Gonzo

Hannah Peel Playlist

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Mercury Prize, Ivor Novello and Emmy-nominated, RTS and Music Producers Guild winning composer, with a flow of solo albums and collaborative releases, Hannah Peel joins the dots between science, nature and the creative arts, through her explorative approach to electronic, classical and traditional music.

The Moon (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: The Moon
Number: XVIII
Astrology: Pisces
Qabalah: Qoph ק

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Chris Gabriel June 15, 2024

The Moon is yellow and raining down its influence over the waters and creatures of the Earth. The sky is filled with its rays. Two dogs look up upon it, and within the water there is a shelled creature. 

This card is the emblem of lunacy. It represents the maddening influence of the Moon, that makes dogs howl, transforms men into monsters, moves the tides and the creatures therein. This is the card of the unconscious.

In Marseilles, we find the “Man in the Moon” looking down morosely upon the earth. He is surrounded by a central halo of rays, and specks beyond that. On the earth, between two castles, two dogs are howling at it. Within the water, there is a lobster whose head and pincers are rising out of the depths.

In Rider, we see the same image, though here the Moon is seemingly disappointed. The towers are simpler, the emanating specks are distinctly in the form of the Hebrew letter Yod י, and the lobster is entirely out of the water.

In Thoth, we are given a similar form, but with major differences. The moon is faceless and fluidic, blood swirls within the water below. The towers remain, but the dogs have been elevated to forms of the Egyptian God Anubis holding wands and ankhs with his jackal form at his feet.. The shelled creature is no longer a lobster, but the scarab form of the God Ra, Keph-Ra, the dung beetle who rolls the Sun day by day.

The influence of the Moon in our lives is ubiquitous. We see it move the tides and we hear dogs howl at it. Our calendars are structured according to the lunar cycle, which also tracks to the menstrual cycle. We get tattoos of the Moon, we watch movies where werewolves are transformed by it. We expect strange things to occur on the night of a full moon, and they often do!

The watery unconscious is symbolized perfectly by the Moon, for under its zenith we dream night by night. The werewolf embodies our experience of this cycle well, when repressed bestial energy spills out and dominates our conscious self.

And the lobster, as Jung told us, is what we meet when we stare long enough into our own reflection and see what is beneath.

Marseilles and Rider show the influence of this dark Moon to hold what Edgar Allen Poe described as ‘illimitable dominion over all’. Thoth offers a significantly more hopeful image, the Sun is already moving through the sky to illuminate all that is dark.

When this card is pulled we are to consider these dark influences, the forces within us that may be brought out at random, and to hold it in our hearts that whether or not this dark night of the soul is but a night, a terrible week, or a cursed year, that the Sun is coming. And on the other hand, if we are engaged in acts that need this cover of darkness, that we can move stealthily therein.

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Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, CARDS

Film

The Could-Have-Beens

“Saint Paul, Hermit”, Salvator Rosa, Mid-seventeenth-century. Pen and brown and black ink with wash. 

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Ale Nodarse June 13, 2024

Art has a name for the path not taken: the pentimento.

The word is Italian, and it is usually preserved as such in English. (Although, if you fancy Victorian novels, you might just stumble upon the now demoded “pentiment”). A 1611 English-Italian dictionary provides an initial translation: 

Pentimento: repentance, penitency, sorrowing for something done or past.¹

The primary focus is regret. The word’s original context was a religious one: the act of repenting for one’s sins. Outside the religious sphere, however, a pentimento might be described more generically: as the ability within us “to change one’s mind” or “to have a change of heart.”

In analyses of painting and drawing, however, the term took on another meaning. The pentimento came to describe any visible alteration to a work of art: any moment where the artist visibly changed her mind. Drawn pentimenti (the plural form of pentimento) allow us to follow the artist’s process, to trace ideas (half-) formed. With each pentimento, we follow a maze of creative possibility — without the risk of getting lost. 

