One of things we are very lucky to have is the Ancient Greeks because for a long time they formed a written culture which was not afraid to practice magic or consider new ideas about deity. From the ancient philosophers comes a long line of written philosophy on how to practice a form of magic. Also the Egyptians had been doing weird things with dead people since around 2600 BC and were famed their knowledge of magic. They were conquered by… guess who… the Greeks! In fact it is due to the Rosetta Stone being written in Greek and Egyptian that were actually able to translate our first Egyptian Hieroglyphs. So thank the gods for Greek writing, it has connected ancient belief to modern day.
A lot of pagans talk about how there was nothing written about magical practices, it was an acted practice and not a written one. How wrong they were! There is a long line of Greek Philosophers who wrote an incredible amount of magic down. If only such people had cracked a book before they opened their mouths!
Plato and the Metadivine realm the world of forms
The first arguments are about what element the Greek metadivine realm consisted of. Was it Water? Fire? Air? Earth? Was it affected by other forces in reality? If you don’t know what the metadivine realm is please see my article on it. It’s going to be very relevant through this.
For philosopher Thales of Miletus in Turkey (approx 600 BCE), the world originated as entirely water. This view is similar to the Babylonia text Enuma Elish where the world was originally Apsu (the fresh water god) and Tiamat (the salt water goddess) co-mingling. He also held beliefs about the power of a soul to affect things around it and concluded a Lodestone (magnet) must have a soul too because it can pull metals towards it. Thales is said to have had instruction from an Egyptian Priest and to be influence by Babylonian philosophy. His views are most recorded by Aristotle (100CE).
His pupil, Anaximander (610 – 546 BCE) said water could not be the first principle because fire existed and water cannot create fire. He decided to call this original principle the Arche. He postulated that the principal from which the universe derived, the Arche, must be the “Apeiron” or infinite. This idea of the infinite is probably influence by Hesiod’s Theogony which has Chaos as one of the first things to exist. At this point there is clearly a concept of 4 specific elements is in existence: Earth, Air, Water and Fire. These are still used today for simplicity sake. A magic circle where we go through the entire period table, hypothetical elements and the atomic forces and sub-atomic particles would just take too long and the initiate would struggle to develop an emotional connection to such a complicated system of magic, but I’m sure there is someone who is trying such a thing.
The reference to the infinite here give the potential for modern transcendentalism to exist. Something we will discuss later.
Anaximander’s pupil Anaximenes of Miletus (586 – 526 BCE) suggested that the arche would be air. Air can be condescended to water and further to hard substances such as snow and ice. He also believed it would be rarefied to fire.
Eventually Empedocles (494 – 434 BCE) is accredited with giving us the four elements, but clearly they pre-existed his contribution. He speaks about them being affect by the forces of Love and Strife which rarefy and condense them. Empedocles comments that life cannot exist in a state of complete love or strife and we can only live when we walk between these two poles. This is an early Yin and Yang in the West. Also Empedocles believe in a cycle of reincarnation. If you were bad you would reincarnate as an animal. He advocated vegetarianism because you didn’t want to take that animal’s punished nature into yourself. He believed that if you were close to god then you could escape the cycle of reincarnation similar to the teachings of the Buddha dating to a similar time.
Plato comes next (428 – 348 BCE). In the writings of Plato we have a recorded dialogue called Timaeus, which explores the composition of the universe. This text postulates an infinite universe of perfect forms which are immortal and a creator god called a “demiurge” who created our world, a poor reflection of the perfect world of forms. This is the beginning of a spiritual philosophy called Platonism. Some suggest that this world exists in the mind of the demiurge in the ability we have to visualise things.
What is interesting in this world view is that there is a creator deity, however the deity is not the highest form of existence. He is simply reflecting that higher form of existence. The metadivine world has been replaced with the infinite world forms.
A lot of people struggle to understand forms. For any computer programmer who was competent with Object-Oriented Programming I could just say the world of forms is the world of base classes or superior parent classes, but that explanation means very little to anyone else. The example usually given is that in reality there exists a large number of seats. Some are big, some are small, some are comfortable, some are hard, but there is one thing that binds all these things together that they are version of a “chair”. The idea is that the world of forms has a chair which is the supreme chair and it has no other associations. It is not big, small, soft or green, in fact is has no other qualities other than it is a chair in the purest form a chair can be. It is in a state somewhat unmanifest in our reality and can only be conceived of mentally. This for plato was the world of forms.
