Theos-Talk Archives (November 2005 Message tt00023)

11/4/2005 3:18 AM

Dear Friends:

In answer to a query, Mr. Judge gave the following answer:



BLACK MAGIC


Q.: How can a "Black Magician" be known? How should he be treated,-as a
part of the Universal Brotherhood?


W.Q.J.-This question comes from America. It is premature, and very much in
the nature of "crossing a bridge before you reach it." It also seems to
indicate either a loose use of the term "black magician" or a total
ignorance of what such a being is, as well as forgetfulness of what has
often been stated,-that a black magician is the efflorescence of an age.

Such a being as this is one who has acquired knowledge of recondite laws of
nature such as those known to the White Adepts, and who uses that knowledge
for purely selfish purposes. He is [ 4 ] the triumph of selfishness, not in
that degree which we so easily recognize about us every day in the lives of
men of strong will used for selfish ends, but in a degree and to an extent
that raise the black adept to a pinnacle of knowledge and power far above
the pigmies of this century. He can perform marvels, read thoughts, and do
all the wonderful feats usually attributed alone to White Magicians.

How many of such, then, are there to be found now, either among those who
study occultism, or in the ranks of the money- loving or fame-pursuing
multitude? I have never heard of one. Why, then, need to enquire how one
should treat a black magician? If the questioner shall ever be so
unfortunate as to meet one of those as yet fabled monsters, he will quite
likely have opportunity to reflect that the magician knew more than he did.

It is wiser to turn aside from the aspect of the matter brought up by the
question, to the reflection that we all have within us potential black
magicians lying in the lower and stronger part of our nature, and that it is
important to see that we shall not furnish the opportunity for that
potentiality to manifest itself in future lives through the giving way now
to selfishness in any of its forms. The black magician, therefore, we are
really concerned with is in our selves. This talk of meeting or dealing with
black magicians in the flesh, with powers developed, is purest nonsense.

But it will probably be said, "If there are White Adepts now working in the
world, why are there not black ones as well?" The answer is easy. It is
this. Although the full-fledged White and Black Adepts are both the
efflorescence of an age, there is a great difference between them. There is
as great disparity between them as between day and night, for those who
follow the White Law represent spirit, unity, love, while the others
represent nothing but self and disruption. Hence, although the Black
Magician-in those days when they shall be abroad on the earth-may prolong
his life for an enormous period, he is surely silently attacked by nature
herself, and at last, when the great day of dissolution, the end of a period
of manifestation, arrives, all those black ones left will be swallowed up
and annihilated. But at that day all the White Adepts, those called by the
Hindus "Jivanmukhta," although absorbed into Brahma are still in possession
of consciousness, and will come out at the new day just as powerful as when
the night came on. Hence, as the day of Brahma is divided into the four
ages-of which Kali [ 5 ] Yuga is the last, the White Adepts alone are known
or in existence in the ages preceding Kali Yuga, and in that age the Karma
fitted to bring forth Black Adepts begins to act, and the seeds sown long
ago sprout up more and more as the years of Kali Yuga roll on. Now as that
dark age has 432,000 years, and only 5,000 of those have passed by, there
has not yet been time to evolve the real black magician. But this
civilization pre-eminently shows the seeds as sprouting, and nowhere with
greater power than in America. Here the national characteristic is
individualism, and that existing as a tendency of the nature will
differentiate some day into individual ism concentrated into some few men.
Imagine this concentration as occurring in a future century when wonderful
advances will have been made in knowledge of great forces of nature, and you
can easily see without any need of prescience the future of the black
magician."	FA, pp 3-4,	-- WQJ

----------------------------------------------------

Additional:


Black Magic	(Occult.)	Sorcery [Goetia]; necromancy, or the raising
of the dead. and other selfish abuses of abnormal powers. This abuse may be
unintentional; yet it is still "black magic" whenever anything is produced
phenomenally simply for one's own gratification. T. GLOS p. 58


[Black Magic]..."Simply the abuse of psychic powers, or of any secret of
nature; the fact of applying to selfish and sinful ends the powers of
Occultism. A hypnotizer, who, taking advantage of his powers of
"suggestion," forces a subject to steal or murder, would be called a black
magician by us...a loathsome animal injection into human blood--a
discovery...if true, is unconscious black magic." KEY p. 293 


"Can a man go against the general will of nature and escape destruction, and
also be able to desire wickedly with knowledge, and accomplish, through
will, what he wishes?

Such a man can do all these--except to escape destruction. That is sure to
come, no matter at how remote a period.

