For the Love of the Gods: The History and Modern Practice of Theurgy - Brandy Williams 2016
Modern Theurgists
Stories from the Ancestors
Taylor lived right at the beginning of the modern world. Sparked in Britain and igniting the rest of the English-speaking world, the Industrial Revolution vastly accelerated the rate of consumption of natural resources. This revolution was powered by the use of wood, then oil, coal, and other fossil fuels. In the nineteenth century, the reins of the global empire shifted from Britain, a small island nation, to America, a vast nation with great forests and significant oil and coal resources.
A century earlier, the Enlightenment brought a similar revolution to the world of belief. The European worldview reshaped around the idea that the visible universe follows laws and systems that can be measured and understood by humans. It swept away the medieval belief in divine intervention and challenged the very idea that there was any other power than the mechanisms of the universe and human reason.
European travelers encountered people around the globe who held numerous and diverse beliefs. It was possible now to talk about religion not just in the singular, but religions in the plural, calling into question the claim to hold the ultimate truth by any one of them. As the European Empire expanded into India and China, the bureaucrats who made the empire run were exposed to Hindu and Buddhist beliefs and rituals. This encounter of West with East opened up new religious possibilities.
As the sense of the possibility of miracle dropped out of the religious and scientific realms, it resurfaced in the “magical” realms. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw a resurgence of interest in “occult” spirituality in Europe and the English-speaking world. Some turned to the spiritual systems of Asia—the “East” or “Orient”—seeking wisdom, while others reached back to the work of medieval natural magicians and alchemists to continue to build on their framework.
THEOSOPHY
A good example of the valorization of Oriental mysticism is Theosophy. Russian mystic Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and her friend Henry Steel Olcott founded the Theosophical Society in America in 1875. Blavatsky moved to India where she resituated the society’s headquarters, accompanied by her colleague Annie Besant.
After Blavatsky’s death the American branches seceded from the international organization. The American organization is still active, with headquarters in Wheaton, Illinois. This is a literate society; members can check out books from the headquarters library by mail, regional branches also have libraries, and branches maintain bookstores called Quest that feature a very wide variety of esoteric books. It is notable that the society publicly supports feminist movement that undoubtedly accounts for the very active participation of women in the society.
Of the many significant members of the society, the most notable for the history of theurgy is George Robert Stowe Mead. Born in England, he was educated in the classics in Cambridge. At the age of twenty-four he met Blavatsky and became her private secretary. He read widely, wrote a great deal, and translated gnostic and Hermetic texts. In particular he translated a collection of the fragments of the Chaldean Oracles, theurgy’s core text.
TWENTIETH-CENTURY OCCULTISTS
Religions are persistent, as increasing numbers of scholars point out. Even religions subjected to a campaign of eradication tend to survive. Paul Hiebert and R. Daniel Shaw instruct a missionary audience in tactics to convert peoples to Christianity in Understanding Folk Religion: A Christian Response to Popular Beliefs and Practices. They warn that Christian victory has been declared prematurely:
“Today it is clear that old ways do not die out, but remain largely hidden from public view.”
When the factors that suppress a religion ease, the hidden can become visible again. As Christianity lost political power, Paganism began to reemerge publicly. In Christian Europe, particularly eastern Europe, many Pagan religious practices have survived as folk customs. These survivals of European Folk Religion provided a basis and inspiration for numerous reconstructions of Greek, Egyptian, Celtic, Norse, and other Pagan practices, in their countries of origin and throughout the world.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the era known as fin de siècle, a number of esoteric societies sprang up, bringing together people with an interest not only in Neo-Platonism as a philosophy but in theurgic meditation and ritual.
Golden Dawn
In 1888 three men, all Rosicrucians and Masons, opened the first Golden Dawn Temple in Britain. Golden Dawn initiates were educated and literate, spending quite a bit of time in the British Museum and the reading room of the British Library. These women and men drew direct connections between their contemplations and rituals and ancient Hellenistic religion and magic.
Two of the temple’s cofounders, Samuel Liddell Mathers and Dr. William Wynn Westcott, along with ritualists Moina Mathers and Florence Farr, contributed to the preservation and development of esoteric Neo-Platonism and theurgic ritual. In particular, Westcott contributed a translation of the collection of Chaldean Oracle fragments.
When the order fell into disarray, Israel Regardie helped to preserve the system by publishing its rituals and papers. In an appendix to his book Ceremonial Magic, Regardie published the Greek and English text of a fragment of the Greek magical papyri containing a prayer to the “headless one,” indicating a comfort with Hellenistic ritual.
