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Interlude: Erasing the Grooves: On Cold Feet
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veiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology betokens a disclosure of the true face of occultism as well as the ultimate “key” for decoding all “mysteries.” Contemporary texts continue the tradition: the full title of Israel Regardie’s classic account of the Hermetic magic of the famous secret society, the Golden Dawn, is The Golden Dawn: A Complete Course in Practical and Ceremonial Magic, Four Volumes in One; The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (Stella Matutina) as Revealed by Israel Regardie; the title uses revelation as a key term. More contemporary, commercially successful, characteristically occultic work, such as that of mystics like Gary Zukav and psychics like Sylvia Browne, have more modest titles but preserve the rhetoric of revelation on their dust jackets. The back cover of Browne’s New York Times best-seller, Life on the Other Side: A Psychic’s Tour of the Afterlife, reads: Praise for Sylvia Browne: “Sylvia Browne is a master at conveying the truth that exists in the fourth dimension,” Carolyn Myss, bestselling author of Anatomy of the Spirit. “I’ve personally witnessed Sylvia Browne bring closure to distraught families . . . and open people’s hearts to see the good within themselves,” Montel Williams [talk-show host]. From Life on the Other Side[:] “I happen to be one of the most naturally skeptical people you’ll ever meet, and I’m almost addicted to research. My faith in God has always been unshakable, but until and unless I’ve seen, tasted, smelled, felt and experience the details about how this whole creation of reality works, I take nothing for granted. . . . I would never waste your time with a book of pretty fantasies and illusions about The Other Side. The Other Side is more thrilling, comforting, loving, and empowering than any fairy tale could ever be.” I have cited the jacket copy at length because it highlights an element that has persisted since the nineteenth century. The language of revelation—that the given occultist will be telling secrets—is always couched in terms of “the truth.” In addition, the jacket copy features a concern with authority, particularly in terms of testimonials from presumed experts (one, another psychic; the other, a television talkshow host). Any non¤ction book necessarily claims authority; both “author” and “authority” are derived from the Latin auctor, which 20 / chapter 1 means “creator.” In occult books, however, the authority claimed is always in terms of something that previously has been concealed or gravely misunderstood, and this something typically has to do with powers that derive from alternate realities most immediately accessible “within” one’s mind. Browne’s book (published in 2000), however, also highlights a rhetorical move found in many historical occult works that bears mention : prefatory piety. “My faith in God has always been unshakable,” she suggests. As I noted in the origin narrative, after Augustine’s in®uential condemnation of magic and occultism as having derived its powers from demonic forces, occultism was thought to be evil by many religious authorities. This belief waxed and waned throughout history; the evidence of its strongest application is the thousands of suspected witches who were burned alive and tortured during the heyday of the Spanish Inquisition. The consequence of this belief was the inclusion of prefatory remarks in occult texts that serve as testaments to Christian faith. Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy begins with an open letter to the Chancellor of Italy that reads, “To the reverend father in Christ, and most illustrious prince, Hermannus, . . . Agrippa . . . sendeth greeting,” signaling his servitude and religious conviction. Barrett’s The Magus is careful to describe magic and astrology as God-given and in general “agreement” with the “Holy Scriptures.”52 Lévi introduces his The History of Magic by stressing that the “three wise men” of the story of nativity were, in fact, magi, a move he repeats in Transcendental Magic: “Science, notwithstanding, is at the basis of Magic, as at the root of Christianity there is love, and in the Gospel symbols we ¤nd the Word Incarnate adored in His cradle by Three Magi, led thither by a star—the triad and the sign of the microcosm—and receiving their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, a second mysterious triplicity. . . . Christianity therefore owes no hatred to Magic.”53 Similarly, Waite opens his self-described “canon of criticism,” The Book of Ceremonial Magic, with a lengthy discussion of “Christian Mystical...