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Thanks for the clarification, that is what I more or less thought. More about Papus and the French school of Occultism in a bit, first we need a little review general history. One of the important things to bear in mind with neo-magical theory is the extent to which the beginnings of the magical revival corresponded to the development of Romanticism. Romanticism itself has beginnings as early as the late Eighteenth Century, in Philosophy with Rousseau and in the arts and literature with the Sturm and Drang movement. Toward the end of the Eighteenth Century these movements, which were more rebellions against the restraint of neo-classicism became fused with a growing dissatisfaction with the “scientific materialism” being loudly put forward by the Evangelical Atheists of “D'Holbach's Coterie”. Circa 1800 a group of philosophical thinkers hijacked Kant's philosophy and basically created a movement that conflated reason and logical thinking with materialism and encouraged both anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism, though at the same time creating a type of approach to spiritual phenomena which I call “spiritual empiricism”, which is in some ways an imitation of “scientific empiricism”. It is under the Aegis of Romanticism and its descendants that the Magical Revival and the "Journey to the East” were undertaken, and the whole of modern “mysticism and magic” is more or less tinged by Romanticism, which of course includes the Dao Bums. At least a little familiarity with Romanticism is a good thing, you may even see aspects of yourself there. This cite is a good beginning point because it separates out important themes that are fundamental to Romanticism: Thematic Analysis of Romanticism The Wikipedia article covers this in more detail, but having the thematic guide of the previous site is useful: Romanticism Article on Wikipedia The intellectual, artistic, social and spiritual descendants of Romanticism are a diverse bunch, with Nazi and Hippies being distant cousins, just like Jerry Lee Lewis and Jimmy Swaggart are cousins, though you couldn't tell it from anything other then their family trees. As the Nineteenth Century developed there was a tendency, following the influence of Hegel, to want to reconcile opposites, thus was born the wish to reconcile magic and mysticism with science. This tendency has already been observed in the wish to model older magic on mesmerism, but is also alive today, though mesmerism plays little part, having been replaced by Jungian psychology. In my own opinion magic has not benefited by these attempts to reconcile it with science, in part because they have not understood magic on its own terms, nor did they have the view of science that we have today. Generally these attempts have resulted in a diminution of magic as the "Archetypes in the Mind of God" have become the mere archetypes of the collective unconscious. The extreme was reached a little after 1900 when in the mind of one man, magic became mere neurology. That man's name was Edward Alexander Crowley, whose non de plume, was Aleister Crowley. I will cover more about him and the French schools in the next few posts. Edit: Spelling

I am sorry to be so long in posting more here, but both the correspondent I mentioned and myself have been rather busy and we have been talking about meta-issues related to scientific method applied to these esoteric matters and there has not been much of interest about Mathematical Magic and magic squares, however in the process I was reminded of this post which has some interesting things to say and shows at least one example from Chinese Astrology in which a whole system of Astrology is derived from the mathematics of the 3x3 magic square which is so fundamental to Chinese Esoteric Cosmology: I was replying to one of our members who is fond of asking questions, some very good and others, such as the ones he was asking in this case, not very edifying. The thread ended at this point and I have not had time to return to the topic until now, and the reason why I bring it up now is that, had I continued with the above thread, I would have cited this Yi Jing astrology as just such an example of the application of the formal system embodied in the he/luo diagrams. The technique of the astrology is hardly the type used to solve a set of linear equations, being simple arithmetic, but it does show that interesting and useful information lies in the most unexpected places and only waits for the right analytic system to bring it shining forth. Occasionally there is talk on the Tao Bums about Sacred Geometry, Sacred Linear Algebra anyone? Since you had relocate the thread which I reference in the above quote, I thought pulling this up would be useful and interesting as illustrating one application. Most of my work would take us well outside the area of purely Daoist Magic and is highly technical anyway, but basically it is possible to create magic squares of just about any size and to represent just about any complex magical system on them. Regarding uses within Daoist Magic, years ago I took the material in Saso and Lagerway (a less well known academic authority on Daoist ritual who covers much the same ground) and let my fingers do the walking, creating a basis for Daoist ritual in which one has 'the whole world', if not exactly in one's hand, at least on one's fingers. While I was reading some of Jerry Alan Johnson's material years later, I was amused to discover that this is a Maoshan Thunder Magic technique. The above touches on several interesting aspects drawn from Chinese Tradition and the subsequent content of the thread, albeit short clarifies them to some extent and is worth a quick read.

Even though I am very busy, I am going to take a little time for a short post here. To understand part of these issues you need to understand Aristotle's treatment of causality, because that is what this thread is all about, causality, and from Hellenistic times to 1700, the default theory of causality among the educated was Aristotle's Four Causes. That is why I made a special thread about them in my posts about Agrippa here: Aristotle's Four Causes in Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy and attempted to show their usefulness in the understanding of an important aspect of magical tradition, that of "occult virtues", here: Occult Virtues as formal causes in occult philosophy Which is why this bears repeating here: Rituals also have "occult virtues", as systems of representation with a well formed logical structure. This is an aspect of rituals that is completely lost in modern magic. In thinking about causality in magic in Aristotelian terms, the magician and his training become an efficient cause, but also the whole root of his ability to do magic is the "occult virtue" of his "soul" as a microcosm and its reflection in the macrocosm. The occult virtues of natural things, of times and places and yes, even of ritual and verbal formulae, are the result of formal systems as the expression of the the Platonic "ideas" existing in the "archetypal" world, and magic becomes very much the study of the formal properties of such systems, whether expressed in Natural, Astrological, or Ceremonial magic. As for egregores, I am familiar with its origin in fiction, and the details of how it became used in magic are not important, but if I recall correctly Levi used the term, but it had certainly become a technical term by 1900. I spent a about year of intense study, beginning in the summer of 1968, with the most complete book of theory on them in English, Mouni Sadhu's, The Tarot, so I certainly know about them and their use and construction, but the whole theory and practice is little understood these days either. While my study of Sadhu's book was before I read Agrippa, what I learned from Sadhu can definitely be assimilated into that framework and even benefits from it. This is why I said here: In regard to Roman Catholic sacraments, while Aristotle's four causes contributed to the discussion of them, at least to believers their efficacy has to be assigned, not to anything magical, but the grace of God manifest through the covenant with "the Church". That said the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation is probably the most interesting interpretation of the Eucharist among the Christian sects from an esoteric and magical point of view. As I said I am busy and I don't have much time right now to elaborate on any of the above.

