of the rational mind. Through gnosis, the ‘knower’ therefore becomes immersed in the mundus imaginalis, and in terms of magical theory and practice the individual or individuals actively engaged become the focal point of the unification of the corresponding relationship between the finite and the infinite.

The arena in which what is whispered, unveiled, and conjured in regards to worldviews and conditions of experience pertaining to magic as a general designation can be located within the sui generis category of ‘magic’ as a participatory worldview manipulated as an instrument by the active person through the execution of the art and science of ritual as an extension grounded in the belief in magical powers within the self and other. The purpose of this is to impose the human will on the self and the other, activating the embodiment of an altered state of consciousness in the endeavour to align the self with the corresponding ritual intent of understanding, connecting, and influencing the other.

References:

Nicki Scully, Alchemical Healing: A Guide to Spiritual, Physical, and Transformational Medicine, 2003.

Susan Greenwood, The Nature of Magic: An Anthropology of Consciousness, 2005.

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[1] Quoted in Nicki Scully, Alchemical Healing: A Guide to Spiritual, Physical, and Transformational Medicine, 2003, page 321.

[2] This can be understood as a shift in perception from a mundane state of consciousness, yet not ignoring the effects of unmediated occult participation within the mundane sphere of awareness and activity.

[3] Susan Greenwood, The Nature of Magic: An Anthropology of Consciousness, 2005, page 5.

Angels and Daimons in the Greek Magical Papyri

Richard Dadd, Come Unto These Yellow Sands, 1842.

Apart from the gods, parehdroi are also identified with angels and daimons, whose presence is frequent in the Greek Magical Papyri. In a generic sense, angels and daimons are a class of beings who are intermediate, apparently, between gods and humans. These spirit beings, in the sense that they do not have a human physical location and limitations, are subordinate to the gods. They are found in the air, on the earth, in the waters, and in the sea. Daimons can also be the spirits of the dead. However, some passages in the Greek Magical Papyri refer to the gods as ‘daimons’. For example, in PGM IV. 460 Helios Horus is referred to as “daimon of restless fire.” There are two rites which present the nature and purpose of angels and daimons assuming the form of a parehdros. The first rite, which is called ‘The spell of Pnouthis, the sacred scribe, for acquiring an assistant’ (PGM I. 42-195) the parehdros is characterised as an angelos, which means ‘angel’, and at times this characterisation is interchangeable with theos, a ‘god’, without having any special connotations. This is clearly evident from the following passage of the rite:

And this is spoken next, “Hither to me, king, I call you, god of gods, mighty, boundless, undefiled, indescribable, firmly established Aion. Be inseparable from me this day forth through all the time of my life.” Then question him by the same oaths. If he tells you his name, take him by the hand, descend and have him recline as I have said above, setting before him part of the foods and drinks which you partake of. And when you release him, sacrifice to him after his departure what is prescribed and pour a wine offering, and in this way you will be a friend of the mighty angel. When you go abroad, he will go abroad with you; when you are destitute, he will give you money. He will tell you what things will happen both when and at what time of the night or day. And if anyone asks you, “What do I have in mind? Or what has happened to me? Or even what is going to happen?” Question the angel, and he will tell you in silence. But you speak to the one who questions you as if from yourself. When you are dead, he will wrap up your body as befits a god, but he will take your spirit and carry it up into the air with him. For no aerial spirit which is joined with a mighty assistant will go into Hades, for to him all things are subject. Whenever you wish to do something, speak his name alone into the air and say, “Come!” And you will see him actually standing near you. And say to him, “Perform this task” and he does it at once, and after doing it he will say to you, “What else do you want? For I am eager for heaven.” If you do not have immediate orders, say to him, “Go lord”, and he will depart. In this fashion, then, the god will be seen by you alone, nor will anyone ever hear the sound of his speaking, just you yourself alone. And he will tell you about the illness of a man, whether he will live or die, even on what day and at what hour of the night. And he will also give you both wild herbs and the powers to cure and you will be worshipped as a god since you have a god as a friend. These things the mighty assistant will perform competently. Therefore share these things with no one except your legitimate son alone when he asks you for the magic powers imparted by us. Farewell (PGM I. 164-194).

This angel and parehdros, whose magical name provided in the rite is “Souesolyr phthē moth,” is revered as a “mighty angel,” “a mighty assistant,” and “god of gods.” The sovereignty of this mighty angel and parehdros is reinforced in lines 130-131, “And the gods will agree with him on all matters, for apart from him there is nothing.” At one point the magician addresses a spell to Helios and Selene as an adjuration of the assistant but no words or phrases actually imply that the parehdros is subordinate to Helios and Selene.