Certain artists capitalized on these marks, turning erstwhile mistakes into a litany of meandering forms. In a drawing of Saint Paul (above), by the Italian artist, actor and poet, Salvator Rosa (1615–1673), the Biblical hermit appears in a state of bewilderment. He is (the trees tell us) in the wilderness, but it’s his flailing arms that signal wild. Looking closely at the drawing, we can follow the artist’s moves: all of those blurred limbs, so many pentimenti, stretching out below the final pair of fully raised hands. The effect is cinematic.

Saint Paul was defined by his repentance. He lived alone in the desert. He survived on crumbs — brought by a raven, the story goes — and prayer.² In Rosa’s image, however, repentance finds another form. The artistic definition comes into play as pentimento changes from sorrow to possibility, from a penitential gesture to a dazzling abundance of could-have-beens: to multiverses in ink.

No doubt, all of these marks could cause confusion. One seventeenth-century critic likened this compositional style to a “mass of sardines in barrel,” or, worse, a “market of maggoty nuts.”³ But a certain beauty, in all its perplexity, resides in this memorialization to the vagaries of journeys, embarked or imagined.

And so, if we allow it, the pentimento asks. Can we still marvel, without regret, at all the paths not taken?

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¹Giovanni Florio, A Worlde of Wordes (London: Arnold Hatfield, 1598/1616), 366.
²This was also depicted in images. See, for example, Saint Paul the Hermit Being Fed by a Raven, an oil painting by an anonymous Spanish artist in the Wellcome Collection, London.
³Marco Boschini, The Map of Painterly Navigation (La Carta del Navegar Pitoresco), translated in Philip Sohm, The Artist Grows Old: The Aging of Art and Artists in Italy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 125. Boschini, a Venetian, pointed his critique at artists in seventeenth-century Florence.

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Alejandro (Ale) Nodarse Jammal is an artist and art historian. They are a Ph.D. Candidate in History of Art & Architecture at Harvard University and are completing an MFA at Oxford’s Ruskin School of Art. They think often about art — its history and its practice — in relationship to observation, memory, language, and ethics.

Julie Greenwald

Film

A Brief History of White Magic. II, From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.

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A Rosicrucianism seal, dense in magical symbolism.

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Flora Knight June 11, 2024

The Medieval period heralded the start of the modern conception of witchcraft, shaping how we imagine it today. As Roman civilization collapsed into barbarism, the period from the Dark Ages to the High Middle Ages remained muddy and obscure, but two prevailing ideas emerged: the magical quest and spiritual alchemy. This era also saw the rise of 'witches'—folk healers using natural ingredients and traditional remedies that later informed the stereotypical witch. Alchemy, botanical mysticism, and, towards the end of the High Middle Ages, Dante’s "Divine Comedy" and the profound vision of the universe it created established a magical world that perseveres today.

Witchcraft and white magic during this time existed as a niche practice, a hangover from paganism and the 'Old Religions.' It is difficult to judge exactly how much magic was integrated into society, but there are several notable examples of its continued existence. Chartres Cathedral is rife with alchemical statues, magical imagery, and mathematical structures that point towards ancient and early Christian magic. There is also scholarship relating the rise of Gothic architecture, with its Pythagorean mathematical structure, to an ongoing interest in and practice of magic, especially among building groups such as the stonemasons and freemasons. Green Men statues, figures made out of natural material such as leaves or twigs, also pervade many churches of this time in England. Nature festivals such as maypole dances all point to magic being a continued part of life, not fully embraced but not completely rejected by the church. The alchemical process was also adapted into the understanding of the human psyche—alchemy was a way to realize a higher power, with the fastest route to this being through the earth. A naturalist and magical combination—witchcraft and herbalism—led to a higher plane of existence.

Four depictions of Saturn from an illustrated manuscript of Picatrix.