There is nothing particularly new or bold about this idea. Its precursor are the model's of magic rooted in Mesmerism such as Joseph Ennemoser puts forward in this early Nineteenth Century book: The History of Magic (This is only to Volume One only) Purely hypnotic interpretations of magic appeared very early and even A. E. Waite puts forward the idea in his Book of Ceremonial Magic ("Concerning the Mirror of Solomon", p. 318, University Books, 1961) over a hundred years ago. Carroll Runyon has made it, and Jungian psychology (which you have brought up in other posts) the cornerstone of his version of magic in his Church of Hermetic Science. Download a copy of an article of his that appeared in Llewellyn Publication's magazine in the late 1970s here: Magick and Hypnosis I don't doubt that magic is psychology, but it is a question of whose psychology. Personally, I prefer Plotinus' psychology: Plotinus on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to Jungian or any reductionist psychology, derived from the Seventeenth Century revival of Epicureanism and based on unexamined presuppositions deriving from Nineteenth Century materialism. As far as I am concerned Jung is a confused thinker caught between Nineteenth Century materialism and Romanticism. This confusion, often not clearly defined, is one of the characteristics of a large spectrum of Western thinking from the mid-Nineteenth Century to the present. And I also prefer the middle Platonist use of the term Archetype, which they originated as a reference to Plato's ideas: A good introduction to Middle Platonism on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy to Jung's also. Oh, and to make it clear, I don't particularly like Runyon's version of magic either. I don't have more time to devote to this, having worked these issues out a long time ago. I have posted upon these issues here on the Dao Bums many times and anyone can use the search function to find these posts, but I hope that this short discussion is helpful to you and anyone else who may read this thread. Edit: Added link directing to Wikipedia page to "Plato's ideas" above.

Eliphas Levi wrote the "Gospel" version of neo-magic an interpretation of the Western Magical Tradition that began in the late Eighteenth Century and continued to the present. It's interpretive model is Mesmerism and it reinterprets the whole of magic within this framework. Early examples include Francis Barrett's The Magus, which while quoting from such sources as Agrippa, starts to cite Seventeenth Century "magnetical" treatises also. To get a good idea of the background a read of Joseph Ennemoser's The History of Magic, is essential as one will find all of the theory and the reinterpretation of the magical tradition in its terms both outlined and copiously detailed there. Once you understand this relation every aspect of the modern tradition of magic becomes clear. Naturally enough I learned neo-magic as a teenager in the 1960s, it was all that was available and is still in its many guises, dominant, but it was thinking about those experiences and more, such as interesting experiences in alchemical laboratories and reviewing the literature, I could not remain satisfied with it, which is why I undertook in the early 70s the historical and other literary research which lead me outside that paradigm and to far more fruitful and interesting models of magic. Levi? Except from a historical point of view, largely a waste of time.

I went to the site tinyatdragon.com and it confirmed what I thought, that it is: There was a great deal of activity related to his teacher, Mak Tin Si, and Chi in Nature, when I started on Dao Bums nine years ago. So searching under Mak Tin Si, and Chi in Nature would be the way to research this. I also seem to remember that this fellow, who seems to be in charge of teaching magic now, posted in the past year or so on Dao Bums to invite people to learn Daoist magic with him. I don't think he got much of a response, as really not many here are interested in Daoist magic to begin with, though there are a small number of Dao Bums that are. As a forum, the Dao Bums has no opinion about this group, we only post the opinions and experiences of our members about it. Our members opinions have varied, but if you follow the link in the post of mine that I quoted, you can get an overview, and more of our members may weigh in here about them. I did some research on their site when I first joined here, and as far as I can tell they do not represent a lineal descent from a specific school, but that the founders do represent some authentic aspects of Chinese magical tradition, and that they believe they were authorized in visions by the highest level of the Daoist Pantheon to teach. I would suggest a lot of "due diligence" in regard to any association with them, but that is my personal opinion as a person with a good familiarity with Daoist Ritual and magic, and should not be confused with any official position of the Dao Bums, even though I am a moderator here. As I have said the Dao Bums does not have an official position on this school. I hope other members who remember past interactions with this group will join in with the discussion. ZYD

As far as I am concerned you have only a few data points, nothing that I would call an outline of my 'path'. You may be referring to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn, a book which I read in the mid 1970s, though I was interested in the history, method and epistemological structure of science since my teens and in particular how they impacted my interest in magic. At the very least you are referring to some work influenced by his work. What seems to me to be the best overview of Thomas Kuhn can be found here: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Thomas Kuhn I am afraid that I took the notion of 'the method of science' far more seriously than little Eddie Alexander ever did. Receiving a revelation from a praeter-human intelligence and founding a magical/religious cult around a 'Book of the Law', is not my idea of what scientific method is all about and frankly, I didn't care about the aim of religion part at all. It is popular because of little Eddie Alexander's Goetia edition, a work which rips it out of a carefully constructed context, creates a context in which it is primitive neuro-anatomy, and by making it a means self-development, implicitly puts it close to the beginning of training. Well, you did not specify it as being for advanced practitioners, or even intermediate ones, but seemed only interested in defending it as a practice in general. That the 'Initiated interpretation of Ceremonial Magic' has Waite in mind is illustrated by his name being mentioned specifically in the discussion of the powers of the spirit Cimieries, point two, 'the destruction of enemies', in a parenthetical comment, Waite is pointedly upbraided for misunderstanding that 'the destruction of enemies' is a blind for a sublime truth, though why gaining compassion to let go of animosity should be hidden under 'the destruction of enemies' is a mystery of too high a level for me, and then told that 'he who sees muck is muck'. As for Waite's negative attitude, there is abundant evidence in his writings and as Leslie Shepard notes in his introduction to the University Press edition of Waite's The Book of Ceremonial Magic, Waite '. . . looks upon Ceremonial Magic as not only futile, but denies any real distinction between white and black magic and considers it all vain and wicked.' This book was a later version (1913) of Waite's The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts, Crowley was probably upset by this book, published in 1898. By the way, as a matter of passing interest, I bought my copies of Waite's Book of Ceremonial Magic and Crowley's Magick in Theory and Practice within a week of each other in the summer of 1963, when I was twelve years old: I must assume that you are referring to Agrippa's Three Books here: With all due respect, if you are referring to the idea that Agrippa and the classical tradition is dated, your posts have not shown me any indication that you have the necessary background to make an informed judgment in the matter. In my earlier post, I should have said that Agrippa should be interpreted within the context of Platonism as represented in the works of Plato, and yes, Aristotle too, since he contributed ideas which the MIddle Platonists assimilated, Plotinus, Iamblichus Proclus and others, as anyone reading it in Agrippa's time would have done. Read in this context Agrippa absolutely delivers what he says he will: I adopted Platonism as a meta-paradigm circa 1980 for reasons related to what already amounted to many years of work and research into history and philosophy of science and the history of Roman Catholic and Protestant Christianity, Qabalah, Hermeticism, Hellenistic Philosophy and yes, even shamanism, as part of my background research for understanding the real historical context in which magic should be interpreted. After over thirty years of fruitful use of it, I see no reason to consider it dated in anyway. It is still a superior approach to anything of which I am aware and I am aware of a lot more than I get the impression you think I am. Most discussion about inward and outward are still framed in the mistaken notions of Descarte and Locke. Ideas which lead necessarily to Berkeley and Hume, 'enlightenment' materialism, Kant and the Romanitic reaction against materialism. In short to the mess in which we find ourselves now. The greatest clarity I found in this matter is in the Platonists. Buddhists analysis is flawed by the necessity to defend certain doctrines at all costs. You must be referring to yourself and your OTO buddies. If only Crowley had lived up to this 'exalted sentiment' in regard to The Book of the Law, maybe he could be a favorite of mine too.