In the second rite, the ‘Lunar Spell of Claudianus and ritual of heaven and the north star over lunar offerings’ (PGM VII. 862-918.), the angel has a subordinate status who obeys the commanding spell of Selene. This radical difference in status is also emphasised by the fact that the angel or daimon acting as the parehdros is never referred to as a ‘god’. The spell begins with instructions for the magician to create a pleonasm from which he is to mould an image of Selene, make a shrine of olive wood that should not face the Sun, dedicate it with lunar ointments and preparatory rites, and finally to proceed with the spell. The spell consists of the magician asking Selene to send forth one of her angels or daimons to act as a parehdros for the magician by reciting:

I call upon you, mistress of the entire world, ruler of the entire cosmic system, greatly powerful goddess, gracious daimon, lady of night, who travel through the air, PHEROPHORĒ ANATHRA... OUTHRA. Heed your sacred symbols and give a whirring sound, and give a sacred angel or a holy assistant who serves this very night, in this very hour, PROKYNĒ BAUBŌ PHOBEIOUS MĒE, and order the angel to go off to her (PGM VII. 880-886).

The magician at this point is to continue the spell by reciting:

Mistress, send forth your daimon from among those who assist you, one who is leader of night, because I adjure you by your great names, because of which no aerial or infernal daimon can ignore you, MESOURPHABABOR BRAL IĒŌ ISI Ē  Come to me just as I have summoned you, ORTHŌ BAUBŌ NOĒRE KODĒRE SOIRE SOIRE ERESCHIGAL SANKISTĒ DŌDEKAKISTĒ AKROUROBORE KODĒRE SAMPSEI; hear my words and send forth your daimon who is appointed over the 1^st hour, MENEBAIN; and the one over the 2^nd hour, NEBOUN; and the one over the 3^rd hour, LĒMNEI; and the one over the 4^th hour, MORMOTH; and the one over the 5^th hour, NOUPHIĒR; and the one over the 6^th hour, CHORBORBATH; and the one over the 7^th hour, ORBEĒTH; and the one over the 8^th hour, PANMŌTH; and the one over the 9^th hour, THYMENPHRI; and the one over the 10^th hour, SARNOCHOIBAL; and the one over the 11^th hour, BATHIABĒL; and the one over the 12^th hour, ARBRATHIABRI, so that you may do this for me (PGM VII. 891-907).

The interesting feature of this spell is the uncertainty regarding which angel or daimon will execute the magician’s request. Although it is likely that the magician will expect the angel or daimon ruling over the hour the spell is executed to attend to his biding, this remains unclear.

The ritual uncertainty as to which entity will become the parehdros appears in the rite called the ‘Powerful spell of the Bear (invoking the astral constellation of Arktos) which accomplishes everything’ (PGM IV. 1331-1389), where the parehdros is referred to as a daimon but is not identified with a daimon of a dead person. In many cases, parehdroi are identified with the daimons of the dead but I must stress that they are not acknowledged as merely being normal spirits of the dead, but instead a being of different and interchangeable status, as this becomes apparent in PGM IV. 1367 where the parehdros is mentioned as tartaroforos, which means ‘guarding Tartaros’. In this spell the daimons are referred to as “assistants of the great god, the mighty chief-daimons” (PGM IV. 1349-1350), but as in the case of the rite of the ‘Lunar Spell of Claudianus and ritual of heaven and the north star over lunar offerings’, the magician is unaware of which of these faceless and subordinate spirits will do his bidding. However, the daimon invoked to perform the ritual duty of a parehdros in PGM I. 1-42 is none other than the mighty Agathos Daimon, the ‘Good Daimon’. This Agathos Daimôn is Agathodaimon, who was the beneficent spirit, protector god, and guard of the city Alexandria. Agathodaimon was a Hellenistic merging of a popular serpent god with the Egyptian god Shai. Although the magical name of the parehdros is “Arbath Abaōth Bakchabrē” (PGM I. 36) it is not clear whether the magician is immediately equating the parehdros with the Agathos Daimon or if it is merely a title, as the parehdros is also equated with Orion and Anubis confusing the applied identity. However, it is truly a powerful entity and not subordinate like the daimons of the ‘Powerful spell of the Bear which accomplishes everything’. As the text states:

Come to me... who cause the currents of the Nile to roll down and mingle with the sea, transforming them with life as it does man’s seed in sexual intercourse, you who have established the world on an indestructible foundation, who are young in the morning and old in the evening, who journey through the subterranean sphere and rise, breathing fire, you who have parted the seas in the first month, who ejaculated seeds into the sacred fig tree of Heliopolis continually (PGM I. 31-36).

Magic, Participation and Causality

Peter Paul Rubens, The Head of Medusa, 1618.

