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which usually terms itself Black, but that they overlap one another.
In what perhaps it may be permissible to call the mind of Magic, as distinct from the
effects which are proposed by the Rituals, there has been always a tolerable contrast
between the two branches corresponding to Magus and Sorcerer, and the fact that the
ceremonial literature tends to the confusion of the distinction may perhaps only stamp it
as garbled. But this is not to say that it has been tampered with in the sense of having
been perverted by editors. White Magic has not usually been written down into Black;
Goëtic Rituals have not been written up in pseudo-celestial terms. They are, for the most
part, naturally composite, and it would be impossible to separate their elements without
modifying their structure.
Modern occultism has taken up the clear distinction and developed it Appealing to the
secret traditional knowledge behind the written word of Magic--to that unmanifested
science which it believes to exist behind all science--and to the religion behind all
religion, as if the two were related or identical, it affirms that the advanced occult life has
been entered by two classes of adepts, who have been sometimes fantastically
distinguished as the Brothers of the Right and the Brothers of the Left, transcendental
good and transcendental evil being specified as their respective ends, and in each case
they are something altogether different from what is understood conventionally by either
White or Black Magic. As might be expected, the literature of the subject does not bear
out this development, but, by the terms of the proposition, this is scarcely to be regarded
as an objection. For the rest, if many rumours and a few questionable revelations must
lead us to concede, within certain limits, that there may have been some recrudescence of
diabolism in more than one country of Europe,
p. 17
some attempt at the present day to communicate formally with the Powers of Darkness, it
must be said that this attempt returns in its old likeness and not invested with the
sublimities and terrors of the modern view. Parisian Diabolism, for example, in so far as
it may be admitted to exist, is the Black Magic of the Grimoire and not the sovereign
horror of the Brothers of the Left Hand Path, wearing their iniquity like an aureole, and
deathless in spiritual evil. These enigmatical personages are, however, the creation of
romance, as are also their exalted, or at least purified, confrères. Between Rosicrucian
initiates of astral processes and the amatores diaboli there is indubitably the bond of
union which arises from one fact: il n'y a pas des gens plus embêtants que ces gens-là.
Footnotes
13:1 It should be understood that this section contains what was said upon the subject,
and seemed then sufficient to say, in the original edition. It stands now substantially as it
then stood; the extensions are in the preface and in the introductory part.