Healers were also prevalent, though they existed outside of official medical practices. Doctors of the time were learned and studied Aristotle and Galen, 'scientific texts' rather than indigenous practices, but the actual effect on the patient of these two approaches was nearly identical, so it came down to wealth and preference. Herbs, plants, tinctures, and potions were widespread, and though mostly passed down orally, there are a number of examples of written texts. The most important of these is the "Picatrix," a book of magic and spells originally written in Arabic, most likely in the 10th century. It contains numerous recipes for herbal and magical medicines as well as incantations. 

A Spell From Picatrix

O Master of sublime name and great power, supreme Master; O Master Saturn: Thou, the Cold, the Sterile, the Mournful, the Pernicious; Thou, whose life is sincere and whose word sure; Thou, the Sage and Solitary, the Impenetrable; Thou, whose promises are kept; Thou who art weak and weary; Thou who hast cares greater than any other, who knowest neither pleasure nor joy; Thou, the old and cunning, master of all artifice, deceitful, wise, and judicious; Thou who bringest prosperity or ruin, and makest men to be happy or unhappy! I conjure thee, O Supreme Father, by Thy great benevolence and Thy generous bounty, to do for me what I ask…

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The final major element of Medieval witchcraft is Dante’s "Divine Comedy." A synthesis of High Medieval culture, in which orthodox science and religion combine with white magic and ancient mystical religion. As briefly as possible, for perhaps no single text in history has as much scholarship, Dante is important to witchcraft in many ways. The “Divine Comedy” solidified a celestial and zodiac way of thinking, showed a path to a higher plane through the soul and introspection—the true purpose and essence of all white magic. It depicted the whole spectrum of human consciousness in terms of love—an all-inclusive system. This system was adapted and existed in the sorcery of the time. Where all good and bad in Dante’s world come from love, in sorcery or witchcraft all came from the Prima Materia, or first material. Prima Materia is ill-defined in contemporary works, but it is not unfair to suggest that sorcery even at this time was used as much as a philosophical framework to see the world as any sort of scientific process.

Witches Sabbath, Goya. 1798. Depiction of a renaissance witch cult.

The Renaissance, running roughly from the mid-15th to the early 18th century, was the most bountiful time regarding magic and witchcraft, for both good and bad. Before examining how white magic developed during this time, it is important to consider how it was persecuted and repressed. This was the time of the witch trials and the beginning of the ‘Old Hag’ understanding of witchcraft. Almost all of this can be attributed to a single book—"Malleus Maleficarum" by Heinrich Kramer—published profusely in the latter half of the 15th century. Prior to this, witchcraft was frowned upon by the Christian church but not treated as much more than a small pseudoscience that caused little harm. Kramer, however, argued that witchcraft was a communing with the devil and should be punished by death, with confessions extracted by torture. The entirety of the witch trials can be attributed to this work, and in the period that followed, thousands of women were brutally murdered and tortured. Modern scholarship suggests that almost none of these women were practicing modern or contemporary witchcraft, a malevolent act, though some would have been indulging in rituals of white magic. It is also important to note that the figures in magic at this time were mostly men. It was a deeply patriarchal society, and though we have records of women using magic, these come almost exclusively from the witch trials, where the magic recorded as being used, entirely under coercion and torture, was black magic, fall less prevalent in society than the white magic that quietly permeated across the culture. 

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“He was devoted to the planets and the natural healing magic of them and the earthly world that represented them, but he emphasized that he was simply amplifying natural forces.”

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While the witch trials were flourishing and popular thought was turning against magic, important developments were happening in Italy and across Europe. Marsilio Ficino was hired by Cosimo de Medici to translate ancient texts, reflecting the Renaissance obsession with Ancient Greece. During this period, he discovered a Hermetic text, the "Corpus Hermeticum." This was an important magical text that contained spells, incantations, and, most influentially, astrological readings that integrated characteristics and healing into the conception of the zodiac. As the public tide turned against sorcery and witchcraft, Ficino was careful to present the text as natural magic rather than angelic or demonic magic, avoiding any response from the Church. Ficino used astrology in medicinal ways, creating talismans, culling plants and herbs, and contemplating symbolic imagery. He was devoted to the planets and the natural healing magic of them and the earthly world that represented them, but he emphasized that he was simply amplifying natural forces. This work laid important groundwork for modern magic. Pico della Mirandola took the ideas of Ficino and added the invocation of spirits. Though these two figures contributed enormously to the 20th-century flourishing of magic, during their time, it remained in the realm of the intelligentsia, and the public conception of magic remained as it was in Medieval times, with herbal medicine, love philtres, and charm spells still at its center. 