A defining essential characteristic of magic that must identified when studying it and may yield further research possibilities, is magic’s capability to adapt and transform itself under the impact of unfavourable worldviews, and finally seek ways and references to legitimise the theory and practice of magic. However, despite these attempts on behalf of magical practitioners, I concur at times that in regards to the persistence of the reality of magic within contextual arenas of performance and legitimation under the auspicious gaze of unfavourable worldviews, such as the those pertaining to secularisation in the modern world, “practices and strategies of legitimation does not even begin to address the question why contemporary people would wish to practice occultist magic in the first place” (Hanegraaff, 2003, 371). In response to this Wouter J. Hanegraaff relates to an adaptation and updating in some respects of Lucien Lévy-Brühl’s concept of ‘participation’, endeavouring to present the essence of magic as being natural for it to survive a process of disenchantment.

The defining feature and effect of ‘participation’ is summarised by Stanley Tambiah:

Participation… signified the association between persons and things in primitive thought to the point of identity and consubstantiality. What western thought would think to be logically distinct aspects of reality, the primitive may fuse into one mystic unity… This sense of participation is not merely a (metaphorical) representation for it implies a physical and mystical union (Tambiah, 1990, 86).

The nature of participation seems to resist attempts of rationalisation, with Lévy-Brühl emphasising the ‘primitive mind’ remaining indifferent to intervening mechanisms and modern culture embracing the notion of causality. However, drawing upon the inconsistency of such as divide, E. E. Evans-Pritchard wrote that “it is not so much a question of primitive versus civilised mentality as the relation of two types of thought to each other in any society, whether primitive or civilised, a problem of levels of thought and experience” (Evans-Pritchard, 1965, 91). Following from this Evans-Pritchard concludes that we fail to rationally grasp participation as it remains aloof to precise intellectual reflection, and rightly emphasised that the crucial point is that:

Primitive man does not, for example, perceive a shadow and apply to it the doctrine of his society, according to which it is one of his souls. When he is conscious of his shadow he is aware of his soul… In the same way, a primitive man does not perceive a leopard and believe that it is his totem-brother. What he perceives is his totem-brother. (Evans-Pritchard, 1965, 107-108).

Despite the avoidance of intellectualist perceptions within paradigms of participation, Hanegraaff argues that participation still requires a more radical non-intellectualist interpretation, with participation being recognised as “a spontaneous tendency of the human mind. As such, it is an immediate and irreducible datum of human experience, which neither permits nor requires further explanation but has to be noted simply as fact” (Hanegraaff, 2003, 374). Recognising how scholars, such as Tambiah (Tambiah, 1990, 105-110), have placed ‘participation’ against ‘causality’ as two defining orientations to the religious worldviews, one can identify that instrumental causality does not necessarily have to be in opposition to participation if one can recognise that it must primarily be distinguished from the ideological character of instrumental causality as a field of discourse established as the dominant symbolic system in Western society, and which can be described as the endeavour of establishing a complete worldview based upon a set of theories claiming exclusive truth and sufficiency with respect to all dimensions of reality. Hence, instrumental causality, like participation, must be construed as “a spontaneous tendency of the human mind: the tendency to suspect things that happen in the world to be the result of material causation, and to explain events in this manner” (Hanegraaff, 2003, 375).

References:

Wouter J. Hanegraaff, ‘How magic survived the disenchantment of the world’, in Religion, 33: 4, 2003.

Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah, Magic, science, religion, and the scope of rationality, 1990.

E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Theories of Primitive Religion, 1965.

Renaissance Magia, in Theory and Praxis

Thomas Cole, Expulsion - Moon and Firelight, 1828.

In the Renaissance context, magic operated through a theory of esoteric correspondences, the doctrine of spiritus, and demonic intervention. However, it must be noted that although on many occasions these three theoretical frameworks appear to exclude one other, there was a tendency for them to mingle and overlap, and with the protagonists of Renaissance magic emphasising different theoretical frameworks at different moments, without worrying excessively about ambiguous incompatibilities. In regards to introducing the theory of correspondences employed by Renaissance magicians, Wouter J. Hanegraaff wisely indicates that the classic Tylorean/Frazerian perspective on the doctrine of correspondences based on an error of reasoning is anachronistic and fails to recognise that Renaissance theoreticians who employed the theory of correspondences in their esoteric discourses were sophisticated intellectuals grounded in a Christian and Hermetic worldview. The theory of correspondences as a dominant Renaissance framework can be defined as “the assumption that the world has been created in such a way that resemblances whether formal or structural are the reflection of real connections” (Hanegraaff, 2003, 361). Not neglecting how these correspondences might appear arbitrary, Hanegraaff does highlight that the level of complexity and subtlety of these correspondences that constitute creation are appropriate to the Creator, and hence are partly hidden from us. This in itself inspired Renaissance to adopt ritual praxis as practical experiments to discover and identify which correspondences truly existed and which were erroneous flights into fancy, along with scrutinising Nature as God had created Nature and imbued it with signs revealing insights into divine mysteries. Echoing various Hermetic axioms, Renaissance magicians also believed that as their very constitution was the microcosm reflecting the macrocosm, these divine mysteries also dwelled within themselves. Hence, knowledge of these divine mysteries as a key to unravelling the mysteries of creation consisted in self-knowledge that required an exalted visionary state transcending normal human consciousness.

