Showing papers on "Ceremonial magic published in 2011"

Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic: Invoking Tradition

Abstract: Acknowledgements Introduction A New Order A New Magic Resurrecting the Past: Hiram, Isis, and the Rosy Cross Preservation and Improvisation: Nineteenth-Century Magicians Magical Libraries: What Occultists Read Revolutionizing Magic: The Will Conquers the Spirit Middle-Class Magic Notes Bibliography Index

La magie divinatoire à la fin du Moyen Âge. Autour de quelques experimenta inédits

Abstract: Magic and divination are strictly connected during the medieval period, in the theological censorship, but also in the practices which deliver us some rare manuscripts of the end of the Middle Ages. The ritual magic, in particular, appropriates gladly a divinatory function, which it realizes by resorting to a big variety of means. This article proposes a synthesis on this question, based mostly on experimenta of the ms. Amsterdam, Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, 114 (end of XVth c.), edited as documentary evidence.

Three Early Modern Magic Rituals to Spoil Witches

Abstract: This edition of Oxford, Bodleian, e Mus. 173, ff. 37r-v presents three rituals from late sixteenth-century England designed to provide protection from witchcraft and to identify magical assailants. The roots of these texts and the practices they record lie in late medieval rituals to detect theft. They provide useful perspectives the practice of magic, on sixteenth-century conceptions of magic, and how magical practitioners perceived witches.

Speaking with Spirits in Medieval Magic Texts

Abstract: In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, learned magic texts of Arabic and Jewish origin were translated into Latin, introducing new ideas about angels to medieval Europe. Although the Christian Church accepted the existence of invisible spirits, scholars were engaged in uneasy debates over their corporeality, man’s ability to comprehend them and the nature of their influence in the sublunary world. The imported magic texts, on the other hand, were full of tangible certainties. They gave angels names, attributes and locations, revealing a vivified cosmos in which temporal divisions – the hours, days, months and seasons – and physical elements – fire and the air, winds, sea, stars and earth – were ruled over or personified by spirits. This was a pragmatic cosmology: the attributes of a spirit told the magic operator what purpose it would be useful for, its name gave him the power to speak to it directly, and descriptions of the spirit’s relationship to the physical world instructed him in the best materials and times for his operation. From the thirteenth century, ecclesiastical authorities condemned learned magic texts for encouraging interaction with demons rather than for presenting fraudulent operations; that is, the authorities accepted that the spirits described in the texts had real powers but classified them as demonic. This allowed elaborate and alien hierarchies to be absorbed into the Christian cosmos. For readers and operators of magic texts, however, it was always possible to regard the angels and spirits of magic texts as good or neutral beings rather than evil demons.

Dramatic Aspects of Medieval Magic in Scandinavia

Abstract: This article deals with the performance aspects of medieval spells and rituals. Magic might take various shapes from benedictions to maledictions, adjurations and conjurations, divinations and omens. Some spells were written, others spoken or performed in rituals. Spells could be shouted in a shrill voice or combined with ritual procedures where magic gained efficacy. It was important that this was done in the right way, or else the magic could fail. Most of the spells and rituals were performed by professional sorcerers or sorceresses but clerics and ordinary people in some cases might expel the demons who were believed to cause illness or harm in other ways. Special interest in the article is invested in the spells and rituals where the performance aspects are explicitly or implicitly stated. The most important spells and rituals from the Scandinavian counties are cited in extenso and commented upon.

A New Order

Abstract: At the turn of the century, Victorian Britain witnessed a revival of interest in magic and the occult. All sorts of respectable men and women were dabbling in dubious pastimes such as ritual magic and attempting to communicate with the dead. Medical doctors donned ceremonial dress and wielded wands in magical ritual; an accountant and a tea heiress astrally projected themselves to other planets; actors and poets gathered together to transmute evil into good. Such gatherings were by no means unusual. Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century such individuals gathered together in groups to practise and study magic for a variety of purposes including communicating with one’s guardian angel, healing the sick, interplanetary travel, and even murder. However, while certain individuals did seek such objectives in their pursuit of occult knowledge, the average Victorian magician was seeking something far less sensational but just as radical. Men and women across Britain were joining magical societies in an attempt to evolve into their ‘true selves’. They believed that ancient wisdom passed down over the centuries through cabalistic, Hermetic, alchemical and occult sources held the key for individuals to gain access to their divine beings.

Discordian Magic: Paganism, the Chaos Paradigm and the Power of Imagination

Abstract: Discordianism, founded in 1957 and generally regarded as a “parody religion,” has only recently received scholarly consideration as a valid religious expression within modern Paganism (Cusack 2010). Yet ritual practice within Discordianism remains largely unexamined; Hugh Urban’s brief discussion of Discordian magical workings as a sub-category of Chaos Magic is the extent of academic discussion of the subject to date (Urban 2006). This article elaborates on Urban’s tantalising classification of Discordian magic. A brief history of Discordianism is sketched; then ritual and magic in the Discordian tradition is explored through an examination of key texts, including Malaclypse the Younger’s Principia Discordia (1965), and Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975). Similarities between Chaos Magic and Discordianism are noted, and an analysis of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY), a magical order founded by British performance artist Genesis P-Orridge and others in 1981, elucidates the relationship between Chaos Magic and Discordian magic. It is argued that the essentially unorganised nature of Chaos Magic and Discordianism, and the trenchant resistance of both to any form of “orthodoxy,” justifies classifying Discordian magic as a form of Chaos Magic. Chaos magicians and Discordians both have a deconstructive and monistic worldview, in which binary oppositions collapse into undifferentiated oneness, and neither conformity of belief nor unity of practice is required to be an “authentic” Discordian or Chaote.

Magical Libraries: What Occultists Read

Abstract: This book has been concerned so far with the traditions, individuals, and to some extent the literature that were influential in shaping the revolutionary form of British occultism emerging at the end of the nineteenth century. The examination of textual sources, however, has so far been restricted to those produced by late-Victorian occultists. We must now turn our attention to what informed the creative process behind these primary sources. An investigation into the history of magic in any period would be incomplete without considering the texts that enlightened the individuals involved. Ceremonial magic had long been an elitist branch of magic and one requiring literacy. It is rare to find a magician, in history or fiction, without an accompanying magical book. Books had long been deemed crucial to the transmission of occult knowledge and the Victorian period was no exception. In fact, the Golden Dawn’s institutionalization of magical learning ensured that the written word’s place of importance was enshrined. We have seen which rituals and texts occultists used in their actual magical practice; what remains is an examination of the written sources these adepts used to inform and construct this unique brand of magic.