The World of the Black Magician

The driving force behind black magic is hunger for power. Its ultimate aim was stated, appropriately enough, by the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were afraid that if they ate the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they would die. But the serpent said, ‘Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat there-of; then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil' 1* In occultism the serpent is a symbol of wisdom, and for centuries magicians have devoted themselves to the search for the forbidden fruit which would bring fulfillment of the serpent's promise. Carried to its furthest extreme, the black magician's ambition is to wield supreme power over the entire universe, to make himself a god. 

Black magic is rooted in the darkest levels of the mind, and this is a large part of its attraction, but it is much more than a product of the love of evil or a liking for mysterious mumbojumbo. It is a titanic attempt to exalt the stature of man, to put man in the place which religious thought reserves for God. In spite of its crudities and squalors this gives it a certain magnificence.

The great fascination of magic is in the type of thought on wich basic magical thinking is not random, it has it�s own laws and it�s own logic, but it is poetic rather than rational. It leaps to conclusions wich are usualy scientifically unwarrented, but wich often seem poetically right. It is a type of thinking wish has been prevalent all through the history of Europe, wich lies behind huge areas of our religion, philosofy and literature, and wich is a major guide-post to the regions of the spiritual and the supernatural, the regions   of wich science has nothing to say. There is no necessity to accept it, but it rings many a far-away summoning bell in the dephts of the mind.