White and Black Magic—in Theory and Practice

Editor’s Note.— This text forms the first subsection of Section II of the surviving “Würzburg Manuscript,” an early draft of The Secret Doctrine prepared by H. P. Blavatsky principally during 1885-1886, before the work was extensively reorganized into the form published in 1888. It belongs to the historical and occult material that originally formed part of the projected introductory volume and was later largely reassigned to the projected third volume.

“White and Black Magic—in Theory and Practice” was first published from the manuscript in The Theosophist, December, 1932, during C. Jinarajadasa’s serial presentation of the Würzburg material. Portions of the manuscript were subsequently incorporated into H. P. Blavatsky: Collected Writings, while the complete surviving section was published in The Secret Doctrine Würzburg Manuscript (Eastern School Press, 2014), pp. 37–42.

The substance of this section was later revised and considerably expanded into Section VI, “The Dangers of Practical Magic,” of the posthumous 1897 Secret Doctrine, Volume III, especially pp. 67–72 and 74–75. Unlike some other portions of the Würzburg Manuscript, its general sequence was largely preserved, though several passages were expanded, one passage was transferred to a footnote, and additional material was inserted in the later version. The Würzburg text therefore preserves a comparatively clear early draft of a section that ultimately survived, in much fuller form, in Volume III.

§II. White and Black Magic—in theory and practice—The Esoteric and Western Kabala and its confessed Esoterism—The “Veil” of Moses—The Taro or the Wheel (Rota) of Enoch—Esoteric reading of the Bible—Numerical value of Jehovah and Elohim Abram—no Brahman.

As already shown—Magic is a dual power; nothing more easy than to turn it into sorcery. If anyone would study Occultism he might turn to the Kabala Denudata, or the Zohar, or again to older works such as the Sepher Jezirah and even the Book of Enoch called by the Greeks Enoïchien, or the “internal eye.” But if any of these is approached without the right key to it; if the student is unable to distinguish between the primitive orthodox and the Left-hand Magic—let him take our advice and never meddle with such literature. There are numerous works written for the sworn Initiates only, those who have pronounced the for-ever binding oath and who alone can deal with their teachings practically.¹ Well intentioned as such works may be, they can only mislead and guide one imperceptibly to Black Magic—Sorcery.

The mystic characters—alphabets and numerals found in the divisions and subdivisions of the Great Kabala, are perhaps the most dangerous portion for human reason—especially the numerals. Dangerous we say, because they are the most prompt to produce effects, and that with or without the experimenter’s will or even knowledge. The point of departure of that special branch of the Occult teaching known as the “science of correspondences” numerical and literal—has for its epigraph—with the Jewish and Christian Kabalists the two misinterpreted verses from Ecclesiastes which say that God made the world by means of number, measure and weight,² . . . . and he saw, counted and measured wisdom. The meaning of this can be found out only by the means of a transcendental method of algebra: Jehovah, Adam Kadmon, Adam and Eve, etc.,—in the Kabala are themselves more intimately connected with geometrical calculations than the world is prepared to understand, but as a correct interpretation of the number 666—in that most kabalistic of works—St. John’s Revelation may one day show.

But the Eastern Occultists have another epigraph: “ABSOLUTE UNITY, x: within number and plurality.” Both the Western as the Eastern students of the Hidden Wisdom hold to this axiomatic truth, only the latter perhaps are a little more sincere in their confessions. Instead of putting a mask on their science, they show her face openly, even if they do veil carefully her heart and soul before the inappreciative public and profane. But even the French Kabalist, Eliphas Levi (the Abbé Louis Constant), says in his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, “Absolute Unity is the supreme and final reason of things. Therefore, this reason can be neither a person nor three persons: it is a reason and a preeminent reason (par excellence).[”]

“GOD GEOMETRIZES”—was said by Plato, because every Cosmogony—from the oldest to the latest from the Vedas down to the Jewish Bible—is based upon, interlinked with, and most closely related to Numerals and geometrical calculations. These, questioned by the Initiates—will yield in numerical value based on the integral value of the CIRCLE—the secret of the Hidden deity (as of every other occult particular) in connection with cosmogonical architecture, or symbolical glyph of the primitive mysteries—whether anthropological, anthropographical or cosmic. The cosmogonical theory of numerals, which Pythagoras learned in India—from the Egyptian hierophants, is alone able to reconcile the two units—in one, or matter and spirit, and cause each to demonstrate the other mathematically.

The sacred numbers of the universe in their esoteric combination can alone solve the great problem, and explain the theory of radiation and the cycle of the emanations. The lower orders before they develop into higher ones, and when arrived at the turning point, be reabsorbed into the infinite.