In my previous post I intended to show that there was no rigid relationship between magical instruments or weapons, and any of the elements, rather these instruments are symbolic representations which, in traditional magical theory at least, had a deeper relation which might be called "resonance" with the represented elements or other power, and was more than that of mere suggestion, as modern interpretations would maintain. However, I left some matters insufficiently developed and that bothered me to the point that I resolved to write something to clarify this by further examining the nature of both fire itself and magical authority and how they relate. I worked out the outline and sources, but then became too busy to put them into a coherent form, this post and my next one will deal with these matters before returning to the question of the polarity of left and right in Chinese and Western magic. In volume II of The Hermetic Museum, in the second part of Michael Sendivogius' "The New Chemical Light, Concerning Sulphur", is a treatment of the four elements, and while I read many such treatments of the four elements back in the Seventies, this one stands out in my mind and was very influential to my later thinking, as I suspect it may have been to the founders of the Golden Dawn, and very likely influenced A. E. Waite's treatment of the Kings as seated on a throne, since Waite was definitely aware of the text, the following being his translation from the Latin. On pages 137-38 we find the following discussion of Fire: "out of fire of an inferior purity were created the stars" In my previous post I mentioned that the Golden Dawn adepts Lotus Wand was related to the Zodiac, since the Zodiac consists of stars which are created of fire, this is a further link between the Wand and Fire. "and of it is fashioned the vital rational soul, which distinguishes man from all other animals, and makes him like God. This rational soul <138> was divinely infused into his vital spirit by God, and entitles him to be regarded as a microcosm, or small world by himself" This brings us to the notion of what I described as "magical authority", and in the Abrahamic strand of the Western Tradition, magical authority is derived from the human resemblance to God, while after the fall it is dormant, like fire in a flint, but can be stirred to action through the appropriate procedures. As noted above I will talk more about this magical Authority in my next post. Here is an interesting quote from Alexander Wilder's translation of Iamblichus seminal work on Theurgy, usually referred to in its Latin title De Mysteriis, On the Mysteries: All of which points to the ancient notion of the sacrality of fire in both Abrahamic and Pagan traditions. With this background it is no wonder that in the initiatory rituals of the Golden Dawn, the officer of Water says, "I purify thee with water", and the officer of Fire says, "I consecrate thee with fire", and thus to the initiate is revealed, right at the very beginning and repeated over and over again, one of the most important secrets of practical magic, whether he or she picks up on it and realizes how to use it in practice is another matter. In the above discussion I implied some of the traditional relationship between fire and and magical authority, which could be the basis of a magic wand as a scepter and representation of the magician's authority, in my next post, which will follow shortly, I will examine the notion of magical authority itself. ZYD Edit: Fixed a problem with line spacing. Edit: Changed an wrong "of" to a correct "or" in the first paragraph.

You have two big things working against you here, one from the Chinese side and one from the English, then there are the small ones. First of all for your Chinese you are giving what looks like unaccented Pinyin and they could mean many things, second of all from the English, you are talking about concepts which in some senses do not translate well, theurgic being one of them. Here is a place where you can play around with these ideas: MDBG online Chinese-English dictionary I use it all of the time, but I usually have a better idea of what I am looking for than you seem to do. For example "wu", this is usually shamanism or witchcraft, at best sorcery, and would have nothing to do with anything theurgic. If you enter magic you get a lot of words that include the character for "mo", which can mean devil or magic, and is more used for sorcery and "black" magic than for theurgy. The Chinese "shengong" can be translated as "god cultivation", and could be used to mean "white magic" and might do as a translation for Theurgy, but the closest thing to a Theurgists in practice would be a Daoshi, or Daoist Priest, such as Daoist Master Chuang, about whom you say you are reading in your introductory post. When you mention Jen as "accumulation of Merit", it seems like you may be using the old school Cantonese for the Pinyin "Ren", usually translated as humaneness or benevolence, but "accumulation of merit" also sounds more Buddhist, and "Jen" could mean any one of several things. I am just posting to let you know that answering your question may not be easy, even for someone fluent in Chinese. Just as background, I have a long term familiarity with the theory and practice, of the Western esoteric tradition, and a fair to good knowledge of Chinese Esoteric traditions, but my Chinese language is nearly nonexistent. I don't have much time to post today which is why I haven't posted characters for any of the words I mentioned above, but if you are interested in more information about what is available in English I can give you some advice. ZYD

This effect is a main part of why I teach people magic through drawing and all of magic stems from a generalization and extension of this effect. What is a drawing, it is a representation of something. What is a talisman or a symbol, it is a representation of something. What is a ritual, it is a representation of something. And what is the world in which we live, move and have our being, in the Platonic perspective on which such magic as that of Agrippa is based, it is a representation of of "the mind of God", a phrase which I use hesitantly, but is more likely to convey the idea then more technical formulations. To connect with the creative power of art, is to connect with the creative power of the universe. This level of concentration is not necessary to practice magic, but you already know that. You can probably already do most of Winger talks about, you just need to extend it. However it is useful to get better control of the mind. The brain doesn't like concentrating on one thing which is why your simple shapes go "wacko", it just takes time to learn that control and for you there may be better methods to achieve it, too many for me to give details now. Unseen_Abilities posted this while I was working on the above: A sigil is just a representation of something, Agrippa talks about them. They entered modern magic as a separate technique largely through the work of Austin Osman Spare as popularized by Kenneth Grant and others. Demystifying magic is great and stripping it down is good as long as one really knows what can be stripped away and what should be left in place. Just how simple it can be can be seen from this from Agrippa's Third book of Occult Philosophy: I quote this because there is a misapprehension among modern magicians that older magic is full of long winded and unnecessary rituals. While holding fast to a single technique many babies have been tossed out with the bath water.

