The Magical Messiah

Since its publication in The Gnostic 4, there has been a fair amount of furor over Alan Moore’s article “Fossil Angels”. Though the article itself was written in 2002 (a point used several times to discredit it), it has not seen official publication until now. Contrary to many arguments to the effect that Moore’s commentary on the sorry state of contemporary occultism is no longer relevant, I see it as being as timely as ever.

Author and magician Aaron Leitch, whose work I respect, himself wrote a rebuttal of “Fossil Angels” entitled “Fossils of Angels”. In this blog post, Leitch’s main argument seems to be that Moore doesn’t understand magical practice and is out of touch with the community surrounding occultism. This, however, misses the point entirely and turns the debate back upon Moore’s qualifications (ad hominem) without addressing his concerns, concerns which are powerful from anybody with occult sympathies.

It seems to me that what Leitch and others are really responding to are Moore’s harsh words, terse tone, and tongue-in-cheek baroque writing style (including unflattering comparisons to A. E. Waite, whose work I love but whose writing style is something of a punishment for misbehaving English majors). But let us not be side-tracked by those things!

I am the first to admit that practical magic, done well, works. Yes, this puts me on the outs with a lot of free thinkers and even Gnostics, who want the subject to be entirely psychologized, or else who want it to go away like a teenager does an embarrassing parent. Moore—and his commentator and supporter Miguel Conner (another guy I respect a great deal)—seems to be saying that he doesn’t buy the efficacy of practical magic at all; I’m not sure if this is actually what he is saying, though. Even if he does feel this way about so-called “results-based” magic, that doesn’t detract from his actual message. I can’t help but agreeing with Moore that the petty applications of magic so commonly attested to are an absolute waste of the symbolism and methodology of magic. It is unfair and ridiculous to posit, as many critics have, that Moore simply “doesn’t know the community” he’s talking about; I’m sure that he is well aware that not every single occultist or magician falls regularly into the traps he disparages, but I’m right along with him if he asserts (as I read him to) that the majority of what he encounters in the erstwhile occult community are poseurs, pretenders to imaginary thrones, and overly dramatic LARPers. And of course, nobody will ever admit to being one of those people! While I don’t put Leitch in this category at all, it is in the interests of damn near every occultist in the world to either refer to Moore’s article as, in the words of one commentary, “self-important rubbish,” or to agree with it as whole-heartedly as necessary to appear to soar above Moore’s critiques. Anything not to have any demands made of oneself!

Well, let’s all just admit that every occultist or magician has committed the crimes of which “Fossil Angels” attests. Some of us have done so more often, or more egregiously, than others, but it is a total lie to say that any one of us has never been petty, childish, or delusional in our approach to or use of magic. If we aren’t willing to be honest about this one point, then we are responsible for the cultural powerlessness of magic. Period.

But the real emphasis is not on these negative points. Moore, in his aggressive way, spends the whole article leading up to the final punch:

We could, if we desired it, have things otherwise. Rather than magic that’s in thrall to a fondly imagined golden past, or else to some luridly-fantasized Elder God theme-park affair of a future, we could try instead a magic adequate and relevant to its own extraordinary times. We could, were we to so decide, ensure that current occultism be remembered in the history of magic as a fanfare peak rather than as a fading sigh; as an embarrassed, dying mumble; not even a whimper. We could make this parched terrain a teeming paradise, a tropic where each thought might blossom into art. Under the altar lies the studio, the beach. We could insist upon it, were we truly what we say we are. We could achieve it not be scrawling sigils but by crafting our art to spread its holy psychedelic scarab wings across society once more, perhaps in doing so allow some light or grace to fall upon that pained, benighted organism. We could be made afresh in our fresh undergrowth, stand reinvented at a true dawn of our Craft within a morning world, our paint still wet, just-hatched and gummy-eyed in Eden. Newborn in Creation.

I cannot imagine a more lively or exalted goal for a magician to attain to!

Finally, in support of this point, let me quote another source, Meditations on the Tarot (Anonymous):

This is the aim of sacred magic; it is nothing other than to give the freedom to see, to hear, to walk, to live, to follow an ideal and to be truly onself—i.e. to give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, the ability to walk to the lame, life to the dead, good news or ideals to the poor and free will to those who are possessed by evil spirits. It never encroaches upon freedom, the restoration of which is its unique aim. (pg 61)

[...]

One has to de-mechanize in order to become a mage. For sacred magic is through and through life—that life which is revealed in the Mystery of Blood. May our problems become so many cries of the blood (of the heart), may our words be borne by blood, and may our actions be as effusions of blood! This is how one becomes a mage. One becomes a mage by becoming essential—as essential as the blood is. (pg 72)

Magic is an art, psychological and psychic, which has for its aim and purpose the restoration of freedom and the infusion of life. Just as the Egyptian priests and classical Hermetists had magical formulae for animating statues, so too must modern magicians of whatever tradition or clan be prepared not only to animate the images passed on to us by posterity, but also to create living works of art ourselves, works of which we can not just “take pride” but of which we are confident in our prayers and visions will bring LIFE and FREEDOM to the benighted and set more and more unchained upon the path which winds ever up the mountain. If our goals are anything less, how dare we?

