Donald Tyson - Serpent of Wisdom: And Other Essays on Western Occultism

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

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Serpent of Wisdom: And Other Essays on Western Occultism 2013 by Donald Tyson.

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First e-book edition 2013

E-book ISBN: 9780738737324

Cover art: Abstract aged paper: iStockphoto.com/Kim Sohee
Snake and magical symbols: Dover Publications

Cover design by Ellen Lawson

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Contents

. Definition of Magic

. The Magic Circle

. The Nature of Spirits

. Serpent of Wisdom

. Familiars

. Vampires, Werewolves, Ghosts, and Demons

. Guerrilla Divination

. Sensory Metaphors

. Order of the Tarot Trumps

. Time and Magic

. The Fairy Godmother

. Black Magic

. The Book of Spirits

. Esoteric Energy

. Spirits Rights: A Manifesto

. The Enochian Apocalypse Working

Introduction

A time of change

We are living in a time of great change. Some might argue that every period in history is a period of change, that change is the only constant, but there is something different about our time. The change is not so much taking place in the external world in the form of technological advancement. That outward form of change has been going on since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and we have become accustomed to it. The present change is internal, and it is taking place within us. Western civilization is questioning the very roots of its existence. The beliefs and convictions that held true for many centuries are currently under assault, not just by intellectuals in the rarefied realm of academia, but by ordinary men and women, who find that they can no longer accept many of the certainties of former generations.

This transformation in attitude shows itself in the rejection of many of our long-established institutions and customs, but nowhere more clearly than in the rejection of mainstream religion. Christians are turning away from the churches in large numbers. Atheism is at an all-time high. The Vatican cannot find enough priests to say mass, and monasteries and nunneries are closing down simply because there are not enough of the faithful to sustain them. People no longer turn automatically to the churches for marriages, christenings, confirmations, and burials. Sunday has become just another day of the week.

The controversial magician Aleister Crowley believed that his text Liber AL vel Legis ( The Book of the Law ), which he received in a psychic dictation from his guardian angel Aiwass in 1904, marked the beginning of the transition between the old astrological Age of Pisces and the new astrological Age of Aquarius. Each of these astrological ages, which are measured by the suns slow movement backwards through a zodiac sign, lasts approximately 2,200 years. The transition from one age to another is not a sharp transition, but a slow evolution that may last for a century or longer. It is said by astrologers that such transitions are always distinguished by chaos, as the old ways give way to the new ways. So, even though Crowley thought that the very beginnings of this transition were in 1904, the change from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius is still taking place.

Crowley associated the old Age of Pisces with Christianity. It was his revelation in The Book of the Law that the transition to the new age would be marked by violent transformation and disruption, as the old ways and old beliefs were cast aside before the new ways and new beliefs had yet been fully formed. Crowley called the new Age of Aquarius the Aeon of Horus, after the Egyptian hawk-headed god of war. The old Age of Pisces he called the Aeon of Osiris, after the Egyptian god of death and rebirth. In his view, both world wars were merely manifestations of the chaotic change predicted in his prophetic Book of the Law .

We dont need to be followers of Crowleys personal cult of Thelema to see that something dramatic is happening to Western civilization. The 20 th century was one of the most warlike in history and saw the introduction of atomic weapons, a method of killing on a mass scale that had never before existed in the entire history of the world. Yet most of the changes during the past century were outward changes. We had the advent of the automobile, the airplane, and space travel, to say nothing of television, the computer, and the Internet.

Since the millennium, that change has become more internalized , as we ourselves change to reject the past, without yet having a clear view of our future. It may have been the Internet, introduced in the final decades of the 20th century, that accelerated this crisis of belief. With instant access to all human knowledge, and instant communication with everyone else in the world, many minds that had previously been asleep began to wake up. They saw the faults and limitations of the old beliefs about spirituality, morality, and social interaction, but they have not yet settled upon a new set of beliefs. The result is a very restless and uncomfortable generation that seeks conviction and spiritual comfort wherever it can find it.

One of the curiosities of our dawning new age is the popularity of the ancient esoteric practices of the West that we call occultism or magic, particularly among young people. Magic is the most conservative of all disciplines. Its modes of practice have not changed in any appreciable way in thousands of years. Yet in this chaotic time of transition between the old age and the new, the occult has offered us an alternative to the dying churches by giving us a structure of spiritual beliefs that is not in immediate and fatal conflict with our modern view of reality.

It really is surprising that magic, the most ancient and primal of all human studies, should be perceived by the young as more modern and more suited to our new century than established religion, yet the great popularity of occult studies testifies to it. The spiritual truths of Hermetic philosophy, alchemy, the Kabbalah, and other esoteric streams nourish the human spirit in ways that the churches, synagogues, and mosques have lately failed to do. The reaction in the West against a rising tide of materialism is not, as might be expected, a return to traditional religion, but rather an experimentation with esoteric philosophies of the same sort that were taught by the Egyptian priests and Greek Neoplatonists.