CHAPTER 1

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAGICAL RITUALS

§ 1. The Importance of Ceremonial Magic.

The ordinary fields of phychological inquiry, largely in possession of thepathologist, are fringed by a borderland of transcendental experiment into whichpathologists may occasionally venture, but it is left for the most part tounchartered explorers. Beyond these fields and this borderland there lies thelegendary wonder-world of Mysticism, Magic, and Sorcery, a world of fascinationor terror, as the mind which regards it is tempered, but in either case theantithesis of admitted possibility. There all paradoxes seem to obtain actually,contradictions logically coexist, the effect is greater than the cause, and theshadow more than the substance. Therein the visible melts into the unseen, theinvisible is manifested openly, motion from place to place is accomplishedwithout traversing the intervening distance, matter passes through matter. Theretwo straight lines may enclose a space; space has a fourth dimension, andfurther possibilities beyond it; without metaphor and without evasion, thecircle is mathematically squared. There life is prolonged, youth renewed,physical immortality secured. There earth becomes gold, and gold earth. Therewords and wishes possess creative power, thoughts are things, desire realisesits object. There, also, the dead live, and the hierarchies of extra-mundaneintelligence are within easy communication, and become ministers or tormentors,guides or destroyers, of man. There the Law of Continuity is suspended by theinterference of the higher Law of Fantasia.

But, unhappily, this domain of enchantment is in all respects comparable to thegold of Faerie, which is presumably its medium of exchange. It cannot withstanddaylight, the test of the human eye, or the scale of reason. When these areapplied, its paradox becomes an anticlimax, its antithesis ludicrous; itscontradictions are without genius; its mathematical marvels end in a verbalquibble; its elixirs fail even as purges; its transmutations do not needexposure at the assayer's hands; its marvel-working words prove barbarousmutilations of dead languages, and are impotent from the moment that they areunderstood; departed friends, and even planetary intelligences, must not beseized by the skirts, for they are apt to desert their draperies, and these arenot like the mantle of Elijah.

The little contrast here instituted will serve to exhibit that there are atleast two points of view regarding Magic and its mysteries—the simple andhomogeneous view, prevailing within that charmed circle among the few survivalswhom reason has not hindered from entering, and that of the world without, whichis more complex, more composite, but sometimes more reasonable only byimputation. There is also a third view, in which legend is checked by legend andwonder substituted for wonder. Here it is not the Law of Continuity persistingin its formulae despite the Law of Fantasia; it is Croquemetaine explained byDiabolus, the runes of Elf-land read with the interpretation of Infernus; it isthe Law of Bell and Candle, the Law of Exorcism, and its final expression is inthe terms of the audo-da-fé. For this view the wonder-world exists without anyquestion, except that of the Holy Tribunal; it is not what it seems, but isadjustable to the eye of faith in the light from the Lamp of the Sanctuaries; ina word, its angels are demons, its Melusines stryges, its phantoms vampires, itsspells and mysteries the Black Science. Here Magic itself rises up and respondsthat there is a Black and a White art, an art of Hermes and an art of Canida, aScience of the Height and a Science of the Abyss, of Metatron and Belial. Inthis manner a fourth point of view emerges; they are all, however, illusive;there is the positive illusion of the legend, affirmed by the remainingadherents of its literal sense, and the negative illusion which denies thelegend crassly without considering that there is a possibility behind it; thereis the illusion which accounts for the legend by an opposite hypothesis, and theillusion of the legend by an opposite hypothesis, and the illusion of the legendwhat literature will prove to rule also in its history; have been disposed of,there remain two really important questions—the question of the Mystics and thequestion of history and literature. To a very large extent the first is closedto discussion, but, so far as may be possible, it will be dealt with a littlelater on. As regards the second, it is the sole concern and purpose of thisinquiry, and the limits of its importance may therefore be shortly stated.

There can be no extensive literatures without motives proportionate to accountfor them. If we take the magical literature of Western Europe from the MiddleAges and onward, we shall find that it is exceedingly large. Now, the actingprinciples in the creation of which reaffirms itself with a distinction. Whenthese what is obscure in the one may be understood by help of the other; eachreacted upon each; as the literature grew, it helped to make the history, andthe new history was so much additional material for further literature. Therewere, of course, many motive principles at work, for the literature and historyof Magic are alike exceedingly intricate, and there are many interpretations ofprinciples which are apt to be confused with the principles, as, for example,the influence of what is loosely called superstition upon ignorance; these andany interpretations must be ruled out of an inquiry like the present. The mainprinciples are summed in the conception of a number of mysterious forces in theuniverse which could be put in operation by man, or at least followed in theirsecret processes. In the ultimate, however, they could all be renderedsecondary, if not passive, to the will of man; for even in astrology, which wasthe discernment of forces regarded as peculiarly fatal, there was an art ofruling, and sapiens dominabitur astris became an axiom of the science. Thisconception culminated or centred in the doctrine of unseen, intelligent powers,with whom it was possible for prepared persons to communicate; the methods...