THE MAGICIAN'S DICTIONARYAn Apocalyptic Cyclopaedia of Advanced M/magic(k)al Arts and Alternate MeaningsSecond Edition 1996die jovis, xxxi oct. mcmlxxxxvi, minvs iii: era apocalypt.LUNAR YEAR OF THE FIRE MOUSE 469411 chicchan 8 zac 12.19.3.11.53468 Timescape CountdownJulian Day 2,450,230Heshvan 17, 57572749 Rom.A.U.C.AN XCII ACReed 389073 CE by E. E. REHMUS(Pseud. "Romulus")------------------------------------------------------------------------INTRODUCTIONEverywhere we can see now how the trappings of M/magic(k) are strewn around with such mindless and perfunctoryabandon that it's obvious to everyone that the morning of barbarism is well advanced. Moreover, the so-called "NewAge" (which is anything but) has produced already so much over- merchandised junk and shadow without substance,that it's clear no mere grain of salt, appearing alongside that sea of sugar, can expect much attention.In only the most ordinary sense are we "already" magicians. It's true that only deliberate action which produces a visibleripple over the surface of reality is a magical act. Nature itself endlessly engages in creatively magical acts everymoment. But what we are painfully learning for the first time is that magic comes out of our connectedness to the worldand is in no way whatsoever the wielding of some mystical power over things from "outside" them. Thus, neither ordinary religion , with its parched, subnatural separation from physical, supposedly "unclean" bodies, nor science withits tedious and incessant denial of all "taint" of self, can be called magic.Continuing in the spirit of that Renaissantial pizzazz which began in the 1960's to raise Hermetic studies from their immemorial grave, we are now entering a much more psychically advanced era. . . ready, as greater and greater numbersof seekers are putting it, for "specific" instruction, even though postmodern minds scarcely understand the words.Where the wise of the past and present fail to provide, I've interpolated my own quirky insights. Avoiding as much as Ican the words and concepts which are abundantly defined elsewhere. I've made it a practice to concentrate on the moreesoteric arcana and most misunderstood philosophical or related terms. On the other hand, there are a good manymagical buzz words that everyone takes for granted as self-evident, when the truth is, hardly anyone really understandsthem at all, so I've included some of those as well.Despite our infatuation with contemporaneity, magic must be tied to tradition - for, once stripped of tradition, itimmediately and bleakly sheds all meaning and quickly degenerates into "black" magic, or the search for private power.In all magic, the figures summoned, *daimones* (good and bad), are summonings from the self, but that is not to saythat they don't have their own steam and direction.The goal of the magician, or one might also say the alchemist, is psychic transcendence and not just the manipulation of the material world for the puffing up of the ego or for changing the outward face of things. The magician's aim is torecognize that we are in now way separate from the universe and need to reaffirm our direct and total connection to it.Therefore, we are able to cease acting horizontally in the hopeless trap of cause and effect and can begin actingvertically to link the celestial to the terrestrial, avoiding, if possible, the much easier connection of the infernal to theterrestrial.Many of us have, with monumental smugness, shoved magic into one corner, metaphysics into another and religion intoa third. Magic in particular, we've all secretly fantasized, is a search for "powers". We tend to imagine that it's just thechildlike, fairy-tale belief in the ability to work miracles - as though ordinary reality isn't miracle enough. Or, evenworse, we act as though magic were just another toy - a superbot, an FTL spacecraft, a cybernetic data cruncher, arevolutionary dimension-splitter, a meta-matter transmogrifier - that we confidently expect some great cosmic SantaClaus to deliver, once we've achieved, say, celibate purity or some pinnacle of self-hypnosis. This is all rather like a dogcomplacently assuming that you will give him the whole turkey if he merely sits on his hind legs and limps his forepaws.True, we've been admonished time and again that the genuine traveler shouldn't be distracted by mere conjurings. Theyogi must not succumb to the call l to develop siddhis. And even Christ refused to be daunted by Satan's insistence thatstones are not easily turned into bread. In fact, we have been warned that we would do better to avoid conjuringaltogether. But of course warnings serve only to sharpen all the more the appetites of callow youth. Let's grab the power first, they say, and worry afterwards about whether we have acted wisely or not. Such is the nature of Time that
Leave a Comment