The psyche (or soul, or mind; except where specifically noted, these three terms will be used interchangeably throughout this article) has an important place in spiritual practice. Nevertheless, the psyche is not identical to the spirit, Nous, Atman, Divine Spark, or essence of being. That being said, we must have a proper understanding of the psyche’s role in the process of spiritualization. To this end, a “philosophy of mind” is necessary, one which not only agrees with Gnosis, but which also takes into account the findings of modern neuroscience. Neuroscience is now seen as an enemy to religion, seeing as how the common assumption—even, or especially, among neuroscientists—is that contemporary studies of the brain have dismantled the very concept of a “mind” separate from the physical processes of the brain itself. This assumption, however, requires an overturn in light of new data, in light of quantum physics, and in light of Gnosis.

Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist David Hubel, quoted in Jeffrey M. Schwartz’s book The Mind & The Brain, said, “The word Mind is obsolete.” (pg 25) What he meant by this is that, based on the scientific investigations of the functions of the brain, every function formerly ascribed to the immaterial “mind” can now be seen as a function of the material brain. On the surface, this seems true to many people. However, materialism (or physicalism) is a metaphysical assumption; just as a person’s religious bias can blind him or her to evidence, so too can “irreligious” bias. Doctor Schwartz’s research, as well as the research of others (Mario Beauregard, Wilder Penfield, Henry Pierce Stapp, just to name a few), has demonstrated that there is “something” at work upon the brain, not merely in it. This “something” is what we call “the mind”.

The primary function of the mind appears to be that of volition; that is to say, the psyche makes choices between different possible brain-states. The contents of our everyday consciousness seems to be seated in the brain (as far as science can presently tell, anyway), but awareness of those contents is not. The question of the interplay between mind and brain, too, has found a resolution in the sciences, namely in physics. The Newtonian view of billiard ball atoms bouncing one into another into another and eventually producing “something” in the process has been overturned for a century, now, but has yet to find its way fully outside of the physics department. This is exactly the mechanism—fully, inescapably deterministic in nature—which many neuroscientists and “philosophers of mind” propose is at work in consciousness. Consciousness itself is, the claim goes, merely a “user illusion”, even an “interface error”, resulting from the functioning of the brain; consciousness thus has no essential reality apart from the brain, and really has no function as mind-brain causality runs in only one direction: the brain affects the mind, but not the other way around. However, this is clearly not the case. Something is causing the brain’s very physical structure (in macro scales, no less) to shift, however gradually, in response to the will (Jeffrey Schwartz’s “mental force”) being exerted upon it in, say, cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, or even just the exertion required to resist biting one’s nails or tapping one’s foot. To simplify, “habits” are the functions of brain circuits, while “decisions” are the functions of mind.

None of this is to say that there is not a physical component to volition; there are regions of the brain which become more active during the exertion of will. However, this is a chicken-or-egg question, and there is strong physical evidence that a decision is made prior to the activation of those brain centers. For instance, electrical impulses move across the surface of the scalp in anticipation of such a volitional brain change measurably before the brain change occurs. None of this is a slam dunk, of course, but it makes quite clear that the question is, scientifically speaking, still wide open.

Thoughts, memories, and other mental events can be seen as the yoke which binds the mind and the brain together; without the contents of consciousness, there wouldn’t seem to be anything to choose from, at least not during normal states. The quantum processes (please see the work of Schwartz, Stapp, et al) which hold the mind to the brain carry these mental events up and down the chain. This constant subatomic flurry of activity is what permits the immaterial mind to choose between brain states; it also corresponds to what occultists know as the “etheric double” and the “silver cord” which links soul and body. In other words, these quantum activities form a constantly shifting matrix of information “between” the mind and the central nervous system.

Spiritual practice—within the Gnostic, Hermetic, and related frameworks—is a series of volitional events by which we choose where to place our attention and where to identify our”selves”. If we take the (maybe overused) image of an onion, we can roughly say that during our normal experiences, the body is the outermost layer, then the etheric double (see last paragraph) just underneath, then the psyche, then something else, and then the spirit or Nous (which, again, will be used interchangeably). The Nous is that with which the many and varied spiritual traditions identify the “true Self”; it is not merely the individual soul of mainline religion, as that is the psyche or mind of which we have been speaking. Instead, it is simultaneously individual and collective, immanent and radically transcendent, so far from our ordinary waking experiences that Buddhism, Gnosticism and Advaita Vedanta all use apophatic/negative language to describe it: it is not this, not that; cannot be compared to this, that or the other; cannot even be said to exist but certainly cannot be said not to exist; etc. When discussed at all, it is always discussed in paradoxical or non-literal poetic language of which we can make little or no sense rationally. And yet, the fact that it is so very weird to rational consciousness is itself a rational conclusion, for how could something more exotic than dark matter (because it is not a substance at all) be meaningfully put into the limited clothing of words, or even abstract mathematical formulae?