Whereas the theory of correspondences allowed the Renaissance magician to charter the structure of a pre-established harmony, it was the concept of spiritus that postulating the functional value of these correspondences through a subtle medium that permeated all of creation, and which through magical influences were transmitted. In Marsilio Ficino’s formulation, later copied by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, “Spiritus is a very tenuous body, as if now it were soul and not body, and now body and not soul” (quoted in Hanegraaff, 2003, 361). Agrippa further explains this by writing:

As the powers of our soul are communicated to the members of the body by the spirit, so also the virtue of the Soul of the world is diffused through all things by the quintessence… By this spirit therefore every occult property is conveyed into herbs, stones, metals, and animals, through Sun, Moon, planets, and through stars higher than the planets (quoted in Hanegraaff, 2003, 361).

Hence, spiritus served to explain, as being the subtle medium intermediate between body and soul, the physical and psychological effects that resulted from the ritual employment of the imagination, coupled with faith and desire, and combined with certain corresponding verbal utterances and symbolic actions.

           

The theory of esoteric correspondences and the doctrine of spiritus were presented by Renaissance magicians as pertaining to magia naturalis. However, ecclesiastical authorities were eager to refute the ‘naturalness’ of such claims by referring to the active belief in the magical effects caused by the intervention of demonic beings, which immediately conjured visions of pre-Christian, and hence demonic idolatry. This accusation was always in response to Ficino’s and Agrippa’s claim that the planets were ‘gods’ and that the magician could ‘drawn down’ their powers, reminiscent of older forms of magic invoking ‘pagan’ gods.

Hanegraaff, citing the work of D. P. Walker (Walker, 1958, 30-35), although he does recognise Walker’s neglect of the role of imagination and reason, presents a conjectural framework through which Renaissance magic transformed the esoteric philosophy into occult practice. As described by Walker, magicians such as Ficino, based upon his De vita coelitus comparanda, in their attempt to invoke the power of the Sun would have burnt the appropriate solar incense to stimulate the sense of smell; to stimulate hearing they would have listened to the sound of a lira da braccio and sung the Orphic Hymn to the Sun; sight would have represented by the presence of a talisman; and finally, during the day he would be in full sunshine, and at night he “represents the sun by fire” ((Walker, 1958, 30). It is obvious here how the senses and various symbols and gestures are employed to stimulate the apothegm “that which is above is like that which is below; that which is below is like that which is above” from the Tabula Smaragdina, which is the foundation of the Renaissance theory of correspondences. In addition, an altered inward state of mind would have been initiated through the occult use of the imagination, due to the recognition that within a Neoplatonic and Hermetic context “the ‘outward’ ritual could not possibly be effective unless it were complemented by an appropriate ‘inward’ state of mind” and that imagination was the was considered the ‘tool’ that could combine the sensual and intellectual world.

References:

Wouter J. Hanegraaff, ‘How magic survived the disenchantment of the world’, in Religion, 33: 4, 2003.

D. P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella, 1958.

In Defence of the Theurgical State of Being

Gustave Doré, The Empyrean, 1857.

In defence of theurgy in a disenchanted world yearning for a dimension of irreducible mystery based upon an experience of the sacred as present in the mundane world, I would like to respond to the instinctive rejections of the theurgical state of being held by the modern scientific mind on the one hand, and on the other condemned by sterile religious dogmatism, that for the individuals undergoing theurgical operations their experiences are as real as one experiences physical objects empirically. Although I am not claiming that mystical experiences induced by theurgical ecstasy are hallucinations, are not visions in a state of altered consciousness real in themselves? Do they not inhabit their own space and time, and are visually experienced in one form or the other? In addition, what these arrogant critics need to take into consideration is the fact that such spiritual experiences that transcend the common human condition with their surpassing beauty of vision and revelation might in themselves be ineffable and inexpressible, due to the fact that the rational structure of language at times is inadequate to express such experiences. The conclusion that ordinary sense experience is the only true way for obtaining knowledge and formulating an understanding of the world is merely an expression of contemporary Western European culture. To end I shall quote an anecdote from the Apophthegmata Patrum:

