It is sometimes ignored how what we may call by the name of “cerimonial magick” (tho inspired on renaissance) is but a romantic viewpoint of the Tradition, brought about by romantic orders such as the Golden Dawn, and many others of its likeness, thus, being initiation within them based on logic, moral values and certain routines, a virtual initiation, which is not, in truth, so different from witchcraft, except that witchcraft requires of the practiocioner, usually, that she be acquainted with the irrational and the immoral and also that she may be able to improvise.
Witchcraft has European roots, while magick draws its imaginaries from the oriental mastery over the self and the world therein and there-out, it being practical (as should be expected from Europe) as well as contemplative (oriental) but rational (greek) is but applied-philosophy, as somewhat in relation with the applied-sciences of today’s world. It is meant to separate, both by the expression of love or by the commandments of will, the pshyche from the conditional realms of the physical body, and from this state creating new realities to conduct the physical motions. On another hand, witchcraft, being of a most pagan nature, works the other way (if we are to understand it in respect to methods of divination, spells, and conjurations). It draws the spirit into the body (and all the emotions it keeps and contains) and from the body to the world of form, flesh, pleasure, agony and passion as to give perspective and power from within it, the mind staying as an echo chamber to whatever may come from this relationship and this metamorphosis. Modern witchcraft, tho, is also a spring of romanticism; and the average man cannot understand it any further than that, because the average man, in any case, did not understand romanticism in its fullness yet (it is still, apparently, in development).
Two things are to be said about high (ceremonial – dealing with celestials and symbolism) and low (sorcery or witchcraft – dealing with nature and demons) magick (if we are to admit into our vocabulary the stupidity of this division), that either one or the other must be understood in its primordial and less pragmatic aspects. And virtual initiation is to be, at some point, cleansed: for the only way left for real initiation (all traditional initiates being no more) is by actual contact, fleshly contact (in lack of a better cocept) with the gods or, if so be, the angels: the dissolving of the falsehood that seems to keep us away from the primordial self and the primordial self away from the soul of the world as well from its thousand shapes.
We seek to understand how, by practice and training, we can, somehow, invite this vampire into our bed at night and ask of him supernatural power and knowledge of the immortal self. We have all heard of the witches flight, as seen in the tenth century canon episcopi, where the witches ride upon certain beasts with Diana, and that Diana would then act as their mistress. Should this mean, as doctor Carl Jung would put it, that the consciousness of the witch is projected as a beast, and Diana signifying the impulses of one’s own nature? It means exactly what it says, and there is no other way to understand this at its core, for interpretation holds no other power than the one to interpret, and for this we do not need to meddle in occult affairs, tho esotericism is generally rich in intellectual foreplay and illusion. The same goes for the Bonae Mulieres, a latin term used to discuss the women or female creatures who flew at night and needed to be placated with offerings of food or drinks. These bonae mulieres are reflected in the women that flew to attend the gatherings of the goddess Diana but also encompassed demons such as the strix and the lamia, night flying demon (later a host of demons) that vampiricly preyed on children, both terms used commonly in medieval ages to call witches. Then, what is this nightflight? And do the witches really turn into cats, toads and hares, as well as knowing the goddess Diana face to face? Or is it but a term for oniric traveling experience? Should we think as anthropologists or as true believers? If you want to be a believer just join a religion, and if you want to think as an anthropologist, don’t lose your time with questions of such kind. The one who has not yet been able to tell, free of mistake, dreams from reality, and then utterly crush all the existing barriers between one and the other, so that reality and dream die a permanent death but a new awareness survives, is playing vulgar games.