The spirit only begins as an abstraction; as our attention draws closer and closer to it, and as our consciousness gradually becomes truly aware of it, we actually find that we are it. In a sense, we have reversed the layer order of the onion: the physical body now rests within the mind, which itself rests within the Nous which is its archetype. Abstraction falls away, leaving an experience more concrete than anything we had experienced with our fingers and toes and eyes and ears and noses and tongues. This process requires grace, which is to say that the steps along the way are freely given by a force beyond our mere conscious minds; but the process still requires the participation of our psyches, because a gift given but not accepted is just a box with pretty wrapping paper, a decoration at best and an unasked-for burden at worst.

The participation of psyche in the whole process is, once again, the task of volition, the capacity to actively choose between two or more possibilities. For most of us, will begins as a weak thing—a squeaking grunt of effort against a door made of oak—but through various disciplines (yoga, contemplative prayer, theurgy, even magic) and through direct application (making oneself do chores on a hot, balmy day), we gradually build up our reserves (so to speak). Like a muscle regularly worked, the power of mental force grows bit by struggling bit. Luckily for those of us on the spiritual path, the mere practice of our regular disciplines of prayer, meditation, and the like, perform double duty: not only do they bring us into closer contact with Nous and Things Beyond, they also strengthen our will as we go.

In Gnosticism, we usually describe there being three “states of the soul”, and every person can be said to act from one of these. There are the hylics (materialists) who focus entirely on their bodies and on physical things and experiences; the psychics (soulish) who are said to be “in the Midst”, experiencing things primarily of the emotions, passions, and imaginations; and there are the pneumatics (spirituals) who experience things “from the top down”, so to speak, or from the perspective of the Nous. Hylics may become passionate or emotional,  but generally only over physical things; psychics may be intellectuals or have an aim to achieve spiritual things, but tend to be waylaid by their own literalism and zeal; pneumatics, however, have achieved what Buddhists and Hindus call “clear mind”, a mental state allowing for intellectual inquiry from a bird’s-eye-view, from which emotions, imaginal visions, and even purely material life all continue to exist but enter into an infinitely larger, more tightly interwoven context.

Now, it is my contention that these categories are not fixed destinies, but rather that they are states through which we can pass (in both directions, unfortunately). The ultimate goal, of course, is to achieve the pneumatic framework and stay there; here, the material life is not forgotten, but is put in its proper place, and likewise emotions do not dry up but rather take on their appropriate value, and all work in accordance with true Wisdom. And here is where volition comes in.

Psyche gets to choose where to aim attention throughout life. A hylic is a person who “looks down” more often than not, and even when the gaze turns upward it is usually momentary and immediately interpreted according to the individual’s understanding of purely physical events. “That feeling of oneness with something far greater than myself must have just been the sudden activation of certain neural circuits in my right hemisphere, involving the release of a specific shopping list of ‘feel good’ neurtransmitters, etc., all toward the end of greater environmental and social awareness and responsibility.” None of this is necessarily a bad thing, or entirely incorrect, but it is a narrow view.

A psychic is a person who primarily looks horizontally, at all of the wonderful thoughts and feelings floating around, the beautiful and horrible visions available, and the potential present and future realities which have not yet been actualized. The life of a psychic can be either irrationally optimistic (see New Age and New Thought movements for examples), or else overwrought with pessimism (see fundamentalist movements); either way, it is the passions which preside, and not the intellect. Once again, this is not to say that the intellect is nonexistent in a psychic, any less than the emotions are dead in a hylic; instead, it is a matter of which “layer” is used as the basis of interpretation. In the case of a psychic, literalism tends to hold sway, as their visions and emotions are not only taken quite seriously (which, in truth, they deserve to be), but are actually taken to be the greatest reality. The psyche, then, is the realm of the spirits of passion, the flowering of the elements, and the vengeful gods of the world; this realm of the Midst is not necessarily a place of evil, but is certainly one of illusions which can be used productively or which can become an ever-shifting maze in which a soul becomes lost.

A pneumatic is able to remain calm even in the Midst, to look upon things of the body and soul as the temporary ephemera that they are, and to apply a standard of intellectual rigor to all questions and experiences, not merely those within the purview of the material world. A pneumatic, then, is a person whose psyche has “looked Heavenward” and been rewarded by the true Beautific Vision beyond visions and become identified with the Nous. That last part is vital for understanding: the psyche identifies itself with the Nous; this act of identification is, of course, an act of will by which the psyche travels beyond itself and is taken into the archetype of which it is a reflection. And just as the psyche influences the brain by way of semi-material quantum effects, so too the Nous influences the psyche by way of a corresponding entanglement (the something else mentioned above in the onion analogy). And so, there is a multilayered, instantaneous interplay of influences constantly flitting through the whole economy of the individual human being. The psyche’s relationship to the Nous is that of a reflection to the original; the brain’s relationship to the psyche is a similar one. The process of spiritualization is that by which the psychic reflection is not only gradually made aware of its own reflective nature, but is also finally fully identified with that which it reflects; the brain, unfortunately, never has this sort of opportunity for enlightened immortality, but its job is to remain a healthy intermediary between the immaterial psyche and the material world, between the subjective and the objective.