Plato also introduces here the concept of a fifth element which is the soul of the entire world and mentions Aether. “There is the most translucent kind [of air] which is called by the name of aether.”
One of Plato’s direct students assumes the role of one of the most famous philosophers to ever exist: Aristotle. Aristotle contributes to nearly every field of learning known to man at the time, but some of the more significant things to come out of his followers are the concepts of virtues and aethers.
Virtues are a spiritual power hidden within natural objects. It’s definition in this aspect does not encompass a moral thing at this time. A heavy object has the property that it wants to fall to the earth. This is one of the virtues in the object. A loadstone which was previously said to have a “soul” now has the virtue of pulling iron.
In 1531 a large compendium of all ceremonial magic is written by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa showing that the virtues had become very significant in ceremonial magic. The author explains that the virtues are a power that can be extracted from an object, by combining multiple objects with a common virtue. The virtues here relate to one of the planets. This book is still used today to make spells.
Also things which count to the same number are seen as manifestations of the same numbers from the world of forms. For example the 4 archangels, the 4 corners / directions on compass, the 4 rivers of hell these are all considered manifestations of the form of pure number 4 and therefore are the same on some level. So the world of numeric emanations is considered a high world of existence, but does it play the role of the metadivine we have seen in previous pagan cultures?
The aether is a 5th element which is not subject to quantity or limitations. It is only subject to motion. It is lighter than fire so floats in a layer above the air like how flames often try to climb upwards. The name used even means the god of the upper sky. In fact the model that develops in the “Aristotelian” science you begin to see layers surrounding the earth getting more and more subtle the further out you get from earth. The non-elemental layers have the heavily bodies in it and the zodiac. For example see the image below. In the centre is the earth, which support the water which falls beneath the air. Fire climbs above air and Aethyrs surround it according to their astrological significance. The Moon first, then Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and the zodiac.
An Arabic Grimmoire which uses these aethers shows up in 11th century called Ghayat Al-Hakim (goal of the wise) or in Latin “the Picatrix”. The magician creates imagery and symbolism, which relate to a planet, specific to an aether. The incense and rituals take the intention to cause a change up to the aether, where it shines down like a ray, having affects similar to astrology on determining fate on earth. These aethers are below deity. The highest aether is simply the place where the first movements occurred in the process of creation. However these aethers take on the role of the metadivine for the purpose of this style of magic.
Theurgy
There is a long tradition of trying to connect to deity through a practice called theurgy or god working. This made itself all the way to the 21st century. This is a key part of Modern Magical practice.
It begins with an ancient Greek Philosopher who you might know from you Maths class: Pythagoras of Samos in Syria (570 – 495 BCE). We don’t know what Pythagoras wrote himself, but the writings of students in his school covered many topics, including:
- Maths,
- Transmigration of souls (reincarnation),
- Immortality of the soul,
- Astrology (or the movement of planets in time with inaudible music and harmonies on earth),
- Divination, and
- Prophecy.
According to one of the Greatest philosophers, Aristotle, the Pythagoreans they are said to have worshipped numbers. To them numbers were pure entities who are manifest in our reality in their grosser forms. They saw our entire reality as composing of numbers. The number 1 (“the monad”) was the origin of all reality, number 2 (“the dyad”) was the origin of matter, number three gave us time, number 4 gave us the seasons and the elements (earth, air, water and fire), odd numbers were considered male and even numbers considered female so number 5, the mixture of 2 and 3, was considered the number of marriage of male and female. 6 was procreation and 7 the number of the visible spheres in the sky (the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn). 7 was also the number of strings on a Lyre so it would seem then that the spheres in the sky were part of a musical score that you couldn’t hear. Modern practitioners of the magical technique called theurgy suggest that connecting to divine powers can be done by trying to be affect by the inaudible music of the spheres like you would be affected by a piece of music. In doing so you could achieve miraculous things.
We learn a lot more about Theurgy by the arguments, in the form of letters, of those that followed on from Pythagoras in the 3rd century CE, from the letters of Poltinus, Porphyry and Iamblichus. I hope to expand this section when I have time.
