Book: The Book Of Ceremonial Magic by Arthur Edward Waite
As this book represents, under a new title and with many additions, a work which was issued originally in 1898, I have accepted the opportunity to indicate its position in respect of far more important works embodying my construction of the Secret Tradition in Christian Times. I have secured this object--which after all is clear and simple--not by a regrettable comparison of what I have written there with that which appears in the present place, but by shewing in a Brief Introduction the proper sense in which phenomenal occultism and all its arts indifferently connect with the tradition of the mystics: they are the path of illusion by which the psychic nature of man enters that other path which goes down into the abyss. The book in its present revision remains of necessity a presentation of old texts by the way of digest; Ihave added some new sections that in this department it may be rendered more representative, and if a touch of fantasy, which is not wholly apart from seriousness, will
be pardoned here at the inception, the work itself is now an appendix to the Introductory thesis--the textual, historical and other evidence by which it is supported.
For convenience of treatment the present work is divided into two parts. The first contains an analytical and critical account of the chief magical rituals known to the
writer; the second forms a complete Grimoire of black magic. It must be remembered that these are the operations which gave arms to the Inquisitors of the past, and justified Civil Tribunals in the opinion of their century for the sanguinary edicts pronounced against witch, warlock and magician. It is, in truth, a very strange and not reassuring page in the history of human aberration; nor has it been a pleasing exercise which has thus sought to make it plain, once and for all.
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