Defining Magic

Por Stephen Skinner

a) Traditional magic was predominantly concerned with the

invocation of all types of spiritual creatures such as angels, demons, and
spirits.

b) The origin of these methods is in the grimoires, which show

little demarcation between invocation and evocation. The early
grimoires treated of angels and demons interchangeably, and either or
both might come from the same calling. There is a continuum of spiritual
creatures from archangels through angels, elementals, to demons.

c) The line of transmission of practical magical methods was

through a succession of scholar-magicians, not via the village cunning-
man and witch tradition (which uses a different approach), or via secret
societies like the Illuminati, Rosicrucianism or Freemasonry (with the single
exception of the Golden Dawn).

d) Practitioners of ceremonial and angel magic tended to be

of one particular social class, with a disproportionate number of jurists
and lords, in other words drawn from the Establishment of the day. In
tracing this line of scholar-magicians we have discovered that in every
age some of the most prominent players were major members of the
establishment, politicians, lords, legislators, and even royalty. In short,
serious magic was not the pursuit of the dispossessed, the wacky, or the
downright crazy. It was, and is, a pursuit worthy of the most intelligent
men or women of every age.
 e) The spiritual creatures invoked are not subjective, nor are
they part of the psychological makeup of the invoker.
This is a fallacy introduced by Aleister Crowley's comments in
'his' edition of the grimoire “the Goetia”1. Demons are not, repeat not,
psychological and definitely not anatomical “portions of the human
brain” as Crowley categorically stated in his introduction. In this
introduction Crowley writes a tongue in cheek exposition of magic that
has confused many generations of students ever since. It was not till the
publication of the excellent edition of the Lemegeton by Joseph
Peterson in 2001 that Crowley's partial and defective edition has been
finally eclipsed. Hopefully his introduction will now also cease to influence
current thinking about evocation.

Although we have the greatest respect for Crowley's

intellectual rigour and pioneering spirit, the introduction penned by
Crowley in that book has effectively put back research into evocation by
more than 75 years, by introducing the beguiling but deceptive notion
that demons are purely subjective. This has reduced evocation from its
position as a prime magical technique to a second-rate form of
psychotherapy. In fact one pair of psychotherapists2 wrote in 1975:

"Down through the ages the power and wonder of practitioners

of magic have been recorded ... These people of power,
wrapped in a cloak of secrecy, presented a striking
contradiction to the common ways of dealing with the world.
The spells and incantations they wove were feared... Whenever
these people of power publicly performed their wonders, they
would both shatter the concepts of reality of that time and
place and present themselves as having something that was
beyond learning."

1 In fact Crowley had very little to do with the transcription of the text of the Goetia. This
was done entirely by L. S. MacGregor Mathers. This fact can be easily verified by
reading Crowley's introduction, where he speaks of the translation of the Goetia. If he
had bothered to look at the relevant manuscripts, he would know that they are in fact
in English, not a foreign language.

2 Richard Sandler and John Grinder The Structure of Magic I, S&B Books, Palo Alto, 1975.
 So far so good, but then this pair of psychotherapists go on to
claim that magic is just psychotherapy, specifically just their very own
recently devised brand of psychotherapy:

"In modern time, the mantle of the wizard is most often placed
upon those dynamic practitioners of psychotherapy who
exceed the skill of other therapists by leaps and bounds, and
whose work is so amazing to watch that it moves us with
powerful emotions, disbelief, and utter confusion."

Such arrogation of the ancient and honourable term 'magic' to

a recent and probably transient psychological practice moves us to
disbelief, and undoubtedly many readers to utter confusion. Demons
cannot be dealt with via the theories of psychotherapy, a supposed
'science' that is yet to be rigorously proved, which is but a hundred years
old, or in the case of the above example just a few decades old.

Demons may now be as rare as wolves or bears in the streets of

a modern metropolis, but they are real nevertheless. The parallel is
deliberate, because it emphasises the fact that both were much more
common in the past, and that in the twenty-first century your chances of
encountering one is much greater outside of heavily populated urban
metropolises. Another thing that is certain is that these creatures are
certainly not just 'parts of the human brain' as Crowley would have you
believe.

f) Christianity, particularly in the person of King James I and his

English authorised version of the Bible, blurred the distinction between
different kinds of spiritual creatures, and introduced dualism into magic.

The Biblical distinction between the Devil and demons became

blurred in 1611 when the King James Version of the Bible was published. It
chose to translate many very different words (such as satyr, faun, and
many other words) simply as 'devil' without regard to their very different
meanings. Diabolos, which is the one term that should have been so
translated was the supreme spiritual adversary of the god of the Jews
and worthy of being called the Devil, but 'demon', and many other
words referring to a range of spiritual creatures, who had none of the
stature or qualities of Diabolos, did not deserve to be translated by the
same English word.

These first two points are very well put in Jonathan Strange & Mr
Norrell, a recently published work of fiction by Susanna Clarke, which
deals with the resurrection of real magical practice in England:

"Magicians are chiefly interested in the usefulness of these

supernatural beings; they wish to know under what
circumstances and by what means angels, demons and fairies
can be brought to lend their aid in magical practices. For their
purposes it is almost ,irrelevant that the first class of beings is
divinely good, the second infernally wicked and the third
morally suspect. Priests on the other hand are scarcely
interested in anything else”.