The Black Arts: A Concise History of Witchcraft, Demonology, Astrology, Alchemy and Other Mystical Practices Throughout the Ages
Since it is October it’s time to look at the things that go bump in the night, making this weeks book The Black Arts: A Concise History of Witchcraft, Demonology, Astrology, Alchemy and Other Mystical Practices Throughout the Ages by Richard Cavendish.
The book is broken down into seven sections, covering specific aspects of the Black Arts, starting with The World of the Black Magician, Names and Numbers, The Cabala and Names of Power, The Stone and the Elixir, Astrology, Ritual Magic, and The Worship of the Devil.
And I will say he started with a bang, and while this book was initially published in 1967 and reprinted in 2007, which is the version I have, this statement stands true:
“No one is a black magician in his own eyes, and modern occultists, whatever their beliefs and practices, think of themselves as high-minded white magicians, not as sinister Brothers of the left-hand path.”
I say this in reference to the news that broke after Charlie Kirk’s assassination that magazine Jezebel had paid witches on Etsy to curse Charlie Kirk. Now, whether or not you personally believe such curses are possible, judging by this follow up bit where in the witch in question wants to apologize to Erika Kirk, and the backlash against Jezebel has been such that they removed the article they wrote about paying for the service, the witch in question realizes She Fucked Up. By casting any such spell, by accepting payment for it, by wrecking her karma so spectacularly. Home girls coming back in the next life as a dung beetle.
I will say in the witchy community, much like the rest of the world, some celebrated, and those are the truly wretched, the ones who, as Cavendish says, think they are high minded and righteous, but are truly pathetic examples of humanity. Some were beyond horrified that anyone would engage in such, and send prayers of blessing and peace towards Erika and her family, and mourned with the rest of the world over the loss of a voice of reason and redemption in a world gone mad with anger and vitriol.
So, back to the book.
The black magician wants power for powers sake. Power over life and death, power over other people, power over the demonic. And however much practitioners of such may think they are on the side of good, virtually every extant Grimoire found to date includes some genuinely nasty things in it. And I’m not talking eye of newt or toe of frog, which are colloquialisms for mustard seed and bulbous buttercup respectively. I’m talking blood of babies, ingestion of bodily fluids...not just blood but waste matter....yes, that’s exactly what you think it is. Which they somehow justify by including prayers to God and the angels and ostentatious piety.
A lot of magic is based on imitation, which is where we get poppets, better known as voodoo dolls from. Make a doll representing the person you want to perform magic on. The doll should include bodily fluids, hair and nail clippings of your target. One love poppet called for the magician to get hair from every part of the object of his affection...every part. Including pubic hair. The good news is, such spells, if discovered, are easy to subvert. The magician in question asked the girls brother to get the pubic hair. When the brother was discovered, the girls mother gave him hair from the family cow, which in turn became infatuated with the magician and followed him everywhere. But at least the towns folk now knew who the magician was.
An alarming number of spells were put towards forcing love and the author rightly calls this out as rape-y in intent. Because if you can’t get a girl to love you on your own merit, forcing her, whether physically or via magical means, is rape. But, ostentatiously praying to God to allow it to happen makes it all better, according to the magicians beliefs.
From that perspective, I rather have more respect for the witches who just openly acknowledge their darkness. The final chapters on the Black Mass include a bit where the 17th century mistress of the King of France participated in a black mass to try and get him to put the queen aside and cleave only to her. At least she knew it was dark, didn’t pretend otherwise, and when she herself was eventually set aside, would spend the rest of her days trying to make up for her perversion by doing good deeds.
Names and numbers discusses numerology which apparently goes all the way back to Pythagoras...he of the theorem. I was vaguely familiar with numerology but had no idea how detailed it gets. There’s some belief that the number of various words can predict the future, and magicians during World War II used numerology to redirect the Germans from Syria towards Russia.
Names of Power go into like Abracadabra, Tetragrammaton, magic squares, which I have never seen to work, but honestly...if I had to guess it’s because they use nonsense words, like this magic square:
Like, the only word in there I recognize is Opera. I’m pretty sure the reason these don’t work is that it’s some weird translation, like writing an English word in Hebrew script, then trying to translate the Hebrew script back into an English word. I’m betting if we knew what the original Hebrew word was supposed to be….in Hebrew, not in English...it might work better.
The Stone and Elixir is all about alchemy, the famous Sorcerer’s stone, and I’m betting the only person who has ever managed to successfully make a Sorcerer’s Stone for immortality is JK Rowling, who will undoubtedly be remembered long long long after the rest of us have died and turned to dust.
Astrology is something everyone is familiar with, as most newspapers even today include a daily horoscope. I did find it interesting how a book written in 1967 acknowledges that the progression of the stars has moved forward so that most people are a sign behind. Example: If you were born September 10 you think you’re a Virgo. Due to procession, the sun was actually in Leo when you were born.
And for people who are about to literally eat shit, magicians were awfully concerned with being clean before they did so. But, there is a bit about psychic attacks and how to protect yourself from such. Which is probably useful if you’re going to post a review mocking witches for sending death curses and condemning themselves to rolling shit into small balls in their next life. Seriously dumbass? Wow….
Power over the demonic. Well, the general belief was if you had a strong enough character, you could control them through your cult of personality, your own willpower, with a bit of God’s blessing too. But what if you’re just not that interesting? Well, that’s where satanic worship comes into play. Because if God can’t help you control the demons, then the father of all demons surely can. But it’ll cost you. Dignity...and your soul, of course. Which might explain why the former royal mistress spent her later years doing good deeds, trying to earn back the soul she sold for favor with the king.
This book was an interesting jaunt into how the belief and practice of magic evolved in lock step with man, through various religions and iterations of Christianity, delving into the Kabbala and the connections between Judaism and Christianity and how those affected the evolution of the early magicians.
Some of it was repetitive for me, having read The Witches Ointment earlier this year, quite a bit of the black mass descriptions was information I’d already read, and the book on Aleister Crowley I read a few years ago, but it was still a good primer on how various practices came to be and have been used up through the 20th century.
What was really...odd...is I can see the connections between what black magicians believe and the madness that has been the first quarter of the 21st century. Black Magicians seek to pervert the natural order, causing men to become women and women to become men, seeking to cause death and mayhem, preferring abortion over the giving of life, and the killing of children for ceremonies is heavily featured in the book.
The seeking to have men become women heavily recalled me to the Crowley book where it said when he engaged in homosexual acts, he would take the woman’s part, forcing his usually straight partner to sodomize him. So that Crowley could experience the balance of being a woman. At the time I thought he was just a garden variety sociopath. And I still think that. But I think now his sociopathy was turned towards the dark arts as his full commitment to such.
And given that Crowley’s true fame came well after his death in 1947...it was actually around the 1960’s and the dawning of the Age of Aquarius that his true fame hit it’s stride. When this book, and others like it were written. Witchcraft started hitting a new high as a feminist pathway to power. And when you look at how the testimonies of those who attended known black masses at the end of the 19th century leads up to the absolute shit-show that was the 20th century and then OH MY GOD look at what’s happened in the 21st century, you might be drawn to conclude that the perverts are winning. The black magicians are taking charge.
But consider this….the bacchanalia that appeared on Social Media right after Charlie Kirk was assassinated has resulted in a mass exodus from this pathway, as more people were horrified by what had happened and the reactions of those truly bent individuals who celebrated. More people who had been drifting, spiritually, are rejecting that excess. Evil knows no moderation. And that bullet metaphorically shot themselves in the foot while martyring Charlie Kirk, giving those they would lure to their side, a chance to run very far away, very fast.
