Varieties of Magical Experience: Aleister Crowley’s Views on Occult Practice

Pasi, Marco

doi:10.1353/mrw.2011.0018

Cited by 13 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…which for him are external entities, due to his 'traditionalist' self-understanding as a learned magician. Yet, his aforementioned re-interpretation of the Arbatel as a "method to cathartically re-balance and reintegrate the planetary forces into one's own psyche, subconscious mind and magical art" 47 represents a typically modern strategy of psychologising magic(k) (on this strategy see, among others, Hanegraaff 2003;Asprem 2008;Pasi 2011;or Plaisance 2015) and of using its techniques for quasi-therapeutic and/or self-growth purposes (see on this motif especially Luhrmann 1989, 244-45, 279-80, 287-88).…”

Section: Re-interpreting the Arbatelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conjuring Planetary Spirits in the Twenty-First Century: Textual-Ritual Entanglements in Contemporary ‘Magic(k)’

Otto¹

2023

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This article illustrates textual-ritual entanglements in Western learned magic across almost two millennia through an analysis of Frater Acher’s Arbatel experience. Frater Acher is a contemporary practitioner of ‘magic(k)’ who, between 2010 and 2013, performed a series of conjurations of six planetary spirits inspired by an early modern manual of learned magic named *Arbatel*. Frater Acher combined the Arbatel with ritual techniques from numerous further contexts, among them the late ancient *Greek Magical Papyri*, the Clavicula Salomonis tradition, Paracelsianism, Hermeticism, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, theurgy, modern imagination techniques, as well as chaos ‘magic(k)’. As a consequence, Frater Acher’s Arbatel experience – as he frames his ritual diaries published online – reveals a strikingly entangled ritual that illustrates the breadth, depth, and complexity of Western learned magic, as well as its manifold entanglements across time and space. His diaries also demonstrate that, even while following largely formalistic premodern scripts of learned magic, contemporary practitioners may nonetheless display a high degree of flexibility, creativity, and innovation. The article closes by reflecting on whether it is likely that such strategies were also present in premodern practitioner scenarios. In doing so, it calls for taking the – extensive but hitherto almost completely neglected – data of experience reports by contemporary practitioners of ‘magic(k)’ into account when interpreting premodern sources of learned magic. As a consequence, this is the first systematic attempt to compare and juxtapose premodern and modern interpretations and mindsets of practitioners of learned magic. It is thus also the first scholarly article that aims at elucidating a premodern manual of learned magic through reading and analysing the experience report of a contemporary practitioner.

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Section: Re-interpreting the Arbatelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conjuring Planetary Spirits in the Twenty-First Century: Textual-Ritual Entanglements in Contemporary ‘Magic(k)’

Otto¹

2023

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“…This mode is commonly contrasted with "reductionist" approaches, which were manifest [56] in a wider Golden Dawn context in some of Aleister Crowley's writings (Asprem 2008;Pasi 2011). 31 However, Crowley's approach also emerges, though somewhat delayed, from a literary discourse.…”

Section: Conclusion: the Psychology Of The Universal Mindmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Entangled Imagination: W.B. Yeats’ “Moods” and the Psychologization of Magic

Johannsen¹

2023

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Among modern practitioners of magic, the “psychologization of magic” has become a common strategy to adapt practices such as rituals of invocation to naturalistic thought. In this article, I discuss what was probably the most elaborate attempt to bridge the gap between the magic of the past and magic suited for the present that took place within the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (1888–1903). Approaching the Order’s teachings through the lens of contemporaneous literary discourse, the Irish poet and magician William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) attempted to consolidate supernaturalist and naturalist understandings of magic throughout the 1890s. In 1892, he made the concept of the “immortal moods” a key to both his poetry and his magical practice. Evoked through symbols in a ritual or a poem, these moods would descend “like a faint sigh into people’s minds” and move them to action, causing “all great changes in the world.” Yeats explored this concept in theoretical writings, poetic experiments, and his ritual practice, finding his own imagination entangled with past imaginations. Serving a brief term as the Golden Dawn’s Imperator and Instructor in Mystical Philosophy in 1901, he condensed the insights gained from this work in the doctrines of the “great mind and great memory.” Presenting a study of Yeats’ psychology of the universal mind, this article shows how his amalgamation of literary and folkloristic theorizing paved the way to connect magical and poetic practice to the emerging psychological discourse.

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“…He believed that magic utilized a genuine physical force in the cosmos, describing it as 'the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will' (1986: 31). Indeed, although rooted in Western esoteric thought, Crowley was influenced by scientific naturalism and argued for the necessity of experimentation in magic, subtitling his ongoing journal The Equinox as 'The Aim of Religion; the Method of Science' (Pasi 2012).…”

Section: Thelemamentioning

confidence: 99%

Lucifer Over Luxor: Archaeology, Egyptology, and Occultism in Kenneth Anger’s Magick Lantern Cycle

White

2016

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One of the great figureheads of American experimental cinema, Kenneth Anger (b.1927), is internationally renowned for his pioneering work, recognisable for its blend of homoerotica, popular and classical music, and dark, symbolist imagery. A follower of Thelema, the religion of infamous British occultist Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), Anger’s work is imbued with occult themes and undercurrents rarely comprehensible to the non-initiated viewer. In exploring these esoteric ideas, Anger makes use of archaeology and heritage in his short films Eaux d’Artifice (1953) and Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954–66), as well as in the lost films The Love That Whirls (1949) and Thelema Abbey (1955), which utilize such disparate elements as Aztec human sacrifice and putative Renaissance Satanism. However, this theme only reaches its apex in Lucifer Rising (1980), an exploration of Thelemic theology filmed at such sites as Avebury, Luxor, and Karnak, which reflects and propagates the Thelemic view of the past—an ‘alternative archaeology’ rooted in Crowley’s own fascination with Egyptomania. This paper seeks to explore Anger’s use of the past and place it in its proper context of twentieth-century Western esotericism.

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Varieties of Magical Experience: Aleister Crowley’s Views on Occult Practice

Cited by 13 publications

References 17 publications

Conjuring Planetary Spirits in the Twenty-First Century: Textual-Ritual Entanglements in Contemporary ‘Magic(k)’

Conjuring Planetary Spirits in the Twenty-First Century: Textual-Ritual Entanglements in Contemporary ‘Magic(k)’

The Entangled Imagination: W.B. Yeats’ “Moods” and the Psychologization of Magic

Lucifer Over Luxor: Archaeology, Egyptology, and Occultism in Kenneth Anger’s Magick Lantern Cycle

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