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Good evening friends.
What I am aiming to do here is to show that, far from having to embrace the post-theosophical new age mentality, the scholastic system of philosophy and its metaphysics already provide a robust account for what magick is, how it works, and the means by which it is to harnessed and understood.
Caution- Philsophical terminology ahead.
Double caution- Aristotle will be deployed.
The age old question rears its head- why is magick exactly? It depends on if we are trying to define it as a substance, as an energy, as a result, or as a cause.
For my part, Magick is the Arte of using the soul itself as a nexus whereby the substantial form of one object may be grafted to the substantial form of another object, granting it a second nature.
Simple way to put it- by meditating on the sun, the soul resonates according to the form of the sun and the arte of magick is transferring this resonance to another object or to a goal.
Now, Aristotle and the other later philosophers of the Middle Ages, the scholastics like Aquinas and Scotus, they taught that when we comprehend an object we are actually contemplating the intelligible form that inhabits that object, the inner essence that shapes matter to make a thing what it is. Interestingly, they also taught that the form of the thing contemplated abides in the soul. The phantasm is the mental image created by the intelligence looking at this resonance.
Take planetary magick for example. When contemplating the literal planet Saturn, the form of Saturn resonates in the soul. The intellect then sees this resonance and creates a mental picture of it, and from there it can transfer it into art- the planet itself or the imagery the planet inspires. Like paintings.
Magick then would be taking that resonance in the soul from contemplating Saturn, letting it build to a desired level, and then through intuitive correspondence creating a symbol to which that resonance is attached. When that symbol is then inscribed on another object, that resonance is transferred to the object with it. In this way the soul serves as a nexus through which form enters from one object and is transferred to another.
What I am aiming to do here is to show that, far from having to embrace the post-theosophical new age mentality, the scholastic system of philosophy and its metaphysics already provide a robust account for what magick is, how it works, and the means by which it is to harnessed and understood.
Caution- Philsophical terminology ahead.
Double caution- Aristotle will be deployed.
The age old question rears its head- why is magick exactly? It depends on if we are trying to define it as a substance, as an energy, as a result, or as a cause.
For my part, Magick is the Arte of using the soul itself as a nexus whereby the substantial form of one object may be grafted to the substantial form of another object, granting it a second nature.
Simple way to put it- by meditating on the sun, the soul resonates according to the form of the sun and the arte of magick is transferring this resonance to another object or to a goal.
Now, Aristotle and the other later philosophers of the Middle Ages, the scholastics like Aquinas and Scotus, they taught that when we comprehend an object we are actually contemplating the intelligible form that inhabits that object, the inner essence that shapes matter to make a thing what it is. Interestingly, they also taught that the form of the thing contemplated abides in the soul. The phantasm is the mental image created by the intelligence looking at this resonance.
Take planetary magick for example. When contemplating the literal planet Saturn, the form of Saturn resonates in the soul. The intellect then sees this resonance and creates a mental picture of it, and from there it can transfer it into art- the planet itself or the imagery the planet inspires. Like paintings.
Magick then would be taking that resonance in the soul from contemplating Saturn, letting it build to a desired level, and then through intuitive correspondence creating a symbol to which that resonance is attached. When that symbol is then inscribed on another object, that resonance is transferred to the object with it. In this way the soul serves as a nexus through which form enters from one object and is transferred to another.