For the Love of the Gods: The History and Modern Practice of Theurgy - Brandy Williams 2016

The Survival of Theurgic Ritual
Stories from the Ancestors

Over and over we have learned that the study of Neo-Platonic texts leads to Pagan religious practice. Philosophy leads to theurgy. The lives of the teachers continually return to the path of education, knowledge of the gods; we can read the philosophical and theological thought of the teachers in surviving texts. Theurgists revered the gods in the ways of their cultures, and we can learn about Pagan religious practice from Kemetic (Egyptian) and Greek reconstructionists.

What about theurgic ritual itself? The attempt to suppress theurgy specifically excised the religious practices from the texts. Plethon’s reconstruction was burned too. How can we recover the ritual aspect of theurgy?

In the last two centuries, archaeologists have collected magical texts. These instructions directly record practices that the Neo-Platonic teachers discussed in their writings. By far the largest collection has been dubbed the “Greek Magical Papyri” because many were written in Greek. Some were also written in Demotic, a Kemetic language form, so we might call them the “Greek and Kemetic Magical Papyri.” While some of these texts are what we would now consider spells—actions designed to have a specific effect in the physical world—other texts describe detailed religious rituals.

There is one final story to tell. It is the story of how one particular religious ritual passed from the most ancient times to end up on our bookshelves today. That ritual is called the Mithras Liturgy. It is one of the texts in the Greek Magical Papyri. It is labelled PGM IV.475-834 (PGM stands for Papyri Graecae Magicae).

The Mithras Liturgy captures a theurgic experience of rising on the rays of the sun to the world of the gods. Sarah Iles Johnston points out in “Rising to the Occasion” that just as Plutarch taught theurgic ritual to his daughter Asklepigenia, the Mithras Liturgy is written by a father for his daughter.

THE PRIEST

He couldn’t sleep. Lying rigid in the darkness, the priest battled worry until dawn lightened the room. Finally he admitted defeat. He slipped out of bed, careful not to wake his wife, and padded over to his daughter’s cot. He hadn’t known love could be like this: so tender, so protective, so terrified of the future. The times were chaotic. Who would protect her if he lost his life? Worse, who would teach her? His own knowledge was hard won, passed from his teachers to himself, crystalized through his own experience. It was his most cherished possession and what he most wished to preserve for her.

He glanced sideways at his scribal gear. Such things were not written, they were passed mouth to ear, reinforced through prayer and practice. But his own death seemed so real to him, so very near in the first faint light. At that moment, he understood in his heart what his teachers had always told him: writing fixes the word, it is the path to eternal life.

A rush of haste washed away his reservations. O gods be not offended, he breathed, and began to scribble feverishly. “Be gracious to me, O Providence and Psyche as I write these mysteries handed down not for gain but for instruction; and for an only child I request immortality, O initiates of this our power … ”

Learning from Living Teachers

Many people today study theurgic ritual as well as Platonic philosophy. These include academics, reconstructionists, Ceremonial magicians, Witches and Wiccans, Pagans and esotericists.

Although the Christian laws that prohibited the practice of Pagan ritual never succeeded in suppressing that ritual entirely and Pagan ritual is today again practiced openly, the general prejudice against Pagan practice was reflected in academic studies of theurgy until quite recently. E. R. Dodds provides an excellent example. In The Greeks and the Irrational, published in 1951, his “Appendix II, Theurgy” provides an indispensable survey of theurgic ritual that continues to instruct us today. However, he denigrates the subject he studies throughout the piece, labelling the practices “superstitious.”

Despite this official disdain, some of the academics who studied the subject also practiced theurgic meditations and even theurgic rituals. Throughout my career as an outsider scholar, I have met academics who disclosed their practice to me while asking me not to reveal the fact to their colleagues for fear of being ostracized and even losing their university positions. That situation is changing as Pagan religion moves into the mainstream. Public Pagan scholars move into the academy, academic conferences include academics and non-academic Pagans, and academic practitioners discuss their Pagan involvement more openly. Notably, Bruce McLennan published The Wisdom of Hypatia under his legal name and attends Pagan conferences to interact with readers of his work.

