In our imagination, we have two characters from our folklore, and these are the mage and the sage. A mage is, of course, a magician, with his tall cap, long white beard and staff, typically associated with Merlin or later, Gandalf. He is the great wizard who can summon angels, demons and demigods. A sage is more obscure, being a person who is wise, the counselor of great leaders and the author and exemplar of religious or philosophical movements. A sage can also be a holy man, or wise religious leader, representing the mystical side of the human experience. These two individuals as archetypes represent two different facets, one is the magician and the other is a religious leader. They would seem to represent diametrically opposed factions of magic and mysticism, and in medieval Christian Europe, this was a popular theme, although it was more complicated in reality than it was perceived in popular folklore. However, the sage and mage were seen as one and the same in the Greco-Roman world, since philosophers were often believed to have arcane powers and occult knowledge.
Magic and religion have always intertwined and intersected at various points, although it is religion, or in the guise of philosophy, that has appeared mostly dominant in that relationship. The archetypal magician that emerged in late middle ages seems to embody both a religious role and a strictly magical one. Grimoires from the past age contain ceremonies and tasks best performed by a cleric, or by a hired cleric for the use of a lay-person or secular ritualist. This is because the spirits that were the target of invocation or evocation were wrapped up in religious beliefs and liturgical lore, and Christianity blurred the boundary between what was supposedly secular philosophy and religious tenants, becoming what was considered then as the highest form of intellectual activity, which was theology. It was Christian theology that embodied both the religious ethos of the time and also, unwittingly, a magical ethos. Thus magic had to appear intermixed with religious rites to engage in a kind of sacred technology.
While European ceremonial magic in its early period (11th - 14th century) was nominally a system of angel magic, functioning as an adjunct practice of trained clerics or monks associated with their sacred duties and almost sacramental in their practice, all of this changed in the early Renaissance. It was at that point when religious practices and the practice of magic began to diverge, and also when the trafficking with demons began to take prominence in the various grimoires and manuscripts on magic at that time. While the Christian Church divorced itself from the practice of even positive and constructive forms of magic, the emerging lay population of academics and their student followers began to engage in these discarded methodologies, and sought to capitalize on the powers and abilities associated with goetic demons despite the proscriptions of the Church.
The practice of engaging with negative or hostile spirits was not new to the traditions of magic, since it had its sources in antiquity with the practices of the goetic shamans who intervened in ghostly hauntings and served chthonic deities, it was redefined as demonology by a Christianized culture. Still, from the 16th to through the 17th century, which was the golden age of grimoires, the magician was required to curry the favor of God and to assume a level of spiritual purification before being granted the authority and power over neutral or demonic spirits. Magic still had a very religious foundation, and those who wished to evoke and coerce demons to satisfy their material-based ambitions had to assume a level of spiritual superiority over the spirits that they commanded. One can see this everywhere in the grimoires of the previous age, as the invocations to the Deity, the prayers, the assumed piety, the expiation and a strict requirement for a degree of spiritual purity still was considered essential to the practice of sorcery. This is because it was believed that only by the mercy and power of God could a magician be warded and escape the wily onslaughts, deceit and cunning of demons.
After the 16th century, magic started to become religiously agnostic and morally ambivalent, as it was practiced by individuals who had little relationship to religious practices other than being a lay person attendant at religious observances. They did not need to engage in an authoritative manner with the Deity, since vesting themselves in the superficial accouterments of their faith seemed adequate to deal with wayward demons. The church had lost its precedence over the practice of magic, and even the presumption of holiness was replaced by a nominal faith and belief in the process, but with the self-serving aim of personal enrichment, or the enrichment of clients who were willing to pay dearly for this service.
Parallel to the practice of ceremonial magic in the 17th century were the practices of alchemy and astrology. Additionally, there began to be an interest in hidden or occultic knowledge, and the fraternal organizations that began to be seen in Europe were first associated with the Rosicrucian movement begun in the early part of century, and then through the decades became a real underground movement that involved the study of the Jewish Kabbalah, alchemy, astrology, and also, to a lesser extent, ceremonial magic. In the 18th century, these secret societies were popularized by Masonry and various Masonic offshoots. The Illuminati had their origin at this time, and there were also the practices of Egyptian Masonry, and many other similar secret organizations. Still, it would seem that the Masonic movement, the Protestant Reformation, and the various secret brotherhoods had pushed the practice of ceremonial magic into a more secular and non-religious environment, where the individual through their piety and personal fortitude, could command spirits and demons to do their will. However, magic had already seen its popularity begin to fade, and the social myth of the magician was seen as an erroneous or fraudulent path to wisdom and power.
By the time of the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, ceremonial magic became the proclivity of the eccentric, the occultist, the madman or the charlatan. The magician seemed like the antithesis to the religious leader, or sage, both great and small; but was also at odds with the ascending scientism of the academics. Magic was an unsanctioned, underground practice of dubious individuals, since it had been drained of most of its religiosity, and infused with a materialistic and cynical ambition to manipulate the world against the rational prejudice and derision of science. As magic became degraded, the image of the magician appeared to be consigned to the ash heap of history, and the mythic image and folklore seemed to show that any attempt to acquire power, material gain, and unsanctioned wisdom by making a pact with Satan always ended badly. This was when the myth of Faustus seemed to cast magic in a dark light, even though the myth of Faust had ironically started an occult magical movement in Germany. Thus, magic became the interesting topic of the collectors and copyists of obscure manuscripts of the previous age, but serious engagement seemed lacking. The Magus was published around this time, but it was likely the last gasp of a dying tradition. Some occultists continued to examine and study magic, such as Eliphas Levi, who sought to revitalize the practice, but who actually was never a practitioner himself. It remained the proclivity of the few, and was fading into complete obscurity as the 19th century and its emphasis on the material sciences gained precedence.