Rosicrucianism arose at this time, a magical brotherhood from whom most modern beliefs and theories of white magic originated. A series of pamphlets published in the early 17th century marked the beginning of this new order with a story of the mysterious C.R. C.R had travelled far across the world to the Holy Land, meeting magical leaders in each country and learning much from the Turks in Damascus. He returned to Europe and formed an order that followed these six rules: 

The Temple of the Rose Cross, Teophilus Schweighardt Constantiens, 1618. Magical depiction of a Rosicrucianist clubhouse.

1. None should profess to any other vocation than to cure the sick.

2. There will be no distinctive habit or clothing.

3. There will be meetings every year at their headquarters.

4. They will find a worthy person to succeed them upon their death.

5. The word C.R. will be their mark, seal, and character.

6. The order will be kept secret for 100 years.

They took their symbolism from alchemical treatises and the trump cards of the Tarot, and their magic was a benevolent one, using mathematics, mechanics, Qabalah, and astrology for scientific gain. Much of sacred geometry came from Rosicrucianism, with their headquarters informed by the Temple of Solomon, geomancy, and magical mathematics. Their significance lies in being a secret order devoted to magic, with influence across society. Rosicrucianism remained at the heart of magic for centuries, informing societies across the western world right up the ‘The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn’ and Aleister Crowley. It marked a conclusion to the centuries long journey white magic had taken, removing it from an oral tradition and folk practice into an organised and formalised order.

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Flora Knight is an occultist and historian.

Iggy Pop Playlist

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Iggy Pop is an American singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, and actor. Since forming The Stooges in 1967, Iggy’s career has spanned decades and genres. Having paved the way for ‘70’s punk and ‘90’s grunge, he is often considered “The Godfather of Punk.”

Amoralman

The Three of Disks (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Works, The Three of Disks
Number: 3
Astrology: Mars in Capricorn
Qabalah: Binah of He ה

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Chris Gabriel June 8, 2024

The Three of Disks is the beginning of material development in the suit of Disks, making it a very beneficial card. This is a card of labor and hard work, of laying the foundation for something great; the molehill that will become a mountain. 

In Rider, we see a craftsman, a monk, and an artist. They are working on a cathedral, beautifying a base structure. The column of the cathedral is mounted by the three disks. Each figure is doing their part, the monk overseeing, the artist designing, and craftsman realizing the design in stone.

In Thoth, we see three wheels forming a three faced pyramid. The wheels are the red of Mars, and the surrounding indigo is the Earth of Capricorn, moving almost cymatically. In the center of each wheel we find a symbol. Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury.

These are the three Alchemical Principles, the masculine Sulphur, the feminine Salt, and the androgynous Mercury..

We find this trinity reflected in the majors where the Magician is Mercury, and the Emperor and Empress are Sulphur and Salt. This trinity is what allows for the materialization occurring in the card. This is “Blood, sweat, and tears”.

In Marseille, we find two disks being surmounted by a third. This is the image of a sprout arising from the earth. Qabalistically, the card is the Binah of He, or the Understanding of the Princess. 

The Understanding of the Princess is Work. Work is the condition of all material development. Even when we feel as if things “fall into our laps” colossal work had to occur beforehand. As William Blake says, “To create a little flower is the labor of ages.”

This card is that labor. And on the scale of ages, the little flower differs not from the cathedral.

