Quotes

Ultimately, the purpose of magic is to free our potential, not bind us to ideas.

There are also necromantic processes, comprising the tearing up of earth from graves with the nails, dragging out some of the bones, setting them crosswise on the breast, then assisting at midnight mass on Christmas Eve, and flying out of the church at the moment of consecration, crying: ‘Let the dead rise from their tombs!’—then returning to the graveyard, taking a handful of earth nearest to the coffin, running back to the door of the church, which has been alarmed by the clamour, depositing the two bones crosswise, again shouting: ‘Let the dead rise from their tombs!’—then, if we escape being seized and shut up in a madhouse, retiring at a slow pace, and counting four thousand five hundred steps in a straight line, which means following a broad road or scaling walls; finally, having traversed this space, lying flat upon the earth as if in a coffin, repeating in doleful tones: ‘Let the dead rise from their tombs!’—and calling thrice on the person whose apparition is desired to appear.

During World War One, 10% of all casualties were civilians.

During World War Two, the number of civilian deaths rose to 50%.

During the Vietnam War, 70% of all casualties were civilians.

In the war in Iraq, civilians account for up to 90% of all deaths.

That which is denied gains power, and seeks strange and unexpected forms of manifestation.

Anybody who likes writing a book is an idiot. Because it’s impossible, it’s like having a homework assignment every stinking day until it’s done. And by the time you get it in, it’s done and you’re sitting there reading it, and you realize the 12,000 things you didn’t do. I mean, writing isn’t fun. It’s never been fun. It’s momentum, and once you get the momentum going, that’s great, but it’s a brutal experience in many, many ways. And when you’re done, people tell you “Well, gee, I’m not interested.” “Great, I’m glad I sat down and wrote this!

Magic is aligning itself against oppressive forms of order in many fields. Magic is opposed to a psychiatry and medicine designed to patch up the damaged automaton and plug him back into the system. Instead it would rather that individuals learn to handle their own mental self-defense and treat their bodies with gentler remedies such as herbs. Magic rejects politics as no more than some people’s perverse desire to dominate others. It does well to dissociate itself from this [squabble] and advocates instead personal enlightenment and emancipation, which are the only real safeguards to freedom. Magic is anti-ideological because the main products of ideological solutions are repression and corpses.

In trying to develop the will, the most fatal pitfall is to confuse will with the chauvinism of the ego. Will is not willpower, virility, obstinancy, or hardness. Will is unity of desire.

Philemon: “That is the third point that you must note as essential:
namely; that there is nothing for you to understand.”

Jung: “Well, I must confess that that is new and strange. So
nothing at all about magic can be understood?”

Philemon: “Exactly. Magic happens to be precisely everything that
eludes comprehension.”

Jung: “But then how the devil is one to teach and learn magic?”

Philemon: “Magic is neither to be taught nor learned. It’s foolish that you want to learn magic.”

Jung: “But then magic is nothing but deception.”

Philemon: “Watch out-you have started reasoning again.”

Jung: “It’s difficult to exist without reason.”

Philemon: ”And that is exactly how difficult magic is.”

Jung: “Well, in that case it’s hard work. I conclude that it is an
inescapable condition for the adept that he completely unlearns
his reason.”

Philemon: “I’m afraid that is what it amounts to.”

Jung: “Ye Gods, this is serious.”

Sigils are monograms of thought, for the government of energy (all hereditary crests, monograms, etc., are Sigils and represent the Karmas they govern), relating to Karma; a mathematical means of symbolising desire and giving it form that has the virtue of preventing any thought and association with that particular desire (at the magical time).The desire is thus protected from detection by the Ego, which cannot then restrain or attach the desire to its own transitory images, memories and worries, but allows it free passage to the unconscious.

Man is capable of being, and using, anything which he perceives, for everything which he perceives is in a certain sense a part of his being. He may thus subjugate the whole of the Universe of which he is conscious to his individual will.