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and subject himself to an iron mental discipline.
The emotional intensity, while not easy to cultivate, at least is more within the bounds and
possibilities of achievement than is the other. It was this method that the ancient magicians cultivated
to a very fine art. They devised innumerable means whereby the normal physiological habits could
be changed and altered, so as to permit of this impingement upon the underlying basis of the self.
To summarise, there is Divination, the art of obtaining at a moment's notice any required type of
information regarding the outcome of certain actions or events. Fortune telling so-called is an abuse.
The sole purpose of the art is to develop the intuitive faculties of the student to such an extent that
eventually all technical methods of divination may be discarded. When that stage of development has
been reached, mere reflection upon any problem will automatically evoke from the intuitive
mechanism within the information required, with a degree of certainty and assurance involved that
could never be acquired save from an inner psychic source.
Another phase--perhaps that which has been stressed more than all others--is Ceremonial Magic in
its widest sense. Comprised within this expression, are at least three distinct types of ceremonial
endeavour, all, however, subject to one general set of rules or governed by one major formula. The
word "ceremonial" includes rituals for initiation, for the invocation of Gods so-called, and the
evocation of elemental and planetary spirits. There is also the enormous sphere of talismans, and
their consecration and charging. Ceremonial is probably the most ideal of all methods for spiritual
development since it entails the analysis and subsequent stimulation of every individual faculty and
power. Its results are genius and spiritual illumination. But personal aptitude is so potent a factor in
this matter, as well as in divination, that although the word "Art" may be applied to cover their
operation it would be unjust to Magic to denominate it a Science.
The third, and in some ways the most important branch for my particular purpose at the moment, is
THE MEANING OF MAGIC 29
Israel Regardie: The Art Meaning of Magic
Vision, or the Body of Light technique. It is with this latter that I shall deal exclusively in this essay,
as it contains elements which I feel answer more definitely to the requirements of a Science than any
other.
In discussing Magic, the reader's pardon must be sought if reference is continually made to a
technical philosophical system named the Qabalah. They are so interlaced that it is well-nigh
impossible to separate them. Qabalah is theory and philosophy. On the other hand, Magic is the
practical application of that theory. In the Qabalah is a geometrical glyph named the Tree of Life,
which is really a symbolic map both of the universe in its major aspects, and of its microcosm, man.
Upon this map are depicted ten principal continents, so to say, or ten fields of activity where the
forces constituting or underlying the Universe function in their respective ways. In man these are
analysable into ten facets of consciousness, ten modes of spiritual activity. These are called the
Sephiros. I cannot enter more fully into an outline of this map here though I have repeatedly referred
to it here and in other essays; but the reader will find it adequately described in various books or
articles on the subject.
Now consider with me that especial Sephirah or subtle aspect of the universe called by the Qabalists
Yesod. Translated as the sphere of the Foundation, it is part of the Astral Light--an omniform plane
of magnetic, electric, and ubiquitous substance, interpenetrating and underlying the whole of the
visible perceptible world. It acts as a more or less permanent mould whereupon the physical world is
constructed, its own activity and constant change ensuring the stability of this world as a
compensating factor. In this world function the dynamics of feeling, desire and emotion, and just as
the activities of this physical world are engineered through the modalities of heat and cold,
compression and diffusion, etc., so in the astral are operative attraction and repulsion, love and hate.
Another of its functions is to exist as the memory of nature, wherein are automatically and
instantaneously recorded every act of man and every phenomenon of the universe from time
immemorial to the present day. The nineteenth century Magus, Eliphas Levi, has written of this
astral Light that: "There exists an agent which is natural and divine, material and spiritual, a
universal plastic mediator, a common receptacle of the vibrations of motion and the images of forms,
a fluid and a force, which may be called in some way the Imagination of Nature...." And again he
registers the conviction that it is "the mysterious force whose equilibrium is social life, progress,
civilization, and whose disturbance is anarchy, revolution, barbarism, from whose chaos a new [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]