The importance of these practices is reflected in Agrippa’s 15th century “Three Books of Occult Philosophy” which forms the basis for modern Ceremonial Magic and even got a mention in 1994’s Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein.
Hermetic and Alchemy hides in Islam
Another part of our long written tradition of magic is the writings of Alchemy which surprisingly come to us from Islamic writings who in turn inherited not only from the above theurgists and platonists, but with many contributions from Greek-speaking Egypt.
Around 2650 BC there is a recording make on the bottom of the statues at Djoser’s pyramid which mentions Imhotep high priest of Ra (the sun god). Then there is no mention of him again for around 1200 years when we begin to see inscriptions suggesting he had taken the role of a saint on for the lay folk.
Around 300 BC he has begun to be recognised as a god as begins with be equated with the Egyptian god Thoth who is in turn equated with the Greek god Hermes. It is clear that in the temple of Thoth at Hermopolis that we was worshipped along with another man who had also been sainted Amenhotep. At this point he is accredited with healing powers and soon comes to be worshipped along with Thoth as Hermes Trismegitus (thrice great Hermes). Egyptologist James Peter Allen states that “The Greeks equated him with their own god of medicine Asklepios, although ironically there is no evidence that Imhotep himself was a physician.” This be comes significant because in the next body of writing we will explore there are many references to Asklepios.
Around the 2nd century a series of documents called the Corpus Hermeticum (or body of writings of Hermes) appears, which includes achieving gnosis (a non-verbal knowledge god) through devotion to deity and that reality really just consists of mind. The text mentions techniques such as meditation on images of deity to get visions. This text is ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus who is often equated with a character called Asclepius in the text. (Asclepius is a different Greek deity, which is similar in representation to Hermes). While this allowed for meditation on pagan deities it is primarily monotheistic. This text and similar text like it are called “Hermetics” after Hermes Trismegistus. They had the biggest influence on Alchemy.
The earliest text on alchemy is written by an author who goes by the name of Zosimos, it is called Cheirokmeta, which means things made by hand.
It is estimated to come from about 300 CE and was written in Greek. Some copies in the original language still exist, but not in full. For the full text we have to refer to translations into Arabic.
He tries to define what alchemy is a “the composition of waters, movement, growth, embodying and disembodying, drawing the spirits from bodies and bonding the spirits within bodies.”
He is clearly influenced at this time by Gnostic spirituality of the Christian religion and shows some of the earliest writing of the Hermetics tradition. He believes that the teachings of alchemy came to man when some fallen angels fell in love with human women. They taught them their secret.
Another author from the same time is often quoted called agathodaimon, but no original texts survive from his writing.
One of the best known authors of alchemy from these early times is Jabir Ibn Al-Hayyan (more often known by a poor translation of his name into Latin, “Gerber”). Jabir takes what he understands from the Theurgists, platonists who came before him and also accredits a new figure who plays a central role in alchemy going forward: Hermes Trismegistus. This figure might have been based on the revered ancient priest Imhotep.
We then have a written history of alchemy which survives to today, including authors such as Albertus Magnus (or Albert the Great),
Roger Bacon, Nicholas Flamel (yes he was real not just made up for Harry Potter), George Ripley, Paracelsus, Dr John Dee (Court adviser to Elizabeth I), Robert Fludd, Elias Ashmole (after whom the Ashmolean Museum is named) and Isaac Newton (the same scientist and discoverer of gravity).
In the 17th century some texts appear which announce the beginning of a secret order called the Rosicrucians. While no evidence can be found about any meetings of the group, Elias Ashmole was found to have had a letter asking to join, but it is entirely possible he could not find a meeting order to whom he could deliver it. The Manifesto brings together the writings of Hermeticists, Alchemists, Qabalists and Theurgists in an attempt to help the world.
While there is no evidence of the order actually meeting it was enough to inspire some major work to combine these different teachings and eventually in 1800s there were attempts to reconstruct the order as the Societas Rosicruciana an order for Master Masons in Scotland. This then inspired the Societas Rosicruciana In Anglia (SRIA) which in turn inspired the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was the single most important group in the development of the modern practice of magic. It was to Magic what the Theosophical society was to the new age movement. Without it there would be no wicca and probably no neo-pagan group at least no in their current form and not with their current rituals.