I’m trying to understand magick at the level of categories and specializations rather than jumping straight into techniques.
From your perspective, what are the major categories or “lanes” of magick (for example: ceremonial, folk, spirit-based, devotional, chaos, divinatory, etc.), and what is each primarily used for?
Great topic. Having an overview of the field is certainly helpful, and I haven't really seen this discussed much.
Perhaps we could make a little family tree. We start with Hermeticism/Neoplatonism. This is the traditional underpinning for any kind of systematic high magic in the Western world.In a sense, this tradition goes back to Iamblichus, although it was really Agrippa and his contemporaries who turned it into the foundation that we know today. Anything Golden Dawn derived is in this camp, as is anything Tree of Life based. That probably includes Crowley and Thelema, although Crowley did start to blend in some Eastern elements that actually change the nature of what is going on.
Second we have the vast category of "folk magic," which is of course quite diverse, but tends to be rather practical results oriented, and usually focuses on a blend a traditional charms with spirit pacting.
Next we see the introduction of Indic (Buddhist and some Hindu) influenced perspectives, giving rise to paths with an explicitly nondual core. This begins with Crowley, but remains somewhat muddled in Thelema. Cultus Sabbati (Azoetia, etc) is probably the leading example of this around today. AMOOKOS is defunct but was a pretty cool thing, and Mike Magee is still publishing as far as I know.
Finally, we have influences from the African Diasporic religions, which caught people's attention with their rich, potent, and lively sorcerous tradtions that had much meatier traditions to them than the European-based folk magic, which had been reduced to rather whispy strands by modern times.
These are the four parents, which have given rise to any number of children. I can't be exhaustive here, so I'll name just a few that are coming to mind.
Chaos Magic. Sigils and servitors. And, more importantly, a general sense of anarchic freedom to build and tear down systems at will and make magic out of whatever you want. This is really a kind of second foundation for contemporary magical world.
Left Hand Path(s). This tends to be a kind of photographic negative of Hermetic approaches, which preserves Hermeticism's underlying structure while nominally reversing its aim (see for example: working with the qlippoth or the 'nightside' of the Tree of Life), and I'm sure LHPers will justifiably shred me for saying so.
Witchcraft. More of an 'earthy' aesthetic skin for a variety of different philosophical underpinnings. Gardnerian Wicca is basically reskinned Golden Dawn, while the Cultus Sabbati is something like a reskinned Vajrayana. (Ok, I'm oversimplifying here a bit too much, but just to give the general sense.) 'Traditional' Witchcraft is generally Robert Cochrane-derived, who had what I consider the most genuinely eco-centered and animistic view of the bunch, but died young and didn't really leave a fully developed system behind.
What else am I missing? I know there is a ton.