Reconstructionists draw on academic work as well as their own travels to Africa and interactions with living traditions there to revive the ancient wisdom teachings and temple traditions. Numerous Afro-centric groups draw on the theology and philosophy of Kemet to follow the way of the neter, the gods of Kemet.

People of color are speaking out about the experience of interacting with white- and European-American-dominated Pagan groups and conferences. Pagan and magical communities are only beginning to confront the racism within the communities to meditate on how we contribute to it, and to commit ourselves to changing it. Crystal Blanton works to build community both in person and through anthologies that give space to many voices to speak, including Shades of Faith, Shades of Ritual, and Bringing Race to the Table. In these books, people of color discuss learning and creating rituals and personal practice. As an example, in “Paganism and the Path Back to Africa” in Shades of Ritual, Yvonne E. Nieves describes practicing Wiccan ritual to include Celtic, Scandinavian, and Mayan deities while being guided by orishas, and finally adding Ifá to her practice through initiation and teaching.

White European-Americans have also founded and lead Kemetic reconstructionist groups. This includes the Kemetic Temple founded by Richard Reidy, whose book Eternal Egypt recreates the Kemetic practices of creating a living statue as well as daily rituals to sustain the god. He has moved from the realm of the living teaches to the realm of the ancestors now, but his numerous articles and videos can be read and viewed at kemetictemple.org and the temple continues.

Egyptologist Rev. Tamara Siuda founded the Kemetic Orthodox Religion in the 1980s. In 1996, the Kemetic Orthodoxy conducted her coronation as Nisut, recognizing her as the current incarnation of the spirit of Heru, the kingly ka or spirit bridging the human world and the world of the Netjer or deities of Kemet. The Kemetic Orthodoxy offers online classes at www.kemet.org.

It is also important to acknowledge here that some black Kemetic reconstructionists and revivalists point to the legacy of colonialism in theurgic work descending through the Greco-European line. These reconstructionists challenge white Europeans and Americans to acknowledge this and join the work to counteract racism in Pagan and magical communities.

Some contemporary teachers specifically focus on recreating theurgic practice. In the 1990s, John Opsopaus’s webpages brought ritual theurgy to the attention of the Pagan and magical communities. Sorita d’Este founded Avalonia Press to publish new works on theurgic practice. Avalonia published Jeffrey S. Kupperman’s guide to theurgic theology and ritual, Living Theurgy. D’Este’s own works include several books dedicated to Hekate, including Hekate Liminal Rites. From 2012 to 2014, she produced a Hekate Symposium in Glastonbury that included an oracular rite. This symposium drew theurgic practitioners from around the world.

Tony Mierzwicki recreates theurgic practices in Graeco-Egyptian Magic. From this teacher you can learn many practical techniques, including the pronunciation and theurgic use of the Greek vowels.

THE COLLECTOR

The magician looked around his little house with a burst of homecoming joy. Waset again at last! He’d had that long trip up the Nile, stopping at every major temple with a library that still functioned, sleeping every night in a different bed, before boarding a felucca for home.

He washed his face and hands with quick, economical movements, and made a quick meal of dried fruit and water. In the cool of the evening he’d go out to the market and bargain for fresh food. For now he was eager to get started. He had so many new texts to copy, so many new ideas to try!

Carefully he retrieved the precious box and unwrapped the codex inside. In this book he was copying all the works containing heka he could find. Magic, to use the Greek word. Some were written in Kemetic script, others in Greek. They mixed Greek and Egyptian elements, Jewish, even Christian. All of it fascinated him. His curiosity drove him, the thirst for knowledge, but there was more to his collecting than just the greed to know. More and more of his fellow citizens converted to the new faith that rejected the ways of the ancestors. These texts were harder to find. It was important, he thought, to preserve them.

He carefully turned the papyrus pages to his last entry. He’d been copying a long list of spells using the Homeric poems. He supposed he ought to finish it before adding anything else. But there was one text he’d found in his travels that captivated him. He hadn’t unpacked yet but he knew just where to find it. His heart beat a little faster as he glanced through the first few lines.

