Magic

“ But we can deride all its threats, you and I. For myself, I own frankly I take all the safety that the charms and resources of magic bestow. You, for your safety, have the cultured and disciplined reason which reduces all fantasies to nervous impressions; and I rely on the courage of one who has questioned, unquailing, the Luminous Shadow, and wrested from the hand of the magician himself the wand which concentred the wonders of will! ”

“ Though "magic" in the accepted sense is all but absent from his verse—the magic that transports the imagination clean into another reality, that drenches a word, a phrase, with the light that was never strangely cast even on the Spice Islands or Cathay, he has that other poetic magic that can in a line or two present a portrait, a philosophy, and fill the instant with a changeless grace and truth. ”

“ So far the History of Magic has been presented as annals of a thing prejudged, or as chronicles—less or more exact—of a sequence in phenomena, seeing that no one believed that Magic belonged to science. ”

“ I wanted to know what all that magic-making meant to the magician, but he has kept his own secret, and I must be content and grateful to one who has revealed more of beauty than any other in his time. ”

“ Now, if you sit perfectly silent for a long time and look at the sea, or the sky, or the running water of a river, something happens to you—a sort of magic. Not the violent magic that makes the kind of adventure that I have been telling you about, but a kind of gentle but very strong inside magic, that makes things clear and shows you what things are important, and what are not. ”

“ The conditions were favourable to the growth of magic; for man was regarded as the measure of the universe, the central figure in an awful tragedy.
Magic is an attempt, by thinking and speculating about what we consider must be the order of nature, to discover some means of penetrating into the secret life of natural things, of realising the hidden powers and virtues of things, grasping the concealed thread of unity which is supposed to run through all phenomena however seemingly diverse, entering into sympathy with the supposed inner oneness of life, death, the present, past, and future. ”

“ And what is magic! When the traveller beholds in Persia the ruins of palaces and temples, the ignorant inhabitants inform him they were the work of magicians. What is beyond their own power, the vulgar cannot comprehend to be lawfully in the power of others. But if by magic you mean a perpetual research amongst all that is more latent and obscure in Nature, I answer, I profess that magic, and that he who does so comes but nearer to the fountain of all belief. Knowest thou not that magic was taught in the schools of old? ”

“ Magic grows, and gathers strength, when men are sure their theory of the universe must be the one true theory, and they see only through the glasses which their theory supplies. "He who knows himself thoroughly knows God and all the mysteries of His nature," says a modern writer on magic. ”

“ I believe in the practice and philosophy of what we have agreed to call magic, in what I must call the evocation of spirits, though I do not know what they are, in the power of creating magical illusions, in the visions of truth in the depths of the mind when the eyes are closed ”

“ II. THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH.
Magic is the harbinger of Science. In the history of human development, the dim perception precedes the clear, and the dominion of imagination that of reason. Before the latter could take upon itself the laborious task of connecting together by its own laws the facts of external and internal experience,—before there was any philosophy or natural science, imagination was bestirring itself in the creation of magic. ”

“ “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.” ”

“ All these things stand real and present before our eyes: but, nevertheless, great magician, it is all, yourself included, a product of our magic, of the power of our own imagination, not of your magic. It is in order to make some acquaintance with the latter that we are come. It is not we who are to answer your questions, but you ours. ”

“ Magic, being the science of universal equilibrium and having the truth, reality and reason of being for its absolute principle, accounts for all the antinomies and reconciles all actualities which are in conflict one with another by the one generating principle of every synthesis—that harmony results from the analogy of opposites. For the initiate of this science religion is not in doubt because it exists, and we do not deny what is. ”

“ The adept becomes king of the elements, transmuter of metals, interpreter of visions, controller of oracles, master of life in fine, according to the mathematical order of Nature and conformably to the will of the Supreme Intelligence. This is Magic in all its glory. ”

“ Hence the strong attraction which magic and science alike have exercised on the human mind; hence the powerful stimulus that both have given to the pursuit of knowledge. They lure the weary enquirer, the footsore seeker, on through the wilderness of disappointment in the present by their endless promises of the future: they take him up to the top of an exceeding high mountain and show him, beyond the dark clouds and rolling mists at his feet, a vision of the celestial city, far off, it may be, but radiant with unearthly splendour, bathed in the light of dreams. ”

“ It has been the purpose of this History of Magic to demonstrate, that, at the beginning, the symbols of religion were those also of science, which was then in concealment. May religion and science, reunited in the future, give help and shew love to one another, like two sisters, for theirs has been one cradle. ”

“ For ages the army of spirits, once so near, has been receding further and further from us, banished by the magic wand of science from hearth and home, from ruined cell and ivied tower, from haunted glade and lonely mere, from the riven murky cloud that belches forth the lightning, and from those fairer clouds that pillow the silver moon or fret with flakes of burning red the golden eve. ”

“ Magic consists in the spirit by faith, for faith is that magnet of the magicians by which they draw spirits to them, and by which spirits they do great things, that appear like miracles.
Secondly, Magic is divided into three sorts, viz., divine, natural, and diabolical. And natural magic is again subdivided into two kinds, simple and compound; and natural compound magic is again likewise divided into two kinds, viz., natural-divine magic, and natural-diabolical magic. ”

“ Hence foreign Magic is more dreaded than the home-made; ancient Magic is more powerful than modern; muttered spells, or formulæ in a strange language, or in one whose meaning has been lost, are more efficacious than intelligible speech; written characters and numbers have a subduing prestige; verse is more subtle than prose (for poets are everywhere respected) ; a wizard is more impressive in a mask than when bare-faced, in a fit than when sober; and operations in the dark, that ought to excite scepticism, enhance credulity. ”