The abbot Olympius told the following story: A pagan priest once came down to Scetis, entered my cell and spent the night there. When he observed the lifestyle of the monks he said to me: “Leading this kind of life, do you see anything of your God?” I said to him: “No.” Then the priest said to me: “When we perform the sacred rites for our God, he hides nothing from us but reveals his mysteries to us. But you, after so many labors, vigils, periods of silence, ascetic exercises say: we see nothing? Altogether it would seem that, if you see nothing, you keep evil thoughts in your hearts which separate you from your God and that because of this he does not reveal his mysteries to you.” I went away and reported the words of the priest to the elders, and they marveled and said that is was so; for unclean thoughts separate God from humans (quoted in Reitzenstein, 1904, 34). 

References:

Richard August Reitzenstein, Poimandres: Studien zur Griechisch-Ägyptischen und Literatur, 1904.

Jan Van Baal, Spells, and a Magical Worldview

John William Waterhouse, Circe Invidiosa, 1892.

In Van Baal’s ethnographic opinion, the universal element of magic is the ‘spell’, and the effect it has is essential for understanding the magical worldview as a religious phenomenon as “it evokes the weird atmosphere of mystery, in which things have power, in which things are more than they are and hold out to man danger and promise at the same time” (Van Baal, 1963, 16). This atmosphere of mystery is essential for magic to form within a worldview. Although, according to Van Baal, mystery has become a rarity in Western cultures, in non-Western cultures mystery is intertwined with the uncertainty of life and it is the magical spell that evokes the participatory element in this worldview, which is crucial for magic and reinforced through myth and symbolism “as a means of expressing his experience of and against an uncertain power-charged world, which makes its mystery felt in that uncertainty” (Van Baal, 1963, 16). From a scholar’s perspective this can indeed be tenuous for systematic research, but this should not be understood as a negative indication, for “it is enough to know how it is driven away, we must know how the experience of mystery originates, or at least what favours its appearance” ((Van Baal, 1963, 17). Another essential purpose that this mystery fulfils is that it eases life’s harshness, and at times pointlessness, by allowing for the presence of some mysterious yet intentional agency, which implies that through magical means those participating in a magical worldview believe that through spells they might be able to control this.

However, despite those who participate in a magical worldview expressing their experience of the world in terms of mystery, they do not merely just confine themselves to this. On the contrary this mystery is addressed through myth and symbol, and then spells are cast in the endeavour that this addressing will cause an effect, an effect though that is not always expected to yield any tangible result. This though, according to Van Baal, is irrelevant as

In magic a result is expected, though not in the pragmatic sphere – at least not in the first instance, for a magic act is no substitute for a technical one – but in the atmosphere of mystery and intentionality surrounding the object… By giving expression to the mystery and the arbitrariness of the object by the secret language and acts applied, man himself has become part of that mysterious atmosphere, has penetrated it and has perceived something of what lies behind the object. As long as that mystery was outside him and he was outside it, it was dangerous, but it becomes manageable as soon as he himself enters that atmosphere by acting mysteriously too (Van Baal, 1963, 19).

Van Baal concluded that despite all reassurance, this reassurance must be accompanied by an effect initiated by the spell, even though this magical act does not replace the technical one. What is essential here is that it connects the practitioner with the aura of mystery that permeates through the magical worldview, and for Van Baal, this in itself has been an obstacle in the path of further understanding the nature and technology of magic.

How then, with magic being such a vague phenomenon, along with insufficient and limited effects attributed to it, has it maintained itself long after the rise of scientific empiricism and Western rational paradigms? In response to this, Van Baal wrote,

There is only one possible answer to this… because magic is such an important religious phenomenon. It permits people to live not in a cold world of cause and effect but in a world which, for all its faults, is one of which one may expect anything (Van Baal, 1963, 19).

References:

Jan Van Baal, ‘Magic as a Religious Phenomenon’, in Higher Education and Research in the Netherlands, VII. 3/4, 1963.

Magic and Mystery in the Greek Magical Papyri

John William Waterhouse, Pandora, 1896.