Gnosis (or jnana, in Sanskrit) is the information, the practice, the gift, and the process by which this spiritualization occurs. Gnosis happens in so many ways and in so many layers, and comes from so many sources, that it is impossible for us to put all of the pieces together until we have made it quite a long way up the mountain. Still, if we don’t constantly try to revise our conscious, rational understanding, we are liable to lose our way altogether. Our ultimate goal, beyond even the process so far described, is beyond words (or, at least, beyond my words). So let the above, a whirlwind tour of my own philosophy of mind in relation to the Gnosis beyond space/time, be helpful to you in formulating your own understanding. I pray to God’s Sophia and the Divine Logos that I have at least succeeded in getting some gears turning (an analogy grown from the outdated clockwork model of consciousness!) for others, as my own continue to turn; as Gnostics, mystics, and theurgists, it is our right and responsibility to always keep the lights shining.

See Also:

Beauregard, Mario, & Denyse O’Leary. The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul. New York: HarperOne, 2007.

Schwartz, M.D., Jeffrey M., & Sharon Begley. The Mind & The Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force. New York: Harper Perennial, 2002.

I have written previously on the limitations of magic within the context of the spiritual quest. At the time, I saw that article as a necessary rebuttal of a common view in Western occultism that somehow magic and spiritual practice (mysticism, in a very specific sense) are identical or “two sides of the same coin.” This is flatly false; magic is not authentically “spiritual” insofar as magic has no capacity to bring us into direct contact with the Reality behind the physical, astral, and mental planes. The belief that it can is largely the result of a misunderstanding of the levels of being. Broadly speaking, the great teachers of humanity have felt quite comfortable in referring to all planes of existence (as defined and explored by occultism, rAja yoga, etc.) as being “material” in nature, even if the constituting matter of any given plane is quite subtle compared to physical matter. I maintain the position of that article, as do all of the great Masters who have come before us. We ignore their experience out of our own ignorance (or arrogance), and at our own peril.

That said, there is an equally problematic position which places magic firmly within “the devil’s camp”, or else denies it any spiritual utility at all. Indeed, magic has a potentially important role to play in the continuum of human striving toward the Light. Magic has at least served us as a tool of survival in the inhospitable reaches of the natural world, but today it maintains relevance as a very human, cultured, yet ineradicably primal link between ourselves and those forces of Nature which can serve as foundations, or even propellants, along the Way.

Let me begin this discussion in earnest by defining some very useful terms: rAja yoga; bhakti yoga; karma yoga; j~nAna yoga; theurgy; and, finally, magic. (Note that the strange spellings of the Sanskrit words are intentional; please see the Wikipedia article on ITRANS for more information. ITRANS is a method of representing Sanskrit and other Indian language scripts in ASCII in a more phonetically accurate manner than a lot of more plain transliterations provide.)

rAja yoga is what most occultists in the West think of when the term “yoga” is used. The term can be translated as “royal yoga” or “royal union”. Yoga, generally, is any disciplined practice the goal of which is to attain “union” with the Divine. The various physical yogas are only preparations for and aids to rAja yoga, traditionally speaking, and are said to possess little to no spiritual value outside of that context. It is from rAja yoga that we get the idea of the seven chakras, the various energy channels, etc. The central discipline of rAja yoga is simply mental concentration; every other facet of rAja yoga develops somehow out of concentration. This is quite similar to authentic esoteric practice in the West, as well. Disciplined training in concentration comes first, and only after some degree of mastery has been gained in it will a teacher move the student on to other things. Even the so-called “siddhis” or “occult powers” cannot be gained except through concentration. So, it should be clear that the capacity for concentration is of paramount importance, whether a person’s interest is in mere psychism, or in the actual spiritual pursuit. Nevertheless, even rAja yoga cannot reach the pinnacle of spiritual attainment; instead, it serves as a preparation, and one can either get “stuck” in it, or else learn its lessons and move forward.

bhakti yoga, or “devotional union”, is rather distasteful to most Western occultists, but is still considered to be a vital preparation for the highest spiritual goals. bhakti essentially consists of some form of intense, earnest religious practice; it ultimately matters little which religion this is, as long as its focus is towards the Highest God of both law and mercy, beyond wrath and jealousy. Thus, the devotees of Christ-as-Logos kneel in awe alongside devotees of Ishvara/Siva, and the cultus of the Holy Mother in many cultures. This is not to say that there is no difference between these religious practices, or even their conception of God, but that the results are ultimately the same. bhakti yoga develops in the adherent a sense of honest humility, which eventually blossoms into the knowledge that it is not I who act but God who acts through me or, rather, that “I” and “God” are not as distinct as we are generally taught. It is the very “emptying-out” of self and “giving over” of one’s power (which is really God’s to begin with) to God which make Western occultists wrinkle up their noses in derision, much to their own detriment. (Note that Aleister Crowley wrote a truly awful essay on the practice of bhakti yoga based on his profound misinterpretation of it; I cannot recommend his essay for a proper understanding of bhakti because of his cynical, utilitarian approach to all things spiritual.)

