Those who know, don't talk. Those who talk, don't know. --Lao Tzu

Magic in this century has been subject to a great deal of "exotericization." Gradually, magic and its components have become more visible to society at large. This process has been assisted by investigations, for "scholarly" and "journalistic" puroposes, undertaken by those who have had no sympathy for magic in its goals or practices, as well as the writings of magicians to defend against or redress the reports of such investigations. Additionally, the socio-economic order of "capitalist democracies" such as the US and UK makes the process of exotericization likely, if not inevitable. The principal value of capitalist democracy is short-term fiscal gain, and the most efficient way to extract short-term fiscal gain from information is to publish for the widest audience available. Given, magicians may not in principle share the values of the larger society, but in order to function within it, they will often have to act as if they did.

The prior history of magic has placed a great premium on secrets and secrecy, and these developments clearly amount to a radical change in the conduct of magic and magicians. Naturally, this change has its advocates and its opponents. The opponents, if sincere, have largely kept silent. One of the most effective advocates (and perpetrators) of the "unveiling of the temple" in this century was Israel Regardie. Despite the notes on capitalist democracy above, it is my belief that Regardie acted on nobler motives, including (but not limited to) the desire to counter slander against the magical tradition in which he participated.

The second chapter of Regardie's My Rosicrucian Adventure details many of his arguments for magical "openness." The first of these arguments is an attempt to distinguish between the noumena of magical wisdom and the phenomena of magical orders. Obligations [of secrecy] were originally intended to protect the esoteric tradition rather than the Order. It is not the Order as an organized body which is important but the order system, its magical teaching, and its time-honoured methods of spiritual development.¹

The order, though, however informal (and generally, the less formal, the more secret--genuine secrecy is not a formality), is often a prerequisite for various sorts of magical work. Certainly, the atom of the order, its individual (in some cases only) member, must be protected if the tradition is to be practiced, and not just preserved in a scholarly vacuum for future generations. ("In case of Last Judgment, break glass.")

Regardie further claims that "Secrecy was originally instituted for fear of tyrannical oppression from state and church. . . Modern progress has eliminated the likelihood of persecution."² I can't say for sure how credible this claim was at its first publication in 1936, but in the US of the 80's and early 90's, it seems unwarrantedly naive. The state weilds all sorts of powers to regulate organizations, and freely legislates on issues of private behavior, such as sexual conduct and drug use. The evangelical churches in the US have gained greatly in influence and ambition, and like nothing better than rooting out magic and its practitioners. Note the growing number of police departments persuaded by "experts" to be alert for signs of non-Christian ritual activity, as a means of detecting "satanism" in their communities. The agents of what Crowley termed "energized enthusiasm," Aphrodite, Dionysus and Apollo (a.k.a. sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll), are everywhere besieged by exoteric Authorities of varying stripes. Crowley would note, of course, that the US is not a "civilized" country; but since his writing, it has exported its barbarism with increasing zeal.

Regardie's most avid opposition to secrecy is psychological in its formulation, as is his most avid advocacy of magic. In making it, he quotes Jung (from Modern Man in Search of a Soul): He [Jung] declares that "anything that is concealed is a secret. The maintainance of secrets acts a psychic poison which alienates their possessor from the community."³

But in some very valid senses, this "alienation" is a goal of magic. In his article "Magic Is No Instrument, Magic Is the Edge," V. Heinrich Liedtke argues convincingly that magic exists to affirm the individual self as distinct from the social role. Liedtke also notes the opposition of this function to that of religion--countering in the process one of Regardie's other objections to secrecy, that it is a prop of priestcraft.

This last charge is trivial. Secrets do not maintain order within heirachic organizations; they tend rather to disrupt the functioning of such programs. Robert Anton Wilson has worked out the basics of this mechanic in what he calls "the Snafu Principle." As much as the Grand Mouseketeers of the Innerest Order may try to laud their secrets over the "less initiated," the very concept of the secret is their undoing, as the Novice Greenhorn Mouslings eventually lose trust and shatter the heirarchy's power by keeping secrets of their own. Secrecy and authority are poor partners.

Furthermore, Jung is not univocal on the nature of secrecy. In Psychology and Alchemy, he notes that

Isolation by a secret results as a rule in an animation of the psychic atmosphere, as a substitute for loss of contact with other people. It causes an activation of the unconscious, and this produces something similar to the illusions and hallucinations that beset lonely wanderers in the desert, seafarers, and saints.⁴

Jung recongnizes here that the chief value of the secret is in its effect on the holder of the secret, rather than the effect on those from whom it is withheld. The latter view is a naïve type that corresponds in some sense to the view of magic as an instrument for winning lotteries. The adoption of attitudes of psychology and the psychoanalytic tradition in Regardie's work is very telling as regards his opposition to secrecy. The crucial failing of the psychoanalytic tradition has been its insistence on dealing with all problems consciously. As Jung himself pointed out to psychologists (and Nietzsche to philosophers, and Spare to magicians), the unconscious is generally older, wiser, and more capable than the conscious, and should be permitted to execute the tasks it undertakes. In ignorance of this fact, psychoanalysis has traditionally viewed the unconscious as the enemy from whom "repressed" materials must be liberated. The opposition to secrecy is this psychoanalytic fallacy extended to the social context.