Sections of the Greek Magical Papyri that exemplify attitudes, practices, and symbols pertaining to elements of the mystery cults come along with Greek deities, fragments of hymns and invocations, rituals, and myths. According to Hans Dieter Betz, “Obviously, in the eyes of the magicians who wrote and transmitted these texts, the mystery cult language and ritual provided religious legitimacy and cultural approval for all the other magical materials” (Betz, 1991, 250). This phenomenon of the imposition of mystery cult ideas, rituals, and tradition indicates and testifies how the Greek mysteries expanded their influence, along with the expansion of other religious fields of discourse into mystical cults enriched with magical rites and spells. Apart from the ‘Spell of Pnouthis, the sacred scribe, for acquiring an assistant’, the ‘Mithras Liturgy’ (PGM IV. 479-829) also attests to this with verses such as “mysteries handed down not for gain but for instruction” and “O lord, while being born again, I am passing away; while grown and having grown, I am dying; while being born from a life-generating birth, I am passing on, released to death – as you have founded, as you have decreed, and have established the mystery.” Other rites that reveal mystery cult terminology with some Hebrew influences are the ‘Stele of Jeu the hieroglyphist in his letter’, which includes a verse summoning the Headless One by declaring, “I am Moses, your prophet to whom you have transmitted your mysteries” (PGM V. 108-111) and the ‘Eighth Book of Moses’ which states “Now begin to recite the stele and the mystery of the god” (PGM XIII. 685). These verses testify to the influence that mystery cult terminologies and practices had on the Greek Magical Papyri. According to Betz, under this impact:

Earlier Egyptian magic was transformed, enriched, brought up to date, and thus legitimated. By presenting themselves as mystagogues, the magicians doubtless added to their prestige… The mystagogue-magician of the Greek mystery cults transformed the older magic into a new and higher “religion.” For the mystagogue-magician, the syncretistic amalgam was indeed “religion” ((Betz, 1991, 250).

However, one must not discredit the fact that there were differences between magic and religion in the Greek Magical Papyri, which were determined by theological issues inherent within the structures of the mystery cults and the fashion in which they were adopted within the realm of magic. To an extent, it appears logical that most of magicians were not fully aware of the entirety of the inner dimensions of the mystery cults whose material they appropriated. For they believed that their ‘art’ was indeed a fully operational religion, which they referred to as ‘magic’, and themselves as the operators of it as ‘magicians’, reflecting yet again the natural receptiveness, fluidity, and impressive power of the magician’s worldview. To conclude, I shall quote a passage from Butler’s exceptional tome, Ritual Magic, which so eloquently invokes and encaptures the diachronic fascination we have up until this day with ritual conjuring the natural receptiveness, fluidity, and impressive power of the magical worldview:

For the inventors and practitioners of the rites, however deeply versed in the lore of their subject and however obedient to its rules, often gave proof of the artistic temperament, to the advantage of the literature which has survived. The aim, like that of astrology, alchemy and applied science as a whole, was strictly practical; the means show evidence of creative instincts, poetical imagination and feeling for beauty and drama… this is what makes the study of ritual magic still interesting to-day (Butler, 2002, 4).

References:

Hans Dieter Betz, ‘Magic and Mystery in the Greek Magical Papyri’, in Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion, edited by Christopher A. Faraone and Dirk Obbink, 1991.

Elizabeth M. Butler, Ritual Magic, 2002.

Austin Osman Spare and the Psychology of Transgression

Austin Osman Spare, Protection Against Evil People, 1955.

For many, the most original magician after Crowley to formulate a unique system, of sex, ritual magic, and artistic creations was Austin Osman Spare. The son of a London policeman, Spare demonstrated at a young age a talent for art, which led him to briefly attend art school. Spare’s artistic endeavour appealed to many attached to London’s avant-garde scene, and he also attracted the attention of Aleister Crowley who initiated into his occult order Argentium Astrum, or otherwise known as the A∴A∴. However, Spare at the age of twenty with his most notorious work, The Book of Pleasure, would take fundamental tenet of Thelema and the Nietzschean idea of trans-human valuation further, whilst using ritualised sex and art to tap into the inner depths of the subconscious mind as a source of magical power.[1]

At the core of Spare’s magical cosmology is ‘Kia’, which is an inconceivable primal energy that is the source of all manifestation, and in Spare’s words, “Absolute Consciousness (Kia, the Self) like Infinite Space (Nuit) is without a boundary; it is the plenum-void, formless and unlocatable; to all intents and purposes – nothing at all, except that it is the sole reality.”[2] The vehicle of this primal energy is called ‘Zos’, which refers to the human mind and body, and the human self reflecting the Kia is also by nature unbounded and blissful, demanding complete freedom from all laws. Therefore, “Ecstasy in satisfaction is the great purpose. Freedom from the necessity of law, realisation by the very wish, is the ultimate goal.”[3] Following from this Spare declared,

In pleasure Heaven shall break every law before this Earth shall pass away… He who is lawless is free… Without hypocrisy or fear ye could do as ye wish. Whosoever, therefore shall break the precept or live its transgression shall have relativity of Heaven. For unless your righteousness exist not, ye shall not pleasure freely and creatively.[4]

More explicitly than both Randolph and Crowley, Spare identified sex and its pleasures with the deepest nature of the Self through which the ‘I’ becomes infinity through the only true sense to exist, the sexual, and the only one desire, to procreate.

