Magic in nineteenth- century occultism and esotericism had become a kind of catchword, a flycatcher term meaning very different things, and appealing to different cultural milieus. It could be used both as a term of approval for occult power and mystery, and as a term of disapproval for surviving superstitions or dubious and dangerous arts (cf. Otto 2011). This basic ambivalence is reflected also in HPB’s widely diverging statements on magic, and it is continued in theosophical literature to the present day. We will start our observations with a late text. The Theosophical Glossary, which should have become a kind of dictionary of Theosophy, but which she could not complete, and which was posthumously edited in 1892 by her last secretary G. R. S. Mead (1863– 1933), has an entry “magic,” from which we quote a few words:
Magic. The great ‘Science’. According to Deveria and other Orientalists, ‘magic was considered as a sacred science inseparable from religion’ by the oldest and most civilized and learned nations. […] Brahmans and Egyptian Rekhget- amens (q.v.) or Hierophants would not have popularized belief in the power of man by magic practices to command the services of the gods: which gods, are in truth, but the occult powers or potencies of Nature, personified by the learned priests themselves, in which they reverenced only the attributes of the one unknown and nameless Principle […]. Ancient and mediaeval mystics divided magic into three classes— Theurgia, Goetia and natural Magic […]. ThG, 197f.
Already HPB’s earlier Key to Theosophy had used essentially the same words (KTh, 344f.). This entry is dominated by an approving attitude to magic, but also includes the idea of black magic; it also incorporates concepts of Magia naturalis, and takes as a basic reference sources from Neoplatonism. It is clearly more a Western interpretation of magic than an Asian one. Probably as interesting as these definitions is the part William Wynn Westcott (1848– 1925) played in the Glossary. He had contributed many articles on Rosicrucian, Hermetic doctrines and Jewish Kabbalah “at the special request” of HPB (ThG, Preface). Now Westcott of course is one of the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the most important Victorian society devoted to western ceremonial magic, Hermeticism and practical occultism with many prominent members (short overview: Frenschkowski 2016a, 142– 153). The story of the rather competitive and strained relationship between the Golden Dawn and the Esoteric Section of Theosophy (mostly HPB’s immediate followers in London) has been told by Gilbert (1987) and others, and it centres very much on the question which forms of occult practice might be beneficial and legitimate.
The leading persons of the occult societies in the London area knew each other well. Commenting on a mandrake sent from Cairo, Westcott called HPB “my friend” (Westcott 2012, 188), and he was extremely proud about a “solemn agreement” on mutual respect and help between the Theosophical Society and the Golden Dawn (ibid., 66, in an address to the Horus Temple from 1892; cf. Gilbert 1987, 8). In the June 15th 1889 issue of HPB’s journal Lucifer the theosophical public “was introduced openly— if somewhat obliquely— to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn” (Gilbert 1987, 1). Westcott has also written some articles in theosophical magazines. To give just one further example: Countess Wachtmeister (friend and some- time secretary of HPB cf. Wachtmeister 1989) in her notebooks writes down a lecture of S. L. MacGregor Mathers on Rosicrucianism, the deity and the Hebrew letters (Cooper 1995, 199); and he was perhaps the most practical one of the magicians of the Golden Dawn. Mathers of course also became the model for the villain in Aleister Crowley’s 1917 novel Moonchild (published 1929; see on this novel also Ethan Doyle White’s chapter in this volume).
Theosophists were much aware of the growing competition in the occult scene particularly in late Victorian London, with a number of players of which the Theosophical Society and the Golden Dawn were just the largest ones (if we do not count fringe masonic groups). The correspondence with ‘secret chiefs’ or masters was a major common element between Theosophy and the Golden Dawn. R. A. Gilbert has demonstrated that the foundation of the ‘Esoteric Section’ in Theosophy (not connected as an organization to the Theosophical Society, and directed exclusively by HPB) that took place in October 1888, has to be interpreted as a direct response to many British theosophists’ interest in more practical occultism, triggered not least by the Golden Dawn (Gilbert 1987; Godwin 1994: 205– 225). Both Olcott and HPB gave other reasons for this new ‘inner order’ as well, but the matter is quite clear. The Golden Dawn also did not expect asceticism or abstinence from sexual intercourse, meat food and alcohol for advanced students, as did HPB. Pleas for advice on more practical sides of occultism had reached HPB over the years, in fact since the ill- fated beginnings in New York City. In her article Lodges of magic (1888) she expressed deep scepticism about groups of practical magic, however:
One of the most esteemed of our friends in occult research, propounds the question of the formation of ‘working Lodges’ of the Theosophical Society, for the development of adeptship. If the practical impossibility of forcing this process has been shown once, in the course of the theosophical movement, it has scores of times. It is hard to check one's natural impatience to tear aside the veil of the Temple. To gain the divine knowledge, like the prize in a classical tripos, by a system of coaching and cramming, is the ideal of the average beginner in occult study. The refusal of the originators of the Theosophical Society to encourage such false hopes, has led to the formation of bogus Brotherhoods of Luxor (and Armley Jail?) as speculations on human credulity. -* 10: 124
These schools would quickly degenerate into “lodges of magic” (ibid., 125). Also Western civilisation has its shortcomings preventing occult adeptship: “Western civilization seems to develop fighters rather than philosophers, military butchers rather than Buddhas,” she writes. A note to the article polemizes against “Tantric black magic on a phallic basis.” HPB wrote even more explicitly on the “dangers of practical magic,” as in an article that became part of the posthumous The Secret Doctrine 3 (-* 15: 59– 69). As this article is already contained in the Würzburg manuscript (*.), our earliest witness for The Secret Doctrine texts, it is plausible that this and some similar texts were indeed meant to become part of a projected third volume of The Secret Doctrine. Over and over in her writings we see both traditions: magic as “the highest knowledge of natural philosophy” ()( 1: 366), and as evil sorcery (cf. Otto 2011, 557– 559). For the difference she quotes Thomas Wright, author of the well- known Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, from the most authentic sources (London, second edition 1851): “The magician differed from the witch in this, that, while the latter was an ignorant instrument in the hands of the demons, the former had become their master by the powerful intermediation of Science, which was only within reach of the few, and which these beings were unable to disobey” ()( 1: 366; from Wright ibid., 1: 1f.).
