For nearly as long as there have been humans (and before,if you count the evidence of Neanderthal religiomagical activities..see Joseph Campbell’s description of the “cave-bear cult”..), humans have believed there are “unseen forces” at work, affecting, guiding, hindering, and otherwise interfering in human activities…
(I posted this on Darkarena a LONG time ago. I wanted tgo stick it up here and see what the folks here thought. Bear in mind,I make no claims of expertise.Everything here is merely my own personal opinion. )
easily as old as these beliefs, is the belief that these unseen forces can somehow be utilized to improve the individual human’s life. In order to utilize these two forces, two distinctly seperate but closely related and inter-twined schools of thought have arisen, namely, “magic” and “religion”.
“Religion” has held the belief that these forces are far more powerful and intelligent than Man,and therefore,should be placated and worshipped. “Magic” on the other hand, has held that these forces are indeed fallible and manipulatible by Man.The two schools of thought have just as many similiarities as they do differences, and, so, have pretty much been at adversarial odds for, oh, thousands of years now. Magic itself, which has been defined most eloquently by Mr.Aleister Crowley as “The Art and Science of causing Change in Accordance to Will”, and who am I to argue with To Mega Therion himself? For every culture or viewpoint that Man has devised, there are, within that culture or viewpoint, ways to manipulate the forces of both Nature and the forces Beyond Nature.Most of my study has been in Western schools of thought, so, I’ll define a few of the ones I’ve looked into:
Goetia/Daemonolatry-in the past, these were pretty much the worst-of-the-worst, selling one’s soul to the Forces of Darkness in exchange for material goods, wealth, power, etc. Modern day Daemonolators hold a vastly different view,and view the arts as merely working with entities/forces as one would work with human allies. For more info there’s quite a few many sites out there on the subject, but, two of the better ones would be www.tigrah.com and Tezrian’s vault ( http://www.demonolatry.com/vault/ ).
There’s also Necromancy, which, of course, I refer only to the acknowledged expert, ie, http://www.westgatenecromantic.com . (Hi,Leilah!).
Hmn…actually,rather than continue blundering on in my attempts to explain.. here’s some links to various schools of magickal thought…
Thelema (the school of magickal thought created by Aleister Crowley..) http://www.maroney.org/CrowleyIntro/ http://www.scarletwoman.org/smoke/ceremony.htm
The Temple of Set (an initiatory organization that is loosely based around Khemetic/Egyptian magical systems..) http://www.xeper.org
Chaos Magick..(Woohoo,let’s PARTY!) http://www.chaosmatrix.com
This cat has some useful info,also as well: http://members.aol.com/khephres/aolindex.html
Goodness.. I could go on forever… but… well.. There’s no substitute for individual research. The path of the Magician is a rough and thorny road, and there ain’t no guide-posts, really. If I showed you the ways i walked, that wouldn’t be fair to the way you had to walk… so, if any body else would mind pitching in,and helping out with this little primer, I’d be WAY appreciative.