I had been studying what I could of Cornelius Agrippa's Occult Philosophy since the summer of 1972, and reading what, at the time, was the standard literature on Renaissance magic and occult practices, and indirectly acquiring something of a vague understanding of Plato and what is usually referred to as Neo-Platonism. Sometime in around 1976, 1977 at the latest, I had a curious idea, it occurred to me that within the context of what I understood of Platonism, Agrippa's Occult Philosophy could be understood as a rational system of magic. This came as a surprise to me, since at the time I accepted the unquestioned post romanticist meme that all mysticism and magic was irrational, it not anti-rational. Now what I mean by rational is this, it seemed to me that given a set of premises derivable from Platonic doctrine as I, admittedly superficially, understood it at the time, one could work out an equivalent to Euclid's Geometry, in which all of the “laws” of magic as Agrippa wrote about it, and apparently understood it, could be derived from these “first principles” as a series of theorems and corollaries, etc. This idea fascinated me as I came to think of magic as possibly being a type of “Platonic” engineering, and I decided to undertake a study of Platonism to see if in point of fact this was the case. This was a surprising turn bearing in mind how negative my earlier evaluation of Plato, as I have noted elsewhere on the Tao Bums, in my teens was, but since I had been as much a teenage science nerd as magic nerd, a rare combination in the mid-Sixties, I found the idea irresistible and started on a study into Plato and Neo-Platonism that was to last several years, and one which much to my surprise, had very fruitful results. As part of this study I read a lot of secondary literature on both Plato and Neo-Platonism before finally starting to read the dialogues themselves. Nothing in the secondary literature really prepared me for all the details of the dialogues themselves, many of which were very interesting from an esoteric point of view, but I will get to that later in this series. At a certain point I wanted to organize the dialogues, there are a lot of them and not finding the categories in the secondary literature really convincing or useful, I decided to look at them in a way that I had used for a long time and which I call “functionalism”, the idea being, assuming that there is an end in view, how would any particular dialogue help to achieve that end. Based on everything that I had read it seemed reasonable that Plato intended to found a school, so that was my basic criteria, but I also looked at the social conditions of ancient Athens to get some idea of what this would entail, which is why awhile ago I said: Apeiron&Peiron talks about publication in ancient Athens Which refers to this: Though there are also some other interesting points in his post, which I hope to be able to address at another time. In a bit I will quote from one of my little essays “An Intellible Order of the Dialogues”, which I wrote almost thirty years ago, giving my own classification of Plato's dialogues, but first we need to examine teaching in Athens in Plato's lifetime. At this time in Athens being a teacher was pretty much a do it yourself thing, so that Plato would have had to start from the bottom up, not merely working out a curriculum, but also writing the “textbooks”, because at the time there basically were none. Books were hand written scrolls, written either by oneself or a professional scribe, and in either case were expensive and time consuming items, which few people could afford, thus “publication” basically meant public reading. Interestingly a fair number of the dialogues are written in narrative format and thus would probably be read by one person, on the other had some are written more like plays with parts and may represent a point at which Plato had been successful enough that they were performed by groups of students at Plato's academy. Now, what types of things would Plato have to write? Well, he would have to write his own advertising. Interestingly there is even a Greek name for this, protreptic, or exhortation, meaning an exhortation to the study of philosophy and several examples of this exist from antiquity. So here is my short introduction and discussion of those dialogues that I considered protreptic: Plato gives us a little bit of an answer here in the Gorgias. Socrates is doing his usual annoying questions routine, to a rather tough customer, Callicles: Callicles is about to erupt into a fit of extreme umbrage over these "niggling" questions, but if there is anyone who deserves "Death by Niggling", it is surely Callicles, but why the nigggling questions in the first place? Hint, it all has to do with the Lesser and Greater Mysteries and the purification of the Soul, with which we will deal shortly.

Since Josh is interested in weather magic he might find this post of mine from many years ago interesting: Note the simplicity of the approach, no great ceremonies, no dressing up in fancy robes and waving painted sticks in the air. This chapter introduces one of the most important concepts of Classical magic, one that separates the masters from the apprentices. I leave it to those who are interested to look it up and make their own decision. Just about everyone who reads this chapter is going to think it nonsense and superstition, but it's not, it's one of the great keys. But any one is free to consider it a 'philosophical superstition' if they want. That would be their loss not mine. This is the difference between what a great Adept, a man of sublime spiritual attainments can do, and beginners who need to dress up in robes and wave painted sticks in the air. Most practitioners are somewhere in between, but especially these days are found closer to the bottom, much closer. I hope that the example is helpful. ZYD

My understanding is that eclipses are generally not viewed as positive in Chinese Astrology, just as they are viewed as potentially bad in Western Astrology. Professor Jerry Alan Johnson says in one of his books on Daoist Magic that while eclipses are used a lot for Chinese "black" magic, practitioners of Chinese white magic don't do magic during eclipse periods at all. I could find the reference if anyone is interested. I found this interesting because it mirrors the traditional Western magical attitude. While I have not looked at this eclipse in detail from the view of mundane astrology, I have been rather concerned about its possible effects on the U.S., among other things the eclipse conjuncts President Trump's ascendant degree and eclipses were associated with averse effects on government and heads of state. As I recall the break up of the Soviet Union happened under a difficult eclipse pattern that started six months before, so it wasn't as complete a surprise to me as it was to just about everyone else.