Being Mars in Capricorn, this is the foundational groundwork that it takes to create and reach great heights. Mars is the aggressive action, and Capricorn is the Goat who scales the mountain. 

The Alchemical Principles are all vital parts of this creative process, the macrocosmic display of Thoth is brought down to humanity in Rider. The Monk guides what the artist envisions, what the artist envisions the craftsman materializes. We contain all three of these within ourselves.

One can almost envision the disks as gears, turning one another, if one is stuck, or smaller than the rest, the work cannot function. One can apply this to teamwork as well.

When dealt this card, we are being asked to labor, to work toward something great, to materialize our visions, and to refine our creative process.

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Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, CARDS

Questlove Playlist

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Questlove has been the drummer and co-frontman for the original all-live, all-the-time Grammy Award-winning hip-hop group The Roots since 1987. Questlove is also a music history professor, a best-selling author and the Academy Award-winning director of the 2021 documentary Summer of Soul.

Film

More Than Meets the Eye - 2. Health and Light.

C. Reithmuller Lantern, Chromolithograph. c.1890.

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Matthew Maruca June 6, 2024

So, we understand that light doesn’t just allow us to see; by powering the evolution of living organisms, and their various functions, light actually caused the process of vision to exist. . If light is powering our existence, what else might it be doing to us? What follows is a brief and incomplete overview of the last 150 years of studies of light, and the crucial role in our physical and psychological well being it plays.

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Light. And Health.

Florence Nightingale, considered the founder of modern nursing, observed in the mid-nineteenth century: “It is the unqualified result of all my experience with the sick, that second only to their need of fresh air is their need of light; that, after a close room, what hurts them most is a dark room, and it is not only light but direct sun-light that they want... People think that the effect is upon the spirits only. This is by no means the case. The sun is not only a painter but a sculptor.” (Notes on Nursing, 1860) 

In 1903, the Danish physician Niels Finsen was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for his discovery that ultraviolet light was an effective means to treat lupus vulgaris (tuberculosis of the skin) due to its antibacterial effects.

Florence Nightingale.

In the early years of the 20th century, researchers discovered Vitamin D, and found that it is essential for bone development and a variety of other essential biological functions. In 1935, it was discovered that ultraviolet-B irradiation is responsible for the reaction producing Vitamin D in its active form. This provided an understanding of the mechanism by which UV-light was successfully used to treat rickets in the children of industrial smog-covered cities, several decades prior, during the Industrial Revolution.

In the 1920s, a Russian researcher named Alexander Gurwitsch discovered ultra-weak ultraviolet light emissions from living cells, which he called “mitogenic rays”, since they appeared to be the stimulus for mitosis, the process of natural cell division. A few decades later, Fritz-Albert Popp, a German researcher, discovered a wider spectrum of light emission from cells, and called this light “biophotons”, which he defined as “a photon of non-thermal origin in the visible and ultraviolet spectrum emitted from a biological system.” Thus, it was discovered that living cells actually generate, and even communicate with light.

More recently, in the 90s, scientists discovered that our eyes contain photoreceptor cells that don’t communicate with the image-forming centers of our brain, but rather wire directly to the hypothalamus—the master regulator of the brain—informing the brain about the time of day, controlling the “circadian rhythm”, and thereby stimulating and regulating the production of a wide variety of essential hormones, neurotransmitters, and other biomolecules. Light is the primary factor that controls this crucial biological rhythm.

In 2017, the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael W. Young for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm—another Nobel Prize for a landmark discovery involving the crucial role that light plays in our health and biology.

Lately, leading scientists and public health experts have taken a keen interest in light, with the likes of Andrew Huberman, Ph.D., a professor of neuroscience at Stanford University, bringing newfound attention to the importance of light en masse. Huberman has spoken in detail about the crucial role that light plays in our health and well-being, and of the importance of daily exposure to morning sunlight in order to stimulate our circadian clock, regulate our biological rhythms, support our sleep, and experience optimal health and well-being. In Episode #68 of his Huberman Lab Podcast, he said “I can think of no other form of energy—not sound, not chemical energy (so not drugs), not food, not touch—no form of energy that can target the particular locations in our cells, in our organelles, and in our body to the extent that light can. In other words, if you had to imagine a real-world surgical tool by which to modulate our biology, light would be the sharpest and the most precise of those tools."

