one
The Dogma & Rituals
of Low Magick
(Dogme et ritual de la bas magie)
Were the world understood.
Ye would see it was good.
A dance to a delicate measure.
Aleister Crowley4
I confess that the title of this chapter was intended to be a gentle poke at the great nineteenth-century esotericist, Eliphas Lévi, and his classic work, The Dogma & Rituals of High Magic.5 Please don’t assume that my irreverent little presumption is in any way an attempt on my part to compare my own work with Lévi’s immortal text. Indeed, they are as different as day and night—or should I say high and low? (See how easily I have given myself a segue.)
I feel the necessity to establish here at the outset what I mean by the words “high magick” and “low magick.” To be perfectly frank I’ve become very uncomfortable with both terms. They are each, in my opinion, universally misunderstood, misused, misapplied, misrepresented, and misinterpreted.
Some ceremonial magicians label their craft high magick to haughtily distinguish their art from the low magick of witchcraft. Conversely, some witches and Neopagans use the term sarcastically to brand ceremonial magicians and their ilk as snobs. Practical Qabalists, who presume their studies to be the only true high magick, use the terms to distance themselves from both ceremonial magicians and witches.
There are others who simply define low magick as being all things nature-based (outdoor magick), as opposed to ceremonial magick, à la the formal rituals of the Golden Dawn6 or Aleister Crowley7 (indoor magick). Here the terms low and high are diplomatically construed by both schools as being morally neutral; the two merely differing in character and application, and appealing to different spiritual personalities and tastes. Here, both the high and the low magician are relatively happy in their own worlds performing their own brand of magick.
There are many others, though, who define the highness and lowness of magick in ways that go way beyond discussing the differences between working in a lodge room temple or outside in a grove. For these people, “high magick” refers to a formal process of effecting change in one’s environment by enlisting the aid of God and a heavenly hierarchy of good archangels, angels, intelligences, and spirits; and “low magick” refers to a formal process of effecting change by enlisting the aid of the devil (or devils), fallen angels, and infernal evil spirits and demons.
Obviously, in order to seriously consider the virtues of this perspective, a person must first be committed to a very particular (some might say “draconian”) view of spiritual reality—one that is supported (or so the argument goes) by the scriptures and doctrines of the Christian, Moslem, or Jewish religions. For convenience sake, I will henceforth collectively (and respectfully) refer to these Bible-based religions by a term I coined just for conversations such as this. The word is:
“Chrislemew.”8
One popular interpretation of these doctrines posits that humans are caught in the middle of a perpetual war between the armies of an absolutely good God in heaven above, and the minions of an absolutely evil devil in hell below. For reasons known only to God, the devil and his team have been placed in charge of human life on earth. Furthermore, according to this theory, God has especially charged the devil with the duty of tempting and tormenting human beings—perpetually prodding us to rebel against a curiously complex catalogue of commandments and divinely decreed roster of rules, irrational beliefs, and blindly obedient behavior that (if we follow the program faithfully) might9 earn for us after death a ticket to eternal happiness in heaven with God and his good angels.
This parochial and highly polarized way of looking at things makes everything pretty simple. God is good. The devil is bad. Angels are good. Demons are bad. Heavenly stuff is high. Infernal stuff is low. For those who subscribe to the Chrislemew worldview, the choice of whether to pursue the path of high or low magick is a no-brainer. After all, who in their right mind would prefer to dabble with dangerous and deceitful evil demons from hell when instead one can safely seek the heavenly aid of the wholesome and well-behaved good angels of God Almighty?
From his high horse of spiritual piety, the high magician looks down upon low magicians who, in order to accomplish their nefarious ends, stand ready and willing to proffer their reprobate souls to the evil spirits in exchange for the fleeting power to be naughty—to harm an enemy, bewitch a neighbor’s cow, or bed an otherwise unwilling partner.
There are many people in the world today (magicians and non-magicians alike) who believe quite literally that the above arrangement is the only spiritual game plan in town. It is certainly their right to do so; after all, for many of us this God/devil, heaven/hell, angel/demon morality play is the familiar foundation upon which the perversely comfortable “faith of our fathers” was built.
While I certainly do not wish to offend anyone’s sincere spiritual beliefs (and I hold my hand up and swear, “Some of my best friends are Chrislemews!”), I must, however, be honest. I do not believe in such an all-good anthropomorphic god. Neither do I believe in an all-evil anthropomorphic devil. I don’t believe in a heaven where I’ll be rewarded for believing correctly or a hell where I’ll be punished for my unbelief. In fact, I believe there is something terribly wrong and spiritually toxic with this entire picture—dangerously and tragically wrong—a wrongness that has plagued the Western psyche for millennia; a primitive and superstitious phantasm of the mind; a nightmare that has infected the human soul with the virus of fear and self-loathing; a cancerous curse that demands that every man, woman, and child surrender to the great lie that would make us believe that our very humanness makes us unclean and damned in the eyes of a wrathful deity.
Does my rejection of a too-literal