This same “giving over” of one’s power, sense of self-will, and so forth, constitute karma yoga. Without going too deeply right now into the concept of karma, karma yoga can be translated as “action union”. This yoga is equally vital as a preparation; bhakti and karma practice generally grow with one another. It should be clear how karma yoga can grow out of bhakti yoga, and vice versa. The practice of karma yoga is simply dropping the sense of being “the doer”. This generally begins by first doing away with attachment to the “fruits of action” (karmaphala), realizing that once you have performed an action the results of it are out of your hands. Eventually, this practice itself fructifies into the realization that it was never “I” who “did” anything in the first place.

Both bhakti yoga and karma yoga serve to gradually undermine the sense of “I” (as in the limited little ego), which helps to make way for j~nAna yoga. j~nAna yoga, like the authentic practice of gnosis here in the West, is a process of enquiry, meditation, discernment and intuition which bring about insight. It is translated as “wisdom union”. While it is true that all of the preceding methods are essentially preparations for j~nAna yoga, that is not to say that they all lose their meaning the moment a person begins to practice j~nAna; no, many j~nAna practitioners remain bhaktis throughout, and it is quite impossible for them to give up karma yoga in any case. bhakti yoga, in a purely pragmatic sense, helps the j~nAni to maintain the “humility in wisdom” for which the Christian theurgist prays, but beyond even that pragmatism, a spiritual eye ever upturned towards God is what ultimately allows our minds to give in to the Reality of God. That said, j~nAna is definitely the most “advanced” of them, insofar as it requires a mind purified by the processes of bhakti yoga and a discriminating faculty honed to a fine edge by karma yoga. Yes, intuition will sometimes spontaneously “flash” before this point, but we cannot truly rely on it until we are capable of dispassionately observing intuition and “feeding” it with appropriate intellectual and devotional materials, and in any case it will not be reliably active until the ego-mind is quieted down.

I use all of these Sanskrit terms found in Hindu (and, to a certain extent, Buddhist) teachings because they are useful organizational categories for various practices which generally fall under the heading of “spiritual”. In other words, these four yogas—rAja, bhakti, karma, & j~nAna—differentiate quite nicely between the authentically spiritual (the trinity of bhakti, kamra, & j~nAna) and the purely psychic (rAja). With this information in hand, we can move back to the topic of magic.

In Hermetism, we largely split magic into two broad categories: magic proper, and theurgy. The difference between them is subtle but important.

A powerful example of theurgy is the Eucharistic Mass found in the Sacramental Churches, such as the Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican, and most Gnostic churches. The other sacraments and sacramentals are also theurgic in nature, as are many prayer practices such as the rosary and the Eastern Orthodox prayer rope. Of course, many of the practitioners of these methods, whether priests or congregants, would not recognize the word “theurgy” to describe them, but that’s what it comes down to.

The word “theurgy” translates roughly to “God-work”. Theurgic practice slots quite snugly into the category of bhakti yoga, insofar as it is a primarily devotional art, and because it acknowledges at the outset that it is not the practitioner him- or herself who brings about the results but rather it is God, and the practitioner is simply a tool or channel for that influence. The rituals of theurgy serve to “clear” or “broaden” that channel in the same way that Hindu bhakti yoga breaks down the personal, egoic barriers which keep the yogi from channeling the Divine Light. The differences in the types of theurgy are largely a function of who they are supposed to benefit. The Mass, and similar religious rituals, are theurgic in nature but serve a much larger number of people, at least in principle: a Mass performed by somebody with both the training and authority to do so not only sheds Grace upon (awakens Grace within) the priest him- or herself, but also upon the entire present congregation, and even out into the surrounding neighborhood. There are also “private” group theurgic practices, such as those found in theurgic lodges, healing circles, prayer groups, and so forth, which serve the needs of the members of the group and perhaps anybody else who is “linked” to their theurgic practice, such as those who ask the group to perform a healing for them, etc. Finally, there are private, solitary theurgic practices, such as praying the rosary or prayer rope, or performing a solitary theurgic ritual in one’s bedroom or home oratory (an oratory being similar to a combined “home shrine” and “meditation room”).

Naturally, this sort of devotional work, when practiced in an authentically devotional spirit, not only serves to bring about Grace-results (“miracles”) in the outside world, but also to connect the practitioners, beneficiaries, and parishioners with Grace within for the sake of their spiritual awakening; it also serves, just as with bhakti yoga, to gradually sever the sense of “I-as-doer”, leading into karma yoga, wherein the individual begins to more and more identify him- or her”self” as being only an instrument of the True Reality in the form of God.