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Light.

“The Human Soul: Its Movements, Its Lights, and the Iconography of the Fluidic Invisible”, Hippolyte Baraduc. 1913.

When I was a kid, I never thought once that light could affect my health; or even that it played any more of a role in my life than simply allowing me to see. When the sun was out, there was light outside, so I could see. When I turned on a light in a dark room, there was light, so I could see. On a dark night, the moon reflected the light of the sun, so I could see, at least a little. The stars emitted beautiful, glowing, dim light from hundreds of millions of miles away, causing the night sky to glimmer with beautiful light. In the magic of Christmas time, we would adorn our tree with beautiful, twinkling lights, and these colored lights would shine all around, causing a special feeling in the air. A warm fire in the winter offered a kind of light that could warm the depths of my soul, and a bonfire with friends offered a kind of light that would burn permanent memories to be cherished for decades to come.

We don’t fully understand it, and we may never. But light, whether we know it or not, is the energy that powers our lives. It is the energy stored in our food, it governs our biological rhythms, it controls our biochemistry, our cells use it to communicate, and so much more. Even the top public scientists and health experts are beginning to emphasize the tremendous importance of a healthy “light diet”: with ample morning sunlight, a sufficient dose of strong daylight for vitamin D production (and much more), and a reduction of sleep-disrupting bright artificial light and screen devices in the evenings. As our collective human knowledge evolves, and our understanding of the world deepens, it may be the case that we return to certain fundamental truths, which have been known for millennia: intuitively, viscerally, if not “scientifically”.

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“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” Plato

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Matt Maruca is an entrepreneur and journalist interested in health, science, and scientific techniques for better living, with a focus on the power of light. He is the Founder & CEO of Ra Optics, a company that makes premium light therapy products to support optimal health in the modern age. In his free time, he enjoys meditation, surfing, reading, and travel.

Michael Richards

Film

A Brief History of White Magic, Part 1.

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A medieval illustration of a magic circle, showing the middle way. 

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Flora Knight June 4, 2024

The history of White Magic is the history of a middle way, and the history of harnessed imagination. Different from ‘Black Magic’, which is magic with the intention of harm or wrongdoing, White Magic is about transcendence, knowledge, self-improvement and the betterment of the world. The very word "magi", from which our “magic” comes, is a Persian word for the learned class. White Magic is both high art and science, concerned with releasing the powers of imagination through a practiced harmony with the universe.

It begins in our earliest records and continues through to modernity. To fully understand it, we must see it as one of the three governing schools of thought that have existed since early civilisation, alongside science and religion. It is both a separate pursuit and a synthesis of these two, a middle way. The distinctions between these three schools can be best understood as:

1. In religion, one requests manipulation of the created universe by God or his agents.
2. In science, one manipulates parts of the created universe oneself.
3. In magic, one manipulates parts of the created universe with non-physical agencies.

In the ancient world, all three approaches were legitimate. In medieval times, religion was the only way forward, and dabbling in science and magic was considered impious. Today, in modernity, science has become the accepted way to understand the world, with increasingly less space for religion or magic. The magical mind understands magic as the link and reconciliation between science and religion, without condemning either.

It is ultimately difficult to disentangle these three threads across history for they have lived in a constant state of dialogue. Magic is ultimately a continuation of pre-Christian pagan ritual and Neo-Platonic thought—the earliest ideas of science and religion. While these two progressed and changed, magic at its core remained remarkably consistent. Nonetheless, its history reveals its subtleties.