Here is an example of reframing a standard time wasting question from the Scientific Proof that Magic Works(!) Thread. In it I invert the question and show that magic proves science: Since Magic in Agippa's sense is fundamentally tied to a world-view based on Aristotle's forms, the interpretation of physics in terms of Aristotle's forms, puts them on the same level as Aprippa's explanation of magic, thus magic is the proof of science. QED. The above discussion is somewhat tongue in cheek, but the fundamental thinking is correct. It was my realization that modern science could be reframed in a Platonic world-view circa 1980, that helped me to adopt Platonism as a fundamental perspective, my 'working model' of reality you might say. For an interesting view of a thoroughly Platonized universe see: Max Tegmark on Wikipedia Who in turn came up with this silly nonsense: Yep, the universe may be a computable function, but it may take a quantum computer to do it. (On Wikipedia) Well, the quantum computer is my idea not Tegmark's, I first came up with it about 2000 in my earliest investigation of the idea of Quantum Computing, though in the end I came to the conclusion that consciousness is not a computable function and that Mathematics is a structure embedded, in a sense, in consciousness by which consciousness becomes aware of itself. Or something like that. We are getting into some pretty deep stuff here, though I think it is ultimately compatible with a Platonic worldview. This is part of what I mean by thinking about science and magic in a different way. To go back to this: western rationalism seems to perfectly account for materialism and mechanics; What exactly does Western Rationalism have to do with the Seventeenth Century revival of Epicureanism? it is easy for one to overlook or unconsciously take for granted the most basic, most foundational assumptions made — through nurture, culture and education This is exactly the point made by E. A. Burtt in his book The Metphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science which I referenced in this post: What is hardest to shake is the idea that the objective world is the 'real real' and all else is imagination (in the weak sense) all our thoughts, feelings and so on just phantasms or noise in the information stream of dull facts: This is exactly what I have described as 'Closet Cartesianism' and yes it is hard to shake off and for reasons that I have mentioned, it is built into the language of object and subject. One needs to start to speak and think of the world differently. I became acutely aware of these problems in the late Seventies and early Eighties, the solution which I adopted at the time was to adopt Platonism as my working model of reality. This decision had many benefits, but I cannot go into them in detail here. While I wasn't to read the book from which the following excerpt is taken until circa 2000, I was very familiar with the ideas from other works: The Book was written and published in the late 1920s, but is still considered to be sound history of science. The worldview which Newton: 'carried to a more influential position a movement already well advanced', was basically a worldview of extended substances which were 'objects (hence 'objective') to which the senses were subject (hence subjective), this worldview was created largely by the work of Descartes and Locke. Burtt's book is available online and may be accessed from the link above. The Epicurean materialism that became a fundamental part of post Seventeenth Century Scientific thinking, was never the subject of Rational investigation, rather it became a set of unexamined presuppositions to Western scientific thought and continues to ride upon the prestige of science in a way that makes the Whore of Babylon and her Beast seem the merest of pretenders by comparison. Both Relativity and Quantum Mechanics can rightly be viewed as the working out of a Reductio ad Absudum refutation of materialism, thought people keep on holding on to it as if it were in itself rational. Far from it, convincing counter arguments existed from Plato and Aristotle onward, which is why the real history of Western Rationalism was not based on materialism, but on its early refutation. Edit: Bolded phrase "western rationalism seems to perfectly account for materialism and mechanics" and copied it out, added (Emphasis mine, ZYD) in quote.

Some misguided member of the Dao Bums "Silent Majority" was kind enough to PM me allowing as how he thought I was such a clever fellow for my cursory comments on divination and information theory and other aspects of high mathematics as it might be applied to this weird spooky stuff and wanted to learn more. Foolishly I said, "happy to oblige as long as I get your first born child for ghoulish experiments." Well, bottom line, said person did not go for that deal, but after some haggling I did manage to get approval for the Idea of posting part of our exchange for the benefit of others as long as it did not betray his true identity, miffed but unbroken, I agreed and what is posted below is the first fruit of our discussion, which is mostly some references to other threads which people who have been following my wild ramblings will already be embarrassed enough to admit they have already read, but for those new to my posts they may prove useful: You have to understand that I am not talking about merely conceptual and logical properties, the verbal and numerical representations of the actual Formal System, but rather to Formal Causes in the sense of Aristotle and a review of this thread might be useful: Agrippa and Aristotle the Aristotelian Background of the Occult Philosophy I have humorously dealt with aspects of this here: Since Magic in Agippa's sense is fundamentally tied to a world-view based on Aristotle's forms, the interpretation of physics in terms of Aristotle's forms, puts them on the same level as Aprippa's explanation of magic, thus magic is the proof of science. QED. (Emphasis added, ZYD) Thus, I see gravity and electromagnetism not merely as mathematical models of physical phenomena, but rather as Substantial Forms which manifest in all gravitational and electromagnetic phenomena and have received mathematical form as part of the explication of their properties. To put this in terms of astrology for example, both as divination and magic, Mercury is a Substantial Form that includes both the Form of Gravity and the Form of Electricity, but also consists of an "Information ordering" Form-al property and it is this "information ordering" form which is the object of Astrology and also by extension Astrological magic. Part of the traditional framework is explained here: Agrippa's Doctrine of Occult Virtues Traditionally the "Information Ordering" properties of substances were referred to as "soul". Keeping the above in mind will make what otherwise seems mere "talk" and "mental conceptualization" something of much greater significance. Please bear in mind that even the reference to this person by the masculine pronoun "he" is not intended to confer any information about this person, but is just a convenience. He has requested time to review the posts that I have linked above and some here may wish to do the same. More as our correspondence progresses and yes, I am still busy and will have to stop this if it gets too demanding on my time, but I do like to keep the illusion that I really am generous with the fruit of my labors alive, in so far as possible. Edit: I hate the way the editor here ignores my wishes and arbitrarily adds or subtracts line spacing as it sees fit. I have a certain way that I want my posts to appear and I sometimes have to make adjustments, in the process one of the links at the top of a quote got seriously messed up in appearance, oddly enough it still worked, but I have tried to correct its appearance. I hope that has worked, but if not ignore its deformed appearance and try it anyway. Edit: I added "and wanted to learn more" in the first paragraph above, the above didn't quite make sense without it, not that it makes much sense anyway.