He acquires extraordinary knowledge, enabling him to use powers for selfish
purposes during immense periods of time, but at last the insidious effect of
the opposition to the general [38] true will make itself felt and he is
destroyed forever. [the "personality"]

.For in other ages, as is to again occur in ages to come, those wickedly
desiring people, having great knowledge, increase to an enormous extent and
threaten the stability of the world. Then the adherents of the good law can
no longer quietly work on humanity, but come out in force, and a fight
ensues in which the black magicians are always destroyed, because the good
Adepts possess not only equal knowledge with the bad ones, but have in
addition the great assistance of the general will of nature which is not in
control of the others, and so it is inevitable that the good should triumph
always. This assistance is also the heritage of every true student, and may
be invoked by the real disciple when he has arrived at and passed the first
abyss." WQJ G. NOTES p. 37-8


"On the ruins of the altar has arisen the temple of the lower self, the
shrine of the personal idea...in America, being totally unrestrained and
forming in fact the basis of independence here, it has culminated...Its bad
effects [are as yet, vaguely shadowed...after sweeping away the fetters
forged by priestly dogma and kingly rule, we find springing up a
superstition for worse than that [88] which we have been used to call by the
name. It is the superstition of materialism that bows down to a science
which leads only to a negation...[92] [Krishna] makes it very clear that he
refers to the principle of reciprocity or Brotherhood. And this he declares
must be kept revolving; that is, each human being must live according to
that rule, or else he lives a life of sin to no purpose...that which moves
the people...on the contrary, [they are] spurred by the personal selfish
idea of each one becoming better, greater, higher than his neighbor. If
continued unchecked it would make this nation one entirely of Black
Magicians. And it was to counter act this that the T S was founded, with
the object of inducing men to one more revolve this wheel of Brotherly Love,
first set in motion by the "Creator when of old he had created mortals."
G. NOTES, pp. 87-8 91-2


"Personality is always an illusion (a rock upon which many persons fall to
pieces), a false picture hiding the reality inside."	G. NOTES 109


"When a man uses the powers of nature indiscriminately with partiality and
no regard to justice, it is Black Magic...Magic is power over the forces of
nature...the first exercise of Black Magic is to psychologize people." WQJ
LETTERS, 161


"An unscrupulous but skilled Adept of the Black Brotherhood ("Brothers of
the Shadow," and Dugpas, we call them )...having no laws of the Spiritual
kind to trammel his actions, such a Dugpa "sorcerer" will most
unceremoniously obtain control over any mind, and subject it entirely to his
evil powers. But our Masters never do that. They have no right, except by
falling into Black Magic, to obtain full mastery over anyone's immortal Ego,
and can therefore act only on the physical and psychic nature of the
subject, leaving thereby the free will of the latter wholly undisturbed.
Hence, unless a person has been brought into psychic relationship with the
Masters, and is assisted by virtue of his full faith in and devotion to, his
Teachers, the latter, whenever transmitting their thought to one with whom
these conditions are not fulfilled, experience great difficulties in
penetrating into the cloudy chaos of that person's sphere."	KEY
p. 293 


"The Astral Light...becomes in, and for, man--if at all psychic--and who is
not?--a tempting Demon, his "evil angel." and the inspirer of all our worst
deeds. It acts on the will of even the sleeping man, through visions
impressed upon his slumbering brain (not to be confused with dreams)...The
will of the outer man, our volition, is of course dormant and inactive
during dreams; but a certain bent can be given to the slumbering will
during its inactivity(*)...but this is one of the dodges of "black magic,"
and when used for good purposes belongs to the training of an Occultist.
One must be far advanced on the "path" to have a will which can act
consciously during his physical sleep, or act on the will of another person
during the sleep of th latter, e.g., to control his dreams, and thus control
his actions when awake. [ (*) and certain after-results developed by the
mutual inter-action--produced almost mechanically--through union between two
or more "principles" into one, so that they will act in perfect harmony,
without any friction or a single false note, when awake,]	TRANS. p.
66


"There are Dhyan Chohans and "Chohans of Darkness," not what they term
devils but imperfect "Intelligences" who have never been born on this or any
other earth or sphere no more than the "Dhyan Chohans" have and who will
never belong top the "builders of the Universe," the pure Planetary
Intelligences, who preside at every Manvantara while the Dark Chohans
preside at the Pralayas....all in this universe is contrast...so the light
of the Dhyan Chohans and their pure intelligence is contrasted by the "Ma-Mo
Chohans"--and their destructive intelligence. These are the gods of the
Hindus and Christians and Mahomed and all others of bigoted religions and
sects worship; and so long as their influence is upon their devotees we
would no more think of associating with or counteracting them in their work
than we do the Red-Caps on earth whose evil results we try to palliate but
whose work we have no right to meddle with so long as they do not cross our
path. (...The Brothers...can to a degree palliate evil and relieve
suffering; they could not destroy evil. No more can the Dhyan Chohans
impede the work of the Mamo Chohans, for their Law is darkness, ignorance,
destruction etc., as that of the former is Light, knowledge and creation.
The Dhyan Chohans answer to Buddh, Divine Wisdom and Life in blissful
knowledge, and the Ma-mos are the personification in nature of Shiva,
Jehovah and other invented monsters with Ignorance at their tail.) -HPB
M. LETTERS, 462-3