“ … furthermore, it is necessary for you, O daughter, to take the juices of herbs and spices, which will be made known to you at the end of my holy treatise, which the great god Helios Mithras ordered to be revealed to me by his archangel, so that I alone may ascend into heaven as an eagle and behold the all.”

Ascend as an eagle! It was the most significant work he had ever collected. Moving decisively, he pulled out his stylus and ink and began to copy it in, right where he had stopped last. Homer could wait.

Skeptical Discipleship

The stories Eunapius told of the miracles worked by theurgists strike us now as fables, and few of us today would take them for literal truth. Aleister Crowley may have been the last theurgist who could discuss the work of the ancients without irony. He stood at the beginning of the age of psychology, where “Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will,” as he said in Magick in Theory and Practice.

Bringing a certain amount of skepticism to learning from teachers is probably prudent. We live in an age where the holiest of our heroes have been revealed to be flawed people. Mother Teresa is accused of validating suffering and refusing medical care, her saintly image largely an orchestrated media campaign. Mahatma Gandhi may have abused the young girls he slept with to demonstrate his purity. Revered Pagan teachers have been indicted on suspicion of sexual abuse and even murder. This is true as well of some teachers in the Hindu and Buddhist guru traditions and in Christian ministries, where some have used the veneration of students as cover for various kinds of exploitation. So we need not and probably should not expect our Neo-Platonic forebears to be beyond reproach. They were human and flawed. This frees us too to be human and flawed, accepting our own shortcomings as well as the limitations of our living teachers.

As we read the ancients, we also learn that the racism, sexism, and colonialism of the Eurocentric academy begins with the earliest academies. In The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity, Jacob Isaac notes that Hellenistic teachers devalued women as well as “foreigners” or “barbarians,” kept servants and slaves, and built a classist hierarchy that valued white men. Because an attitude is old does not mean that it is venerable, nor does age make it worthy to be replicated. We can and must build justice into our systems, because justice is the foundation for peace.

The teachers we choose, whether we are invoking an ancestor or learning from a living teacher, should hold the highest human ideal that all people are equally worthy. Whatever their flaws, our teachers should strive to help the people around them as well as to reflect the goodness of the divine. When we invoke teachers from the past, we must remember that we are not learning from these teachers in their time but in our own.

Fortunately, we are not required to pledge devotion to a single teacher and pledge to keep the teachings secret as theurgists sometimes did in the past. We are free to learn from many sources and to share what we know. We can choose to learn from women as well as men, from Kemetic and Indian teachers as well as Greek, Roman, and Hellenistic. We are free to temper what we learn from the ancient sources with the knowledge gathered from the world and from our experience in the millennia since they taught. It is part of our work as links in the living chain to update teachings where the texts do not value all humans equally.

JEAN D’ANASTASI

“I hear you are paying for old things.”

The dapper Armenian sized up the peasant hovering in his door, trying to keep the distaste from his face. “Only some,” he said cautiously.

The man thrust a bundle at him. Dirt flaked from the wrapping. “From the tomb of a priest. It has to be worth something.”

Anastasi flinched reflexively, rearing from the dust of the tomb. “Take it outside and unwrap it!”

The grave robber returned with a box. Anastasi carefully turned back the lid. He had considerable experience peddling antiquities to a European market hungry for marvels so he managed not to gasp, but his eyes widened slightly when he saw the treasure within. So many pages, an entire codex!

“You like it,” the man said avariciously.

Anastasi forced himself to turn away. “It’s only a book. Statues bring more money.”

The grave robber took back the lid. “There are other buyers in Thebes,” he said. “The Turks love books.”

Clearing his throat, Anastasi said, “It does have a mild curiosity value.”

Grinning, the thief sat on the floor and settled into the cadence of bargaining.

Learning from Texts

Pagan theurgy is a literate tradition. It passes from teacher to teacher but also through texts, and it can be revived through the study of those texts. Over and over again we have seen that the study of the texts fans the spark of Pagan ritual back to life.

An Alexandrian theurgist with access to the temple libraries would have been able to find the Kemetic and Greek Ritual texts, the Hermetica, the Chaldean Oracles; the works of the Neo-Platonists; the works of Plato; and Kemetic wisdom literature. Platonists through the ages have also learned from the world’s cultures, and while some of those texts have vanished, some are preserved. Modern archaeology and scholarship has made available ancient texts that the Greeks did not know, and the shrinking world has brought texts from everywhere within our grasp.

Some texts can be found in local public and university libraries. Quite a few are available free online. Theurgists today build our own libraries both physical and electronic. We can read the original texts as well as commentaries written by contemporary academic and Pagan scholars.

Appendix B, Theurgic Study Course, lists the most commonly referenced source texts with annotations.

ALBRECHT DIETERICH

“Thank you, Maria.” Dieterich touched her forearm affectionately.

She patted his shoulder. “Don’t stay up all night,” she warned him, but left the room with a smile.

Dieterich reached for a crystal glass. “Cognac, Richard?”

Wunsch took the offered glass and raised it. “May I offer a toast? To the Mithras Liturgy!”

They both drank. Dieterich raised his glass. “To Hermann Usener, our teacher!”

“And your father-in-law,” Wunsch said, dropping onto a padded chair.

Dieterich said, “I am indebted to you for your close reading of my little text. There are too few of us interested in this material.”

“You’re too pessimistic,” Wunsch protested. “The modern taste is interested in the comparison of religions.”

“If only it were religion! The idea that it is ’magic’ still taints it.” Dieterich blew a derisive breath. “Tell me, my friend. What would you think if I were to teach a seminar on the subject?”

Wunsch coughed his brandy. “On magic?” he said. “I think it would be … brave.”

“Well, perhaps not magic,” Dieterich temporized. “Just on the texts. ’Selected Pieces from the Greek Papyri’.” He poured another finger of brandy in their goblets.

“I know several students who would be interested,” Wunsch said, warming the glass in his hands.

Dieterich nodded cautiously. “Just so. It may be time for magic to emerge from the shadows.”

Perennial Philosophy

Sooner or later students of Platonism encounter the notion of the perennial philosophy. Agostino Steuco coined the term, Marsilio Ficino popularized it. Once formulated, it became entrenched in Western European Platonism; the Cambridge Platonists relied on it, the Theosophical Society strives to embody it. But what is it?

The perennial philosophy says that for the eternal questions there are eternal answers.

In Perennial Philosophy, Aldous Huxley called it:

“the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial

to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology

that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man’s final end in

the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground

of all being— the thing is immemorial and universal … ”

Perennial philosophy claims to be accurate at all times for all people, describing a fundamental underlying, unchanging reality. It is revealed in whole or in part to humans who receive it and then teach it. Those teachers then become revered saviors.

What inspired this idea, that there is a universal truth? In some ways it is an attempt by Christian Platonists to hang onto their faith after

encountering Pagan thought. The reentry of Platonic philosophy into the West presented significant challenges for the Christian Platonists, who had lost the context for the texts with the suppression of the paideia. How could church dogma be reconciled with these exciting and new ideas? One approach is to declare that there is a single underlying truth and that all religions and philosophies are fragments of this truth.

It is an attractive notion that there are no real differences between religions and that ultimately they can be reconciled. What is revealed to the sage and taught to the student is truth, and it is the student’s job to learn, embody, and reteach that truth. This is convenient for the sage, but not necessarily for the student, who may find the teaching disempowering and denying the student room to grow in understanding or contribute to knowledge. The drawback is that an unchanging reality cannot change to accommodate new learning, new observations about the world, new ideas, new agreements—such as valuing all human individuals as equally worthy.

If on the other hand we approach a given teaching as a historical document, it is possible to analyze the context in which it was formulated, the effect of the life experience of the teacher formulating it, and whom the doctrine benefits and disenfranchises. Huxley goes on:

“Rudiments of the Perennial Philosophy may be found among the traditionary lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions.”

This is undiluted racist and colonialist European exceptionalism, and this stance calls the entire perennial philosophy project into question.

Is the perennial philosophy truly ahistoric? Neo-Platonists from Ficino through to the twentieth century enthusiastically adopted the concept, but where did it originate? In Radical Platonism in Byzantion: Illumination and Utopia in Gemistos Plethon, Niketas Siniossoglou analyzes Plethon’s idea of true doctrines and does not believe they form the source of Ficino’s understanding. Plethon was Ficino’s teacher’s teacher, so if the idea predated Ficino’s generation we would expect to see it in Plethon’s work. We can pinpoint the origin of the idea in Ficino’s time.

So it seems that the doctrine does have a beginning; as it has a beginning it can have an end, and we may challenge it. The similarity between various cosmologies and thoughts can be explained by the understanding that the peoples who created them were in contact. Arguably, the doctrine of the perennial philosophy constitutes an attempt to deny the influence of African and Asian peoples on European thought.

Unfortunately, Huxley and others linked the perennial philosophy with the idea that the human soul can have an experience of the divine while embodied. This is the fundamental kernel of theurgic practice—if we challenge the historicity of perennial philosophy, do we negate theurgic practice? Not necessarily; theurgic practice belongs to a moment in history before the development of the perennial philosophy concept. We can engage in contemplation and ritual practice as a contemporary iteration of Platonic theurgy. We reserve the right to challenge the philosophical tenets we encounter, noting that they are historical and benefit a privileged few. We may and should remake that philosophy into a framework of understanding that enfranchises all who wish to enter into the practice.

KARL PREISENDANZ

“There you are,” Preisendanz said, waving his student to a chair. “I found a copy.”

The young woman nearly grabbed the text from his hands. “It’s real,” she said, her hands shaking as she picked up the manuscript. “It exists.”

Her teacher made a face. “In photocopies,” he said. “Papyri Graecae Magicae. If there’s any truth to magic, this thing is cursed.”

Still clutching the papers, the student frowned. “Why do you say that?”

“Dieterich died just after he finished the first translation: The Mithras Liturgy, the one you’re interested in. My teacher Wunsch was lost in the first war, the war to end all wars. He was working on this at the time.” He sighed. “We lost so many good minds in that war. At any rate, the publisher Teubner brought me in to edit the manuscript. We decided to start over with a whole new set of translations.”

“What an opportunity!”

Waving his hand to quell her excitement, Preisendanz pursed his lips. “Just as it was finished the second war broke out. So much for the war to end wars.”

“War seems endless,” the student said sadly.

“Teubner was bombed,” he said sourly. “Fortunately I had a copy of the galleys. Since then we’ve been handing out photocopies to interested students. It was meant to be a study guide anyway.”

“I’m glad it survived,” she murmured. She started to say something else, but he had already turned his attention to another book, so she quietly slipped out the door.

Re-Paganisation

In the latter half of the twentieth century, the triumphalist narrative proclaiming that Christianity had caused the “death” of Paganism subsided. As this has occurred, subjects previously considered eccentric or fringe have become academically acceptable. Contemporary Pagan religion itself has emerged as a field of study, academics attend Pagan conferences, and a Pagan university—Cherry Hill Seminary—teaches academic courses from a Pagan viewpoint.

Anthropological studies of Eastern European villages document surviving magical customs, rites with direct lineal connections to the rituals of the paideia. In Ritual and Structure in a Macedonian Village Joseph Obrebski described the work of Balkan medicine women who conducted rites and spells for healing. A collection of essays edited by Dejan Ajdacic described magical customs and activities in the Balkans—rainmaking, protection against illness, spring fertility rites, and agricultural practices, including songs sung to collect swarms of bees. Recently, Avalonia Press published Georgi Mishev’s Thracian Magic Past and Present. Mishev himself is the inheritor of the traditions of healing passed through his maternal line, a great-grandson of famous healers. Mishev directly links the extant healing rites to spells in the Greek magical papyri.

Pagan researchers and theologians also work independently, outside the academic system, drawing on academic research and their own field studies. In the last half of the twentieth century Neo-Pagan scholars have enthusiastically studied European folk religion in the library and in the field. Priests and priestesses have reconstructed and resurrected culture specific rites: Norse (Asatru), British (Celtic), Sumerian, Hittite, Roman/Etruscan, Kemetic, Greek, Byzantine, and many more. In addition to reconstructions of village folk religion, Pagan scholars re-create urban Hellenistic, Greco-Roman, and Byzantine Paganism.

This leads us back to our present work, studying Neo-Platonic philosophy and the theurgic ritual associated with it from a Pagan perspective. Contemporary theurgists act to rebuild the paideia, the pact between human and god. We act from the belief that the peace of the gods is universal, that if we approach the gods with reverence, knowledge, a willingness to learn, and the drive to share, that it is possible to create a new paideia, one that reconnects self with culture, self with land, and self with the sacred.

HANS DIETER BETZ

I brought the book home. “Check out what I found,” I said.

Everyone looked at the gaudy scarab on the cover. “Another library run?” We lived within walking distance of the University of Washington, where the Suzzalo library was open until midnight on weekdays.

“Greek Magical Papyri in Translation.” I beamed. “In 1978, a bunch of Claremont College people got interested in this stuff. This is a brand-new English translation, just republished in 1992.”

One of my friends leafed through the pages. Stick figures scribbled with vowels crawled over the pages. “This thing feels alive!”

“Look at this. It’s called the Mithras Liturgy. It’s written by a man to his daughter. He asks the gods to make her immortal.” I laughed. “With all this book has gone through, it was the text they made immortal!”

Linking Platonic Philosophy to Theurgic Practice

When I first picked up the Greek Magical Papyri in Translation it was a religious, magical, and historical revelation. Even as an outsider, a nonacademic student of history, I had imbibed the narrative that there was no historical connection between what we do today and what the ancients did. Roman Christianity killed Pagan religion dead and magic died with it.

Yet here were two-thousand-year-old texts I could immediately pick up and use. My own training as a Witch and a Ceremonial Magician had prepared me to understand many of the rituals contained in the volume. I recognized the gods. I recognized the guardians of the directions. There were angels and archangels, herbs and tools, astrological timing. There was a ritual to meet one’s own daimon.

There were other ideas new to me at the time. There were protective symbols and names, vowel chanting and popping sounds, substances like wax used in new ways, substances that I hadn’t heard of at all.

In Techniques of Graeco-Egyptian Magic, Stephen Skinner traces a direct line of descent from the operations in the papyri and nineteenth-century Ceremonial operations. He notes that when Islam conquered Egypt in the sixth century CE, Greek-Egyptian magicians fled to Constantinople, where the Byzantine emperor Heraclius welcomed them. One of these was an Alexandrian Greek Neo-Platonist, Stephanos, a student of Olympiodoros. Stephanos wrote Hygromanteia, a book with operations paralleling those of the Greek Magical Papyri. The Hygromanteia was source material for the grimoire Clavicula Salamonis from which many European manuscripts descend, including the Key of Solomon which was translated by Golden Dawn founder Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, one of the Golden Dawn’s founders. The Hygromanteia directly ties the magic of the papyri with magic practiced today.

Early studies of the papyri treated them as grimoires, collections of spells conducted for practical purposes. In recent decades scholars have approached the material more seriously and found connections between Neo-Platonic writings and the rituals in the volume. Sarah Iles Johnston has written a number of papers exploring specific rituals and ideas; Gregory Shaw finds theurgic instructions in the philosophical texts; and Eleni Pachoumi’s important work explicitly links Neo-Platonic ritual references to specific operations in the papyri.

The Mithras Liturgy is a living document that can be studied and incorporated into our practice today. It forms a bridge between the practices of the past and modern Pagan theurgy.

Notes on the Story

The two quotations of the text are taken from Betz, The Mithras Liturgy. In the book, Betz notes that Preisendanz reviewed galleys of the Greek Magical Papyri with his friends, including Richard Wunsch.

Scholars note that this piece is inserted into a collection of Homeric verses; why the collector placed it there is a mystery.