Page 4 (part 3)

The second respect in which the interests of the occult student have been considered is, however, of much more importance, though he may not be as ready to admit the suggestion, having regard to all that it implies. Robert Turner, the English translator of the Magical Elements , written, or--more correctly--supposed to be written, by the unfortunate Peter of Abano, describes that treatise as an introduction to "magical vanity," a term which was possibly used in a symbolical or exotic manner, to intimate that most things which concern the phenomena] world are indifferently trivial. Now, the more inward purpose of the present investigation is to place within reach of those persons who are inclined to such a subject the fullest evidence of the futility of Ceremonial Magic as it is found in books, and the fantastic nature of the distinction between White and Black Magic--so far also as the literature of either is concerned. As to the things which are implied within and may lie behind the literature, they are another consideration, about which I will say only at the moment that, judged by the fruits which they have produced, they are not incomparable to the second death beyond the gates of perdition. It would be unbecoming in a writer of my known dedications to deny that there is a Magic which is behind Magic, or that even the occult sanctuaries possess their secrets and mysteries; of these the written ceremonial is held by their self-imputed exponents to be either a debased and scandalous travesty, a trivial and misconstrued application, or, in respect of diluted views, it may be alternatively "as moonlight unto sunlight and as water unto wine." The exponents withhold their warrants; but in the presence or absence of these, it may be as well to say at the beginning that if the secrets and mysteries belong to the powers and wonders of the psychic side, and not to the graces of the spirit, then God is not present in those sanctuaries. Let a mystic assure the occult student that as he, or any one, is dealing herein simply with nauseating follies of the inside world of distraction, so he would be concerned in the alleged schools behind them--supposing that he had the right of entrance--with the same follies carried to the ne plus ultra degree. The texts, for this reason, may be more innocent because they are more ridiculous and have the advantage--for the most part--of being impossible to follow. The statement just made will explain why it is permissible to bring forth from the obscurity of centuries a variety of processes which would be abominable if it could be supposed that they were to be seriously understood. The criticism applies to all the extant Rituals, whatever their pretended claims, whatever their surface distinction. Some are more absurd than others, some are perhaps more iniquitous, but they are all tainted with Black Magic in the same way that every idle word is tainted with the nature of sin. The distinction between White and Black Magic is the distinction between the idle and the evil word. It would, naturally, be unsafe to affirm that all persons making use of the ceremonies in the Rituals up to the point of possibility would fail to obtain results. Perhaps in the majority of cases most of such experiments made in the past were attended with results of a kind. To enter the path of hallucination is likely to insure hallucination, and in the presence of hypnotic, clairvoyant and a thousand kindred facts it would be absurd to suppose that the seering processes of Ancient Magic--which are many--did not produce seership, or that the auto-hypnotic state which much magical ritual would obviously tend to occasion in predisposed persons did not frequently induce it, and not always only in the predisposed. To this extent some of the processes are practical, and to this extent they are dangerous.