sabato 18 marzo 2006

Everyone can make game of the unknown.

'Yet magic is no more than the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects. Will, love, and imagination are magic powers that everyone possesses; and whoever knows how to develop them to their fullest extent is a magician. Magic has but one dogma, namely, that the seen is the measure of the unseen.'

'Will you tell us what the powers are that the adept possesses?'

'They are enumerated in a Hebrew manuscript of the sixteenth century, which is in my possession. The privileges of him who holds in his right hand the Keys of Solomon and in his left the Branch of the Blossoming Almond are twenty-one. He beholds God face to face without dying, and converses intimately with the Seven Genii who command the celestial army. He is superior to every affliction and to every fear. He reigns with all heaven and is served by all hell. He holds the secret of the resurrection of the dead, and the key of immortality.'

[...]

…doubt was a proof of modesty, which has rarely interfered with the progress of science. But one cannot say the same of incredulity…

[...]

Mr Haddo has given you one definition of magic, and I will give you another. It may be described merely as the intelligent utilization of forces which are unknown, contemned, or misunderstood of the vulgar.

S. Maugham, The Magician

sabato 11 marzo 2006

The Aim of Magick

A sentence or two written many years ago by William Quan Judge in his pamphlet An Epitome
of Theosophy express so exactly the impression to be conveyed that it is convenient to quote:
"The real object to be kept in view is to so open up or make porous the lower nature that the
spiritual nature may shine through it and become the guide and ruler. It is only 'cultivated' in
the sense of having a vehicle prepared for its use, into which is may descend."
This conception is likewise the point of view of our magical system. The technical forms of
Magick, such as Pentagram and other rituals, astral assumption of God-forms, evocations (though not necessarily to physical manifestation) of elemental and planetary spirits, skrying in the spirit-vision, and the invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel, are all performed with that single objective held ever before one. Theurgy and the exponents of the Eastern mysticisms are thus in complete accord on the fundamental theoretical principles.