Magic, Rituals, Demons. Ritualistic Magic

I remember a psychiatrist once telling me he didn't believe in god, but always he always prayed before driving. His explanation was that it helps him relax, remove anxieties of what might happen and so on. Indeed, much of the history of "common magic" is about attempting to remove such real or imaginary threats from one's life. Rituals, ceremonies, prayers could be a useful tool to achieve this end. Indeed, often the ritual is more important that the actual credence in the reality of the thus addressed deity. Still with any tool, I guess the secret is how to use it, and what it should not become is an automatic procedure of habit or tradition.

Magic always had a ritual aspect. Contemporary magical trends owe a lot to the work of Eliphas Levi, who developed a system of rituals and their theory, based in a large part on Renaissance traditions. The person who pushed ritualistic magic to its limits in the early 20th century was Aleister Crowley (see above). Being "the most evil man in the world", his hedonistic rituals including sexual practices and the use of drugs made him a scandalous figure of his time. He placed the notion of thelema, or true will (true in the sense that it also incorporates one's higher destiny) in the center of his practices, and experimented with I would say whatever the human body and mind could take, eventually ruining his health. As some of his practices would lead to less attention nowadays, I would also venture saying that some of the sort of hedonistic experiments he pursued are now incorporated into what is regarded as normal or acceptable, and such experiments may have played a crucial role in this change. Another development in this regard was the Satanistic movement of Anton LaVey (see below). LaVeyan Satanism is symbolic, i.e., it does not include worship of a Satanic deity, but rather uses Satan as a symbol of man's true nature. For example, the Satanistic parallel to the Christian Golden Rule would be "Do unto others as they do unto you", simply because it is considered false to expect the same consideration from others as one pays to them, since it is not in human nature. Here I would halt for a moment. While I sympathize with this dictum since it very often proves true in my personal experience, I think the same potential source of mistake is there as with the Christian parallel, namely mindless application justified by a doctrine. In other words, I think it is really the individuum that matters, and could make an intelligent decision whether in a given situation one or the other action would be appropriate. It involves risk as any action of free will. In any case, the modern satanist seems to pay much attention to individualism and materialism. Magic is now a psychological means to govern situations or focus one's emotions to a given purpose via rituals. On a final note regarding rituals of any kind, I think their danger lies in biasing ones own view on the world one way or the other, and so they may become the master rather than the servant.

While I do not fancy any form of religion or thought connected to churches or other organizations, since after all this is a private matter, one has to appreciate the role these organizations play in the course of history, and evaluate the appearance of newer ones as indicators of important questions of the time. Neopagan movements including modern Witchcraft, or Wicca, should also be mentioned among the practitioners of modern ritual magic. Their ritual practices appear much more light-hearted and playful than those mentioned above, they are perhaps advocates of an imagination less bound by reason.