Nietzschean Wizards and Hitler's Demonic World

The Occult Philosophy of Ernst Schertel

[The cover image of Magic: History, Theory and Practice by Ernst Schertel]

Introduction

I have recently become aware that many people are far more interested in the occult than I previously thought. A few years ago, while endeavouring to read all secondary literature on Weininger, I discovered that Hitler’s mentor and the “spiritual co-founder” of the Nazism, Dietrich Eckart, was a big fan. This was a big rabbit hole, and by the end I found myself reading Magic: History, Theory and Practice by Ernst Schertel. It is an interesting book and I thought my readers may enjoy a summary of some occult philosophy.

The book is infamous because it was found in Hitler’s library, and the edition in question was a gift from the author. I admit that I know very little about Hitler’s occult interests, but we can be sure of one thing: he read this book.

Because I hate doing biographical sketches, here is the short introduction by the editor of the book, J.H. Kelley:¹

In May 2003, The Atlantic Monthly carried an article entitled “Hitler’s Forgotten Library” by Timothy Ryback, author of “Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life.” The article described various books in the library and mentioned that one of the most heavily-marked books was a strange volume by Dr. Ernst Schertel called “Magic: History, Theory, and Practice.”

“He who does not have demonic seeds within him will never give birth to a new world,” - that was the only example of Adolf Hitler’s annotations from Magic that Mr. Ryback made mention of. For decades the debate has raged as to what degree the occult influenced Hitler. The annotations in the book seemed to represent the first direct link between Hitler and occult beliefs.

My curiosity got the better of me and desiring to further study what had so entranced Hitler, I searched the Internet for a translation of Magic – only to find nothing. The result of my frustration is what you’re holding in your hands at this time. After several years various translators have come and gone, some holding the book for months and accomplishing nothing, while others translated just enough to figure out they found the subject matter too disturbing to continue. Now finally there is a complete translation for others to enjoy.

In my study of Dr. Ernst Schertel (June 20, 1884 – January 30, 1958) I found that he can only be described as a researcher of the unusual. After obtaining his doctorate in 1911 and graduating magna cum laude he authored several books focusing on dance, the occult, nudism, sadomasochism, and other topics that few dared to touch. In 1923 he authored Magic and sent a dedicated copy to Hitler (page 54).

In 1933 he fled to Paris after the takeover of Germany by the National Socialists, but he returned to Germany in 1934. Shortly thereafter he was rewarded with a seven year prison sentence for “spreading licentious writings.” 1937 saw the revocation of his doctorate by the University of Jena. After the war he found work as an editor and proofreader, occasionally publishing his own works.

Hitler’s extensive markings (sixty-six in all) in his copy of Magic were in the form of vertical lines in the margins. Previous reports of handwritten notes are incorrect. For ease of publication the markings have been reproduced throughout the English edition in boldface type.

I would like to thank Mr. Ryback for his Atlantic Monthly article, without which this project would have never been conceived. I’d also like to thank the employees at the John Hay Library of Brown University for their assistance in obtaining the Hitler copy of Magic on microfilm so the annotations could be reproduced.

It is my hope that the reader will find this work as fascinating as I have. I believe it gives us a new look into the mind of one of the most notorious leaders to ever exist.

JHK

Some sentences there make it seem like Magic is some kind of Necronomicon, and a superficial reading confirms this: the whole thing is explicitly “demonic.” But like many occultists, this is more of a rhetorical thing. People like Schertel love to play the bad guy, the rebel, the devil (even Nietzsche² is like this in many passages). For example, he defines the two halves of they dyad as “satanic” and “seraphic” when he could just as easily have used “chaotic” and “ordered,” or “male” and “female” as Weininger does.

Despite being rather short, Magic itself is filled to the brim with interesting ideas. Schertel gives us an alternate history of the world, a whole metaphysical vision of a magical cosmos, practical steps for yoking yourself with your “demon” and many other crazy things. That said, it strikes one as something Schertel wrote for people who wouldn’t need a lot of convincing. There are very few arguments, but those well-versed in these topics—or in the philosophy of perception—will find quite a bit here that is good fun.