In the late nineteenth century, with the advent of the Theosophical Society and various occult groups such as the Golden Dawn, ceremonial magic was rehabilitated. Yet its more religious attributes were no longer represented in the 19th century Victorian culture. Therefore, it continued to be treated and engaged with in a more secular manner than what would have been considered a proper mental condition for working these rites in the previous age. The Golden Dawn brought to its members and later the world, a whole new style of working magic that merged occult concepts, various Qabalistic tables of correspondences and rituals to engage with various kinds of spirits into the purview of the magical practitioner. The pentagram became the tool for engaging with the elementals, and the hexagram, the tool of planetary and talismanic magic. Angels were incorporated into rites of warding and protection, but a ritual used to invoke an angel or evoke a demon into manifestation was not part of this corpus.
However, the basic ritual practices, such as the watchtower rituals, the banishing and invoking rites of the pentagram and hexagram, gave the adept practitioner the basic lore needed to engage with the old grimoires. Without the archaic religious praxis, the old grimoires were likely not very accessible to the modern public, so the Golden Dawn provided a body of rituals that would establish a surrogate or replacement methodology that made these magical books accessible. Grimoires from the previous age were starting to become available, first in manuscript form in the GD, and then in published books. Those individuals who had mastered the basic ritual workings of the Golden Dawn could then apply this knowledge to unlocking the grimoires, and this what they did. It began a kind of accelerated process that is still going on today, with more and more of these magic books being published and made available.
With all of the new magical tech that the Golden Dawn invented and disseminated to its membership, probably the most important practice was godhead assumption. There was also a kind of sympathy for the polytheism of antiquity, that was taken to a greater level of engagement by Mathers, Brodie, Crowley, Fortune, and others. The early twentieth century saw the beginnings of a pagan religious movement, which was an alternative to Christianity. Margarete Murray published books on the Witchcraft cult of the previous age, and this was the beginning of a movement of popular and romantic thought that would culminate in the birth of modern Witchcraft. These new fledgling religions saw themselves as the repository of both a modern polytheistic religious practice and the engagement and practice of modern occultism. Nearly all of the founders for the various pagan and wiccan groups were also practicing occultists, and so much of that lore found its way into these groups, along with both modern religious perspectives (post-Christian) as well as fragments of ancient lore, but also, the practice of magic. Murray had made magic central to the Witch cult of the previous age, and this notion was fully captured in these new groups.
While Crowley was instrumental in bringing the practice of magic into the 20th century, his invention of a new religion seemed to be a requirement for participation in this system of magic that he brought to his Thelemic followers. Crowley’s religion, Thelema, was actually the first of the polytheistic pagan traditions that would be come abundant in the later part of the 20th century. Crowley also made magic the central tenant of his religion, and this was also a model for the other and later organizations. Despite the fact that Thelema was such a new and compelling religious perspective, along with the required practice of magic, his organization of the Ordo Templi Orientis nearly ceased to exist after his death. The post world-war period of the 1950's was more about reconstruction and finding balance in the Cold War era than engaging in various forms of occultism. Still, this profound phenomenon of religious, occultic, and magical development went into a kind of stasis after the Second World War. It was only in the 1960's that this modern engagement with magic returned along with many other alternative spiritual and occultic perspectives that were part of the counter cultural youth movement.
During the late 1960's and into the decades following, the modern Pagan and Witchcraft movements, along with the OTO, and many other newly founded traditions, proposed a religious system that combined the practice of religion and magic as a single praxis. In the Pagan and Witchcraft traditions, the central liturgical rite was a form of godhead assumption that had been taken and modified from the Golden Dawn tradition, and this brought a dimension of immanent spirituality into the group practices that had no precedence in Western European religions since antiquity. It allowed for individuals to impersonate and assume the characteristics and qualities of the pagan Deities that they were worshiping to the intimate contact and communion with their group. This is a clear case of channeling the Deity, and this would have a profound effect on the one personifying the Deity and the group who functioned as the witnesses and benefactors of that spiritual outpouring.
Since magic was considered a central tenant of this new religious movement, then godhead assumption would therefore become a part of the magic that was also performed. The liturgical rites would blend into the magical, since there was nothing to really distinguish them. It is this very consideration that I followed in developing my own system of magic based on the central liturgical practices of modern Witchcraft, but I am certain that I am not alone in this practice. However, what I was not aware of at the time was that this approach of merging religious liturgy and magic together had a truly ancient precedence that echoed from the Greco-Roman world of the philosophers and their practices, to the monks and clerics practicing angel magic, to Witches and Pagans practicing both religious rites and magic together. This is where the Sage and the Mage become fully united once again in the practice of Western religion and magic. While Catholicism had stripped itself of all ceremonial magic associated with the rites of the Mass and its ancillary practices especially in Vatican II, modern Paganism and Witchcraft had restored them, and in fact, made them even greater. Magic practiced in the guise of religion has also another provenance, which is theurgy, the methods of magic used by the philosophers of antiquity.
As a Witch Elder and Ritual Magician of the post modern age, I see myself as both a sage and a mage, embodying both perspectives as a single system of magical practice and religious engagement with the inner and outer worlds of spirit, mind and body. I see these two practices of religion and magic in perfect balance with each other, and I am engaging in developing a magical practice that can elevate the operator to the highest states of enlightened being, merging also magic and mysticism together. If there is a unitary function in the modern Pagan and Witchcraft religions, then this holistic practice represents the both the foundation and the zenith of our aspirations.
Frater Barrabbas
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