20 Ceremonial Magic
To complete what has just been said about ceremonies and their essential differences from rites, we will consider a special case that we have intentionally left aside, that of 'magic ceremonies', and while this certainly lies outside the principal subject of our study, we think it will not be unprofitable to consider it in some detail since, as we have already said, it is magic that gives rise to the better part of the ambiguities created and sustained by a crowd of pseudo-initiates of every sort. Moreover, the word 'magic' is today constantly applied without rhyme or reason to the most diverse things, often without the least relation to what it really designates. Anything that seems more or less bizarre, anything out of the ordinary, or what is conventionally considered as such, becomes 'magic'. We have already pointed out how some apply this epithet to the efficacy proper to rites, though usually with the intention of denying its reality; and in truth, the word has come to have hardly any other meaning than this in ordinary language. For others, 'magic' has instead a 'literary' aspect, somewhat in the way that people currently speak of the 'magic of style'; and it is above all to poetry, or at least to a certain kind of poetry, if not to all, that they wish to attribute this 'magic' character. In this last case the confusion is perhaps less crude, but all the more important to dissipate. It is true that originally, and before it degenerated into mere 'literature' and the expression of purely individual fantasy, poetry was something quite different, and could in the final analysis be directly linked to mantras, [1] so that at that time there could indeed have been a real
magical poetry as well as a poetry intended to produce effects of a much higher order; [2] but as soon as it is a matter of profane poetry (and it is inevitably this that the moderns have in mind since they cannot recognize any other even if it stares them in the face, since they persist in regarding it merely as 'literature') there can no longer be any question of this, nor, whatever may be said (for this also is an abuse of language), can there be a question of 'inspiration' in the only true meaning of the word, that is, in the strictly supra-human sense, however much lip service it may be given. We are not of course denying that profane poctry, as indeed any other expression of ideas or sentiments, can produce psychological effects, but this is an entirely different question which, to be precise, has absolutely nothing to do with magic. Nonetheless, this point should be kept in mind because it can be the source of a confusion directly related to another error frequently made by the moderns about the nature of magic itself, to which we shall have to return later.
Having said this, let us recall that magic is properly a science, one could even say a 'physical' science in the etymological sense of the word, since it deals with the laws and production of certain phenomena (and as we have already noted, it is the 'phenomenal' character of magic that interests modern Westerners because it satisfies their 'experimentalist' tendencies); but it must be clearly understood that the forces intervening here belong to the subtle order and not to the corporeal order, for which reason it is completely false to try to assimilate this science to a 'physical' one in the restricted sense intended by the moderns, though this error is actually met with, since some people have thought that magical phenomena can be reduced to electricity or some sort of 'radiation' of the same order. Now if magic has this scientific character, one will perhaps ask how there can be a question of magic rites, and it must be admitted that this has to be rather embarrassing for moderns, given their idea of the sciences. Wherever they see rites they think they are dealing with something entircly different, something they almost always seek to
identify more or less completely with religion; but let us say at once and clearly that in reality magic rites have nothing in common with religious rites with respect to their end, nor moreover (and we are tempted to say 'with even more reason') with initiatic rites, as, from another point of view, the partisans of certain pseudo-initiatic notions current in our time wish to believe; and yet magic rites do indeed exist, although they stand entirely outside of these two categories.
The explanation is really quite simple. Magic is a science, as we have just said, but a traditional science; now in everything that has this character, be it a question of science, art, or the crafts, there is always something that, if properly understood, must be considered a true rite, at least as long as one is not limited to merely theoretical considerations; and there is no reason to be surprised at this, for every action accomplished according to traditional rules, whatever its domain, is really a ritual action, as we have already pointed out. Naturally, these rites must in each case be of a special kind, since their 'technique' is perforce suitable to the particular end for which they are intended; this is why every confusion and false assimilation such as those just mentioned must be scrupulously avoided, and this pertains to the rites themselves as well as to the different domains to which they respectively belong, the two, moreover, being closely linked; and magic rites will thus be nothing more than one kind among many others, such, for example, as healing rituals, which must also appear to the eyes of the moderns a very extraordinary and even incomprehensible thing although their existence in traditional civilizations is an incontestable fact.