Regardie also published a form of the Golden Dawn ritual “Opening by Watchtower.” This ritual uses two fragments of the Chaldean Oracles. Holding the fire wand, the operator says:
And when, after all the phantoms have vanished, thou shalt see that holy and formless fire, that fire which darts and flashes through the hidden depths of the Universe, hear thou the Voice of Fire.
Later, holding the water cup the operator says:
So therefore first, the priest who governeth the works of fire must sprinkle with the lustral water of the loud resounding sea.
In Foundations of Practical Magic, Regardie explicitly connected Ceremonial Magic to Neo-Platonic theurgy. Unfortunately he did so to contrast the “passive” meditations of the “superstitious” East with the “superior” spiritual action of the West, an assertion of European exceptionalism that mars his work.
In The Essential Golden Dawn: An Introduction to High Magic, Chic and Tabitha Cicero also directly equate Ceremonial Magic with theurgy.
The magic of the Golden Dawn falls under the heading of high magic, also called Ceremonial Magic or theurgy (“divine action” or “god-working”). A Ceremonial Magician is often referred to as a theurgist.
They explicitly link the work of Iamblichus and Renaissance esotericists to the ritual work conducted in the order.
Thelema
Aleister Crowley began his magical career as a Golden Dawn initiate. He famously conducted a theurgic operation in Cairo in 1904 with his wife, Rose Kelley. During this operation, he received pronouncements from three Egyptian entities who named themselves Nuit, Hadit, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit. The result of this operation was the Book of the Law, the text that founded the religious philosophy Thelema. Crowley is also noted for his role in shaping the Thelemic fraternity Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O), which initiates women as well as men.
Crowley’s voluminous works contain numerous theurgic operations and references, including the ritual of the Star Ruby, the essay “Energized Enthusiasm, A Note on Theurgy,” and “ASTARTE vel Liber BERYLLI sub figura CLXXV, the Book of Uniting Himself to a particular Deity by devotion.” The O.T.O. continues to publish his works and perform his rituals. Clearly he was an inheritor of the Neo-Platonic and Hermetic traditions as well as an accomplished theurgist.
Witchcraft
Witchcraft emerged in the twentieth century with the assertion that the religion had been practiced underground throughout the Christian era. The religion was popularized by Gerald Gardner, Doreen Valiente, and their subsequent numerous colleagues. Today many individuals and groups practice Witchcraft. Some make distinctions between Witchcraft, Traditional Witchcraft, Wicca, and Wica; definitions of these change with time and from group to group.
Some Gardnerian Wica trace a significant theurgic component. At Theurgicon 2010, Don Frew presented the paper, “Gardnerian Wica as Theurgic Ascent.” After surveying the history of Neo-Platonism and Gardnerian Wica he concluded:
There is indeed a traceable continuity of an explicit “Paganism” consisting of a body of cosmological lore and ritual practice from the Hermetic and Neo-Platonic theurgists of the Eastern Mediterranean of late antiquity down to the beginnings of Gardnerian Wica.
He connects entities in the Gardnerian Dryghton Prayer to the Neo-Platonic entities. He cites the practice of “tuning” the individual to the divine as a direct survival of theurgic practice. He also connects the three degrees of Gardnerian initiation with the three levels of theurgic ascent. It is worth noting that contemporary theurgist Bruce MacLennan presents the study of Neo-Platonic philosophy as a three-degree system in The Wisdom of Hypatia.
LESSONS FROM THE TEACHERS
The teachers whose lives we have studied were daughters and sons, sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers. They were scholars, householders, and lovers. They were African and European, black, brown and white; they came from Kemet, Greece, Rome, Syria, Turkey, Italy, England.
When we consider their lives as people, we learn important things immediately. Most were rich, born into privilege; some, like Tullia and Thomas, scraped by on patronage. Many kept slaves, and when they did not, kept servants. Some teachers were women; some of the male teachers denigrated women but many taught women. Some were homophobic, some were gay. They were flawed, as all humans are flawed, but they were dearly loved in their lifetimes and admired well beyond their times.
We have learned many lessons from the teachers in reviewing their lives. Here are some of the highlights.
Theurgy Is a Literate Tradition
Knowledge is acquired through individual study and effort. Because the tradition is written, if it is not possible to find a living teacher, it can be learned through books.