 I. Antiquity

The ancient world, in this case Egypt, Rome, and Greece, laid the foundations for all magic that followed. The distinctions in this era are less clear. Paganism and polytheism ruled, and magic was a part of daily life. The traditions and ideas that developed here informed all magic and witchcraft that followed. These cultures took from one another, and this interchange allowed for pagan tolerance, paganism at this time simply meaning the practicing of a religion outside of the ‘mainstream’, where Gods from each culture were absorbed into the others.

For the history of white magic, the most important pagan god is Thoth, also known, in Rome and Greece, as Hermes and Mercury respectively. Thoth is the god of magic, the moon, trade, learning, and books. Egyptian writing attributed to Thoth laid the foundations for all European magic that followed and Jewish influence in Egypt also helped create these base principles. It was during this time that an important distinction was made: that of the difference between theurgy and thaumaturgy, or high and low magic, respectively. Theurgy is the raising of consciousness above the material world to the realization of a restored world. Thaumaturgy, or sorcery, is the production of wonders by the powers of the mind. In the Jewish story of Aaron and Moses against the Pharaoh’s magicians, the men duelled each other by transforming rods into serpents. This was an act of Thaumaturgy and there is a close relationship between this form of magic and the religious ideas of miracles.

Stories and symbols from this era pervade the history of witchcraft and white magic. The Egyptian funerary rites, administered by Thoth, created the idea of ‘secret passwords’ or cryptic spells. The use of wax figurines, or voodoo dolls, also came from this process. Farming practices led to the idea of a guiding star, which was later adopted by Christianity and Masonic symbolism. In the world of ancient Egypt, the distinctions mentioned meant little; magic was intertwined with religion and science and all three combined as a way to understand the world.

A layout of the interior chambers of the Temple of Solomon.

Around 950BC, The Temple of Solomon was built in the then Egyptian city of Jerusalem. It is the most important physical site of magic, laying the building blocks of not just magical architecture but also sacred geometry and the conception of the magical universe as a whole. It was built to house the Ark of the Covenant and is the earliest forerunner of pagan mystery religions—a way of combining magic, paganism, and spirituality with mainstream religion. We see its influence in Templar magic, the Freemasons, and in the rise of ‘magic spell books,’ one of the most important in Renaissance magic being the ‘Clavicle of Solomon.’

 II. Early Christianity

As Christianity spread across the world, four threads emerged that play a vital role in the history of white magic and witchcraft. These are Gnosticism, Hermetic literature, Neo-Platonic philosophy, and the Jewish Qabalah. Gnosticism was the amalgamation of pagan magic and Christianity. Hermetic literature reflected the Christian impact on Greek philosophy and Egyptian magic. Neo-Platonic philosophy was the resurgence of Greek thinking, and Jewish Qabalah was a form of Jewish mysticism. All four of these threads are essential to the conception of witchcraft, and there is endless scholarship on all of them. It is Hermetic literature and Qabalah, however, that have remained the most potent influence on modern witch-cults, the Golden Dawn, and Wicca itself.

A representation of the Qabalah Cube.

Qabalah didn’t flourish in its entirety until the Renaissance, but in the days of early Christianity, many of its ideas were conceived. In a brief history, the most encompassing for us is the Qabalistic Cube as a representation of the universe. The Qabalah was a break from Christian thinking, placing transcendence and introspection as its core tenets. The Cube was a representation of the universe that mirrored man's consciousness, a tree of life that placed all existence along a single thread. It was an early example, along with the Temple of Solomon, of a portrayed fourfold universe—an important number and conception in all later witchcraft. It also represented the twelve zodiac signs and assigned them characteristics, with mental activity represented by Mercury, love by Venus, order by Jupiter, and inspiration by the Sun. The Qabalah Cube consists of ten interconnected spheres, or sephiroth, representing different aspects of divine emanation and the journey of the soul. Each sphere embodies spiritual principles and cosmic forces, which together form a multidimensional map of existence. It is a tool for understanding the interconnectedness of the universe, the divine hierarchy, and symbolizes the eternal quest for unity and harmony within the cosmos. Through meditation and study of its intricate pathways, practitioners seek spiritual enlightenment and alignment with the divine will.

