The Dialogue with Devils of 1890s Writers: Theurgy

My quest to understand the spiritual nature of writers in London in the 1890s, who participated in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, has taken me to strange places indeed. I began, today, by looking into theurgy and wound up at the Book of Ceremonial Magic (1911) by Arthur Edward Waite.

Theurgy describes the operation or effect of supernatural or divine agency in human affairs. In Esoteric Christianity, this benefits a person by bringing one closer to God. As I discovered through my exploration of Christian Mysticism, the Order supported the notion that such a union may be attained through performing acts, in the form of rituals or spells, to gain knowledge. Through this knowledge, I presume, members of the Order felt that they were getting closer to God. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn claimed to teach a type of theurgy that would help one ascend spiritually, while learning about the true nature of the self and its relationship to the Universe.

Best known for his role in creating the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck in 1910, Waite joined the Order in 1891. Waite moved to London from the United States as a child and was scarred by the death of his sister in 1874. Biographers use his sisters death to explain Waite’s attraction to physical research, a term used to describe the attempt at scientizing mysticism in the nineteenth century. Waite had a successful career, as a mystic, before entering the Order, and wrote the Book of Ceremonial Magic before leaving the Order in 1914. He also participated in the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia and the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, on top of becoming a Freemason at the turn of the century.

In his book, Waite makes a distinction between White and Black Magic.

The history of this distinction is exceedingly obscure, but there can be no question that in its main aspect it is modern--that is to say, in so far as it depends upon a sharp contrast between Good and Evil Spirits. In Egypt, in India and in Greece, there was no dealing with devils in the Christian sense of the expression; Typhon, Juggernaut and Hecate were not less divine than the gods of the over-world, and the offices of Canidia were probably in their way as sacred as the peaceful mysteries of Ceres.

To Waite, the real difference lies in the user’s intent.

White Ceremonial Magic is, by the terms of its definition, an attempt to communicate with Good Spirits for a good, or at least an innocent, purpose. Black Magic is the attempt to communicate with Evil Spirits for an evil, or for any, purpose.

Or at least an innocent purpose? That's the slippery part and it's only not dangerous, if you don't believe in theurgy, which I sometimes wonder whether Waite did. I have never believed in any of this stuff really. Communicating with spirits for an innocent purpose reminds me of being in the eighth grade, using a Ouija Board with my BFF, Kari Lozinski. I'm sorry, Kari, wherever you are. I moved the pointer. Ok... so are Ouija Boards a form of theurgy? The first advertisements for the talking board appeared in 1891. The ad claims:

The Ouija is. without doubt, the most interesting, remarkable and mysterious production of the nineteenth century. Its operations are always interesting and frequently invaluable, answering as it does questions concerning the past, present and future with marvelous accuracy. It furnishes never-failing amusement and recreation for all classes, while scientific or thoughtful its mysterious movements invite the most careful research and investigation - apparently forming the link which unites the known with the unknown, the material with the immaterial. It forces upon us the conviction that a great truth was contained in the statement of the Danish Prince: “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than were ever dreamed of in thy philosophy.” Price $1.49

In that the Ouija board aims to contact spirits, I would say it is a form of theurgy. The famous occultist and member of the Order, Aleister Crowley, advocated use of the Ouija Boards. Like other forms of theurgy, users ran the titillating risk of unleashing the diabolical.

Diabolism, I have to wonder, might have been part of Bram Stoker’s interest in the Order, since he was writing and researching Dracula, when he participated with its members. Dracula’s plot is all about people with innocent intentions, who inadvertently unleash a monster, a monster, who can damn them to hell. Van Helsing says to poor Mina:

”...All this without that diabolic aid which is surely to him [Dracula]; for it have to yield to the powers that come from, and are, symbolic of good. And now this is what he is to us. He have infect you—oh, forgive me, my dear, that I must say such; but it is for good of you that I speak. He infect you in such wise, that even if he do no more, you have only to live—to live in your own old, sweet way; and so in time, death, which is of man’s common lot and with God’s sanction, shall make you like to him.”

Guilt by association. Mina was bit by a kind of devil and will be damned to hell, unless through certain rituals they can bring her closer to God again by ridding the Earth of this vampire.