Theurgy Is Rooted in Kemet
Western European esotericism and fraternal organizations have always insisted that our learning comes from Kemet. While academic skepticism scoffed at these claims in past decades, today scholars are reassessing what the teachers themselves reported, and are once again taking their reporting seriously: the Greek philosophers travelled to the great universities in Egypt to learn. In the works of Plato and Iamblichus, we can see the reflection of the wisdom of those centers of learning.
In the last century, scholars have once again translated the texts inscribed on temples and tombs recording the work of the priestesses and priests as well as the work the soul undertakes upon the end of its journey among the living. These texts assist Kemetic reconstructionists and theurgists in creating new rituals to invoke the gods.
From Kemet we learn depth of commitment. The course of study in the universities required forty years to complete. Priestesses and priests served part of the year and then returned to the community to serve among the people. The temples also sustained a full-time priesthood of women and men who dedicated their lives to this service.
The temples in Kemet created statues of deity and then invoked the deity into the statue. The priesthood served the statues daily, bringing offerings of food, clothing, incense, and their own work to maintain harmony. This operation passed into theurgy as the animated statue operation; theurgic rituals describe how to invoke a deity into a small statue that can be kept in the home. Kemetic reconstructionists and theurgists do so today.
Theurgy Owes a Debt to India
Pythagoras was said to have studied in India. The doctrine of reincarnation appears in Greece after his journey there. Scholars are analyzing similarities in Neo-Platonic philosophy and Hindu theology. This work is just beginning; the student of theurgy can profitably study the Upanishads along with the texts from Kemet, Greece, Byzantium, and Western Europe.
Pythagorean study focused on the family, bringing women into the discipline and making the practice not only a form of education but a way of life that played out in the home. This was notable enough to draw comment from the ancients. We might consider the emphasis on family in Indian culture as an influence on theurgy.
Theurgy Rests on the Work of Plato
The works of this philosopher founded the theurgic worldview. We continue to study these works today. We know that his work rested on those who came before him whose names we have lost, including his teachers in Kemet and the Pythagorean teachers he encountered on his travels. We also note the inclusion in the Platonic dialogues of the priestess Diotima, who he specifically credited with his understanding of love.
While we acknowledge his foundational contribution and study his works, we also understand that his work changed over time. Plato played with ideas, and his works contradict each other. He was a great teacher but he was human, and no human is infallible. This understanding can free us to approach his work not as a universal truth, but as a conversation aiding us in formulating our own views of the world.
Theurgy Is an Urban Tradition
There are many folk traditions that have preserved the relationship of a specific people and culture to the deities of the land. Theurgists have always acknowledged these, and Proklos in particular felt a responsibility to honor all the gods he encountered in his travels and preserve the knowledge of the gods of his homeland. Theurgy, however, is not primarily a folk tradition; it is urban, born in Alexandria from the mixing of many cultures from around the world. Theurgic ritual acknowledges holy nature without being tied to a particular place. As such it is particularly well suited to the contemporary world where we are all dealing with the worldwide effects of urban culture, whether we were born in the place our ancestors live, or have settled in a new place.
Theurgy Is a Religious Tradition
The Neo-Platonists studied philosophy. They engaged in contemplation of ideas. This is what philosophers do today. Neo-Platonists, however, also engaged in singing hymns, making this not a secular tradition but a religious tradition in our contemporary terminology. Most Neo-Platonists also engaged in a specific set of ritual, magical, practices to bring the contemplating soul into harmony with the divine.
Theurgy Meets the Challenge of Christianity
Neo-Platonic teachers took on Christian students. Many teachers wrote polemics against the Christian theologians, responding to the Christian attempt to suppress Pagan practice. From this interaction, we learn to hold our own truths. We acknowledge the spirit of nature, which is holy and universal and is not the property of any specific religion. We also tap into the spirit of renewal, which gives life to Pagan religion; despite the overwhelming efforts to repress the Pagan impulse, it remains, has budded with every opportunity, and is in full flower today.
Women Are Important to Theurgy
Despite the fact that most discussions of philosophy in the Western academy exclude women, and women are rarely included in lists of Neo-Platonic philosophers, the women in the tradition, black, brown, and white, have been as central to its development as the men. The women point to an important truth: the tradition is not only about thinking or even worship of the gods—it is about how we relate to each other. It is about love and finding the divine, not just in the universe or nature or ourselves but in the people around us. Love unites us with the divine.