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Features of Occult magic
I'm currently working on a system of high magic, which is not rooted in Abrahamic imagery. I <3 high magic a lot - it really works for me - but I always get stuck at the point where I'm not willing to conjure an angel in my living room. Or even a symbol of an angel. More importantly, the key cosmological concepts - an all powerful divine, a sense of good vs evil - simply don't exist for me.
Step one: here's a quick analysis of what makes up ceremonial magic.
Key influences:
Historic grimoires, John Dee, Paracelsus, Albertus Magus, Enochianism
Alchemy, astrology, working with angels/demons - 16th century magic
Jewish Mysticism: the Qabbalah, the Tree of Life, numerology, angels and weird bits of apocrypha
Ancient Egypt, Sumeria, Persia, Babylon, etc
Key traditions:
Freemasonry
Golden Dawn
Thelema
Chaos Magic
Post-Golden-Dawn offshoots (Quareia, Order of the Inner Light)
Satanism (and its offshoots)
Symbolic Languages
Shapes, symbols, sigils, secret letters, secret languages, especially Hebrew, but also Latin, Arabic, hieroglyphs, anything else that feels "magical". Alchemical symbols, circles, stars, stuff to freak your Jehovah's Witness mother in law out when she comes over for dinner. Faux-biblical monologues.
Hierarchy & Gatekeeping
Slow progression towards enlightenment, fixed ritual roles, gatekeeping/trials/tests, hierarchy with people above and below you, tutelary spirits/hidden masters. Badges, oaths, sashes of different degrees, secrets reserved for higher grades. The act of progressing from grade to grade is *itself* part of the magic of initiation, and the grades are like "stages" in personal development".
Philosophy, not Religion
There aren't gods or worship per-se. Gods are used as "god forms" - symbols of the psyche, masks to wear, keys to unlock parts of yourself but without a polytheist approach where these beings are real personalities. Often has overtones of self-apotheosis/self-deification - there's a general vibe that you create your own reality, and mastering your emotions and behavior alongside gaining wisdom through ritual in some way makes you godlike because power over yourself is the true mastery.
Values
Self control. Mastery. Precision. Self-reliance. Insularness. Balance. Book-learning. Vast memory.
Ritual & Routine
Very self-improvement focused. Regular meditation. Rituals as *rituals* to program the psyche, often repeated, and usually studied/or designed in exacting details for secret meanings. Use of symbols to change the brain, giving it a new "language" to communicate with you in meditation and routine. Very stuff-focused - the act of making a robe, then wearing it, is very important; making different ritual tools to symbolise progression, and using a host of them in correct ways usually important. Things are often grouped into binaries, or groups ("The three alchemical virtues"), or detailed correspondence lists. Having a temple, or a symbolic temple, or a lot of temple equipment - such as columns, altars, banners - is also important
Technical/Ass-Clenching pedantry
Precision is very important: seals of exact metals, correct angles in stars, learning ritual scripts, walking/speaking properly, meditating every day, following a rigid program of ritual work, amassing and remembering a tonne of esoteric knowledge. This is very much no scrubs magic. No, you can't cut corners. If Paganism is "religion with homework", Occultism is (or likes to brand itself as) "religion as PhD". It's fairly common to meet occultists who see themselves as "better" than other kinds of magic practicioner, and I think this is hilarious.
Deconstructed/Post-Modern
Occultists don't necessarily believe in magic. There's an atheist strain running throughout it: you might be working with aspects of the psyche for self-improvement, instead of there being any true astral or supernatural forces. Jungian imagery, pseudo-science, the idea that you are "your own god" as in, you have ultimate power/control over the direction of your life. Even theist(?) occultists often see their rites as affecting primarily themselves, or are prepared to encounter figments of their imagination in preparation to access the higher levels. The ultimate manifestation of this is Chaos Magic, which pushed deconstructed magic to its furthest extent. It came out of ceremonial magic perhaps because the occult already leaned hard on the use of incense and colours to affect the mind of ritualists.
Being a bit of a tit
The core focus on the individual attracts some nasty people. Selfishness as virtue, and personal responsibility philosophies can be hostile to i.e. people with disabilities, or trapped in poverty. The "up by your bootstraps" of magic. I've got into difficulty in the past, trying to fit my horrible mental health into occult systems, and beating myself up when I can't just "fix" my personality. Both because a true mage is "supposed" to overcome all flaws, and because these paths are not supposed to be adapted - if you can't do them correctly, you clearly don't "want" to.
