10 Concluding: 'Magic' and the Moral Continuum Notes Index vii Of the many people who assisted with this book, special thanks are due to Deirdre Toomey, whose knowledge of Yeats -and through Yeats of Theosophy, the Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley -was always engagingly offered, and who made useful suggestions on the text; also John Symonds, who authorised quotation of Crowley materials originally in his possession, and Anna Haycraft (Alice Thomas Ellis), who read the typescript on completion and in some ways helped to guide me to the subject in the first place.Others whose inspiration and support were essential include the Rodney Beard family of Stanford, California, especially Julie for providing exposure to Scientology over the years, Philip for contact with Steinerism and other things German, and -as ever -Edin, who listened and encouraged. I am grateful too to Christine Salmon, Geoffrey Layton, William and Lynne Wilkins and not least Vince Whelan for moral support.Finally, thanks are also due to the staff of the British Library and the Warburg Institute and to my editor, Frances Arnold, whose enthusiasm has made author-publisher relations a consistent pleasure; also to Valery Rose and Graham Eyre, who have seen the work through production with faithful attention, and to Virginia Smyers of Harvard University, who helped me prepare the index. viii1 Introductory: 'Magic' as Word and Idea I DEFINITIONSAt least since the advent of the written word, the problem of 'magic' 1 has given rise to prolix and unruly discussion; and any author approaching it in the present day might begin by admonishing himself to proceed with simplicity. To simplify 'magic' may involve making generalizations, which in turn may give rise to objections from those who fancy themselves 'adept'. If so, so be it. This author is no adept and can claim only vast ignorance in an area of all-embracing knowledge. Still, it seems imperative that any author seeking to gain a comprehensive view of modern literature and thought should at some stage try to come to grips with this elusive yet pervasive motif.To begin with, he must have a lexicon. In 'magical' texts from the Bible to works of Aleister Crowley, we come up against the idea of a generative Logos. 'In the beginning was thP Word.' The word in this case is 'magic', and it has been bandied around so loosely as to seem opaque -as opaque as 'love', which indeed it may be, if not more so. The Oxford English Dictionary, for instance, describes it as 'the pretended art of influencing the course of events by compelling the energy of spiritual beings or by bringing into operation some occult controlling principle of nature; sorcery or witchcraft'. This is daunting. What is meant in the context by 'energy', 'spiritual beings', 'occult', 'sorcery', 'witchcraft'? If the 'compelling' of 'energy' is a part of 'magic', then does 'magic' include the processes of the internal combustion engine; or, more daunting still, the nuclear bomb?'Energy' is defined by the same dictionary as '1. Force or vigour of expression .... 2. Exercise of power, operation, activity .... 3. The capacity and habit of strenuous exertion .... 4. Power actively 'belief in a suprasensual world' will once more be at hand and mankind will be driven by strong emotions and these unseen 'magical' forces, as it was in a more barbaric past. 'We will learn again', he says, 'that the great Passions are angels of God.'Yeats in this vein of course disturbed T. S. Eliot, the great literary defender of Reason and Christianity during the contemporary period; and it is useful to view the Irish poet's invocations in the light of the Anglo-American's equally manipulative and circuitous counter-arguments. 32 These are put forward most forcefully in After Strange Gods, a series of lectures Eliot delivered at the University of Virginia in 1932 -that is, a third of a century after Yeats had written his essay and thus a time by which some of the 'new consciousness' Yeats was trying to invoke had begun to manifest itself.Eliot does not speak of 'magic' directly. The word and concept no doubt struck him as 'unsound' and best rarely spoken about. The 'unknown' at large does not appear to him as a proper study for lay minds. In defence against the kind of moral aberration he sees arising from such study, he proselytises in favour of two protective concepts: (1) 'tradition', which he defines as 'a way of feeling and acting which characterises a group throughout generations' and which 'must largely be, or . . . many elements of it must be, unconscious'; and (2) 'orthodoxy', which means 'that element of agreed upon moral intelligence growing out of tradition which organises the best of tradition in such a way as to make it a standard by which to value the present'. 3 3 The past is a 'good' to Eliot as to Yeats. He too disdains 'tired' conventional liberalism and inclines toward romantic glorification of 'race'. Beyond this, however, the two have little in common.'Novelty and originality' are false values, Eliot believes. Province and class represent positive forces which may help inhibit pernicious modern tendencies to universalise, unify and posit moral relativity. These tendencies are themselves the result of an era of 'the decay of protestant agnosticism ' [p. 38]. New gospels and old doctrines neglected since the fall of Atlantis, or resurrected via the example of primitive peoples, have produced a rash of new messiahs. But 'no messiah can last for more than a generation', since 'an uncritical public tends to move from one new programme to another, viewing all as equally valuable "experiences" ' (p. 34). Furthermore, ancient or Eastern or primitive belief systems, however fashionable, are not practical in the long run: they cannot
From Egypt to Freemasonry
I THE INITIATE AS 'ASS'
A first function of 'magic' is to create an effective type of personality. Jungian psychology makes a distinction between archetypes of the hero and archetypes of the initiate . 1 Potentials for both must be embraced in the full 'magical' worldview, but the second, paradoxically, may be stronger than the first; and on it 'magic' has ever put great emphasis. The trajectory of the hero begins with a rise from humble origins, through early proofs of strength; continues with accession to 'power', struggle with 'evil', return to 'home'; and ends with a fall through hubris or self-sacrifice. This, one can see readily, is a model for action in the world of affairs and requires an instinct for moral discrimination, even prejudice, more than philosophical appreciation of the forces moving behind things. The hero attempts to dominate destiny, achieves glory through exercising his will, and falls through lack of full knowledge. He is Wagner's Siegfried rather than Parsifal. The latter is an initiate. His type achieves integration and power through submission to fate and reverence for natural and cosmic laws acquired through symbolic experiences of death: circumcision, outcastness, imprisonment, unwilling ensorcellement, or other forms of subjection of the ego.The initiate, a Jungian or Wagnerian would say, is made wise through sympathy: 2 a sympathy which originates in waiting, watching and suffering. He must make contact and peace with his inner daemon, soul or 'self'; also with his animafemale aspect of his nature, impulse to 'das Ewig-Weibliche' or vision of the 'Holy Grail'in a kind of 'alchemical marriage'. The hero does not have time for such things. In early primitive form, he may be the 'trickster', a figure of blithe anarchy. Later he might appear as the 21 Note: certain words and concepts seem too general and pervasive in this study to cite. These include among others 'magic', God, Nature, Man, Love, the devil, knowledge and power.
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