“ Now, to give the reader a clear and a distinct notion of each several species of magic here mentioned, I set down the following definitions: Divine magic is a celestial science, in which all operations that are wonderfully brought about, are performed by the Spirit of God. Natural magic is a science in which all the mysterious acts that are wrought, are compassed by natural spirits. But as this natural magic may be exercised about things either in a manner indifferent in themselves, or mere morally good, and then it is mere natural magic ”

“ To attempt to define magic further than has been done in our description of the notions of primitive man is like trying to embrace a phantom. Magic rested upon man’s conjecture of the characteristics and processes of nature, not on a knowledge of nature correctly deduced from observation and experiment. ”

“ But in general the name of magic and magician is now taken in these days in an odious sense, for an art which produces marvelous effects, that appear above the common course of nature, and that by the operation of the bad spirit. ”

“ PRELIMINARY DEFINITION OF MAGIC.
Lemegeton Vel Clavicula Salomonis Regis. Magic is the Highest, most Absolute, and most Divine Knowledge of Natural Philosophy, [7] advanced in its works and wonderful operations by a right understanding of the inward and occult virtue of things; so that true Agents [8] being applied to proper Patients, [9] strange and admirable effects will thereby be produced. Whence magicians are profound and diligent searchers into Nature; they, because of their skill, know how to anticipate an effort, [10] the which to the vulgar shall seem to be a miracle. ”

“ Magic is subordinate to no other superstition or occult art; they are more often regarded as subdivisions of it. The attempts of some of our authors to distinguish between magic and astrology, or magic and divination, or good and bad magic, or natural magic and sorcery, or witchcraft and counter-magic, have all been exceedingly illogical and unconvincing. ”

“ Magic, in a more modern sense, is a science which teaches to perform wonderful and surprising effects.
The word magic originally carried along with it a very innocent, nay, a very laudable meaning; being used purely to signify the study of wisdom, and the more sublime parts of knowledge; but in regard to the ancient magi, engaged themselves in astrology, divination, sorcery, &c. the term magic in time became odious, and was only used to signify an unlawful and diabolical kind of science, depending on the devil and departed souls. ”

“ You see the angels, sliding down the moonbeams,
Bring white dreams like sheaves of lilies fair;
You see the imps, scarce seen against the moonbeams,
Rise from the bonfire’s blue and liquid air.
All the enchantment, all the magic there is
Hid in trees and blossoms, to you is plain and true.
Dewdrops in lupin leaves are jewels for the fairies;
Every flower that blows is a miracle for you.
Air, earth, water, fire, spread their splendid wares for you.
Millions of magics beseech your little looks;
Every soul your winged soul meets, loves you and cares for you. ”

“ THE READER may remember that we were led to plunge into the labyrinth of magic by a consideration of two different types of man-god. This is the clue which has guided our devious steps through the maze, and brought us out at last on higher ground, whence, resting a little by the way, we can look back over the path we have already traversed and forward to the longer and steeper road we have still to climb. ”

“ He simply gave orders and caused all things to appear and to be made,—sun, moon, stars, wind, mountains, animals.
In many of the primitive stories, magic is the means by which the most wonderful effects are produced. It was believed that a magician could bring [45] about any effect he desired by the mere use of his will, and often without any visible symbol of magic power. Sometimes, however, magic wands were used, and sometimes ceremonies were performed for the purpose of producing magical results. ”

“ I shall here endeavour to give a sketch of certain of the outstanding doctrines of magical philosophy, some details concerning the art of magic, more especially as practiced in the Middle Ages in Europe, and, finally, an attempt to extract from the former what I consider to be of real worth. ”

“ Magic has been confounded too long with the jugglery of mountebanks, the hallucinations of disordered minds and the crimes of certain unusual malefactors. There are otherwise many who would promptly explain Magic as the art of producing effects in the absence of causes; and on the strength of such a definition it will be said by ordinary people—with the good sense which characterises the ordinary, in the midst of much injustice—that Magic is an absurdity. ”

“ The illusion that Magic is the earlier is due to the misinterpretation of two facts: (a) Magic and Science are, for the most part and during many ages, worked out by the same men—magicians or priests; and all that they do is mistaken for Magic, even by themselves. ”

“ Thus, if magic be deduced immediately from elementary processes of reasoning, and be, in fact, an error into which the mind falls almost spontaneously, while religion rests on conceptions which the merely animal intelligence can hardly be supposed to have yet attained to, it becomes probable that magic arose before religion in the evolution of our race, and that man essayed to bend nature to his wishes by the sheer force of spells and enchantments before he strove to coax and mollify a coy, capricious, or irascible deity by the soft insinuation of prayer and sacrifice. ”

“ You learn things by saying them over and over and thinking about them until they stay in your mind forever and I think it will be the same with Magic. If you keep calling it to come to you and help you it will get to be part of you and it will stay and do things." ”

“ Reason is not only biased, but actually held bound; the mind is wrought up to a state of excitement in which it ceases to see clearly, and finally visions assume an overwhelming force, which ends in symptoms of what is called magic. ”

“ The art of magic, which is wicked and impious, continued he, is that which is professed, and has been professed at all times in the world, by witches, magicians, diviners, enchanters, and such like notorious profligates; who, by having an unnatural commerce with the devil, do many strange, prodigious, and preternatural acts, above and beyond all human wisdom; and all the arguments I ever did, or ever will deduce, continued he, from that black art, is a good and shining argument ”