It is appropriate to recall also that among the traditional sciences magic is one that belongs to the lowest order, for here, of course, everything must be considered in a strict hierarchy according to its nature and its proper domain, which is no doubt why it is subject, perhaps more than any other science, to many deviations and degenerations. [3] It sometimes happens that it is developed out of all proportion to its real importance, to the point of stifling, as it were, higher kinds of knowledge that are more worthy of interest; and
certain ancient civilizations have perished from the spread of magic, just as modern civilization risks perishing from the spread of profane science, which moreover represents an even more serious deviation, since magic, despite everything, is still a form of traditional knowledge. Sometimes, too, magic outlives itself so to speak under the aspect of more or less crude and misunderstood vestiges, but remains capable of producing certain effective results; and it can then descend to the level of sorcery, which is the most common and widespread case, or degenerate in some other way. Until now we have not spoken of ceremonies, but we have come precisely to the point where they must be discussed, for ceremonies constitute the proper character of one of these degenerations of magic, so much so that it has even received the name of 'ceremonial magic'.
Surely, occultists are little disposed to admit that this 'ceremonial magic' - the only magic they try to practice - is only a degencrate form, yet this is the case; and even without wishing to assimilate it to sorcery, we can say that in certain respects it is even more degenerate than this latter, although in another fashion. Let us explain ourselves more clearly on this point. The sorcerer accomplishes certain rites and pronounces certain formulas, generally without understanding their meaning but content to repeat as exactly as possible what was passed on to him (this is a particularly important point when it is a question of anything of a traditional character, as can be easily understood from what we explained above); and these rites and formulas, which most frequently are only the more or less disfigured remnants of very ancient things and are certainly not accompanied by any ceremony, nonetheless have in many cases a certain efficacy (we are making no distinction here between the benefic and malefic intentions that may govern their use, since it is solely a question of the reality of the effects attained). On the contrary, the occultist who performs 'ceremonial magic' generally does not obtain any serious result, however careful he may be to conform to a multitude of minute and complicated prescriptions that he has merely learned from books and not received from any transmission; he may sometimes delude himself, but this is an altogether different affair, and one can say that between the practices of the sorcerer and
his own there exists the same difference as that between a living thing, even if in a state of decrepitude, and something dead.
This failure of the 'magus' (for this is the word the occultists prefer to use, doubtless thinking it more honorable and less vulgar than 'magician') has two reasons. On the one hand, to the extent that in such a case there can still be a question of rites, he simulates rather than truly accomplishes them, for he lacks the transmission that would be necessary to 'vivify' them and which cannot be replaced by mere intention. On the other hand, these rites are literally stifled under the empty 'formalism' of the ceremonies, for, unable to distinguish the essential from the accidental (and the books he consults are far from helpful, for everything in them is usually mixed inextricably together, perhaps intentionally in some cases and unintentionally in others), the 'magus' will naturally give his attention to the outward aspect above all, which is what is most striking and 'impressive', and it is this which in the final analysis justifies the very name of 'ceremonial magic'. In fact, most of those who believe they are 'performing magic' really accomplish nothing more than a sort of autosuggestion purely and simply; and what is most curious here is that the ceremonies manage to impress not only the spectators, if there are any, but even those performing them, so that when they are sincere (and this is the only case that need occupy us, not that of charlatanism) they are like children taken in by their own game. These people only obtain, and can only obtain, exclusively psychological effects, that is to say effects of the same nature as those produced by ceremonies in general, which, after all, is their purpose; but even if they remain sufficiently conscious of what happens within them and around them to realize that everything reduces merely to this, they are very far from doubting that, even if this be. so, it is only due to their incapacity and their ignorance. And so they rack their brains to concoct theories that agree with the most up to date notions, thereby rejoining willy-nilly the ideas of 'official science' itself to explain that magic and its effects belong entirely to the psychological domain, just as others do for rites in general. The sad thing is that what they speak of is in no way magic, from the perspective of which such psychological effects are perfectly null and
void, and that in confusing rites with ceremonies they also confuse the reality with its caricature or parody. If the 'mages' themselves are so confused, how can one be astonished that similar confusions are current among the 'general public'?
These remarks will suffice on the one hand to establish a link between the case of magic ceremonies and what we said in the first place about ceremonies in general, and, on the other, to show whence some of the principal modern errors about magic derive. Surely 'performing magic', even if done as authentically as possible, is not an occupation that seems to us of much interest in itself; but we must still admit that it is a science of which the results, whatever one may think of their worth, are just as real in their own order as those of any other science, and have nothing in common with illusions and 'psychological' dreams. One must at least know how to determine the true nature of each thing and how to put it in the place it belongs, but it is precisely this that most of our contemporaries show themselves to be wholly incapable of, and what we have already called 'psychologism', that is to say the tendency to reduce everything to psychological interpretations, of which we have here a very clear example, is, among the characteristic manifestations of their mentality, not the least peculiar or the least significant. Moreover, this is at root only one of the most recent forms taken by 'humanism', that is to say the more general tendency of the modern spirit to try to reduce everything to purely human factors.