HPB sees a revival of sorcery at the end of the nineteenth century, writing already in 1877 ()( 1: 366): “few facts have been better established than that of sorcery.” She could also set “occultism” against the “occult arts” (-* 9: 249– 261). Another terminology HPB uses for black vs white magic is Left- Hand Path and Right- Hand Path (e.g., $' 1: 192). This symbolism she takes from the Indian tradition; Sanskrit vamacara meaning “left- handed attainment,” synonymous with Left- Hand Path or Left- path (vamamarga). Stephen E. Flowers, author of a study (2012) on left- hand path magic, sees two criteria to be considered as basics of Left- Hand Path magic: Self- Deification and Antinomianism. Bernd- Christian Otto has underlined the inclusivist approach in Theosophy, its “semantischen Inklusivismus,” interpreted as a “magiologische Ökumene” that uses magic as a “Sammelbegri/f für nicht- christliche Religion” (blanket term for non- Christian religions, Otto 2011, 562f.). He stresses the discourse character of magic, which is here used to define a Theosophical identity distinguished from both science and theology, and as a label to draw demarcation lines in the occult milieu. An epistemological concept verging on that of arcane knowledge and magic is “forbidden knowledge,” a borderland of revelations that must not be written in books or told to non- initiates ($' 1: 156, 179, 299; 2: 48, 51, 156, 251, 437, a.o.).
The relationship between Theosophy and practical magic has been complex and diverse, not least for the reasons just mentioned: it conceptually works as a group boundary marker in occultism. But these boundary lines are not strong. Interestingly, the leading calligrapher of magical manuscripts, spellbooks and grimoires in Victorian Britain, Frederick Hockley (1846– 1885), published also in Theosophical magazines, and was a kind of honorary member of the Theosophical Society, though as it seems he was never really active in it (though he could be quite dismissive of Isis Unveiled) (cf. Hockley/ Hamill 2009, #)), 65f., 88). Hockley’s invocation manuals using magic crystals and mirrors were widely known in British occultist circles (cf. )( 1: 596 on consecrated “black mirrors”).
Recent research has pointed out that experiments in practical occultism such as astral projection seem to have been a subject of much interest already in the early New York phase of Theosophy 1875– 1879. Joscelyn Godwin even says: “Occult training, particularly in astral travel, was the main object of the early Theosophical Society, and this caused an almost immediate retreat from the public eye” (Godwin in Hammer and Rothstein 2013, 20). This overstates the point. There is much more evidence for metaphysical discussion, growing interest in Indian religions, and generally in a dissociation from the spiritualist milieu than in ‘astral travel’ or occult training. But of course these aspects go together. Some researchers have tried to prove a deliberate turning away of the Society from occult training (e.g., Godwin in Hammer and Rothstein 2013, 21). The evidence for this interpretation is small: we have also to consider the basic ambivalence concerning magic that results in widely divergent statements on anything connected to practical occultism, ritual, and psychic experiments.
As stated, in Lodges of magic (-* 10: 124– 130) and other writings HPB clearly expressed her deep scepticism about the advisability to form magical “working groups.” The term “ceremonial magic” by HPB is often used in a negative sense: “Having neither dogma nor ritual— these two being but fetters, a material body which suffocates the soul— we do not employ the ‘ceremonial magic’ of the Western Kabalists; we know its dangers too well to have anything to do with it […]” (-* 11: 266; cf. 5: 39; in French articles she uses the term “magie cérémoniale”). She was not much interested in ritual anyway: her widely divergent writing on magic never describe specific rituals, and she never quotes ritual agendas of magic or grimoires, in contrast to, e.g., the spiritualist Emma Hardinge Britten.
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