OldGreen, thank you for your appreciation. Crowley has not been a major object of interest for several decades. He has some interesting things to say, but I came to the conclusion that the best of the Beast was assimilated by Regardie and well used in his works and adaptation of the teachings of the Golden Dawn. Based on my study of Crowley I would say that he never returned to following the original method of Abramelin, but instead chose to employ a version of an ancient invocation taken from the Harris papyrus and first used by him in print as "the preliminary invocation of the Goetia" in his publication of the first book of the Lemegaton in 1903. He subsequently wrote study of it which was titled Liber CCCLXV. On page 226 of Magick in Theory and Practice he describes if as the most potent invocation extant and used "by the Master himself in his attainment". He there refers the reader to the complete text and his analysis of it on page 265. Where it is made clear that the attainment in question was "the Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel". Further in the commentary on page 274 in his commentary on Line 5 he makes a reference to the Neophyte ceremony of the Golden Dawn, "...the Hierophant is the perfected Osiris, who brings the candidate, the natural Osiris, to identify with himself.", to which I will return in a moment. Regarding his trip to China I read about it so long ago that I could not comment on it at this time. I might be more interested if I thought Crowley's attempts at Sino-Occidental synthesis was a worthwhile contribution. As it is I find it as sterile as a mule, the unnatural offspring of two otherwise very fruitful systems. The failure of which is made all the more ironic by his failure to recognize the inherent value of Western Geomancy and its applicability as a cross cultural bridge. In terms of traditional sources, no one makes as big a deal of the Guardian Angel as Abramelin, building a whole system around it. This could be because a significant subtext of the work is the notion of Religious conversion and the need to provide a procedure that can be used by any religion. This fact may indicate that the text itself may date from the late 16th Century when religious conversion was both figuratively and literally a burning issue. Aside from the spirit that I mentioned in my original post, the second section of the third book of the Lemegaton, the Pauline Art, has a procedure for contacting a zodiacal spirit ruling the degree of your rising sign. It can be found online here: http://www.esoterica...mon/paulina.htm The two Chapters that I cite from Agrippa can be found on the same site here: Book III, Chapter XXI: http://www.esoterica...pp3b.htm#chap21 Book III, Chapter XXII: http://www.esoterica...pp3b.htm#chap22 and contain some interesting information. If I have time I may post them and comment on them. The site itself is an excellent online resource. The Agrippa book that I mention both is and is not the one which you reference. The Agrippan text is worthwhile, the editor/commentator was not really up to the task. He comments copiously on irrelevancies such as the Paschal Taper (see note p. 572), but can't explain Occult Virtues, a fundamental and much understood aspect of traditional magic. He vaguely understands the importance of Plato to understanding Agrippa, but is blind to Aristotle. You have to know the material better than he does to know when to attend to or when to ignore his comments, but then you don't need his comments do you? When I was teaching Western Magic I emphasized an approach integrating Natural Magic, Astrological Magic and Ceremonial Magic in the Agrippan tradition. I did not emphasize the "Holy Guardian Angel" at all, though I did think about recommending the spirit Camael from the Grimoire of Armandel to some advanced students if they wanted to work with it. I never pursued the matter and eventually stopped teaching, largely because few people have any real vocation for magic and were wasting their time and mine. If you or anyone else is interested in knowing what approach I would use now you can read my posts here: http://thetaobums.co...gic#entry291148 Which begins a long series of posts where you will also learn about Occult Virtues among other interesting things. I would not recommend pursuing work with the "Holy Guardian Angel", for reasons that may be clearer after you read my posts, but if you or anyone else absolutely, positively wants to do that sort of thing I would recommend pursuing rituals of the type described in the Shin subsection of the Shin section of the Z2 documents of the Golden Dawn, the basic text of which can be found on pages 178-181 of Book Four of Regardie's The Golden Dawn. Regardie provides good example rituals on pages 248 to 265, the second one of which is an adaption of Crowley's "Bornless Invocation" in the format of the Golden Dawn Neophyte formula. Regrettable the more recent Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic does not deal with these ideas as well as the earlier work and is inferior in its treatment of one of the aspects of the Golden Dawn system which is, as far as I am concerned, the most interesting and valuable of the Golden Dawn's contributions to Western Esoteric knowledge. This brings us back, as I said I would, to Crowley's reference to the Neophyte Ritual. I hope that all this is helpful to you and anyone else who may read it. Edit: in reading the above for a quote in another post, I have noticed that I wrote ' . . . and much understood aspect of traditional magic . . .', where 'understood' should have been 'misunderstood'. I have corrected the text accordingly.

Here is the second post on the Holy Guardian Angel which I mentioned in the previous post: It is, thank you. Do you know about subsequent attempts at Knowledge and Conversation by Crowley? I remember reading about him doing a modified temple as he traveled through China, and I thought it was for this ritual, but it could have been for another. Much of the additional information you provided I was not aware of, but is excellent for perspective. Is the the Agrippa book you are talking about? http://www.amazon.com/Three-Occult-Philosophy-Llewellyns-Sourcebook/dp/0875428320/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y You say that the HGA is mentioned in other places. Do you have other references than the Abremelin text that you can recommend for someone looking to work toward establishing conversation/union? Crowley has not been a major object of interest for several decades. He has some interesting things to say, but I came to the conclusion that the best of the Beast was assimilated by Regardie and well used in his works and adaptation of the teachings of the Golden Dawn. Based on my study of Crowley I would say that he never returned to following the original method of Abramelin, but instead chose to employ a version of an ancient invocation taken from the Harris papyrus and first used by him in print as "the preliminary invocation of the Goetia" in his publication of the first book of the Lemegaton in 1903. He subsequently wrote study of it which was titled Liber CCCLXV. On page 226 of Magick in Theory and Practice he describes if as the most potent invocation extant and used "by the Master himself in his attainment". He there refers the reader to the complete text and his analysis of it on page 265. Where it is made clear that the attainment in question was "the Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel". Further in the commentary on page 274 in his commentary on Line 5 he makes a reference to the Neophyte ceremony of the Golden Dawn, "...the Hierophant is the perfected Osiris, who brings the candidate, the natural Osiris, to identify with himself.", to which I will return in a moment. Regarding his trip to China I read about it so long ago that I could not comment on it at this time. I might be more interested if I thought Crowley's attempts at Sino-Occidental synthesis was a worthwhile contribution. As it is I find it as sterile as a mule, the unnatural offspring of two otherwise very fruitful systems. The failure of which is made all the more ironic by his failure to recognize the inherent value of Western Geomancy and its applicability as a cross cultural bridge. In terms of traditional sources, no one makes as big a deal of the Guardian Angel as Abramelin, building a whole system around it. This could be because a significant subtext of the work is the notion of Religious conversion and the need to provide a procedure that can be used by any religion. This fact may indicate that the text itself may date from the late 16th Century when religious conversion was both figuratively and literally a burning issue. Aside from the spirit that I mentioned in my original post, the second section of the third book of the Lemegaton, the Pauline Art, has a procedure for contacting a zodiacal spirit ruling the degree of your rising sign. It can be found online here: http://www.esoterica...mon/paulina.htm The two Chapters that I cite from Agrippa can be found on the same site here: Book III, Chapter XXI: http://www.esoterica...pp3b.htm#chap21 Book III, Chapter XXII: http://www.esoterica...pp3b.htm#chap22 and contain some interesting information. If I have time I may post them and comment on them. The site itself is an excellent online resource. The Agrippa book that I mention both is and is not the one which you reference. The Agrippan text is worthwhile, the editor/commentator was not really up to the task. He comments copiously on irrelevancies such as the Paschal Taper (see note p. 572), but can't explain Occult Virtues, a fundamental and much misunderstood aspect of traditional magic. He vaguely understands the importance of Plato to understanding Agrippa, but is blind to Aristotle. You have to know the material better than he does to know when to attend to or when to ignore his comments, but then you don't need his comments do you? When I was teaching Western Magic I emphasized an approach integrating Natural Magic, Astrological Magic and Ceremonial Magic in the Agrippan tradition. I did not emphasize the "Holy Guardian Angel" at all, though I did think about recommending the spirit Camael from the Grimoire of Armandel to some advanced students if they wanted to work with it. I never pursued the matter and eventually stopped teaching, largely because few people have any real vocation for magic and were wasting their time and mine. If you or anyone else is interested in knowing what approach I would use now you can read my posts here: http://thetaobums.co...gic#entry291148 Which begins a long series of posts where you will also learn about Occult Virtues among other interesting things. I would not recommend pursuing work with the "Holy Guardian Angel", for reasons that may be clearer after you read my posts, but if you or anyone else absolutely, positively wants to do that sort of thing I would recommend pursuing rituals of the type described in the Shin subsection of the Shin section of the Z2 documents of the Golden Dawn, the basic text of which can be found on pages 178-181 of Book Four of Regardie's The Golden Dawn. Regardie provides good example rituals on pages 248 to 265, the second one of which is an adaption of Crowley's "Bornless Invocation" in the format of the Golden Dawn Neophyte formula. Regrettable the more recent Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic does not deal with these ideas as well as the earlier work and is inferior in its treatment of one of the aspects of the Golden Dawn system which is, as far as I am concerned, the most interesting and valuable of the Golden Dawn's contributions to Western Esoteric knowledge. This brings us back, as I said I would, to Crowley's reference to the Neophyte Ritual. I hope that all this is helpful to you and anyone else who may read it. That ends my two posts in the Holy Guardian Angel thread Edit: Corrected 'much understood aspect' to 'much misunderstood aspect', here and in my original post.

