The Book of Black Magic

Rating:
Summary: Ian Myles Slater on: An Old Standard
Review: Arthur Edward Waite (1860-1942) was a professed mystic, an historian of mysticism, alchemy, magic, and secret societies, an industrious translator, and a man unusually willing to turn 180 degrees from a published opinion when faced with new and better evidence. His variously titled "Book of Black Magic and of Pacts" (1898, privately printed; public edition, 1911), or "Book of Ceremonial Magic," etc. (it is currently in print under the latter title as well), shows Waite rejecting the misinformation and misrepresentations of his old source and model, "Eliphas Levi" (real name Alphonse Louis Constant, c.1810-1875) and his sometime-associate in the Order of the Golden Dawn, S.L. MacGregor Mathers (1854-1918), and trying to offer the interested public a responsible survey of the literature of ceremonial magic.

The book in question, under a variety of similar titles, is frequently reprinted, although it is now very badly dated. Most of those editions I have seen seemed to be identical; I can't be sure of all them. The present, Weiser, edition, seems to be a reprinting of the original, somewhat shorter, and apparently less (or un-)illustrated, edition of 1898. (I would like to be clearer, but it's been several years since I actually handled it, and, to judge from information on Amazon, some of my recollections of it seem to have been wrong.)

In any version, the book also contains a number of oversights and errors of fact, but it retains considerable value and interest, and is worth reading with care, and *critical* attention.

Waite makes interesting points on the presuppositions of the genuinely early grimoires (books of spells and rituals) which he describes and excerpts, and useful comments on the (un)reliability of the then-current translations, many of which have been reprinted in recent years. Anyone attempting to use it as guide to practicing such magic should heed Waite's warning that he has taken care to present an incomplete or corrupt form of any ritual involving harm to animals, rendering the spells, by the magical hypothesis, ineffective; entirely out of concern for the animals, not the would-be-magicians, he explains. Indeed, Waite has little patience with the operative magician in general, and with those who supply the demand for spellbooks in particular. He points out that, in terms of procedures and intentions, the magical literature allows no real distinction between "white" and "black" magic; indeed, what is presented as "white" magic, is, by making direct use of religious rites and objects, sometimes the more objectionable. He also points out that the medieval and early modern magicians generally seemed unaware that what they were doing could be considered blasphemous.

Among its other merits, Waite's book provides extended excerpts and illustrations from the leading pseudo-grimoires published in cheap editions in (mainly) France in the nineteenth century. He points out the origins of some of these tracts in more respectable "occult" writings of the eighteenth century. (A rather wavering line probably could now be drawn back all the way to the Hermetic enthusiasts of the Renaissance, and ultimately to Hellenistic Egypt, but all genuine Egyptian content, except mention of the Pyramids and Pharaohs, had vanished along the way.)

Waite attempts, albeit with inadequate data, to establish the medieval date and Christian origins of the various "Books" and "Keys" of Solomon, a task still not complete in detail, and compares these texts to explicitly Christian works, some masquerading as highly effective devotions. The book is concerned with the relatively elite practice of ritual magic, including its many vulgarizations, and not with European witchcraft, nor with Satanism as such. As Waite points out, the grimoires promise to teach how to compel, bribe, and trick devils, not worship them (although from a theological point of view, as he makes equally clear, the distinction is meaningless). Pacts are attempts to force supernatural beings to serve humans, not promises of one's own soul -- except where the intention is to break the pact.

The nearest successor to Waite's book to appear in English was Elizabeth M. Butler's "Ritual Magic," first published by Cambridge University Press in 1949, and recently reprinted. It shows a dependence on Waite (in the 1898 edition, with the original page numbering) for materials unavailable to its author in wartime and post-war Britain, but has considerable additional material on actual and supposed magicians (including Gilles de Rais), and on nineteenth century magicians, pseudo-magicians, Satanists, pseudo-Satanists, and hoaxes, and provides an invaluable context for understanding Waite's writings. Her book can be read as a follow-up, if not an introduction.

Butler, more importantly, fills a gap in Waite's coverage. "Ritual Magic" offers a good discussion of the various German (and generally Central European) books purporting to contain the magic of Faust; these are generally duller than the French pamphlets described by Waite, but seem to be rather more likely to reflect real attempts to practice the "black arts," and represent a different geographic area. "Ritual Magic" was, in fact, the middle volume of a trilogy on the Faust tradition (including "The Myth of the Magus" and "The Fortunes of Faust'), and Butler's literary interests are clear throughout.

