English occultist, bohemian and author Aleister Crowley defined magick

as "the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will".
Crowley's will was aided by the inheritance age 11 of a tidy fortune, and
took him on a hedonistic ride through a life of sex, drugs and occult
practice. Member of the Order of the Golden Dawn, founder of the
mystery religion of Thelema, self declared spiritual master and Magus
and, significantly, accomplished chess player, Crowley revelled in his
notoriety as "the wickedest man alive". The Great Beast's polyamorous
lifestyle would barely contend for such a title in today's more liberal and
permissive world, and the philosophy of ordering your world in line with
your will is one that seems entirely accepted in our individualist society.

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The Book of English Magic by Philip Carr Gomm and Richard Heygate
offers a thorough and illuminating history of magic and magicians in
England. It reveals a 5,000-year tradition of English magic, stretching
from Neolithic shamen and Anglo-Saxon "Wyrd Crafters" to modern
Wiccans, New Age spiritualists and Neo-Pagan revivalists. Along the way
it catalogues the remarkable interplay of fictional and historical figures
who have influenced and shaped the history of English magic. The
fictional wizards from Merlin to Harry Potter who have shaped our
perceptions of magic. John Dee, mathematician, astrologer, occultist and
consultant to Queen Elizabeth I, who like Crowley and other "practicing
magicians" crafted a powerful fiction around the cult of their charismatic
personality. And the writers and artists who have drawn on magic as
inspiration for their creations or even, like WB Yeats, have been drawn in
to the world of the occult.

Reading this secret history, ensconced in Topping & Company bookshop

of Bath, the kind of independent bookseller that will gladly bring an idle
browser a cup of tea as he muses on the nature of magic, and a location
that could easily have been pulled from the pages of Susanna Clarke's
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, I was struck most by the rich history of
magical English stories it catalogues. Also in Topping & Company could
be found magical stories by JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis and of course the
mighty JK Rowling herself (you don't have to have multiple initials to
write magical stories for children, but it helps). Regardless of how you
view The Book of English Magic's more eccentric thoughts on the reality
of magic, it reminds us that Englishness and the English cultural identity
have been intertwined with magicians and magic throughout their history.

No writer today is more associated with Englishness and magic than Neil
Gaiman. Aleister Crowley makes a caricature appearance in the very first
issue of The Sandman, as the magus Roderick Burgess, whose failed
attempt to summon Death herself launched Gaiman's comic series.
Throughout his career from The Books of Magic to American Gods and
beyond, Gaiman has systematically reinvented the archetypal characters
and symbols of magic in his stories. But he has yet to declare himself a
practicing wizard, unlike his fellow comic writer Alan Moore, who recently
detailed his worship of the snake deity Glycon in an alternative Thought
for the Day on Radio 4. Moore's most potent work of magical writing is
the From Hell comic series, which outlines a conspiracy theory of royal
involvement in the Jack the Ripper murders, around which Moore
explicates his complex ideas on the magical nature of reality, tackling
masonic rituals and the architecture of Nicholas Hawksmoor along the
way. And the pulp aesthetic of comics has also been a launching pad for
one of magic's greatest advocates, Scottish writer Grant Morrison who in
series such as The Invisibles and The Filth has created a complex
philosophy synthesising magic and post-modernism, along the way
penning the now iconic essay on Pop Magic.

Magic seems to live at the heart of English identity, as much today as

millennia ago if the hordes reading Harry Potter are any indication. But
even if we assume, as most rational Guardian-reading folk no doubt will,
that magic is nothing but hokum, poppycock and superstition, it's
interesting to ask why it has such a profound hold over our popular
imagination. Perhaps Crowley, magus and chess master, provides a
possible answer. As any good player knows, the strategies of chess are as
relevant in the real world as on the playing board, and many a politician
has studied that game to understand the larger games of politics and
power.

Perhaps magic is another kind of game, where the symbols and

theatricality of the occult mask metaphors for power to help us
understand the "science and art of causing change to occur in conformity
with will". No wonder we English, living with the lingering ghosts of
Empire, an unreformed class system, and the complexities of a post-
industrial economy, find such fascination in it
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/feb/23/english-culture-magic-merlin-harry-potter