I can’t do the whole book justice, but sketching out the basics should suffice in giving an impression of Schertel and perhaps some intimations of what Hitler may have been preoccupied with. I will deal with (I) Schertel’s metaphysical worldview and (II) his concept of the magician.

I should also note that any quotes in bold correspond to Hitler’s underlines.

I. Homo Nodum and Para-cosmic Forces

Understanding Schertels’s overall metaphysical picture is no easy task. I read this book a few years ago³ and now that I have reread it, it seems even more complicated (and more interesting) than it did back then. I am also going in blind, so to speak: there is no secondary literature on this obscure figure (in English?), and the translation, while cool, leaves certain things to be desired. So please bear with me.

The best place to start, and the most interesting part of Schertel’s book, by far, is his theory of perception, which incidentally explains how magic is possible. See, the main issue facing a magician in the realm of philosophy is explaining how it is that thoughts can influence reality and how to explain “magical” acts. Even though many may not be aware of it, the 21st century is still largely under the influence of a Cartesian paradigm, one where the physical and mental are two discrete substances—the res extensa and the res cogitans. While the dualism he espoused is not so common today, the idea that these are two separate “realms” is a common assumption, and much contemporary philosophy is written about how to reconcile them. Thus, we get views where consciousness emerges from matter somehow, views where consciousness is dismissed as some kind of illusion, views where the physical world is actually emergent from the mental (idealism)—or views where the two are intermixed as in pan-psychism.

In essence, this is the mind-body problem, albeit with an occult twist: the issue is explaining how mental acts can directly affect the physical world in “magical” ways. How is it possible to “will” events into being? How can one possibly explain such powers as clairvoyance, telepathy and the “occult sciences” such as astrology? Schertel’s solution to this is actually very cool.⁴

1. The Conscious Universe

The first step to understanding his resolution of this problem is to grasp his panpsychism, which is a standard move for those with occult inclinations:

The gruesome, otherworldly bringing to life of natural things, which is the basis of all magic, produces the world view that is known to us from so-called primitives as “animism,” “pan-animism,” or as “inspiriting of nature,” “pan-psychical.” For the primordial man “things” are dark-vivid essentialities, everything is surrounded by a holy horror which itself signifies a source for forces by which magical effects become possible in the first place. (25)

For Schertel it seems that everything is animated somehow, that the world is filled with various powers. Since Schertel’s book is filled with some rather well-written and evocative passages, I will make liberal use of many long quotes over the course of this essay. Early in Magic he describes the plight of primordial man, but his ideas here are really more representative of what he thinks the cosmos is like at a fundamental level. He writes:

The man of primeval times felt small compared to nature and its creations. In all things and appearances, in mountains, clouds, rivers, in the world of the stars, in the fire, in the smoke, in the blowing of the wind, in the descending lightning, he recognized and admired forces and powers which were darkly related to him but still stood above him. He still had a distinct knowledge that forces of the deep filled with eerie significance were also active in the bodies of pre-human creatures: a tree, an herb, an elephant, a bull, and even a toad.

Through all of this came those peculiar processes and conditions we today call *illusions*, *hallucinations*, *delusions*, *suggestions*, *dreams* etc., which revealed to him a world of shaping strengths that are virtually hidden from present man. The man of primeval times, sleeping and awake, felt himself surrounded by a reality of images that was pregnant by a dark, often times gruesome meaning, and alive with mysterious powers. Even after he had learned to somehow control these powers and make them subservient, the feeling of eeriness and evil did not vanish, and he still stood before these things with that strange mix of feeling of superiority and fear - like an animal tamer before his beasts. (15)

It should be mentioned that Schertel also distinguishes between “cosmic” and “para-cosmic” forces throughout the text. He is not terribly clear on this point, but it seems that para- (beside, adjacent to) cosmic forces are his version of spiritual forces; they are the “roots of consciousness-phenomena, which in some circumstances gain ‘thing character.’” Sometimes he writes as though the para-cosmic forces are more fundamental somehow,⁵ but it seems that they are just a certain type of force within the larger universe—perhaps with a “conscious” character as opposed to the merely “kinetic” forces in the universe.