In communities, what you get is a lot of people who THINK they have conquered their personality problems and are now perfectly balanced and rational, and THINK they have rejected all dogmas and biases and are truly neutral and objective. You regularly meet the very worst of my-first-libertarianism adolescents, and there's a generally right wing vibe. There's minimal room for worldviews which see the environment as a factor, and you need to actively add your own models for acceptance/grieving journeys because they don't come as standard. This egotism-as-virtue is most explicitly stated in LaVeyan Satanism, and it's one of these things where - I like it. A lot. But I have crushing self esteem issues, so as a philosophy it counterbalances well defects I already have. It bothers me more in others - admittedly I don't know their history or where they are coming from with it, but it makes me wary of a person.
Probably the most important "being a cock" factor is lowkey, virulent anti-Semitism. It's pretty depressing that traditions founded on Jewish mysticism don't, say, produce hundreds of young men who are passionate about Jewish history and culture. Instead, what you see is a fetishising-exoticising-fearing-hating journey; qabbalistic magic I guess confirms anti-Semitic ideas like "Jews are powerful and rule the world" for many of these people. You're generally only ever one degree of separation from these shits when reading and debating the occult. It was a flaw held by many or most of the occult's founder writers, and since Satanism these traditions can attract people who think being nasty is cool & edgy.
Christianity's Weird Brother
Ceremonial paths traditionally originated with people who had a relationship with Christianity - from the original grimoires, to the early Edwardian Golden Dawn. Therefore, these traditions are all "I AM a Christian however..." For example, working with angels/enochianism, working with Hebrew mysticism (Different enough to Christianity to feel "other" and "exotic" and even a bit scary, but similar enough for plausible deniability). These paths usually self-define as Good with a capital G, and work with a divine-universal-onenness figure who is very easily mapped onto the Abrahamic God. Even Satanic traditions have a "relationship" with Christian texts and iconography.
Appropriating from the East
The Golden Dawn, Thelema and Wicca were all influenced by different phases of Western fascination with "the East". GD and T is suffused with Egyptology. T and W are borrowing more from India. Similar to the weird-Christianity, there's a sense of the "appropriate exotic" - it was normal for the Edwardians to be well into Egypt, so easier for the pagan-hearted Golden Dawn to hide their interest in legitimacy.
Gender
Typically, there is a very strong sense of symbolic gender binary, but also that a mage must synthesise both influences - like an alchemical experiment combining two substances to make a third.
The gendered imagery usually gets on my tits - it can absolutely be a tradition where "male and female are both equally important and powerful (but male is more important)", and which short-changes women by giving the sacred feminine lousy attributes. "Being empathetic", "being the receptive power", etc unavoidably read to me as the sacred equivalents of "listen to me complain about work then go back into the kitchen and make my dinner". In a society that devalues women, I don't think it's really possible to create a list "feminine virtues" without them inevitably being "the second best virtues"; it's not possible to make a symbolism for woman which isn't influenced by a culture which hates women. Even if an individual is able to create correspondences which are rich and meaningful, they're still operating in occult spaces filled with people who have not. Aleister Bloody Crowley explicitly wrote that there could only be one Beast, but many Scarlet Women - as he fucked his way through five of the disposable, interchangeable sacred feminine.
There's a perception of the occult as all men, and wicca as all women. While that's not true, I do think occult traditions appeal to men more often. The virtues they promote are similar to our socially constructed masculine virtues - being in charge, being an authority, being competitive with others in a hierarchy, being rude to women on the internet, being The Best At Things, collecting a comprehensive number of facts on a single topic. Despite ideas about occult paths blending the masculine and feminine, they tend to be short on socially constructed feminine virtues - they're not collective/communal, they're not kind or empathetic. Wicca, and its decendents, also put a far stronger focus on the sacred feminine. While this still can lead to some pretty sexist & transphobic outcomes and worldviews, I think there's more room there for women to be comfortable there, and easier to find like-minded people who didn't think of you as a sacred sex recepticle.
Step one: here's a quick analysis of what makes up ceremonial magic.