The most infamous of Spare’s magical methods to achieve such as state of transgression and finally tap into the ultimate source of magical power, consisted of the use magical sigils, abstract ideograms made up of letter combinations expressing a particular magical desire, and which would also act as the focus of the magicians meditation. In order though for the magician to bring this sigilised magical desire into reality the magician must enter an altered state of consciousness through a gnostic trance or ecstasy. Spare’s ultimate mean to achieving this was through sheer exhaustion, “that is, by so exhausting and emptying the mind that it is open to forces of the subconscious, which can then manifest the idea or desire represented in the magical sigil.”[5] This state of altered consciousness, according to Spare, could culminate through various ways, but the most powerful means was through the powerful momentum of the orgasm when a state of ecstasy prevails and the ego and Kia are in unison in a receptive state of openness and emptiness. In Spare’s word, “At this moment, which is the moment of generation of the Great Wish, inspiration flows form the source of sex, from the Primordial Goddess who exists at the heart of Matter.”[6] Spare also described the saturnalian use of,

The sense of smell, hearing and sight seduced by incense, mantric incantation and ritual, while taste and touch are made more sensitive by the stimuli of wine and… sexual acts. After total sexual satiation… an affectivity becomes an exteriorized hallucination of the pre-determined wish which is magical in its reality.[7]

Despite this liberating ecstasy being the path to tapping into the magical source of the primal essence of being, this final state of ‘exhaustion which Spare referred to also had a mystical quality to it where the limits of thought are exhausted resulting in an annihilation of all conceptual categories in a non-dualistic fashion. This mystical current in the sexual magic of Spare is clearly expressed when,

Desire is the conception I and induces Thou. There is neither thou nor I nor a third person – loosing this consciousness by unity of I and Self; there would be no limit to consciousness in sexuality. Isolation in ecstasy, the final inducement, is enough.[8]

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[1] According to Kenneth Grant in his introduction to Austin Osman Spare’s The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love: The Psychology of Ecstasy, 1975, Sigmund Freud allegedly described Spare’s work as “one of the most significant revelations of subconscious mechanism that had appeared in modern times.”

[2] Kenneth Grant, The Magical Revival, 1973, 205.

[3] Austin Osman Spare The Book of Pleasure. The Hermetic Library, www.hermetic.com/spare/pleasure.html.

[4] Austin Osman Spare The Anathema of Zos: A Sermon to the Hypocrites, 1976, 13.

[5] Hugh B. Urban, Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism, 2006, 231.

[6] Quoted in Nevill Drury, The History of Magic in the Modern Age, 2000, 123-124.

[7] Quoted in Kenneth Grant, The Magical Revival, 1973, 197.

[8] Quoted in Kenneth Grant, The Magical Revival, 1973, 201.

The Magical Eroticism of Paschal Beverly Randolph

The most important figure in the rise of modern sexual magic was arguably the fascinating yet generally neglected figure of Paschal Beverly Randolph. Born in 1825 to a wealthy Virginian father and a slave from Madagascar, Randolph was a poor, self-educated free black raised in the poorer parts of New York. He was orphaned at a young age and ran away from his foster parents to explore a vast range of new spiritual traditions and to travel the world. Through his journeys in Egypt and the Near East he claimed to have been initiated by various seers and holy men, including Egyptian mages and Indian Brahmins. Upon his return to the United States he became involved with various Spiritualist movements, and was also involved in various political movements championing the cause and future of African Americans. These ideas of liberation would become a major theme in his spiritual writings and understanding of sex magic, especially in regards to gender equality. He also founded a new religious order, which he labelled the Brother of Eulis. Although he had been influenced by European Rosicrucian orders, he claimed that his order would surpass them and that the core of their spiritual teachings had a sexual magical element. Unfortunately, Randolph’s life ended after a series of tragic events. An accident had left him invalid which led him to excessive amounts of intoxication. Suspicious that his wife had betrayed him, he committed suicide in 1875.

Randolph’s work on sexual magic took place during mid-nineteenth century America, where the tremendous power of sexuality was slowly being recognised scientifically and socially, where it was praised within the confines of marriage and condemned outside of it. It was also an era of radical social movements and the foundation of various new religious movements and especially the Spiritualist movement, all of which were concerned with the spiritual side of sexuality but not all in the same fashion.