2. The Force Net

So it seems that Schertel’s universe is one comprised of various forces, some comic and others para-cosmic. From a metaphysical perspective, these then form a great net, which at times seems like a Heraclitean flux wherein certain structures of mesh and remesh in perpetual conflict. In such a universe, the human exists as a point, and “Our ‘I’ in the strict sense of the word is nothing else but a ‘focal point,’ a ‘center of consciousness,’ a ‘knot’ within the infinite cosmic force-net”. (61) Moreover, “This point represents a place of crossing, a whirl-center of cosmic force-lines and is connected with the whole cosmos like a knot in a fishnet with the net itself.” (65)⁶

Here man is not a homo sapien but rather a homo nodum: a constellation of forces within the great web of being.

Schertel tells us that “what we call ‘I’ in the sense of concrete personality, real individuality, etc. is already a complex of ‘elements of observation,’ and principally does not differ from the tangible ‘environment.’” (61) Since the whole world is conscious in some way and since we are nothing but a node where these forces congregate, man has no special privelege among the animals—or even among plants and rocks. This reminds me of a beautiful passage from Fernando Pessoa (who is also an occultist):

My soul is a black maelstrom, a great madness spinning about a vacuum, the swirling of a vast ocean around a hole in the void, and in the waters, more like whirlwinds than waters, float images of all I ever saw or heard in the world: houses, faces, books, boxes, snatches of music and fragments of voices, all caught up in a sinister, bottomless whirlpool.

And I, I myself, am the centre that exists only because the geometry of the abyss demands it; I am the nothing around which all this spins, I exist so that it can spin, I am a centre that exists only because every circle has one. I, I myself, am the well in which the walls have fallen away to leave only viscous slime. I am the centre of everything surrounded by the great nothing. (The Book of Disqueit, p. 9, Serpent’s Tale edition)

3. The Soul

With this out of the way, we can now see how Schertel reconciles the external world with the internal one and dissolves the distinction between them. The answer, in short, is that the internal world of emotions and thoughts is comprised of forces that are part of the inner meshes of one’s knot: “layers of the force-net, which are lying around that knot and are (as surrounding meshes) particularly close and directly (because of the “inner- feeling” or “organ-feeling”) intertwined with it”. (65) With this, the difference between what is mental and what is physical transforms into the difference between what is “close” and what is “far” from the center of our “I”—i.e., into a difference between the relative layers of the force net. Here are Schertel’s words:

The difference between “soul“ or “inner world“ and sensual “environment” or “outer world” consists only in that the ”soul” represents a complex of “emotional perceptions,” the “outer world” a complex of “sensory perceptions,” of “pictures.” It is not possible to draw an exact border between both areas, since spiritual-emotional moments easily gain a pictorial nature, and on the other side every sensory perception carries a more or less pronounced “emotional tone” provided that it not only consists of an “emotion,” as is the case with the senses of smell and taste and with various kinds of irritations of the skin. (63)

This passage, like most in the book, is not terribly clear; but Schertel’s idea is not so radical. The idea is that one’s mental world is comprised of the same stuff as the external one, with the only difference being that the energies which comprise the mental one are “closer” to the center of consciousness, which gives them a different (and often affective) character.⁷ On such a view, images from one’s imagination are ontologically the same as real things; they just reside within the inner layers of the person and are too weak to cause any corresponding effects in others.