Magic-proper is generally not so concerned with the emptying-out of self, but rather with the strengthening of it. All it takes is the close reading of any given manual of ritual magic to see this. The “exalted experiences” of ritual and ceremonial magic generally consist of contacting a being of the mental plane, because magic cannot truly reach beyond the manifest planes. However, there have been and still are magical practices and practitioners who find that the tools at their disposal, whether so-called “high ritual magic” or “low folk magic” (the latter generally working more consistently than the former anyway, despite the “high” and “low” designations) need not be the tools of the ego.

I have known ritual magicians, for instance within the Golden Dawn tradition, who understood that their magic was best used as an expression of Divine Grace rather than as a grasping for personal power. They are uncommon, but such individuals can be found. Within folk magic, it is much more common. The Pennsylvania Dutch methods of Braucherei are a personal favorite of mine for the deeply-ingrained devotion to God inherent in them which cannot be stripped away; if the bhakti is removed from the Brauche, the Brauche ceases to be. A prayer-charm with which I am familiar in the tradition of the Braucherei says that, “Dei Hand und mei Hand iss Gottes Hand.” That is, “My hand and your hand are God’s Hand.” (For those who are familiar with German, the form of the language spoken by the Pennsylvania “Dutch” is a bit different, due to a primary root in continental “low German”, contact with other Germanic languages such as Dutch, and the process of change inherent in having been settled in a non-German-speaking locale for multiple generations. See C. R. Bilardi’s The Red Church and his bibliography for more information.)

Has, then, the practice of Braucherei, the previously mentioned Golden Dawn magicians, and others like them, transformed their “magic” into “theurgy”? In a very real sense, yes. While they may not be practicing within any of the traditions which refer to their practices as being specifically “theurgic”, their intent is clearly as theurgic as those of any Martinist. They act for God, from God, and through God to achieve Godly ends. And while the healing of a damaged limb, or the removal of a curse from milk cows may not be specifically spiritual results, unlike with the “mere magic” of the egoic practitioner, the magic of the Braucher serves as a finger pointing to the Moon: the Braucher’s eyes are turned toward God and her magic turns the eyes of her patient Heavenward as well.

That, then, is the value of magic along the spiritual path. It is not flippantly that Draja Mickaharic has written that,

Being a magician is a stage in the process of developing spiritually. It is not the height of development; in fact, it is only a step in the first part of the range of real human development. the fact that many religious sects speak and act harshly against those who have the ability to practice magic is most revealing of the true character of the leaders heading those religions. Those whom they speak against may be more developed spiritually than the so-called religious people who speak against them! (Draja Mickaharic, Practice of Magic, page iiiv from the Introduction)

So magic is a stage of human development, and a potentially very important one for the people who have to pass through it. Even for many those who have passed beyond it, magic still remains a useful tool in guiding others and in aiding an ailing world. Dedicated to God, magic turns our gaze upward and inward; dedicated to self, magic solidifies and increases our suffering.

I’m sorry for not posting recently; I’ve had a lot going on.

Anyway, I wanted to quickly throw a link out here that I think is a really important read for anybody interested in Gnosticism.

I identify myself as something of a Valentinian Christian, which places me firmly within the “Gnostic” category by many accounts, and I am absolutely fine with this designation. However, the author of the article linked to below points out some very important things:

1. No modern Gnostic can claim an unbroken lineage back to Valentinus or any other “Gnostic” teacher;
2. The term Gnostic itself needs to be understood within its historical context before we can safely use it to describe ourselves or others;
3. The ancient Gnostics, and related teachers, schools, and congregations, did not view themselves as being “heretics”, but rather they saw themselves as being Christians plain and simple.

If you have an interested in Christian Gnosticism and/or Hermetism, please read this article and think on it:

http://www.palmtreegarden.org/2011/01/gnuance3/

I am presently in the process of changing the approach of this blog. I will provide more details shortly. In the meantime, anybody looking through the archives may find that some entries are disappearing. This is because I have decided to change focus almost entirely from doctrine, theology, and philosophy to practice, with theology et al only coming in where necessary to support the practice. Again, more details to come.

I am prompted to make my thoughts clear on this topic by a recent discussion, in which several people asserted that suffering could be, of itself, “good”.

I could not disagree with this point any more if I denied the very experience of suffering. The justification generally given is that suffering often acts as the impetus for efforts of self-development. This is true, certainly; any self-examination in an adult will prove it out in one’s own personal history. However, let us not make a mistake in logic! To say that we can bring something good out of suffering is not the same as saying that suffering itself is inherently good.

Consider an analogy: a camper is incautious and does not put out his fire before moving on. The fire spreads and rages, destroying acres and acres of forest, spreading across fields of dry grass and into areas populated by humans. Several people, not to mention the numerous animals and incredible numbers of trees, lose their lives, and thousands or millions of dollars in property damage on top of it all. But the burnt remnants of trees and plants fertilize the soil, allowing for the regrowth of the forest even more lush than before. And the fields that were burned now make for excellent farmland. So some benefit did come from it, in the long run! But was the fire, or the carelessness which caused it, or the drought conditions which allowed it to spread, or all of the death and destruction, good of itself? It would be a callous and unreflective soul who would answer in the affirmative.

