BLACK MAGIC: Mysticism Magick Dictionary on BLACK MAGIC

BLACK MAGIC

Sorcery or Goetia. Eliphas Lévi said it was but the shadow of white magic and that, in greater wisdom, we can see that the light and the dark are the same thing. On the simplest level, White Magic is the work of the conscious mind, with Black Magic the work of the unconscious. Or, as Jung put it, white magic serves the self and black magic the ego. For Alice Bailey, on more complicated levels, white magic deals with the soul, the positive electrical energies, transmutation through radiation and the self-induced development of the Central Self. Black magic deals with the outer form, negative electrical energy, reduction of the human sphere.

But in popular belief black magic frankly isnt just simply intended to harm others more than that, its the worship and glorification of the negative. Said Crowley in a 1933 newspaper article quoted by Grant (The Magical Revival): "To practice black magic you have to violate every principle of science, decency and intelligence. You must be obsessed with an insane idea of the importance of the petty object or your wretched and selfish desires ... I despise the thing to such an extent that I can hardly believe in the existence of people so debased and idiotic as to practise it."

Historians insist that the idea of black magic derives originally from a word in the Arabian version of magic, from a confusion of fehm, black, with fehm, understanding or wisdom. In general, the idea of black or forbidden magic simply arose as a designation for the unofficial or unorthodox. In our predominantly masculine culture, black magic is that which relates to the feminine principle.

HPB designates the symbols of black magic to be the Moon and the inverted pentagram as opposed to white magics sun symbol and point-uppermost star. Black magic, she tells us, is concerned with form and matter, whereas white magic seeks the life and spirit within the form. Black magic uses the astral light to deceive, to seduce and to serve the purposes of involution, whereas white magic uses the same light to instruct others and to aid evolution. For HPB, black magic, furthermore, sought to degrade sex, whereas white magic sought to transmute it to higher creative thought.

Remember that magic is a completely different path from religion or science. Its sometimes called the Middle Pillar. It matters little where you choose to begin. The vodounist, for instance, who thinks he'll just drop in for a lesson in where to stick the pins into the doll will soon discover that sorcery is clumsy and ineffective according to its distance from higher principles of responsibility and inter-relationship with all consciousness, both higher and lower. The person who is merely curious will soon discover that he has a genuine thirst for understanding and his curiosity will blossom into a consuming passion for enlightenment. Consider the life of Tibetan yogi Milarepa, who started out as an evil black magician only to become, eventually, a great saint!

Since the proper goal of magic is to deliver the world from its infernal condition, there is a tendency to view any magic but one's own as black or evil. However, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as black magic. All paths are sacred. The initiate does not distinguish between self and other. Rather than calling white the magic of charity and black the magic of self, we would do better to think of all magic as that which seeks wisdom and designate as leading to evil, sorcery, only that which acts in ignorance. By that definition, most contemporary religion is black magic.

The dark path, Vama Marg or left-hand path, is merely one side of the caduceus, in contrast to the other, and as light is brought into darkness, it ceases to be dark. The phrase, Lux in tenebris, can refer to the light being brought to the darkness, or to the darkness itself acting as light. Like the scientist, the true magician does not shrink from exploring all avenues of the manifest and the unmanifest. Some magicians say that we are actually unable to choose anything but white magic (or enlightenment), since in order for any magical operation to work, one has to refine one's understanding and purify one's vision. In practice, however, the followers of Satanism supposedly align themselves to the development of the individual ego for the sake of personal power. In order to strengthen the ego, detachment is learned through controversial rites. One of the preoccupations of magic is to enlist gods, spirits, elementals, etc. to do one's bidding and to release their power to the practitioner. But the black magician seeks unlimited power, not to borrow, but to appropriate for himself not in order to better the world or himself, but to satisfy his personal greed and to establish his ambitious tyranny. Moreover, real magicians know better than to wallow in close-minded ignorance and self-perpetuating superstition. They certainly arent going to go to all the trouble of throwing out Jesus just so that he can sneak in through the back door wearing the cloak of Satanism.

Serious magicians consider true Satanism (mere Devil Worship, that is) to be shallow and ultimately self-defeating. Power and freedom accrue in direct proportion to the shedding of the ego, not to its inflation. Initiates see Satanism as a pathetic rebellion that merely exalts the other side of the coin of Xtianity. In any case, Satanism is more in the nature of a religion than a magical system, since it is based upon belief and worship. Seeing that Xtianity tars all variance from itself with the same brush, it has become necessary to discourage the childish triflers by labeling dark that which is most holy.

Finally, for the last word on the subject, here is a graffito copied from a San Francisco sidewalk, circa 1987: White witchcraft which fools condemn. Turns to black and crushes them.

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For more articles on BLACK MAGIC , see: BLACK MAGIC , Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul.

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The definition and meaning of BLACK MAGIC is extracted from the home page of Sacred Magick.

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