Any Kabalist well acquainted with the Pythagorean system of numerals and geometry can demonstrate that the metaphysical views of Plato were based upon the strictest mathematical principles. “True mathematics,” says the Magician, “is something with which all higher sciences are connected; common mathematics is but a deceitful phantasmagoria whose much praised infallibility only arises from this—that materials, conditions, and references are made to foundation.” And true mathematics is the science upon which all the knowledge of Kosmos and its grand mysteries in the possession of our Teachers—rests. Nothing easier for them than to prove that the Biblical in [and?] the Vedic structures are both based upon God-in-Nature and Nature in God,—as the radical law; and that this law, as everything else immutable and fixed in eternity, can find a correct expression only in the purest mathematics referred to by Plato, or transcendentally applied geometry. Revealed to man—(we fear not and shall not retract the expression) in this geometrical garb, Truth has grown and developed into poetical symbology—otherwise the masses could have never grasped the idea. If later on led by their clergy—crafty and ambitious of power in every age, they have anthropomorphised abstract ideals as well as real and divine Beings, the fault rests with their leaders not with the masses. But the gross conceptions of our forefathers of the present Christian era can satisfy no longer the thoughtful religionist, the scientific and learned mystic, and these have to learn the truth. When it is shown to the world that the Tres Matres of Hermes, and the “Three Mothers” of Sepher Jezirah, are “Light, Heat and Electricity” revealing themselves in their “coats of skin” to modern science and in their very soul and spirit to ancient and mediæval Alchemists—then the so called learned classes may not spurn them any longer. The Rosicrucian Illuminati shall find followers in the Royal Academies, and the latter shall be more prepared than they are now, to admit the great scientific truths of Archaic natural Philosophy. In Hermetic dialect those “Three Mothers” stand as shown in “Isis Unveiled” as a symbol for the whole of the forces or agents which have a place assigned them in the modern “Force correlation.” Synesius mentions books of stone which he found in the temple of Memphis, on which was engraved the following sentence: “One nature delights in another, one nature overcomes another, one nature overrules another, and the whole of them are one.”

The inherent restlessness of matter is embodied in the saying of Hermes: “Action is the life of Phta”; and Orpheus calls nature πολυμήχανη μήτηρ, “the mother that makes many things,” or the ingenious, the contriving, the inventive mother.

The Books of Hermes, the Chaldean Kabala or Book of Numbers as well as the Zohar—without mentioning the old plates made of some unknown pliable and indestructable material in a book called the Yo-ya-hoo in the possession of our Teachers—are all a kind of symbolic writing, and a numerical method upon which Moses built his Genesis, the first four chapters of which contain the synopsis of all the rest.³ Some readers wonder at the non demonstrated fact of the Biblical containment of the pyramid structure, “at the use of Biblical names in general and those of Shem, Ham and Japhet especially” as determinative of pyramid measures, in connection with the 600 year period of Noah, and the 500 year period of his sons; or again that “the terms ‘Sons of Elohim’ and [‘]daughters of H—Adam,’ are for one thing astronomical terms.”⁴ But all this is only natural. Moses was a priest initiated into all the mysteries of the Egyptian temples. He was as well acquainted therefore with the symbolical and astronomical meaning of that mystery of mysteries—the great Pyramid. And having been so familiar with the geometrical secrets that lay concealed for long æons in her strong bosom the measurements and proportions of the Cosmos our little earth included—what wonder that he should have made use of his knowledge. The esoterism of Egypt was that of the whole world at one time. During the long ages of the 3rd Race, it had been the heirloom in common of the whole mankind, received from their Instructors “the Sons of Light”—the primeval SEVEN. There was a time when Wisdom Religion was not symbolical, for it had become esoteric only gradually, necessitated by its misuse and the Sorcery of the 4th Atlantean Race. It was misuse indeed and not the use of power that made the divine gift of the Gods, inherent and only atrophied in man in our own age, develop into ungodly Sorcery. The Elect that escaped from the “Great Flood” preserved and treasured the Divine Science given to their forefathers of the 2nd Race who were incorporeal and pure, as mankind will be once more at the end of its probationary Cycle. Old Plato tells us in his Phaedrus all that man once was, and that which he may yet become again. “Before man’s spirit sank into sensuality and was embodied with it through the loss of his wings, he lived among the Gods in the airy (spiritual) world where everything is true and pure.” In the Timaeus he says that “there was a time when mankind did not perpetuate itself, but lived as pure spirits,” and Plato was an Initiate.

Unwilling that his (by him) “chosen people[”] should become grossly idolatrous as the profane masses of Egypt, Moses utilized his knowledge of the cosmogonical Mysteries of the Pyramid, to build upon it a Cosmogony more accessible and comprehensive to the hoi polloi than the abstruse truths taught to the educated. He invented nothing, added not one iota. Following the example of older nations he only clothed the truths revealed to him by his Egyptian Hierophant under the most ingenious imagery and national garb calculated to meet the requirements of the Israelites. These were corroborated to him, later on, by his own personal “Initiator”—his divine SELF on Mount Sinai, whither “Moses went up unto God.” He understood the great danger of delivering them to the uneducated masses, for he knew the history of the Past. Thus he veiled them from the profanation of public gaze and presented them allegorically. Hence too, the remark in his biography—alleged to have been written by himself—that when he descended from Sinai—“Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone . . . and he put a veil upon his face” (Exod. XXXIV, 29-33). And so did [he] put on a veil—on the face of his Pentateuch; and to that extent that (using the orthodox chronology) only 3376 years after the event people are beginning to acquire the ultimate conviction that it is a “veil”—and a very thick one,—thrown on the archaic Symbols of WISDOM-Religion—and not the face of God that shineth through.

We have the confession of Clement to corroborate the above in Stromata (I.V.) he says: “The mysteries of the Hebrews, their rites, their ceremonies . . . etc., are extremely similar (simillima) to the Mysteries of the Egyptians.” And so they are, with a very simple reason why. If facts are awkward opponents, mathematical and geometrical axioms are still more so, as will be seen, later on.

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