One’s thoughts and feelings, therefore, are private only because of proximity and relative strength. In this respect, they are not so different from physical feelings: you feel your heartbeat because you are always close to it, but others need to touch you to feel that same movement. One could assume that magicians “read minds” by attaining a certain psychic proximity. This is not a perfect analogy, but the idea is similar.

4. No Things

One consequence of this line of thinking is that there are no “things” in the universe—no objects. (65) All we have is an ocean of conscious forces, and Schertel likens man himself to a seismograph. This is a complicated idea, so I will quote him at length:

We have to imagine our body as a seismograph of the cosmic dynamic. Shifting of energy within the cosmic force-net “effectuate,” by indirect way via our body, a “perception” on the table of our consciousness, just as any shaking of the earth causes, by indirect way via the seismograph, a curve on a strip of paper. This curve is the result of joint action of the shaking of the earth together with the individual parts of the seismograph. If, for example, there is red ink in its pen, then the curve will be red, if there is black ink in it, then the curve will be black. Depending on the construction of the machine, the curve will be high and narrow or low and wide, even though the shaking of the earth was neither red nor black, nor narrow or wide.

The same applies to our “observations.” They are the result of the co-action between cosmic shifting of energy and the force-complex of our body. But they are as little equal to the shifting of energy as an earthquake is to a red or black curve.

It is in the nature of every perception and consequently of every observation that it is standing before us, that is to say “projected.” Our consciousness automatically puts the mental image “before us” and creates therewith an “outer world” or “environment.” So, perceptions are always something which originated in the co-action between the cosmic and our own inner-bodily energies, but are never the copy-image of a “thing.” Things only exist at our level of consciousness, and they are drawn upon this level by the whole universe on its way through our body, which itself is just a part of the universe. (65, 66)

The key term here, as I see it, is “projection.” The images that comprise our own world are “projected” by us. This isn’t exactly representationalism, as the images in our consciousness do not really give us representations of “the thing in itself.” Rather, they just give us a way of navigating the forces that we come into contact with.⁸

Somehow (this is never explained) the complex of conscious forces that comprises us “projects” images after having been acted upon by the other energies in the universe.

5. Reality

At the end of all this, we arrive at a very interesting place. In a universe such as this, the very idea of an objective world is abolished, and the absolute distinction between private and public disappears. Schertel has this to say:

Now the objection is suggested that in this way every differentiation between “fantastical perceptions” (“imaginations”) and “objective observations” might be blurred. But there is indeed no fundamental difference between them. Imagination and observation are to the same extent products of the cosmic dynamic and of inner-bodily forces and as such are “real,” provided that the notion of “reality” still has any meaning at all. That in practice we nevertheless differentiate between imagination and observation is because of the fact that the imagination is to a stronger degree caused by inner-bodily compression of cosmic energy, observation on the other hand is caused more by the influence of layers of the cosmic force-net which are further “away.” (67)

Under such a scheme, imagination becomes the fundamental principle of reality, and one’s ability to “project” forces into the universe can change the universe itself. He tells us that “The man with the greatest force of imagination is commanding of the world and creates realities according to his will, instead of being the slave of an unsubstantial, bodiless empiricism. Empiricism fulfils the laws of “probability,” but imagination makes the impossible happen.” (73)

This explains one of the well-known dictums of all new-age spirituality that “you create your reality.” In Schertel’s metaphysics, this is literally true since your imagination is the same kind of force that engenders everything. But not everyone is well-suited to creation of this kind since it is very dangerous, which brings us to the idea of the magician.

II. The Magician as a Schizo-Warlord-Prophet

Schertel’s idea of the magician is very similar to the concept of the genius, which was prevalent at that time (and which fellow Substacker

Russell Walter

has written about here). In order to affect changes in the universe at large through magical—i.e., imaginative—means, one needs to be a special kind of person, specifically, someone who we would today consider mentally ill. In addition to this, the magician is supposed to cultivate some kind of symbiotic relationship with his “demon,” which is supposed to confer even greater ability to affect reality.