[ evidence of Shammar activity in European thought - on confusion re:
marriage ]	M. LETTERS, 272


"It has been well said by H.P.Blavatsky that "each one has a potential black
magician within." The black magician is the fruit and perfection of
selfishness; selfishness is the triumph of the lower nature. The black
magician is the opposite pole in development to the white Adept, and the
latter is the fruit and perfection of the highest qualities in man conjoined
with entire 
communion with spirit; this is the triumph of all that is best in the human
being; it is the conscious union with the divine. The black magician
stands for self alone, and therefore for discord, separation and
destruction; the white one is the embodiment of union, harmony, and love.
In the words of the Bhagavad Gita the white adept "is the perfection of
spiritual cultivation," and it must follow that the black one is the
perfection of the material cultivation. In this question, "black"
represents self and "white" the spiritual whole.

The query then arises, "Why are there now only white magicians and merely
embryo black ones?" We think there are but few black adepts existing today,
but of the white school there are many. The age and the cycle have not yet
come to that point where the black magician has blossomed, and it is easy to
understand why there are perfect white ones. The question is answered in
the Bhagavad Gita where it says: "At the night of Brahma the Jivanmuktas
are not absorbed nor destroyed, but all others are; and at the coming forth
of the new creation those Jivanmuktas ( white adepts) come forth intact and
conscious. [ fn. A free translation.] This means that at the preceding
pralaya--or dissolution--all the black adepts were destroyed; and as now
but the first 5,000 years of Kali Yuga have elapsed, there has not been time
enough to evolve enough full black magicians [495] to make a sensible
impression upon us...Each one of us may become a black magician if we let
selfishness have its course, and hence we should ask ourselves, "How may we
prevent the possibility of our becoming black magicians in some future
age?"...the sole and sovereign protection against such things and persons is
a pure heart and right motive."	WQJ ART II 494-5



"...those members who have as one of their aims the acquisition of psychic
and abnormal powers. These powers cannot be safely found and used by the
man who desires them for himself, and his mere statement in his heart or in
words that he desires them for others goes for naught unless the deeper and
inner motive and object coincide with the high one...each age and each race
has its limitations that it is not possible for the average man to overcome.
Hardly any member who has desires for these would admit that he would be
willing to become a black magician in order to acquire them, that is, would
sacrifice his chances for emancipation for their sake. Yet without altruism
one cannot get them except as a black magician...to deliberately make up his
mind that he will sacrifice everything and everybody else to his design, if
it is his intention to obtain them without following the rules laid down by
the White Adepts, inculcating truth, purity, charity, and all the
virtues--in fact, altruism...two ways and no more lie open to the one who
wishes for the powers of an adept, and those are on the right hand, that of
virtue and altruism, and on the left--the black side--that of intense and
unrelenting selfishness. No compromise, no mere dabbling, is allowed or
possible, and more so in the [208] selfish path, for there every one's hand
is against every other one; none will help at any crisis, and, when the
hour arrives that the student in that school is in peril from the unseen and
terrible forces of nature, his companions on the road will but sneer at his
weaknesses and rejoice at his downfall. And indeed the line of demarcation
between these two ways, for students of the grade of most of the members of
our Society, is very thin...One has to be very careful so as to know if his
motive is really so unselfish as he pretends it to himself to be. But it
can always be tested by the reality of the feeling of brotherhood that he
has in him...success on either side depends upon the burning desire in the
heart. With the white school this is for the sake of fellow-man, and on the
dark hand the same fierce desire is for self alone..."	WQJ ART II
207-8


"Still another wanted to, and virtually did, practice black-magic--i.e.,
undue personal psychological influence on certain Fellows, while pretending
devotion and every theosophical virtue." KEY p. 254 


"In both the publications and conversations of the day, frequently occur the
expressions "black magic,:" and "white magic," and those who follow these
studies are designated as followers of the 'left hand path," or the "right
hand path." It ought to be understood that up to a certain point all
students of magic, or occultism, journey together. By and by is reached a
place where two roads meet, or where the common path divides, and the awful
voice from the silence, heard only in the recesses of the individual soul
utters the stern command: "Chose ye this day whom ye will serve." Instead
of black and white magic, read, black and white motive."	WQJ Art I
337