It’s relevant that Dracula was a high-born male and that his victims were either feeble-minded or women, especially when reading the Book of Ceremonial Magic. Waite believed that magic was most dangerous in the hands of “The class of people to whom such [selfish] considerations would appeal were those obviously--and as I have otherwise indicated--who could not obtain their satisfaction through the normal channels--the outcasts, the incompetent, the ignorant, the lonely, the deformed, the hideous, the impotent and those whom Nature and Grace alike denied.” Of course, the Victorian social-stratification of society played a role in one’s ability to access other worlds.

In spite of the fact that he slept in the vampire's house, Mina's husband was able to avoid being bitten, even though he had a luscious night with three diabolical women. Poor Mina only wanted to save her friend.

The Ouija Board might have been for everyone, but the Book of Ceremonial Magic and the secrets of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn most certainly were not.

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The Occult Magic of 1890s Writers: Hermeticism

Writing about Bram Stoker, W.B. Yeats, Maude Gonne, and Constance Wilde’s involvement in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, made it tackling the idea of hermeticism inevitable. Although the term is often used to describe the occult “sciences” in general, hermeticism, as a religious philosophy, is based on the adherence to the body of ideas set forth in hermetic writings.

Hermeticism and its writings date as far back as the first century B.C, and the bulk of its texts were completed before the second century. This corpus hermeticum was uncovered in the Byzantine libraries by by the court of Cosimo de Medici in the late-fifteenth century. If you are especially keen, the Corpus Hermeticum is available online.

These writings were attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. Many Christian writers of the Renaissance and the Reformation, including Lactantius, Thomas of Aquinas, Augustine, Giordano Bruno, Marsilio Ficino, Campanella and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola saw Trismegistus as a wise pagan prophet, who foresaw the coming of Christianity. They called him ‘Thrice Great' because the writings claimed he understood the secrets of alchemy, astrology, and theurgy. I think hermeticism's connection with those three “sciences” is how it came to be associated with the occult in general.

I call alchemy, astrology, and theurgy “sciences” only to make the link between them and the late-Victorian urge to understand everything by turning into a science. Proponents of ideas like these, and something you might be more familiar with - psychoanalysis - felt they were really getting somewhere in the late-nineteenth century, if they got people to believe they had uncovered a “real” science.

Historically, hermeticism had its greatest influence on the world between 1300-1600 A.D. through the development of the sciences. Hermeticism gave scientists the idea that they could influence or control nature, leading many of these early scientists to experiment with the hermetic arts. So... scientists experimented with magic for three-hundred years. By the nineteenth-century, it had gone on, albeit to a lesser extent, for more than five-hundred years. What changed?

The Victorian pursuit of science changed everything for hermetics. Through the misadventures of people, like Frederic William Henry Myers, some things became unsuitable for scientific research relegating the pursuit of those ideas to the margins and labeling the people, who continued to pursue them, as quacks. That’s why Arthur Conan Doyle’s belief in fairies seems so incomprehensible to us today, and W.B. Yeats’ involvement in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn seems cooky. The writers, who participated in the Order, stopped seeing alchemy, astrology, theurgy, and divination as heretical, checked it out and, for the most part, decided it was a bunch of hookum, or at least, through their experimentation, convinced many of the people around them it was hookum.

I don’t know whether Constance Wilde ever actually gave up her belief in hermeticism, though she eventually stopped participating in the Order, but because Victorians began allowing themselves to look at Christianity differently, developing their own understandings of God’s relationship with the universe, hermetic philosophy blended well with Christian beliefs.

Hermicism uses the concept of God, the All, or the One, as synonymous with reality. It is incredibly monotheistic, while also accepting the existence of things, like angels, in the universe. As we saw with the reputation of Hermes Trismegistus, Christians had been reconciling hermeticism with Christianity for a long time.

The thrice great things, Trismegistus comanded, would fall under the Victorian microscope, by which I mean to say that they looked closely at them. Alchemy easily loaned itself to the Victorian definitive experiments with science. For astrology, they got to look through telescopes and blame the stars for each other’s wacky behaviour. And theurgy became part of the ultimate goal of Christian mysticism, a step on the path to a closer relationship with God, the All, or the One. Isn’t that where AA gets some of it’s language from?