It has been said that pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice. This is true, insofar as pain is merely a physiological and/or emotional reaction to some stimulus, while suffering is the result of consciousness of that pain. In other words, pain is just something that “happens to” you, while suffering is something that you “do with” pain. A fish never asks, “Why me?!” And that, conscious awareness, is the key to the whole question.

The degree to which any given individual possesses the capacity for self-reflection is also the degree to which that individual may suffer. The more questions the individual can ask, the more he may suffer. But that does not reflect an inherent property of suffering as much as an inherent property of awareness. It is as the Buddha said: it is Mind that makes a heaven out of hell and a hell out of heaven. Suffering is, of itself, morally neutral. Causing suffering, however, is morally reprehensible. If suffering were inherently good, causing it would also be good, which would lead us into a moral and ethical black hole.

Now, it is also awareness, mind, Νους, which is capable of bringing good out of evil. In our present case, it is conscious reflection which may extract a lesson from the suffering. If I am not paying attention in the kitchen and I put my hand onto a hot stove, I will feel pain, and I will probably suffer by looking at my burn, thinking about how much it hurts, and asking how I could have been so stupid, but only if I take just a moment to consider just how, really, I could have been so stupid, can I learn how not to repeat it. Does that make the burn, or the fact of my consciousness of the pain, beneficial? No, but I might be smart enough to extract some small nugget of knowledge out of those things and avoid making the same mistake twice.

On a higher plane of thought, suffering as both experience and concept, in the broad scope of its reality, provides even more food for thought. I can begin to ask the questions, “Why does suffering exist?”, “Why do innocents suffer?”, and so forth. But the good which comes from this process is not the doing of suffering, but of my reflective and active mind. That is the good in the equation of suffering. Just as a hammer can be both a weapon and a tool, we each have some capacity to use our minds to create, preserve, and carry on cycles of suffering, or we can use them to alleviate and prevent suffering. The more we grow, the more we learn to direct our minds according to our higher will, the more good we can extract and unfold from the suffering which makes up so much of this world. We may learn to outsmart the devil and take from him his power, but that doesn’t make the devil our friend!

Gnosis! Gnosis! We cry out for thy gnosis, O Sige! Silent art thou, thou Void before all things, even before the aeons themselves. Thou Mother of Spirit, before whose creative Kosmos mere kaos is less than dust, we pray unto thee to receive thine supernal gnosis. Holy! Holy! Holy! Sige!

Gnosis! Gnosis! We pray thee thy gnosis, O Charis! Thou art compassionate, the Mother of Love, to whom we pray. In the inmost heart of thine aeon do we seek all miracles, in thy darkly resplendent treasure trove do we seek the true gold of Heaven. Rain down on thy children the healing which resides in the comfort of thy embracing wings, that gnosis which makes all things whole. Holy! Holy! Holy! Charis!

Gnosis! Gnosis! We ask thee thy gnosis, O Sophia! Thou tender Soul of the Fullness in whom was Life then death, and is Life once again, let us glimpse in thee the Redeemer in whose Sacred Heart we are made safe. For we know the thrust-and-stab of homelessness, the screaming desolation of matter apart from thee, even the shattered madness of psyche in which the Light shines not, and we trust in thy perfect sympathy that Incorruptibility descends to claim our incorruptibility by thy refulgent gnosis. Holy! Holy! Holy! Sophia!

There is a newly-forming Gnostic prayer, meditation and study group forming here in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. You can follow this development, and participate if you are so inclined, at our Facebook page and at our Meetup.com page. You don’t have to be local to Pittsburgh to initiate online discussions at either of those sites!

Please take a look at the blog/manifesto of the Convocation of the Silver Rose & Golden Cross. It is an evolving set of principles pointing toward cooperation between all those who seek or serve the Light in the midst of the darkness.

If a generation were given the diplomatic task of postponing any action in such a way as to make it seem as if something were just about to happen, then we should have to admit that our age had performed as remarkable a feat as the revolutionary age. (The Present Age by Søren Kierkegaard)

I don’t generally discuss politics here, and there is a very good reason for that. The purpose of this blog, successful or not, is to explore topics significantly deeper and more essential than politics. Political arguments of the past few years have taken quite the religious turn, though, and with some of the most popular mainstream political commentators being also religious commentators, I feel the need to make a few comments of my own, though my audience will certainly never equal theirs in number.

In the same essay from which the opening quotation has been extracted, Kierkegaard had the following to say:

A revolutionary age is an age of action; ours is the age of advertisement and publicity. Nothing ever happens but there is immediate publicity everywhere. In the present age a rebellion is, of all things, the most unthinkable. Such an expression of strength would seem ridiculous to the calculating intelligence of our times.