Key influences:
Historic grimoires, John Dee, Paracelsus, Albertus Magus, Enochianism
Alchemy, astrology, working with angels/demons - 16th century magic
Jewish Mysticism: the Qabbalah, the Tree of Life, numerology, angels and weird bits of apocrypha
Ancient Egypt, Sumeria, Persia, Babylon, etc
Key traditions:
Freemasonry
Golden Dawn
Thelema
Chaos Magic
Post-Golden-Dawn offshoots (Quareia, Order of the Inner Light)
Satanism (and its offshoots)
Symbolic Languages
Shapes, symbols, sigils, secret letters, secret languages, especially Hebrew, but also Latin, Arabic, hieroglyphs, anything else that feels "magical". Alchemical symbols, circles, stars, stuff to freak your Jehovah's Witness mother in law out when she comes over for dinner. Faux-biblical monologues.
Hierarchy & Gatekeeping
Slow progression towards enlightenment, fixed ritual roles, gatekeeping/trials/tests, hierarchy with people above and below you, tutelary spirits/hidden masters. Badges, oaths, sashes of different degrees, secrets reserved for higher grades. The act of progressing from grade to grade is *itself* part of the magic of initiation, and the grades are like "stages" in personal development".
Philosophy, not Religion
There aren't gods or worship per-se. Gods are used as "god forms" - symbols of the psyche, masks to wear, keys to unlock parts of yourself but without a polytheist approach where these beings are real personalities. Often has overtones of self-apotheosis/self-deification - there's a general vibe that you create your own reality, and mastering your emotions and behavior alongside gaining wisdom through ritual in some way makes you godlike because power over yourself is the true mastery.
Values
Self control. Mastery. Precision. Self-reliance. Insularness. Balance. Book-learning. Vast memory.
Ritual & Routine
Very self-improvement focused. Regular meditation. Rituals as *rituals* to program the psyche, often repeated, and usually studied/or designed in exacting details for secret meanings. Use of symbols to change the brain, giving it a new "language" to communicate with you in meditation and routine. Very stuff-focused - the act of making a robe, then wearing it, is very important; making different ritual tools to symbolise progression, and using a host of them in correct ways usually important. Things are often grouped into binaries, or groups ("The three alchemical virtues"), or detailed correspondence lists. Having a temple, or a symbolic temple, or a lot of temple equipment - such as columns, altars, banners - is also important
Technical/Ass-Clenching pedantry
Precision is very important: seals of exact metals, correct angles in stars, learning ritual scripts, walking/speaking properly, meditating every day, following a rigid program of ritual work, amassing and remembering a tonne of esoteric knowledge. This is very much no scrubs magic. No, you can't cut corners. If Paganism is "religion with homework", Occultism is (or likes to brand itself as) "religion as PhD". It's fairly common to meet occultists who see themselves as "better" than other kinds of magic practicioner, and I think this is hilarious.
Deconstructed/Post-Modern
Occultists don't necessarily believe in magic. There's an atheist strain running throughout it: you might be working with aspects of the psyche for self-improvement, instead of there being any true astral or supernatural forces. Jungian imagery, pseudo-science, the idea that you are "your own god" as in, you have ultimate power/control over the direction of your life. Even theist(?) occultists often see their rites as affecting primarily themselves, or are prepared to encounter figments of their imagination in preparation to access the higher levels. The ultimate manifestation of this is Chaos Magic, which pushed deconstructed magic to its furthest extent. It came out of ceremonial magic perhaps because the occult already leaned hard on the use of incense and colours to affect the mind of ritualists.
Being a bit of a tit
The core focus on the individual attracts some nasty people. Selfishness as virtue, and personal responsibility philosophies can be hostile to i.e. people with disabilities, or trapped in poverty. The "up by your bootstraps" of magic. I've got into difficulty in the past, trying to fit my horrible mental health into occult systems, and beating myself up when I can't just "fix" my personality. Both because a true mage is "supposed" to overcome all flaws, and because these paths are not supposed to be adapted - if you can't do them correctly, you clearly don't "want" to.
In communities, what you get is a lot of people who THINK they have conquered their personality problems and are now perfectly balanced and rational, and THINK they have rejected all dogmas and biases and are truly neutral and objective. You regularly meet the very worst of my-first-libertarianism adolescents, and there's a generally right wing vibe. There's minimal room for worldviews which see the environment as a factor, and you need to actively add your own models for acceptance/grieving journeys because they don't come as standard. This egotism-as-virtue is most explicitly stated in LaVeyan Satanism, and it's one of these things where - I like it. A lot. But I have crushing self esteem issues, so as a philosophy it counterbalances well defects I already have. It bothers me more in others - admittedly I don't know their history or where they are coming from with it, but it makes me wary of a person.