He designates the magician as an “ektropic” being, that is, as one who creates—and the universe itself seems organized to produce and arrange itself around such beings.

1. Hysterical Psychopath Kings

Schertel’s first claim is that the magician is a madman, though—in a typical Nietzschean fashion—he identifies this as a positive thing.

A great amount of irritability is a prerequisite for being granted permission into the circle of the magicians. Added to this are a lot of mannerisms and oddities which we today can still find frequently in people of “genius.” Also an epileptic characteristic is considered to be a sign of magical giftedness. In any case we recognize that the magician in former times had a lot of features which we would today call “psychopathic.” Today we associate with this term a derogatory meaning and do not think that most of the great things were created by these kinds of “psychopaths.” Also the magician of the early times despite his abnormal predisposition should not to be pictured (sic) as an “ill” human in our sense of the word. To the contrary he had to be equipped with a great amount of robustness to be able to put up with the pathological sides of his being without impairment of his organism as a whole and to match up to all the stress that his function required. Frequently these magicians have been epic warlords who took an active part in battle and were, because of their efficiency in war, a light unto all others. (22, 23)

Schertel is also clear that the most powerful magicians are all “hysterical” in a special sense and that “Primitive mankind in its entirety was to a much larger degree ‘hysterical’ than today’s mankind.” (65) This hysteria is something like a sensitivity to cosmic and para-cosmic forces, and an excessively developed faculty of fancy.

A point about Schertel’s epistemology: he grounds occult knowledge in the body, in “feeling”—which, again, is not very strange by occult standards and my friend

Sirius White

talks much about the primacy of the body. “The idea that the avenue to the last reality is found through the body and the sinking into a purely carnal form, rather than through intellect and abstraction, signifies the main antithesis.” (13) Like I just said, this in itself is not a very radical thesis. It’s really just an acceptance of much older mystical traditions where the highest knowledge can only be experienced or “seen” in some special way. As Schertel writes, “the essence of things is beyond all intellect.” (55)

The problem, he says, is that today we are so concept-driven, so mired in abstraction, that these forces are often completely hidden (occulted?) from us. He goes so far as to write that “One almost has to be a genius today to live such a harmless-sacred life as every sow-herder did in the past.” (92) The magician has a much deeper connection to these forces: he feels more and therefore affects more.⁹

2. The “Demonic” Struggle

Now we get to the good stuff. For Schertel, in a sense, everything is demonic. He has no concept of divinity or of a higher law. The whole universe is merely composed of cosmic and para-cosmic forces. There is no distinction between so-called white and black magic (47); and in his system even religion itself is demonic: “All religion is only a form of magic and all magic is only applied religion.” (31) Abraham, Moses and Mohammed are all given as examples of great demonic magicians.

Since everything is conscious, magical actions involve assimilating forces and subjugating them to your will. As such,

"Magic is always dangerous, is always a trial of strength between the one who performs the magic and the forces he invokes, that is to say the demonic things or simply the “demons.” Out of this distinctive feature of struggle originates the aristocratic characteristic, which from the beginning was part of all magic and despite its comprehensive human basis hallmarked it as the privilege of a selected few. (24)

The magician’s power is related to the amount of demonic (para-cosmic) power he commands. “Every magician is surrounded by a force field of para-cosmic energies, and as already indicated he acts to the highest degree “ektropically” upon the cosmic dynamic.” (78) The idea here seems to be that you can “tie more threads” around your personal knot, thus facilitating more connection and greater influence throughout the universe. And “the consciously working magician will always feel himself surrounded by a more or less clearly structured demonic world.” (78)

This requires that the magician be one hard son-of-a-bitch. According to Schertel, “All mastery is based on acquirement, absorption, compression, control, and design by way of subjugating the alien being to a new form-law, imbibing it to ones own world, just like the body assimilates food. All fight for power is therefore a fight of hostile structures.” (17) On this view, the magician is a spiritual warlord conquering demonic hordes and then using them to effect his will upon the greater universe. It’s a perilous and exciting life.