As a person who has been basically a Science/Magic nerd since my childhood in the fifties, I have followed this thread with some amusement, as well as some serious interest. I have done a little digging and may contribute to it in what I hope will be interesting and stimulating ways. ZYD

For some time I have been asking myself how best I can further the topic of the study of Agrippa, and the conclusion that I came to was to clarify the relationship between Agrippa's Occult Philosophy and the Philosophy of Aristotle. It is simply not possible to get a good understanding of Agrippa without an appreciation of Aristotle, in particular his doctrine of the “Four Causes”. Other aspects of Aristotelian thinking are important also, but it starts with these “Four Causes”. In the modern world the basic tendency is a viewpoint created in the Seventeenth Century in which the basic categories are mind and matter and objective and subjective. If you watch the discussions here on the Tao Bums and elsewhere you will see these terms bandied about with little attempt to understand them, but with a great deal argued from them. I will deal with them and their effects on the Modern Mentality in a series on Agrippa and the Scientific Revolution, but for now the most important thing is to understand what those Revolutionaries found so revolting about the worldview Circa 1500 and what about it may have been worth preserving or reviving as part of our understanding of Traditional Magic and its application to modern magic. This is the beginning of the Wikipedia article on the Four Causes: The further discussion in the article is also worthwhile. This is a fair first step, but in order to understand its application to Agrippa and to other aspects of the Occult Philosophy of his age we will have to dig deeper. That is the intent of this thread and I will examine all of these in more detail and their relationship to other aspects of Aristotle's thinking and then their applicablity to understanding how and why Agrippa thought magic and by extension alchemy and other “esoteric” arts should be practiced. As I develop this thread I will expand on the above, examine them for their applicability to understanding Agrippa, how to understand modern magic in these terms, why they are relevant to an understanding of modern science and how they can reconcile science and magic, and extend magical theory and practice. Questions and comments are welcome and I will answer them according to relevance and as time permits, in some cases putting an answer off until more groundwork has been laid, even to the extent of answering it in another thread, such as the one I am thinking about the Scientific Revolution.

http://www.amazon.com/Taoist-Ritual-Chinese-Society-History/dp/0028964802 Actually the nine stars, though the trigrams are an important aspect of the star's symbolism and also the twelve earthly branches. I used a description of a practice of Master Chuang in Saso's book and material from Lagerway's and came up with a ritual of my own which turns out to be a close relative of a Maoshan Thunder Magic technique Jerry Alan Johnson describes in Daoist Magical Incantations, Hand Seals, and Star Stepping on pgs. of 136-137 the 2006 edition and pgs. 268-269 of the 2012 final edition. I adapted the material so that my version is close to, but not exactly the same as that given by Professor Johnson. I had a version for personal use and one that could be used for cleansing and exorcising people, places and things. I did a lot of creative adaptation of material from Saso, Lagerway and Livia Kohn. They seemed to work quite well. The 3 X 3 magic square is the core of Doaist Meditation and Magic. I don't believe that they use the other squares in their practices, though they may. They were certainly aware of them in mathematics. The rest of my exploration of magic squares was in the context of Western magic, or higher levels of Mathematical magic that are not part of any tradition, but part of the potential for magic that exists in many types of mathematics. Edit: Corrected spelling of exactly in 'but not exactly' above.

Since this whole subsection is about Western Esoteric practices, the magic in question is Western Ceremonial Magic as it was revived in the NIneteenth and Twentieth Centuries, and particularly as practiced in The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and it offshoots, and the popular styles of magical practice derived from it. Secondary to this is teachings of a quasi-tantric school called the Ordo Templi Orientis which is more of a Twentieth Century phenomena. Both of these schools have roots that reach back to antiquity and which reached their high points in the Renaissance. By the time the Western "revival" of esoteric doctrines occurred these roots were not well understood, and what was created by the revival of magic is a mixed bag which reaches its high point in the Golden Dawn, the doctrine and practices of which are of considerable value. The field of Western magic is a large one, with many aspects, and what I have said above does not and is not intended to do justice to those aspects, but just to answer the question. ZYD Edit: Added paragraphs after the first.

Thank you for your kind words above, I do the best I can with a lifetime of research, study and practice, and to know that it is appreciated is a comfort in my old age. Just to add a bit on egregores, the Wikipedia article is, as it often is, a good place to start, among other things it brings out the two primary meanings of egregore, the more historical one as "watcher" and the contemporary occultist meaning as a "group mind", quite nicely. I suspect that the OP in pairing Archon and Egregore within the context of the Matrix intends the more historical meaning of a watcher and not the occultist meaning of a "group mind". As I am not much interesting in spiritual Peeping Toms, I cannot provide much insight into that. On the other hand I have studied the use of egregores in magic since my late teens, and could say quite a bit. I will start by saying, to quote the Wikipedia article, as "a kind of group mind that is created when people consciously come together for a common purpose" is kind of a laughable oversimplification and misleading in its fundamental presuppositions. I learned very early that even a single magician practicing a simple ritual could create an egregore, and what was necessary to do it as I mention here: Son of the Gods, who was mentioned in the OP, has an only slightly better understanding than that expressed in the Wikipedia article. As for a little serious reading on Archons, here is a good academic paper, which I will link under the humorous name that I stored it on my own computer: How 'bout them Archons I hope that this is useful, more later as time allows. ZYD

