RITE AND REASON

There is probably more rubbish believed and written about Magical Rituals than any other subject. From the wildest guesswork and the most fertile imaginations, magical rituals and their practitioners are invested with every conceivable impossibility or absurdity. Nonsense runs riot. As usual, the sensationalist writer catering for the willingly credulous reader is largely to blame. Most people want to believe in whatever stirs their sense beyond the average rate, thus providing them with lifts, kicks, thrills, or variations from their living-line. It is of course quite necessary to human progress and evolution that we should rise above our own levels all the time, but there are right and wrong ways of doing this. Magical workings can supply both. We come from the Eternal and return to this same Source through an unimaginable circle of Cosmic Creative Evolution. In our attempts to relate ourselves consciously with our hidden origins and background of pure BEING, we have made a great number of mento-emotional structures which serve our purpose to their limited degree, according to our ability to use them. Religions, philosophies, and sciences have grown up with us, together with the arts and whatever else extends our awareness toward the Unknown-which is our Great Necessity. Yet the basis of all our beliefs is neither more nor less that what may fairly be termed "Magic"! Definition of Magic is largely a matter of individual opinion, since it means so many things to so many people, and there are so many claims made in its name. Fundamentally it remains what it always was: Man's most determined effort to establish an actual working relationship through himself between his Inner and Outer states of being. By magic, Man shows that he is not content to be simply a pawn in the Great Game, but wants to play on his own account. Man the meddler insists on becoming Man the Magician,
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