SOME HISTORY OF MAGICK
There isn’t a single piece of knowledge or information in the universe that a magician can’t use in one way or another. When I was on death row, I studied a lot about history, especially the history of magick.
Humans began practicing magick as soon as they developed the faculty of imagination, which enabled them to remember past experiences and project their minds into the future. You can see this ability clearly at work in the prehistoric cave paintings that depict the interdependent relationship of early people and the animals they hunted for sustenance. This is an example of sympathetic magick — creating a link between an object and a desired outcome. It’s similar to the way that a voodoo doll works (well, at least the Hollywood version of one): you form an energetic connection between the doll and a real, living person, and then you direct energy into the doll in order to affect that person. So the earliest forms of magick we know about worked something like this. Prehistoric people painted scenes on the walls of caves in order to make those links and hopefully fend off starvation during the long, cold winters.
As primitive societies developed, people began to specialize into roles, and the role most relevant to this topic, of course, is that of the magician, shaman, or medicine man and woman. These people often lived apart from the rest of the tribe, only visited by others during times of need. They were fundamentally “other,” yet a necessary part of the group, so they lived on the fringes, viewed with a mix of reverence and suspicion. Magicians have always lived on the edge — somewhere just beyond the reach of traditional values and beliefs.
As mainstream religions rose to power — largely to subjugate and control citizens — they began to view magicians as immoral and dangerous. The luckiest magicians were ostracized or went into hiding; the less fortunate were burned at the stake or tortured to death in some other horrible way to send a clear message to anyone who might still be practicing magick. Hierarchical structures can’t tolerate what they can’t govern. Magick is dangerous because it’s about self-empowerment, as opposed to adherence to rigid, predetermined belief structures. So, at least in the West, practitioners of magick were persecuted for hundreds of years.
Eventually, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn formed in the late 1800s in London. They focused on various occult practices, theurgical magick, and alternative means of spiritual development. The Order gave equal status to men and women, and included some of the brightest minds of the era, including W. B. Yeats, Pamela Colman Smith, and Aleister Crowley — a controversial figure once named “the wickedest man in the world” by English newspapers. These people delved into Hinduism, Taoism, early Egyptian religions, and various Western mystery traditions, and they assembled the core practices into a working system of magick.
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was actually three distinct orders under one banner, organized somewhat like concentric circles. The first circle — the Outer Order — was for beginning students who were supposed to master basic exercises and rituals (for example, the next practice in this book: the Middle Pillar). The second circle — the Inner Order — was by invitation only. The Inner Order served as guides for those in the Outer Order, and if beginners in the latter group showed dedication and promise, they were brought into the Inner Order, where they learned advanced forms of practical magick. I’ll say more about the third circle below. When the original members of the Golden Dawn disbanded, most of the practices of the Inner Order would have been lost were it not for Israel Regardie, the personal secretary of Aleister Crowley.
Regardie went against the rules of the Order and published the practices and rituals. To this day, these books have never gone out of print. Regardie was a staunch advocate for the Middle Pillar and the Lesser Banishing Ritual (also coming up), and he said that just doing these two practices every day for a year would be just as good as being initiated into the Inner Order. After that period of time, one’s energy centers would be awakened enough that magick itself would serve as one’s teacher. From personal experience, I can say that this is true. At some point, I began to perceive a higher intelligence gently nudging me toward new discoveries, modifications, and techniques.
The third and innermost circle of the Order consisted of “secret chiefs” who had completed the great work of magick — spiritual immortality. These beings have transcended the need for incarnation in the physical realm and dedicate their activity to the liberation of other practitioners (somewhat like bodhisattvas of some Buddhist traditions). For most people, this sounds like fantasy or delusion. However, if you make it far enough down the path of magick, you begin to feel guided in ways I described above, and the notion of these evolved beings doesn’t seem as farfetched. Among other things, they act as lights in the distance that constantly beckon and guide us forward.