It goes without saying that religion thus conceived is the opposite of magic. The latter is essentially selfish, the former admits... of and often even demands disinterestedness. The one claims to force the compliance of nature, the other implores the favor of a god. Above all, magic works in an environment which is semi-physical and semi-moral--the magician, at all events is not dealing with a person; whereas on the contrary it is from the god's personality that religion draws its greatest efficacy. Granted that primitive intelligence thinks it perceives around it, in phenomena and in events, elements of personality rather than complete personalities, religion, as we have just understood it, will ultimately reinforce these elements to the extent of completely personifying them; whereas magic looks upon them as debased, dissolved, as it were, in a material world in which their efficacy can be tapped.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The profession of magician, is one of the most perilous and arduous specialisations of the imagination. On the one hand there is t...he hostility of God and the police to be guarded against; on the other it is as difficult as music, as deep as poetry, as ingenious as stage-craft, as nervous as the manufacture of high explosives, and as delicate as the trade in narcotics.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Rise. Let us combine. There are no magics or elves... Or timely godmothers to guide us. We are lost, must Wizard a track through our own screaming weed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Magic is the envelopment and coercion of the objective world by the ego; it is a dynamic subjectivism. Religion is the coercion of... the ego by gods and spirits who are objectively conceived beings in control of nature and man.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread,... For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Indubitably, Magick is one of the subtlest and most difficult of the sciences and arts. There is more opportunity for errors of co...mprehension, judgement and practice than in any other branch of physics.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »