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To: alt.magick From: catherine yronwodeSubject: Class, the Classics, and "High" Magick Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 23:34:47 -0800 Crowfoot wrote: > Do people have any sense of a "class" structure, related to this > one or differently constituted altogether, in the magick/wiccan/ > pagan communities? In the Protestant world at least, the amount of Latin needed to navigate the corpus hermetica kept "high" occultism out of the hands of those who didn't happen to go to schools where the classics were taught. Since these schools were (and remain) largely the preserve of the upper-middle and upper classes (and often expensive at that), practitioners of the hermetic field naturally showed a bias toward these classes -- culturally if not by family background. As a child, I did some work on parallels between the Golden Dawn "revival" and other nostalgic or reactionary cultural movements. Generally, such "revivals" are most appealing to members of cultural elites -- the "upper classes" -- who have the most to gain from the recapitulation of a vanished "golden age" or primal scene and the least to lose from the abandonment of ideas of progress and reform. It takes a certain presupposition of leisure to worry much about the preservation of archaic architecture (et tu, prince charlie) and vanishing lore, much less spend one's time immersed in a vast role-playing game of cosmic Lodges. On a biographical note, Crowley and company definitely harbored intense nostalgia for an aristocratic era, if they did not come from aristocracy themselves. Many were of the upper-middle (mercantile) class, but were encouraged to fraternize with and "aspire" toward old money. The proof of this pudding can be found in the term "high" magic, which I personally find a bit pernicious. What makes one branch of the occult "higher" than another? Is it the absence of pragmatic effect ("work" or the "result" that Crowley warns his readers not to lust after)? Is it the preponderance of classical lore required to engage in practice? Is it an emphasis on mental activity over "brute" ritual? An emphasis on content over form? These are all marks of the "gentleman." I wouldn't be surprised to see the distinction between "high" and "low" magic emerging out of the 19th-century split between "high" and "low" church in the Anglican Rite of mother England. Telling if so. Different of course in the Catholic world, where Latin is more commonly taught but where dabbling in hermetic heterodoxy isn't quite so easy to get away with. However, I'm sure someone more knowledgeable than myself could make a class-oriented case within French masonry and rosicrucianism. > I think to the outside public the seer-for-hire > (tarot reader, psychic, etc.) is considered low-class or even out- > cast, depending on whether there's a "Gypsy" sub-text or not. Aren't > witches in classic stories usually poor and marginal persons, while > wizards tend to be a sort of spiritual bourgeoisie -- not nobles, > but hired by nobles for their magical skills? "Low" magic -- which we could take a leaf from the original Anglican schism and call "broad" magic. Magic for everyone, without tears! Many witches attempt to evade these class issues by appealing to an alternative line of privileged descent, of course. The "old families" who have handed down practice from generation to generation are, in some pagan circles, the "real aristocracy." ------ From: Crowfoot Newsgroups: alt.magick Subject: Re: Clothes, and choosing your garments. > Interesting. I just came across a comment (where -- ???) that > European Romanticism, in the first half of the 19th C, was born of and > flourished in the warmth of the sudden appearance of large numbers of > younger sons of the industrial bourgeoisie who had the energy of an > ambitious class (as opposed to the gentry and aristos) but nothing . > useful to do with it Maybe the further flowering of this group gave a > boost to the Golden Dawn crowd? > > All complicated deliciously by the fact of the rise of American > Spiritualism via the ("low class") Fox sisters, and spreading to > Europe just in time to feed the spiritual hungers awakened by huge > losses inc WWI -- this was a phenomenon that was very lively indeed, > it seems, among the genteel as opposed to the gentry, in England as > well as the US -- have I got that right? > > Fantasy literature, which I both read and write, is full of contrasts > between scruffy little "hedge wizards" and "high" practitioners like, > say, Gandalf the Grey and his ilk. These latter seem to be educated > and experienced enough to control great and powerful forces, while > your village cunning man or woman deals with the homely and small, by > and large, in fiction at any rate, and the methods of the latter do > tend toward herbs and spells rather than lofty incantations and > alchemical wisdom. Thanks, you two, for an interesting set of posts. The upwardly-aspirational "High Church / High Magic(k)" cliques of late 19th and early 20th century England showed their class-consciousness in numerous petty ways. Case in point: good old Sam Mathers, who suddenly became the Scottish clan leader, S. L. MacGregor-Mathers and was in contact with "The Secret Chiefs." And Aleister Crowley, mentioned above, is a good example: an educated man of the upper mercantile class, he aspired to aristocracy in his poetic imitations of Sir Richard Burton and worked hard at keeping the "lower classes" out of his advancement scheme by branding Jews and Hindus as sub-humans. Finally, it is important to note that such grandiosities were not confined to Hermetics in Victorian and Edwardian England by any means: Paschal Beverly Randolph, an mid-19th century American Free Man of Colour, became a Spiritualist, a Rosicrucian, and a Sex Magician -- and suddenly sprouted a Madagascan Princess for his mother! cat yronwode Hoodoo in Theory and Practice -- http://www.luckymojo.com/hoodoo.html
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