But magic spells; how can their efficacy be explained? By the reigning sympathy and by the fact in Nature that there is an agreement of like forces and an opposition of unlike, and by the diversity of those multitudinous powers which converge in the one living universe. There is much drawing and spell-binding dependent on no interfering machination; the true magic is internal to the All, its attractions and, not less, its repulsions. Here is the primal mage and sorcerer- discovered by men who thenceforth turn those same ensorcellations and magic arts upon one another. Love is given in Nature; the qualities inducing love induce mutual approach: hence there has arisen an art of magic love-drawing whose practitioners, by the force of contact implant in others a new temperament, one favouring union as being informed with love; they knit soul to soul as they might train two separate trees towards each other. The magician too draws on these patterns of power, and by ranging himself also into the pattern is able tranquilly to possess himself of these forces with whose nature and purpose he has become identified. Supposing the mage to stand outside the All, his evocations and invocations would no longer avail to draw up or to call down; but as things are he operates from no outside standground, he pulls knowing the pull of everything towards any other thing in the living system. The tune of an incantation, a significant cry, the mien of the operator, these too have a natural leading power over the soul upon which they are directed, drawing it with the force of mournful patterns or tragic sounds- for it is the reasonless soul, not the will or wisdom, that is beguiled by music, a form of sorcery which raises no question, whose enchantment, indeed, is welcomed, exacted, from the performers. Similarly with regard to prayers; there is no question of a will that grants; the powers that answer to incantations do not act by will; a human being fascinated by a snake has neither perception nor sensation of what is happening; he knows only after he has been caught, and his highest mind is never caught. In other words, some influence falls from the being addressed upon the petitioner- or upon someone else- but that being itself, sun or star, perceives nothing of it all.

Among those which came to my hand was a volume containing all kinds of invocations and magical formulæ. In this book I discovered information to the e...

Transcendentalism and all forms of phenomenalistic magic are but blind alleys--outgrowths of Atlantean sorcery; and those who forsake the straight...

The devil has taught man sorcery or witchcraft, thereby to strengthen and fortify his kingdom. But if he had revealed to man the right, true,...

CEREMONIAL magic is the ancient art of invoking and controlling spirits by a scientific application of certain formulæ. A magician, enveloped in...

The heart of man has been so constituted by the Almighty that, like a flint, it contains a hidden fire which is evoked by music and harmony, and...

Another reason, also, of these things may be assigned. The powers of the human passions that are in us, when they are entirely restrained, become...

Still, he replied, I do not understand you. I fear that I must have been talking darkly, like the tragedians. I only mean that some men are changed by...

The faithful hold that the sweet influences of heaven As we are all members of Adam, We have heard these melodies in Paradise; Though earth and water...

Just as angels preside over the elements, so does the soul rule the members of the body. Those souls which attain a special degree of power not only r...

The purpose of this work is not the enunciation of any special philosophy or doctrine, but rather is to give to the students a statement of the Truth...

Dissolving, however, the doubts in a way still more true, we think it requisite, in invoking superior natures, to take away the evocations which...

The powers, then, of which we have spoken hold out beautiful sights, and honours, and adulteries, and pleasures, and such like alluring phantasies bef...

Behold, when the corporeal, qualifying or fountain spirits set their will into sorcery or witchcraft, then the animated or soulish spirit, which they...

We must rather, therefore, say, that sounds and melodies are appropriately consecrated to the Gods. There is, also, an alliance in these sounds and...

The above figure is a complete and faithful representation of a magic circle as designed by mediæval conjurers for the invocation of spirits. The...

And of those who are so by nature, some are capable of being apprehended; and these some would not call occult, being apprehended by analogy, through ...

When the Love is predominant in Love, it is the sweetest, meekest, humblest, most loving Fountain of all that springs in all the Fountains; and it con...

I make no claim for either the infallibility or the originality of any statement herein contained. I have studied the fragmentary writings of the...

Let it be granted, therefore, that a God, a dæmon, or an angel, gives completion to more excellent works, yet we must not on this account admit what...

A lover was once admitted to the presence of his mistress, but, instead of embracing her, he pulled out a paper of sonnets and read them to her,...