Those with a genuine interest in current research on the history of European traditions of magic will probably want to turn to the essays in "Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic," edited by Claire Fanger (1998), and Richard Kieckhefer's "Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century" (1997). These all, especially the latter, contain excerpts of texts to compare to those offered by Waite. (Kieckhefer gives a long Latin text as well.) A shorter survey, covering a number of other topics, and with briefer quotations, is Kieckhefer's "Magic in the Middle Ages" (Cambridge University Press, 1989; the Canto paperback of 2000 has a useful new Preface with updated bibliography). Kieckhefer also provides a good introduction to the historical literature on witch beliefs and persecutions, and how these relate to elite magic; a subject on which the second edition of Norman Cohn's "Europe's Inner Demons" is also enlightening.

Rating:
Summary: Think of the consequences, you Boeotians!
Review: Basically a comparative compendium of several of the classic grimoires, it is quite reasonable as a sort of primer for those with an interest in the style of magic written about 5 centuries or so ago. I do not expect most modern wiccans would care for the attitudes and methods represented, but whether they like it or not, it is how magic was done and still is done by some.

Due to the rather comparative nature of the work, it was necessary for Waite to be rather sketchy in his examination of the grimoires. That is quite forgivable. He made no claim that he was including the ancient texts word for word, or even complete instruction from them.

As a sort of sampler, it is quite excellent. A person interested in the darker sides of magic can use this book to find what they might be looking for and then seek the actual text Waite quoted from in his excerpts. The older the better, since the modern reprints sometimes have left out bits the publishers feared might be "objectionable".

My one real displeasure in the reading was noting Waite's comment on the formula referred to as "The Composition of Death", where he mentions that it appears to him that the formula would result in a liquid rather than a powder. This indicated that he settled for available english translation of the time and did not bother to check the older versions. If he had, he would have known that the formula in the english version was incomplete.

That small displeasure was more than balanced by his reminder to readers that while in modern times the sacrifice of a lamb or goat to get parchment may seem bloodthirsty, it was an everyday occurrence since paper was not actually available when many of the old grimoires were written. The only way you could get a guaranteed clean sheet of parchment was to make it yourself, since some parchment dealers would wash writing off used parchment and sell it as new.

A classic in it's own way and always a refreshing read free of the "politically correct" viewpoint that seems to have become popular to impose over such works.

While I would not recommend it alone without additional reading from the original texts he quotes, it's quite reasonably well done.

Rating:
Summary: Just any right now
Review: Do you have any that I can study on?

Rating:
Summary: Good, left a bit to be desired
Review: I found this book to be very interesting and informative, a good read for both students of the occult or anyone interesting in reading about the darker side of magic.
I did find that it left a bit to be desired in the way that there are gaps in some of the text, gaps which would have contained important information. Aside from that a good read, better if one has companion texts that are mentioned in the book.

Rating:
Summary: Black Magic Explained
Review: Not a book of black magic spells, but black magic explained by a master. This is biased because I am a member of the Golden Dawn. But I still think what I say holds true that this an excellent book. Most books carried in finer bookstores' New Age or similiar sections are on Wicca. Maybe try something more original. Wiccans are just as bigoted or even more bigoted than conservative Christians. They always moan over inverted pentagrams, etc. Do not complain about anything you don't need to subject yourself to. WAite explains theories behind black magic. From what I've seen, all of WAite's about 50 books have a combined total of about 1 million copies sold. Waite is one of the better occult authors. Unlike most, he doesn't force his group in this case the Golden Dawn on you. Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: If there is 10 stars out of 5, this book earned it!
Review: The title is misleading a bit. Black Magic here is not a main category. Basically, this book has a MASS of resources, reciting the Goetian tradition and the Magick of Solomon. The word Ceremonial, meaning not too energy oriented as witchcraft or wicca, but more of a spirit summoning practice. What you get is over 300 pages of utterly thorough magickal art dating back centuries ago, with arts that are somewhat new in discovery but amazing in value. There is Black Magic in this book but its not what really gives it a value. I found the 'art' to be fascinating and the simplicity of performing the rituals, compared to the outstanding results was breathtaking. If you're a practicioner of ANY kind of magick, buy this immediately.