Hermeticism gets weirder when we move on to magic. Arcane laws and limits govern the use of hermetic magic. Many of these have roots in antiquated notions of the human body, such as the balancing of the four humors and twisted ideas of how contagions work, but understanding these laws and limitations was important to being able to perform magic spells.

Magic organizations, like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, were incredibly secretive, leaving lots of room for rumour and speculation. In my search for hermetic spells, I found such speculation that hermetic witches claimed to have ended the First World War, while shamans claimed those witches were using their spells. Is anyone else thinking about American Horror Story here?

So, while I set out to learn about what made writers in the 1890s tick, I wound up learning that the magic of my favourite television witches is rooted in the hermetic tradition. Well, I know nothing about the link between shamanism and voodoo, if there is any such link. It makes sense, though, that the creators of that series would root the Salem witches' magic in these old esoteric European traditions.

Hermetic spells, like some of the spells seen in the popular TV show, involve candles and a circle. These spells require the person performing the magic to imagine certain things and are called meditation spells. Meditation spells are primarily used for contacting the spirits of people in this world and beyond, as well as seeking hidden truths. I’m not sure how they can be used to wreak havoc or end wars, but maybe I just don’t have a good enough imagination.

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The Perplexing Spiritualism of 1890s Writers: Christian Mysticism

Writing a comprehensive post on Christian mysticism might be as challenging as writing my novel. Yet, it feels integral to that process because I’m writing about writers in London in the 1890s, most of whom were Christian, some of whom believed in magic. When I think of all the American churches that banned Harry Potter as heretical, it’s hard to reconcile belief in Jesus with a belief in magic. Still, many people held both beliefs close to their hearts in the 1890s.

The main objective of late-Victorian Christian mysticism was to unify the soul with God. Practitioners hoped to find a way to get closer to God by uncovering and practicing forgotten or secret religious rituals. It was believed that one could be transformed through the unification of their soul with God in clear and obvious ways. The only true test for the authenticity of a mystic then would be to look for evidence of the mystic’s transformation, as well as the mystic’s transformitive effects on other people.

As exciting as it would be, I’m not talking about people being transformed physically. They didn’t start to glow, sprout wings, or walk around with a halo hovering above their heads. All the evidence that a community open to the idea of Christian mysticism needed was to be persuaded that the mystic had had a religious experience.

The American philosopher and psychologist, William James popularized the use of the term “religious experience” in the 1890s. His book, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902), was his manifesto on the subject. The very concept of a religious experience fostered the idea that the experience of the mystic, the experience of magic, was transformative in the sense that it supplied knowledge. Therefore, your proof of your religious experience rested in your knowledge of what happened and your ability to persuade others that you were telling the truth.

At its core, belief in transformation through a religious ritual does not fall outside of Christianity. Water baptism is one of Christianity’s oldest practices, still practiced today, and it holds deep symbolic meaning. The water cleanses the soul of impurities and we rise from it prepared to lead a new life.

Most of the Christian rituals practiced by the writers in London in the 1890s, who participated in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn [link], only consisted of meditation. One contemporary web page I found on the subject describes the need for Christian mysticism.

When a soul no longer feels realized through the traditional devotional practices, it naturally feels inclined to reach another level of “knowing” the Divine. This is the starting point for an expansion of the relationship with the “father” in heaven: the Soul abandons the old practices and give[s] itself to the Divinity [...]

Among historians, I find a need to explain the Victorian need to reach another spiritual level of knowing through a kind of collective disillusionment with Christianity in the wake of Darwinian sciences. While I accept that explanation, the need certainly hasn’t gone from us today.

What I see happening in the psyches of my writers, who were both Christian and involved in things - like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, is similar to what I see happening among my contemporaries, who are Christian and using tarot cards or participating yoga because it is supposedly good for the body and the soul. (I just think it’s a good way to exercise without sweating too much. I hate sweating!) As with yoga and Christianity, the Order blended elements of different religions, while using Christianity to make participants feel they were uncovering the mystic secrets of the religion of their parents.

That’s how I reconcile Victorian mysticism and Christianity.

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