3. The Personal Demon-God

This is where things get even more confusing. Although everything is demonic in some way, there is also such a thing as a personal demon or a “demonic seed” that resides in the heart of every man. He writes:

We call the central focus of the cosmic forces in us our “god” or our “demon.” It describes the punctual projection of the whole dynamic of the universe with all of its abysmal infiniteness in our self, it signifies the deepest sense, the first being and the highest value, created in the center of our consciousness out of the senseless, being-less and value-less chaos of paracosmic forces. This parthenogenesis of the god in us, this primeval creation of a sense out of the senseless, is the darkest secret of existence, and is the actual “principium individuationis,” the actual “act of creation” and withstands every thinking dissection and every potential imagination that it itself might be the origin and foundation of every thought and every imagination. (74)

Quite frankly, I have no idea what he is talking about here. It seems that he wants to invoke a higher principle, perhaps even a higher self, but I can’t make sense of how this is supposed to work given his ontological commitments. In Christianity this “God” is simply Christ; in the Vedic tradition it would be the “atman;” in hermeticism it is the “gold” that is hidden within the “earth.” But for Schertel the being of absolute value somehow grows out of the value-less chaos of para-cosmic forces. I know what he is getting at, but I have serious doubts that it works.

Philosophically, this strikes me as a dead end (but to be fair, I have not spent hours and hours pondering this quandary.)¹⁰

This personal god or divine seed is somehow special, and the well-being of the magician depends upon his connection to this (higher?) power. Whether it makes sense that this force is of the highest value makes little difference to his overall view. In this respect, he follows the mainline occult idea of “spiritualizing the body and physicalizing the spiritual.” The magician is supposed to cultivate a connection with his demon through acts of sacrifice,¹¹ with the ultimate goal being total identification with one’s demon.¹²

He has experienced a fundamental transformation, because in him the “god-center,” the “demonic center” was opened, so that in a certain sense he now appears as identical with his demon, that is to say he himself appears as “demon” or “god.” In any case, he gained demonic powers, i.e. magical abilities. (120, 121)

But even without this final apotheosis, the personal demon is a necessity. It is the connection to one’s own demon that protects the magician from being overpowered by the hoard of demonic para-conscious powers that he has brought under his command, and “only by that life in his demon which protects the magician against the continuously attacking forces, i.e. those cosmic energies attacking his individuality, these forces can be checked and suppressed so that the individual sphere can grow undisturbed.” (133)

In other systems, the personal demon would be a higher principle of some kind—a fixed pole around which everything else spins. Sometimes the regular “demonic” forces are of a lower order ontologically, which allows for them to be dominated by the superior element. ¹³ Those kinds of resources aren’t available to Schertel, but he seems to think along similar lines in practice.

Conclusion

So what do we make of all this? Schertel’s book contains a great deal more than what I have laid out here, but this covers the basics of his system. There are many more details to be teased out—some of which, I think, can’t be teased out—but it remains an interesting curiosity.

I am not well-read on Hitler’s occult beliefs, but we have reason to think that he did not take Schertel too seriously. For one thing, Schertel was arrested by the Nazis; for another, Hitler was a vegetarian—and Schertel thinks that vegetarianism makes you weaker and more “tame.” The schizo-magician-king-prophet-warlord feasts on the blood of slaughtered animals, apparently. One thing is certain, however: Hitler did read the book.

The spooky quote that is thrown around whenever Magic is mentioned is also not so ominous. Hitler highlighted, “He who does not have demonic seeds within him will never give birth to a new world.” But this “world” is really one’s own private sphere of perception that has been saturated with demonic para-cosmic forces—it isn’t a new regime like the Third Reich.

