《The Art and Meaning of Magic》

飛翔朱雀

When I was about seventeen years of age, a friend loaned me a copy of Major L. A. Waddell's Lamaism. In those days it impressed me tremendously, no doubt because of its massive size. In every sense it was a heavy tome, and tomes then suggested depth and weight of scholarship and insight. Naturally I knew nothing at that time about Magic, and beyond a few theosophical allusions next to nothing of Buddhism. So the greater part of the significance and wide erudition of the book must have passed me by completely, though it is a veritable storehouse of knowledge.

Then, out of the blue it appeared on my horizon again, again through the agency of a friend. In the light of the little knowledge and experience gained through the passage of several years, its contents excited me enormously--and it was with the utmost interest that I reconsidered it. For me, one of the things that stood out most emphatically this time was the extraordinary similarity between--even the fundamental unity of--the highest and most basic magical conceptions of both East and West. Whether this is due, as many exponents of the Eastern wisdom would claim, to the direct importation of occult philosophy and practice from the Orient to Western civilization, it is not my intention now to argue. Nonetheless, it is my considered belief that in Occidental countries there has definitely been a secret tradition on a practical level--a tradition which for centuries has orally transmitted the finer part of this magical knowledge. In fact, so jealously reserved at all times was this tradition that by most people it was hardly suspected at all. Very few were the fortunate individuals who in any age were drawn as though by invisible currents of spiritual affinity to the concealed portals of its temples.

Occasionally a small portion of this closely concealed tradition wormed its way outwards into books. Some of these latter are those which were written by Iamblichus and the later Neoplatonists, and also by students such as Cornelius Agrippa, Pietro d'Abano, and Eliphas Levi, etc. Its cruder elements found expression in the far-famed Clavicles, Grimoires and Goetias. Yet for the most part the true sequence of teaching, and the vast implications of its practical knowledge were, as above stated, maintained in strict privacy. The reason for this secrecy may have been the feeling that there are only a small number in any age, in any country, amongst any people, who are likely to appreciate or understand the deeper or sublimer aspects of Theurgy, the higher magic. It requires sympathy, much insight and a capacity for hard work, which needless to say few people possess. And there is, consequently, but little point scattering broadcast these pearls of bright wisdom which can only be misunderstood.

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