Magick in Theory and Practice (Section 1)

meetings 1 are the foulest and most degraded rituals of black magic, the laws of Magick are not thereby suspended. The iaws of Magick are the iaws of Nature. A singular and world-famous exampie of this is of sufficiently recent date to be fresh in the memory of many people now living. At a nigger camp meeting in the “United” States of America, devotees were worked up to such a pitch of excitement that the whole assembly deveioped a furious form of hysteria. The comparatively intelligible Cries of “Glory” and “Hallelujah” no longer expressed the situation. Somebody screamed out “Ta- ra-ra-boom-de-ay! ”, and this was taken up by the whole meeting and yelled continuously, until reaction set in. The affair got into the papers, and some particularly bright disciple of John Stuart Mill, logician and economist, thought that these words, having set one set of fools crazy, might do the same to ail the other fools in the world. He accordingly wrote a song, and produced the desired resuit. This is the most notorious example in recent times of the power exerted by a barbarous name of évocation. A few words may be useful to reconcile the general notion of Causality with that of Magick. How can we be sure that a person waving a stick and howling thereby produces thunderstorms ? In no other way than that familiar to Science ; we note that whenever we put a lighted match to dry gunpowder, an unintelligibly arbitrary phenomenon, that of sound, is observedj and so forth. We need not dwell upon this point ; but it seems worth while to answer one of the objections to the possibility of Magick, chosing one which is at first sight of an obviously “fatal” character. It is convenient to quote Verbatim from the Diary2 of a distinguished Magician and philosopher. “I hâve noticed that the effect of a Magical Work has followed 1. See, for an account of properly-conducted congregational cérémo¬ nial, Equinox I, IX. “Energized Enthusiasm”, and Equinox III. I. Liber XV. Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae Canon Missae. The “Revival meetings” here in question were deliberate exploitations of religious hysteria. 2. In a later entry we read that the diarist has found a similar train of argument in “Space, Time, and Gravitation ’, page 51* He was much encouraged by the confirmation of his thesis in so independent a System of thought. — 74