A more contemporary critique of secrecy is offered by Persona RA OH 1043 in a paper "On Magical Orders," in which it is argued that "orders today have a much more central role in the dissemination of information broadly than the hoarding of teachings for the select trustworthy few."⁵ Yet a few pages later, Persona RA OH acknowledges the persistence of secrecy, in its curiously inverted present form:

Today the dedicated occultist. . . must seek not rare occult texts, but the gems of genuine occult knowledge now hidden in the midst of the thousands of junk occult books that sit on the shelf beside the books that have published the magickal wisdom. In like measure, the student must find from among the numerous occult orders, those few that will for their time and effort teach them the best of occult teachings without a strong overlay of occult fluff.⁶

Well-meaning but misguided attempts at "the dissemination of information broadly," as well as mercenary production of "occult fluff," exacerbate the "problem" which is not, in fact, a problem, but the salvation of magic and of its secrecy.

Secrecy has always been the crux of magic. "Occult" means hidden--occult knowledge is such by virtue of its secrecy, past or present. An "arcanum" is a secret--the much-abused symbols of the tarot deck will always constitute a pack of seventy-eight greater and lesser secrets. The fourth and final magical power is tacere, to keep silent, while the speaking of Greek, Hebrew, Babylonian, and Enochian by modern magicians imparts to their rituals a quality of secrecy. The whole agenda of Austin Osman Spare's potent sorcery is to dispense with the conscious and immerse onesself in secrets.

Secret languages, secret signs, secret societies, secret rites, secret secrets, all compose the true workings of magic. Magic without secrets, void of its fecund arcana, cools into the sterility of parpapsychology, metaphysics, paraphysics, et al. These "disciplines" are not magic; they are sciences of magic and, as such, its death. "Doesn't every science live on this paradoxical slope to which it is doomed by the evanescence of the object in the very process of its apprehension, and by the pitiless reversal this dead object exerts on it? Like Orpheus it always turns around too soon, and its object, like Eurydice, falls back to Hades."⁷

But in the final analysis, secrecy needs no defense in the context of magic. Magic is, to borrow terminology from Baudrillard, the seduction of knowledge, as opposed to its production. In production, the world is made visible, corporate, predictable. Seduction makes invisible, intangible, reversible. Seduction, and her dearest child the secret, cannot be eliminated because she alone permits the interplay of distinction, change and identity which is "the implosive process of the game."⁸ I concur with Baudrillard that before the world was produced, it was seduced.⁹

Supposing an improbable and lamentable eventuality in which the occult field of today is cropped of its secrets, magic will have vanished from it to graze in pastures of greener seduction, where the secret still permits the genuine magic of transgression, reversal, and disappearance.

If the way is made clear, it is not the Way. If discriminations are put into words, they do not suffice.--Chuang Tzu

Back to R.'.D.'.R.'.L.'.

NOTES

1 Regardie, p. 38.

2 Ibid., p. 41.

3 Ibid., p. 42.

4 Jung, p. 49.

5 RA OH 1043, p. 1.

6 Ibid., p. 4.

7 Baudrillard, Simulations, pp. 13-14.

8 Baudrillard, Forget, p. 129.

9 Baudrillard, Ecstasy, p. 71.

WORKS CITED

Baudrillard, Jean. The Ecstasy of Communication. Semiotext(e); New York, 1988.

__________. Forget Foucault. Semiotext(e); New York, 1987.

__________. Simulations. Semiotext(e); New York, 1983.

Chuang Tzu. Basic Writings. Trans. Burton Watson. Columbia; New York, 1964.

Crowley, Aleister. "Energized Enthusiasm" in Gems from the Equinox. Falcon; Phoenix, 1986.

Jung, Carl Gustav. Psychology and Alchemy. Bollingen; Princeton, 1980.

Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching. Trans. Stephen Mitchell. Harper & Row; New York, 1988.

Liedtke, V. Heinrich. "Magic Is No Instrument, Magic Is the Edge," in Semiotext(e) USA. Semiotext(e); New York, 1987.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Portable Nietzsche. Trans. & ed. Walter Kaufmann. Penguin; New York, 1982.

RA OH 1043, Persona. "On Magickal Orders." Black Moon Archives.

Regardie, Israel. What You Should Know About the Golden Dawn. Falcon; Phoenix, 1985.

Spare, Austin Osman. The Book of Pleasure. Sut Anubis; 1988.

Wilson, Robert Anton. The Illuminati Papers. Sphere; London, 1980.