The book is interesting for those who like to read such things, but do not expect the answers to the universe to be unveiled therein. If there is sufficient interest in this post, I will gladly do more essays on occult philosophy. But it’s important to keep in mind that the people who write these books are, at the end of the day, just people. This kind of thing shouldn’t make anyone hysterical in a fearful sense, though it should perhaps make you consider how “unhysterical” we all are—that is, it should make you more sensitive and more aware of the forces that are acting on your mind and body. Because, at least in this respect, I think Schertel was onto something.

Ernst Schertel: Magic: History, Theory and Practice. COTUM (2009)

1. I have no intent of passing this off as my own work, and the fact is that Kelley’s introduction is so short and sweet that doing my own rendition would just amount to prolonged paraphrase. Anyone interested should seek out the book itself and support this person, as he did an admirable job in rendering this little gem into English.

2. I refer to Schertel as a “Nietzschean Wizard” in the title. Schertel does not refer to himself as such. But I will not prove that it is an apt name in the essay; readers of Magic will see what I mean.

3. I experienced what I thought was the greatest Mandela Effect of my life while writing this article, for when I went to reread this book on my Kindle, it wasn’t there. I began to worry I had invented the whole thing as I could not remember the name of the author (Shortle? Shertelle?). It wasn’t until I found another copy and saw that my notes were still in the Kindle that my fears were assuaged. But take this as a warning: Amazon can delete your books!

4. At the time Schertel was writing this book (1923), there were many interesting developments with this problem, and while we can’t know for sure what Schertel was reading, his stuff bears a semblance to what we find in Dilthey, Scheler and especially later Nietzsche. This also seems to have been the pinnacle of esotericism in Europe, and Evola’s Ur Group was active just a few years earlier, as was Alestair Crowley and all the British guys.

5. “The only remaining reality is the one that lies in the cosmic dynamic, which is for us completely unsubstantial and bodiless, and lies in the “energetic para-cosmos,” which has nothing to do with our imagined universe other than that it somehow gives rise to the emergence of this perception.” (69)

6. This strikes me as being very similar to Nietzsche’s “quantas of force,” but I must admit that I find this to be one of, if not the, most challenging idea in Nietzsche. So I am not sure.

7. At around the time Schertel was writing there was an idea in philosophy that reality is “resistence,” and Schertel is basically invoking this without saying so. The difference between the mental and the physical, between the internal world and the external one, is that the latter resists your actions since it is not integrated into the “knot.” For more on this see Dilthey, Scheler and Nietzsche.

8. In certain respects this is similar to theories developed by Bergson and Münsterberg, where motor responses dictate how sensory material is organized.

9. He is also a regal being:

The magical type of man was the one who dominated and defined all primeval cultures. The magician was in all early times identical with the “ruler,” be it as chieftain or as priest or as both combined in one. He acts as intermediary between the profane reality and the world above, he himself radiates forces which exceed the normal, he is in reality the superior and the highest and so it is natural that he also holds worldly power in his hands. Even later on by the time the worldly power usually cuts itself off from the spiritual, it is still the magician, the priest who represents supreme authority and before whom also princes and kings have to bow. But not until the end of civilization, by the time the connection to the world above diminishes more and more, does the magician step back from his dominating position, the hierarchical structure of the people disintegrates, and with regard to every supernal thing every individual has to start completely from scratch. (24)

10. If you take occult stuff seriously, then this kind of methodology is far more likely to get you soul-raped than anything else, in my opinion.

11. I will not go into more detail on sacrifice here. It’s in the book but is too complicated for this essay.

12. This is very ambiguous and can refer to two seperate things: (1) theosis in a religious context where the human being is divinized (as in Christianity) or (2) a kind of mind-melting with some external, traditionally “demonic” force—which is what some people think the Illuminate are up to (see Leo Zagami’s book Invisible Master for more on this).

13. I recall a funny passage in Iamblicus where he says that demons lie, not because they are evil, but because they are retarded and can’t remember the truth. They are time-bound members of the flux and the magiscule-T “Truth” is of a higher spiritual order.