Probably the most important "being a cock" factor is lowkey, virulent anti-Semitism. It's pretty depressing that traditions founded on Jewish mysticism don't, say, produce hundreds of young men who are passionate about Jewish history and culture. Instead, what you see is a fetishising-exoticising-fearing-hating journey; qabbalistic magic I guess confirms anti-Semitic ideas like "Jews are powerful and rule the world" for many of these people. You're generally only ever one degree of separation from these shits when reading and debating the occult. It was a flaw held by many or most of the occult's founder writers, and since Satanism these traditions can attract people who think being nasty is cool & edgy.
Christianity's Weird Brother
Ceremonial paths traditionally originated with people who had a relationship with Christianity - from the original grimoires, to the early Edwardian Golden Dawn. Therefore, these traditions are all "I AM a Christian however..." For example, working with angels/enochianism, working with Hebrew mysticism (Different enough to Christianity to feel "other" and "exotic" and even a bit scary, but similar enough for plausible deniability). These paths usually self-define as Good with a capital G, and work with a divine-universal-onenness figure who is very easily mapped onto the Abrahamic God. Even Satanic traditions have a "relationship" with Christian texts and iconography.
Appropriating from the East
The Golden Dawn, Thelema and Wicca were all influenced by different phases of Western fascination with "the East". GD and T is suffused with Egyptology. T and W are borrowing more from India. Similar to the weird-Christianity, there's a sense of the "appropriate exotic" - it was normal for the Edwardians to be well into Egypt, so easier for the pagan-hearted Golden Dawn to hide their interest in legitimacy.
Gender
Typically, there is a very strong sense of symbolic gender binary, but also that a mage must synthesise both influences - like an alchemical experiment combining two substances to make a third.
The gendered imagery usually gets on my tits - it can absolutely be a tradition where "male and female are both equally important and powerful (but male is more important)", and which short-changes women by giving the sacred feminine lousy attributes. "Being empathetic", "being the receptive power", etc unavoidably read to me as the sacred equivalents of "listen to me complain about work then go back into the kitchen and make my dinner". In a society that devalues women, I don't think it's really possible to create a list "feminine virtues" without them inevitably being "the second best virtues"; it's not possible to make a symbolism for woman which isn't influenced by a culture which hates women. Even if an individual is able to create correspondences which are rich and meaningful, they're still operating in occult spaces filled with people who have not. Aleister Bloody Crowley explicitly wrote that there could only be one Beast, but many Scarlet Women - as he fucked his way through five of the disposable, interchangeable sacred feminine.
There's a perception of the occult as all men, and wicca as all women. While that's not true, I do think occult traditions appeal to men more often. The virtues they promote are similar to our socially constructed masculine virtues - being in charge, being an authority, being competitive with others in a hierarchy, being rude to women on the internet, being The Best At Things, collecting a comprehensive number of facts on a single topic. Despite ideas about occult paths blending the masculine and feminine, they tend to be short on socially constructed feminine virtues - they're not collective/communal, they're not kind or empathetic. Wicca, and its decendents, also put a far stronger focus on the sacred feminine. While this still can lead to some pretty sexist & transphobic outcomes and worldviews, I think there's more room there for women to be comfortable there, and easier to find like-minded people who didn't think of you as a sacred sex recepticle.
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A Star From Heaven: An Introduction to Angelic Magic by Jonathan Sousa
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"Angelic Magic has a varied stigma, owing to the abuses of orthodox creeds, the saccharine new age, and the cryptic whispers of ceremonial lodges. Despite this and in spite of this, many occult paths have found ready recourse through the Art. Drawing on Traditional Witchcraft, Hellenistic and Middle Eastern Magic, and the teachings of the greater Western Esoteric Tradition, this book attempts to be something different. Neither a tell all nor a dogmatic sermon, A Star From Heaven attempts to strip the obscurity away and carry Light to those who would walk where both Angels and Demons themselves fear to tread."
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(I think I would still find it challenging not to bring my personal associations to angelic figures, due to the intervening centuries of imagery - but I'm going to look into this, and maybe they can play a large role in the new system I'm toying with)