Randolph’s main contribution to Western occultism concerned sex. Apart from being an expert in the cure of sexual diseases and dysfunctions, he developed a system and practice of sexual magic that, as he claimed, could achieve all manners of marvels, both worldly and otherworldly. He saw his system of sexual magic as a path to a millennial new world. Randolph’s teachings would later on inspire and influence a host of new magical orders, such as the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor and the Ordo Templis Orientis. His system of sexual magic has been described by Hugh B. Urban as “a system of magical eroticism, or affectional alchemy.”[1] As Randolph continuously stressed,

LOVE LIETH AT THE FOUNDATION... and Love is convertibly passion, enthusiasm affection heat, fire, SOUL, God... The nuptive moment, the instant wherein the germs of a possible new being are lodged... is the most solemn, serious, powerful and energetic moment he can ever know on earth.[2]

Randolph believed that the sexual drive is the most potent and fundamental force in the universe, due to its natural attraction between the active/positive and the passive/negative. Following Franz Anton Mesmer’s pattern of thought, Randolph understood the male and female as opposite yet complimentary electromagnetic forces, with the male genitals being the positive and the female the negative. Because sexual attraction is the most potent and fundamental force in nature, the experience of the orgasm is a very primordial, powerful, and critical moment in human consciousness. It is the key to magical power. At the moment of climax the soul is exposed to the energies of the universe and new life pours from the spiritual into the material realm. At this point anything that is truly willed can happen.

The moment when a man discharges his seed – his essential self – into a womb is the most solemn, energetic and powerful moment he can ever know on earth; if under the influence of mere lust it be done, the discharge us suicidal... At the moment his seminal glands open, his nostrils expand, and while the seed is going from his soul to her womb he breathes one of two atmospheres, either fetid damnation from the border spaces or Divine Energy from heavens. Whatsoever he shall truly will and internally pray for when Love... is in the ascendant, that moment the prayer’s response comes down.[3]

A unique feature of his sexual techniques, apart from the employment and magical use of the orgasm as a means of acquiring otherworldly sympathies, was his emphasis on the mutuality and equality of male and female in their loving union. All forms of sexual abuse within the Victorian framework, whether through masturbation or excessive intercourse, drained the body of the vital energy required for the undertaking of a sexual magical operation.

Despite being accused by many as promoting promiscuity and sexual license under the guise of his sexual magical teachings, Randolph was indeed a very conservative character. His practice of sexual magic is anything but mere hedonistic license. Sex, for Randolph, is strictly for married couples in a state of pure love.

Although for many in nineteenth century America Randolph might have appeared to be a radical, spiritual antinomian threatening the moral and spiritual foundation of society, his teachings on spiritualised love and sexual magic reflected and embodied many of the basic sexual values of his day, both physically and spiritually. His system was unlike the sexual techniques developed by many magicians to come who were inspired by him.

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[1] Hugh B. Urban, Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism, 2006, 23.

[2] Paschal Beverley Randolph, Eulis! The History of Love: Its Wondrous Magic, Chemistry, Rules, Laws, Modes, Moods, and Rationale, 1874, 100.

[3] Paschal Beverley Randolph, Eulis! The History of Love: Its Wondrous Magic, Chemistry, Rules, Laws, Modes, Moods, and Rationale, 1874, 339-340.

Marsilio Ficino on Eros and Magic

Domenico Ghirlandaio, Zachariah in the Temple, 1486-1490.

Eros and magic operate through the all-permeating pneuma that flows through each and every part of the cosmos, just as the human soul flows through each and every part of the human body. Eros is the almighty attractive power that holds all things as one, from the stars of the Heavens above through to the Earth below; and magic is the philosophy and gesture of understanding and manipulating these attractive relationships between the parts of the cosmos, between the parts of the human soul and body. Take for instance the ritual employment of talismans inscribed with images of the stars drawing down the life of the particular stars. Ultimately, the Magos is able to know and control these attractive forces through the cosmos as power, with the Magos being the male principle and power the female principle responding to his virility and charm, or neglecting him if he finally reveals himself as being impotent. The Magos is the lover, and power is the beloved, for “the lover and the magician both do the same thing: they cast their ‘nets’ to capture certain objects, to attract and draw them to them.”[1] According to Marsilio Ficino, the powers of eros and magic are entwined beyond belief, for both eros and magic work by the principle of attraction, which is the very force that holds the cosmos together,

The whole power of Magic is found on Eros. The way Magic works is to bring things together through their inherent similarity… In our body, the brain, the lungs, the heart, liver and other organs interact, favour each other, intercommunicate and feel reciprocal pain. From this relationship is born Eros, which is common to them all; from this Eros is born their mutual rapprochement, wherein resides true Magic.[2]

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[1] Marsilio Ficino, Commentary on Plato’s Symposium, 128.

[2] Marsilio Ficino, De Amore, VI, 10, 87.