"If early in the race he finds it difficult to shake off his chains, let him
remember that at every step they grow more and more tyrannical, and often
before the goal is reached where the ways divide, the battle is lost or won,
and the decision there is only a matter of form. That decision once made is
irrevocable, or so nearly so that no exception need be made. Man lives at
once in two worlds: the natural and the spiritual, and as in the natural
plane he influences his associates, and is in turn influenced by them, so
let him not imagine that in the spiritual plane he is alone. This will be a
fatal mistake for the dabbler in magic, or the student in occultism.
Throughout this vast universe, the good will seek the good, and the evil the
evil, each will be unconsciously drawn to its own kind."	WQJ
Art I 338


Avitchi	(Sk.)	A state, not necessarily after death only or between two
births, for it can take place on earth as well. Lit., "uninterrupted hell."
The last of the 8 hells, we are told, "where the culprits die and are reborn
without interruption--yet not without hope of final redemption." This is
because Avitchi is another name for Myalba (our earth) and also a state to
which some soulless men are condemned on this physical plane." T.
GLOS. p. 45 
[see: PATH I 235 fn VOICE p. 79 & fn ML 108 fn 130 	
171 196 396 ISIS I 317-9 490 616 fn II 368-9]



Good and Evil


"As soon as the Absolute began to manifest itself...relativity begins, and
all minds are caught in its net and are obliged to look at things
relatively. And so it comes about that we have to say "good" and "evil," as
well as all the other words that connote these relative things and ideas.
If there were no matter there would be no spirit, and also if there were no
evil there would be no good. It is therefore wrong in logic and common
sense to say there is no evil. It is only the desire of the optimist, who
will not look at things as they are, that causes people to affirm that all
is good or that there is no evil."	WQJ Art II 430-1



"In the so-called metaphysical arts or "sciences" the relativity of things
and ideas is constantly ignored from the desire to have everything right and
just as we want it. But how can these optimists know they are right when
they sweep away relativity? and how shall any of us say that sorrow and
poverty do not exist? Poverty is a fact--the fact of being without means or
the things that can be bought with means, and this is so whether the general
wants of the nation you live in are small or large...proper contentment does
not come from violations of logic and fact, but from a right view of this
universe of relativity. And such right view will never be attained by
denials that can not be sustained...Much of our misery is due to discontent
and to selfishness, and will disappear as we grow contented and
whole-souled."	WQJ Art II 431



Jesuits and Dugpas


[ relation of Dugpas to Jesuits ] - "They--the Jesuits sacrifice the inner
principle, the Spiritual brain of the ego, to feed and develop the better
the physical brain of the personal evanescent man, sacrificing the whole
humanity to offer it as a holocaust to their Society--the insatiable monster
feeding on the brain and marrow of humanity, and developing an incurable
cancer on every spot of healthy flesh it touches.--...we seek to bring men
to sacrifice their personality--a passing flash--for the welfare of the
whole humanity, hence for their own immortal Egos, a part of the latter, as
humanity is a fraction of the integral whole, that it will one day become.
They are trained to deceive; we--to undeceive; they do the scavenger's
work themselves--barring a few poor sincere tools of theirs con amore, and
for selfish ends; we--leave it to our menials--the dugpas at our service, by
giving them carte blanche for the time being, and with the sole object of
drawing out the whole inner nature of the chela, most of the nooks and
corners of which, would remain dark and concealed for ever, were not an
opportunity afforded to test each of these corners in turn. Whether the
chela wins or looses the prize--depends solely of himself. ..."
M. LETTERS 231-2


"...the ideas on magic of the Jesuits, that magic which they are pleased to
call devilish and Satanic when studied by the Theosophists. Writing on this
subject in his secret instructions, Anthony Escobar [Theologiae Moralis]
says:

It is lawful...to make use of the Science acquired through the assistance of
the Devil, provided that preservation and use of that knowledge do not
depend upon the Devil, for the knowledge is good in itself, and the sin by
which it was acquired has gone by."

True: why should not a Jesuit cheat the Devil as well as he cheats
every layman ?"	
"Theosophy or Jesuitism" -- HPB Art. II p. 100


"In the middle of the VIIIth century...the very notorious Archbishop
Adalbert of Magdebourg, famous as few in the annals of magic, appeared
before his judges...ultimately convicted...of using...ceremonial magic the
names of the "seven Spirits"--then at the height of their power in the
Church--and among others that of Uriel..."	
HPB ART III 387

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Best wishes,


Dallas