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Can anyone recommend a good book on the roots and development of the western esoteric tradition? Part of the problem I have with it - at a practical level - is that I'm just not convinced this stuff has much of a historical precedent before the 19th century. I'm just a bit skeptical of its operating dynamic.
While you can see how it incorporates elements of other things, such as Hinduism, astrology, tarot and the Qabala that have been around for centuries, the syncretism doesn't really hold water for me. I'm just not convinced by the western tradition sometimes. I'm not sure that I can believe that various secret brotherhoods kept the ancient western mysteries alive until they flourished again in the 1890s, and then developed into modern occultism. I'd like to study this in more depth, to get a clearer picture. Given the profound influence that I think this western syncretism has had on our modern frame of reference for understanding magic in general, I want to get a better sense of its roots and formation.
Perhaps part of my problem is the flawed scholarship that we've talked about in other threads, paired with the fact that a lot of these elements of genuinely ancient bodies of knowledge were consciously woven together by a finite group of intellectuals who you can point to in recent history (Mathers, Crowley, et al). Sometimes it feels too much like the artifice of a handful of Victorian's trying to conjure up an ancient body of lore by cribbing surviving bits and pieces from here and there and assembling them into a contrived vision of a "western tradition".
It's the operating system I have trouble with, the underlying dynamic of how the western magician goes about doing things. I can't see a clear precedent for that. Sure, you can trace certain bits and pieces of it back to older sources like the medieval grimoires - but most of those grimoires are so diverse and mental, that you're not really looking at a "tradition" as such, more the weird field notes of disparate sorcerers from different times and places. It feels as if some of the components themselves have a clear precedent, but the way in which they have been put together, and the conclusions that have been drawn from this assemblage, don't quite ring true for me.
I think that Donald Michael Craig's "Modern Magick" - whilst not my favourite book on the subject by a long way - stands as a snapshot of what the western tradition of magic consists of. Certainly it paints an accurate picture of what the contemporary magician would think of as the western magic curriculum. It paints a picture of a "western magic" that I don't think ever really existed before the Golden Dawn fashioned it out of various bits and pieces, and something about the dynamic - as it is presented - feels a bit hollow to me. I can't quite put myself behind it 100%, I can't quite feel the meat and bones of it. It feels as if the individual elements contain profound mysteries, but the operating system they are hung on has been erected quite recently to give these gems something vaguely suitable to dangle from. Is this making sense? It's hard to describe what I'm getting at as I'm trying to put my internal responses to working this magic into words.
Comparatively, when I practice Voodoo-based stuff, it's almost the other way around. For instance, in Haitian Vodou, the names of the Gods, in some cases even their personalities, their praise songs, the structure of the pantheon, various metaphysical details, and so on - are markedly different from how they appear in Africa. As an example, in the original Yoruban religions, Oshun was specifically the Goddess of the River Oshun; whereas in Cuba she becomes the Goddess of all Rivers. Certain details - what I might call the external expression - are very different, but the meat and bones of it... The operating system, the fundamental working dynamic participated in, remains pretty constant from Benin to Haiti, Cuba to Brazil. Things are gone about in the same way, towards the same ends, and the essential working processes of Voodoo remain much as they have been for thousands of years. I'm not sure you can make the same statement about western magic, and I think that's probably a big factor in the vague, low level sense of dissatisfaction I get from working with western magic. The weird sense of ancient magical baubles draped around a tree made out of coat hangers and cellotape.
For instance, when I go out to the crossroads, slip between worlds, make physical offerings to Legba and ask for his intervention in something. It feels as if the working dynamic that I'm participating in is unfathomably ancient and I can feel that in my gut. People have always done this, perhaps with a different name or a different variation on the Crossroads personality, but the process remains. I get the same feeling when I do things like ancestor work, or when I work with the Sea or the River in a Voodoo-type way. It's old, old magic. The face and the name that you put on it are important, crucial in fact, because it is these personalities that we form relationships with. But what I'm talking about is more the very dynamic of that interaction itself. There's something fundamental there to the human race and how it works magic, that I can totally get behind. It feels right. In my gut. And I can't quite get the western tradition to do that. I'd like to, as I'm absolutely fascinated by it, but I have difficulty.
I don't want any of this to come across as me dissing western magic, or for it to degenerate into "my traditions is better than yours" wankery. That's not what I'm trying to get at. I practice western magic and I wouldn't be having this conversation if I didn't see the beauty and mystery contained within it. I'm just trying to elaborate on the internal responses that I feel when I practice the magic of these two traditions and trying to fathom out what might be going on there. One of my magical goals is to try and get the shining jewels of western magic to work for me with the same kind of visceral clout as the Voodoo stuff does. I want to feel it in my gut in the same way. I'm not sure what that process might entail, but a bit of lively debate with experienced minds never hurts...
I'll get around to writing about the magical memory one of these days, for sure... |
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