Hermetic literature is another important development of this era. These works took the form of compilations of allegedly ancient texts, attributed to an amalgamation of Thoth and Hermes. The most relevant is the Cyranides: put together in the 4th century, it is one of the earliest magic spell books, pertaining to mystic remedies, spells, and the practical and magical properties of plants, animals, and amulets. There were a whole host of Hermetic texts related to these properties, as well as groundwork for astrology and the foundations of alchemy. These texts are almost all lost and exist only in fragments, but their influence on witchcraft is paramount.

For the first thousand years of its recorded existence, white magic was a central way of understanding the world. It was not altogether a distinct path, but a necessary strand of thinking that informed and complimented religious and scientific thought. In these periods, each new culture and civilisation imbued it with their own mythology, ideas and conceptions and it adapted these disparate influences into a unique way of thinking which pervaded across the world. As Christianity began to spread, the magical way was forced underground, taking with it a millennia of hidden and forbidden knowledge.

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Flora Knight is an occultist and historian.

Tyler Cowen Playlist

Tyler Cowen June 3, 2024

I don’t like the term “world music” — isn’t all music “world music”? But until aliens visit us, this will have to do. These are from various popular music traditions, with broadly African and African-American emphases.

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Tyler Cowen is Holbert L. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason University and serves as chairman and general director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. With colleague Alex Tabarrok, Cowen is coauthor of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution and cofounder of the online educational platform Marginal Revolution University.

Performance Art

The Knight of Cups (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Knight of Cups
Astrology: Pisces, Fire of Water
Qabalah: Yod of He  י of ה

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Chris Gabriel June 1, 2024

The Knight of Cups is a court card and the highest card in the suit of Cups. In each iteration we find a bluish gray horse, mounted by a fair haired rider bearing a cup. This is a card of confusion and desire.

In Marseille, we find a rather plain rider, lacking the armor of the other two cards. He is smiling, holding a large golden cup with red detail. His horse appears satisfied. Both he and his horse have blonde hair.

In Rider, we find a much more determined figure, bearing a stern demeanor and firm grasp of his cup. He has a winged helmet, armor, and a tunic decorated with fish. His shoes are winged. His horse seems to hesitate as they prepare to cross a river and approach a mountain range.

In Thoth, we see a figure in the midst of great activity, his horse galloping ahead. He has dark armor and two large wings. His cup holds a crab, even though he is the image of Pisces. He is surrounded by waves, and beneath him is a peacock.

The image Rider and Thoth evoke to me is that of the Flying Fish, who leaps from his home in the sea to surf the waves with his fins. And just as the saying goes, the Knight of Cups is a “fish out of water”. He is Pisces as Flying Fish. His Knightly nature is that of Fire, but his suit is Water, meaning there is fundamental conflict;  He is the Fish who fights against his own needs.

As such, we find the flying fish’s human correlation in the Surfer. One who leaves the land to dominate and harness the water. This is the nature of the Knight of Cups, surfing the power of the ocean, but never far from drowning.

Flying Fish, Kristen Middleton

Symbolically, we see this as the archetypal Grail Knight, the knight not only seeking the cup, but seeking to be worthy of the cup. The Grail Knight must have an absolutely pure and perfect Heart to be worthy of the Grail, but this is exceedingly rare, for the pure heart exists in opposition to our base drives. Like fire and water they combat each other. In the Grail stories this leads to terrible failure, with a character like Klingsor going as far as to castrate himself in an attempt to be pure enough for the Grail.

Thus this card is characterized by confusion and conflict. There is the overwhelming desire to obtain the Grail, to surf larger and larger waves, but it is always met equally by Nature, and it’s bestial demands to crawl in the dust of the Earth.

When dealt this card, we may be confronted with our own confused desires, or with a figure who embodies this conflict, it may even be as simple as a Pisces that we know.

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Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

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