Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/375

 MAGNETISM AND MAGIC. 343

rods he held in his hands, instead of to his will which was the real agent. It was in this sense that all polytheistic nations took the matter, and even Plotinus, 1 but more especially Iamblichus, understood Magic; that is, as Theurgy [sorcery], an expression which Porphyry was the first to use. That divine aristocracy, Pantheism, was favourable to this interpretation, since it distributed the dominion over the different forces of Nature among as many gods and demons, mostly mere personifications of natural forces, and the magician, by persuasion or by force, subjected now one, now the other of these divinities to his power and made them do his bidding. But in a Divine Monarchy, where all Nature obeys a single ruler, the thought of contracting a private alliance with the Almighty, let alone of exercising sovereignty over him, would have been too audacious. Therefore where Judaism, Christianity or Islam prevailed, the omnipotence of the one God stood in the way of this interpretation of Magic: an omnipotence which the magician could not venture to attack. He had no alternative therefore, but to take refuge with the Devil, and with this rebellious spirit perhaps even direct descendant of Ahriman to whom some power over Nature was still attributed, he now entered into a compact, by which he ensured to himself his assistance. This was "necromancy" (the black art ). Its antithesis, white Magic, was opposed to it by the circumstance that, in it, the magician did not make friends with the Devil, but rather solicited the permission, not to say co-operation, of the Almighty himself, to intercede with the angels; oftener still, he invoked devils by pronouncing the rarer Hebrew names and titles of the One God, such as Adon-Ai, &c. &c., and compelled them to obey him, without promising

1 Here and there, Plotinus betrays a more correct knowledge, for instance, Enneads, ii. lib. iii. c. 7 &mdash; Enneads, iv. lib. iii. c. 12, &mdash; et lib. iv, c. 40, 43, &mdash; et lib. ix. c.3.

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