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New Daily Reflection Series: The Magic of the Gospels
Introduction
Welcome to the newest continuing book review on this blog. Now that we've finished Sun Tzu's Art of War, I want to move on to another popular, and, I think, misunderstood, spiritual text: The Gospel of Saint Matthew.
My hypothesis is that Jesus, whatever else he was-- spiritual teacher, heretical rabbi, political rabble rouser, adopted son of God, living embodiment of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, eternal Divine Logos-- was a great magician. The aim of this series, then, is to explore the Gospels from the perspective of the Western Magical Tradition.
What This Is and Is Not
I'm not the first person to take this sort of approach to the Gospels. There is a long tradition reinterpreting the Gospels in the light of some person's philosophy. This ranges from enlightenment rationalism in the case of someone like Thomas Jefferson to moderately-diluted Hinduism in the case of most contemporary "Christian esotericism." Other authors find everything from astrological allegories to whatever half-baked theology was invented last week at the First Church of Jesus Christ, Nebraskan.
So I want to be clear from the outset that I am not setting out to discover "what the Bible really says." Everyone who sets out to do that only ever discovers what they want to discover, and the enormous range of different interpretations is enough to show us that we simply don't know "what it really says." We only know what happens when the strange, ancient stories of the Gospels interact with the minds of particular human beings, in particular places, in particular times.
So that's what this is: An attempt to look at the Gospels from my own particular perspective. That means, first and foremost, the perspective of the Western Magical Tradition, as I understand it. The best modern exponents of this tradition, and the most influential on me, are Dion Fortune, Eliphas Levi, and the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
From Levi, who wrote in the 19the century, the tradition runs backwards through Cornelius Agrippa, Renaissance Neoplatonism, the Picatrix, medieval Jewish Cabalism, and from there into the Hermetic, Gnostic and Neoplatonic traditions of late Roman times, as well as early Christianity and Jewish Merkavah mysticism; and from there to Plato and his immediate predecessors; to Pythagoras, who was initiated in the temples of Egypt; and from there back into unknowable antiquity.
It is popular in modern times for people who do not follow Christ to either deny his existence or to claim that he was "just a teacher." This was not the approach of any of the opponents of Christianity, Roman or Jewish, in ancient times. The question then was not whether Jesus existed or not or whether he had performed miracles or not, but how he had performed his miracles. For Christians of all stripes, he was the living Son of God; for Romans and Jews, he was a dangerous magician.
My view is that if he was a magician, then we should certainly be able to use the tools of modern magical theory to understand his teachings and his miracles. And this is all the more so if he were the son of God, as all true magic is theurgic magic, the manifestation through the acts of the magician of the will of the Divine.
If that sounds interesting, join me tomorrow when we'll be looking at The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 1.
Introduction
Welcome to the newest continuing book review on this blog. Now that we've finished Sun Tzu's Art of War, I want to move on to another popular, and, I think, misunderstood, spiritual text: The Gospel of Saint Matthew.
My hypothesis is that Jesus, whatever else he was-- spiritual teacher, heretical rabbi, political rabble rouser, adopted son of God, living embodiment of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, eternal Divine Logos-- was a great magician. The aim of this series, then, is to explore the Gospels from the perspective of the Western Magical Tradition.
What This Is and Is Not
I'm not the first person to take this sort of approach to the Gospels. There is a long tradition reinterpreting the Gospels in the light of some person's philosophy. This ranges from enlightenment rationalism in the case of someone like Thomas Jefferson to moderately-diluted Hinduism in the case of most contemporary "Christian esotericism." Other authors find everything from astrological allegories to whatever half-baked theology was invented last week at the First Church of Jesus Christ, Nebraskan.
So I want to be clear from the outset that I am not setting out to discover "what the Bible really says." Everyone who sets out to do that only ever discovers what they want to discover, and the enormous range of different interpretations is enough to show us that we simply don't know "what it really says." We only know what happens when the strange, ancient stories of the Gospels interact with the minds of particular human beings, in particular places, in particular times.
So that's what this is: An attempt to look at the Gospels from my own particular perspective. That means, first and foremost, the perspective of the Western Magical Tradition, as I understand it. The best modern exponents of this tradition, and the most influential on me, are Dion Fortune, Eliphas Levi, and the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
From Levi, who wrote in the 19the century, the tradition runs backwards through Cornelius Agrippa, Renaissance Neoplatonism, the Picatrix, medieval Jewish Cabalism, and from there into the Hermetic, Gnostic and Neoplatonic traditions of late Roman times, as well as early Christianity and Jewish Merkavah mysticism; and from there to Plato and his immediate predecessors; to Pythagoras, who was initiated in the temples of Egypt; and from there back into unknowable antiquity.
It is popular in modern times for people who do not follow Christ to either deny his existence or to claim that he was "just a teacher." This was not the approach of any of the opponents of Christianity, Roman or Jewish, in ancient times. The question then was not whether Jesus existed or not or whether he had performed miracles or not, but how he had performed his miracles. For Christians of all stripes, he was the living Son of God; for Romans and Jews, he was a dangerous magician.
My view is that if he was a magician, then we should certainly be able to use the tools of modern magical theory to understand his teachings and his miracles. And this is all the more so if he were the son of God, as all true magic is theurgic magic, the manifestation through the acts of the magician of the will of the Divine.
If that sounds interesting, join me tomorrow when we'll be looking at The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 1.