Writing in 1846, Kierkegaard couldn’t have been more wrong about his own age, given the bloody rebellions across Western Europe only two years later. Still, more apt words could not be written for America here at the end of the first decade of the 21st century. (Of course, Kierkegaard and I both can only write about what we have so far witnessed, making inductive projections into the future, so I can’t be too critical of Søren’s observations.) There is perhaps no area of our lives in which this is more true than in the political arena. We do not have far to look in order to see politicians and pundits making grandiose claims, compiling massive plans, and organizing sparkling rallies, but really to what end? Our eyes are dazzled, our ears left ringing, our brains confounded, our souls enlarged by the promises of HOPE and CHANGE, and declarations that “America today begins to turn back to God.” Where, then, is the hope? It seems to have died, because the change surely hasn’t made itself known. The fact is that the one needed to fuel the other, which would have then fed back into the first, and so on, but of course there was never any real chance for that to happen. Call it indolence.

Kierkegaard continues:

On the other hand a political virtuoso might bring off a feat almost as remarkable. He might write a manifesto suggesting a general assembly at which people should decide upon a rebellion, and it would be so carefully worded that even the censor would let it pass. At the meeting itself he would be able to create the impression that his audience had rebelled, after which they would all go quietly home—having spent a very pleasant evening.

Does this sound familiar? I can recall the excitement of Obama’s rallies, the enthusiasm of going to the polls to elect him, and the resulting ecstasies (perhaps “seizures”) upon the announcement of Obama’s election. And what happened immediately after? Immediately after sex, the warm, relaxed, “fuzzy” sensation which washes through the bodies of many men and women can serve to bring us closer together as individuals, or it can serve to make us lazy. Immediately after a “revolutionary” election, the warm, relaxed, fuzzy sensation which washes over us can serve to enliven us for our mission, or it can serve to put us to sleep. So much for the afterglow!

But the present generation, wearied by its chimerical efforts, relapses into complete indolence. Its condition is that of a man who has only fallen asleep towards morning: first of all come great dreams, then a feeling of laziness, and finally a witty or clever excuse for remaining in bed.

Now, I am not blaming President Barack Obama for this state of affairs; I am merely saying that he, like most politicians, took full advantage of it. I do not know if he and his speech-writers and aides did so on purpose, but it is rather bad in any case. Either our President did not understand the very forces and trends which brought him to power, or he did know and took advantage of the combined boredom, anxiety, and laziness of the American people. And Obama is certainly not the only politician to have taken such advantage! Look at the “anger” of the Tea Party movement, and you will see many politicians riding the coattails of that hollow sensationalism. Whether we dress it up as HOPE or RAGE, we are dealing with the same SUBSTANCE, in truth no substance at all.

Equally unthinkable among the young men of today is a truly religious renunciation of the world, adhered to with daily self-denial. On the other hand almost any theological student is capable of something far more wonderful. He could found a society with the sole object of saving all those who are lost. The age of great and good actions is past, the present is the age of anticipation when even recognition is received in advance.

Golden Age romanticism aside, Kierkegaard’s point here is clear, if stated somewhat sarcastically: it is easy, now, to found a society, what we today might call a “special interest group”, for anything at all, but nothing ever changes. The answer to this, which Kierkegaard also says in the same essay, is simply that such societies are worthless, without substance, unless they are made up exclusively of substantive individuals. In other words, as the old trope goes, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. When we are dealing with a “chain” as large as a social movement, a political party, or a nation, how many weak links must there be, and how weak must the weakest ones be?

And what of Glenn Beck and his ilk? It is common to place Obama, and those like him, at one end of the American political scale, and Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and so on, on the opposite end. But is this accurate? It depends, I suppose, on the metric. As far as how much good they do, we could safely place them both firmly in the “negative influence” side of the slider-bar. Are they evil people? Almost certainly no; evil is an extremely strong term, and I hesitate to apply it to flawed human beings, likely no better and certainly no worse than myself. Though likely not “evil”, there is a rather terrifying political messianism surrounding and vivifying both camps. Beck has gone so far as to actually place himself in the role of prophet, a role which traditionally is not assumed but rather imposed; we must always be careful of those who are glad to be God’s mouthpieces!

And so the whole thing comes down to one essential: American society has no essence. It is empty but unwilling to be filled. What can we do? I cannot answer for everybody, but my own intention is to work upon myself, rather to allow God to work within me; if only substantive individuals are of value for creating positive change, if only such individuals can profitably create and join organizations, we must become substantive individuals! Take Kierkegaard’s advice or no, but his vision for becoming such a one was simply

behold, all is in readiness, see how the cruelty of abstraction makes the true form of worldliness only too evident the abyss of eternity opens before you, the sharp scythe of the leveller makes it possible for every one individually to leap over the blade—and behold, it is God who waits. Leap, then, into the arms of God’.

(All quotations from The Present Age: On the Death of Rebellion by Søren Kierkegaard, translated by Alexander Dru, with an introduction by Walter Kaufman, 2010, Harper Perennial Modern Thought paperback edition.)