Magick in Theory and Practice (Section 1)

E<r<7£ai àôàvaToç OeSç, 7.u^pozoçy oux tzi 0\>rjz6ç Pythagoras. “Magic is the Highest, most Absolute, and most Divine Knowledge of Natural Philosophy, advanced in its Works and wonderful operations by a right understanding of the inward and occult virtue of things; so that true Agents being applied to proper Patients, strange and admirable effects will thereby be produced. Whence magicians are profound and diligent searchers into Nature j they, because of their skill, know how to anticipate an effect, the which to the vulgar shall seem to be a miracle.” The Goetia of the Lemegeton of King Solomon. “Wherever sympathetic magic occurs in its pure unadulterated form, it is assumed that in nature one event follows another necessarily and invariably without the intervention of any spiritual or personal agency. Thus its fundamental conception is identical with that of modem science; underlying the whole System is a faith, implicit but real and firm, in the order and uniformity of nature. The magician does not doubt that the same causes will always produce the same effects, that the performance of the proper ceremony accompanied by the appropriate spell, will inevitably be attended by the desired results, unless, indeed, his incantations should chance to be thwarted and foiled by the more potent charms of another sorcerer. He supplicates no higher power: he sues the favour of no fickle and wayward being: he abases himself before no awful deity. Yet his power, great as he believes it to be, is by no means arbitrary and unlimited. He can wield it only so long as he strictly conforms to the rules of his art, or to what may be called the laws of nature as conceived by — XIII —