Actually, strange as it may seem, magic is the proof of science. I say this because in the well-formed definition of magic given by Agrippa in his Three Books on Occult Philosophy all of the positive content of modern science and engineering can be viewed as manifestations of Natural and Mathematical Magic. By positive I mean all those conclusions and doctrines of Science that have been the result of Scientific Method and not those derived from or derivable from the false world-view with which the Scientific Revolution started, the mechanistic/atomistic framework based on the Seventeenth Century revival of Epicurianism, and substantially refuted by both Special Relativity and Quantum Physics, viewed as a reductio ad absurdam proof of such mechanistic principles taken as starting points and a return to explanation in terms of Formal causes as Thomas Kuhn explores in 'Concepts of Cause in the Development of Physics', which can be found in a collection of his essays The Essential Tension, on p. 21. From part of Kuhn's conclusion: Since Magic in Agippa's sense is fundamentally tied to a world-view based on Aristotle's forms, the interpretation of physics in terms of Aristotle's forms, puts them on the same level as Aprippa's explanation of magic, thus magic is the proof of science. QED. The above discussion is somewhat tongue in cheek, but the fundamental thinking is correct. It was my realization that modern science could be reframed in a Platonic world-view circa 1980, that helped me to adopt Platonism as a fundamental perspective, my 'working model' of reality you might say. For an interesting view of a thoroughly Platonized universe see: Max Tegmark on Wikipedia Who in turn came up with this silly nonsense: Yep, the universe may be a computable function, but it may take a quantum computer to do it. (On Wikipedia) Well, the quantum computer is my idea not Tegmark's, I first came up with it about 2000 in my earliest investigation of the idea of Quantum Computing, though in the end I came to the conclusion that consciousness is not a computable function and that Mathematics is a structure embedded, in a sense, in consciousness by which consciousness becomes aware of itself. Or something like that. We are getting into some pretty deep stuff here, though I think it is ultimately compatible with a Platonic worldview. Edit: Corrected spelling of Seventeenth in Seventeenth Century.

I hope to wind this up soon, if not with this post, then only one more. Aside from the late dating of most of the manuscripts of the Lemegeton, there is another reason to argue for it being a relatively late collection and that is the fact that all of the its constituent books are mentioned elsewhere, but never as part of a larger work. Also important are the people who mention them. In his Vanity of Arts and Sciences, Agrippa mentions both the Pauline Art and Almadel and if I recall correctly the Ars Notoria in a section on theurgy, and his chapter on black magic is called Goecia (Goetia). His student Wier (Latinized as Wierus) gives most of the hierarchy that eventually appears in the Lemegeton's Goetia, in his own account, the Pseudo-Monarchia Daemonorum, which Wierus says is from a much older work, a De Officium Spiritum, which as I recall in my original, I cite a reference in E. M. Butler's Ritual Magic placing this work in the middle of the 13th Century. However by the time the time that the Goetia emerges, Wierus list of 69 spirits has changed a little and grown to 72, a number of some importance. Finally the spirit hierarchy of the Theurgia-Goetia is taken from Agrippa's principle teacher, the Abbot Trithemius. All of which indicates that every element that became part of the Lemegeton was known by people closely related by teacher student relationships. I proposed in my 1980 article that a group either started by Agrippa or students of his, put these texts together in order to have a workbook for magic within an Agirppan framework. I also speculated that since Agrippa died in France (some of the Lemegeton manuscripts are in French) this group might have originated there and may have ended out in England because they were Protestants and during most of the 16ht and 17th Centuries the situation for Protestants in France was unpredictable and ever changing to say the least. In order to demonstrate the point I was trying to make, I made the following equations: Almadel = Sigillum Dei Aemuth as and approach to the super celestial wold Pauline Art = Tabalu Bonorum/Heptarchia Mystica as an approach to Planetary Magic. Theurgia-Goetia = 30 Aires as an approach to the magic of the medium between Heaven and Earth. Goetia = the Evil spirits drawn from the lower parts of the Lesser Angles of the Four Watchtowers. What is missing is a book of elemental magic, why that would be is not clear, but at the least the above equations point strongly in the direction of an attempt to create a magical workbook, that may have originated in a Protestant branch of Agrippa's French students who emigrated to England to escape the religious turmoil that existed in their native France. In the article I also solved some problems which the original author to whom I was replying left unanswered, such as why the example seals which were given in the Lemegeton's Pauline Art, spoke of the tenth of March as the day that the Sun entered Aries. As a well read astrologer interested in the intricacies of astrological calculation, even writing programs for my own hand held calculators, marvels of the time, but a modern cell phone was more computing power, I was familiar with the history of the Calendar and knew that the discrepancy could be explained by the shift from the Julian to the Gregorian Calendar. The Gregorian Calendar being sponsored by the Pope and adopted universally in Catholic countries in 1583, and was naturally suspect among Protestants. Protestant England did not adopt it until 1752. The Pauline Art also requires that one know the sign on the cusp of the 12th house of a chart, but there are several systems for calculating this and the main one used by English speaking astrologers since the 19th Century, that of Placidus, was not even created until the mid 17th Century and only introduced to England in the Late 17th Century. So one of the earlier systems had to have been used. I figured out from the examples which sign had to be on the 12th house cusp and then compared the 12th houses cusps for several systems at the longitude of London and arrived at the conclusion that it was probably the system of Regiomontanus. I also pointed out that the origin of the seals of the Zodiac that are given in the second part of the Pauline Art is probably the Archidoxes of Magic of Paracelsus, another interesting point. Well that is about as good an account as I can give from memory now, almost 33 years later. I hope this account is reasonable satisfactory to BaquaKicksAss, whose query set it in motion. Obviously to some people not familiar with the some of the technical language some of this series of posts must seem confusing. I am sorry for that, but as I mentioned at the beginning I am summarizing almost 30 pages and I cannot take the time to address all questions that these posts might generate. While working on these posts, I have had some other ideas which I may add as a postscript to these posts to summarize and point in some new directions.

Thanks Taomeow, I could have hardly said it better myself, and yes it is absolutely a necessary clarification, but one which I did not have time to make today, but I have tried to make clear in my discussions on Western magic, and to a certain extent on Chinese magic. Though the misunderstanding of what "supernatural" originally meant, and the relation between supernatural in that sense and paranormal as a replacement for it, is not going to go away easily, nor is the prejudice agains magic, whether Chinese or Western, going to be easy to over come, but thanks again for your valiant effort to do so. ZYD