W.E.Butler - Practical Magic OCR.pdf

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-M-A-G-IC-A-N-D-O-C-C-U-LT-IS-M----,
PRACTICAL MAGIC
AND THE
WESTERN MYSTERY
TRADITION
W. E. Butler, a devoted friend and colleague of the celebrated
occultist Dion Fortune, was among those who helped build the
Society of the Inner Light into the foremost Mystery- School of its
day. He then went on to found his own school, the Servants of the
Light, which still continues under the guidance of
Dolor~s
Ashcroft-Nowicki, herself an occultist and author of note and the
editor of this
v
olume.
PRACTICAL MAGIC AND THE WESTERN MYSTERY
TRADITION is a collection of previously unpublished articles,
training papers, and lectures covering many aspects of practical
magic in the context of western occultism that show W. E. Butler
not only as a leading figure in the magical tradition of the West,
but also as one of its greatest teachers.
*
What makes an occultist
*
Ritual training
*
Inner Plane contacts
*
Telesmatic images
*
Words of Power
ISBN 0-85030-411-3
Subjects covered include:
THE AQUARIAN PRESS
Wellingborough, Northamptonshire
9 7808503041'14
First published 1986
Contents
©
SERVANTS OF THE LIGHT 1986
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter
Page
7
11
13
35
42
54
57
61
69
73
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized
in
any
form or by
any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and
recording, or by any information storage
and retrieval
system, without
permission in writing from the Publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Butler, W.E.
Practical magic and the Western mystery tradition.
1. Occult sciences
I.
Title
II. Ashcroft-Nowicki, Dolores
133
BF1411
ISBN 0-85030-411-3
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
Keys in Practical Magic
Mysticism and Occultism
The Qualities Demanded of an Occultist
Inner Plane Contacts and Rays
Tatvas
Masters and Pupils
Esoteric Secrecy
The Manichean Heresy
Symbols
Telesmatic Images
Words of Power
Exegesis
Ritual Training
Recording Psychic Experiences
An Explanation of Some Phenomena
The Witch Cult
The Group Mind
The Ashram Concept
The Egregore
Groups and Organizations
21.
Unity
Afterword
Index
78
83
87
91
94
99
101
109
120
129
133
137
153
155
159
The Aquarian Press is part of the Thorsons Publishing Group
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Anchor Brendan Ltd, Tiptree, Essex
Foreword
To Mrs Gladys Butler
with love and gratitude for her unselfish sharing of W.E.B.
with others.
In
the days before the bombing started, Belfast's Smithfield
Market was a favourite haunt of mine. You could find me there
almost any Saturday afternoon, a solitary teenager driven by
desperation to the only decent source of science fiction
paperbacks within a hundred miles.
It was on such a Saturday, sifting through the Asimovs and
Heinleins, that I came across a tiny maroon-backed book entitled
Magic: Its Ritual Power and Purpose.
Its author was listed as W.E.
Butler.
What the work was doing among the spaceships, I never did
find out. But I began to browse through its pages with a growing
excitement. Even in those days, my interest in the esoteric was
well developed. I had devoured most of the standard Victorian
tomes on psychical research, read extensively on spiritualism and
even attended a seance or two. But the little book on magic was
something of a different order. It was the first strictly occult work
I had ever seen. And reading it, I felt I had suddenly come home.
Anyone with an interest in practical magic will recognize (or at
least remember) a fundamental problem: where to learn the
techniques that make magic work? It is less acute now than it once
was, since many fine books have become available at reasonable
cost, but for the beginner, there is still the difficulty of deciding
where the chaff ends and the wheat begins. The little book I
found was an overview of the subject rather than a workbook, but
it
positively oozed the sort of insight which only comes from long
expenence.
There is a theory, often expressed in the pompous terminology
occultists still enjoy, that when the Pupil is ready, the Master will
appear. In my experience it describes a process rather than a
literal meeting on some windswept moor. At 19, I was as ready as
I've ever been and
Magic: Its Ritual Power and Purpose
was the
key which opened floodgates.
8
PRACTICAL MAGIC AND THE WESTERN MYSTERY TRADITION
FOREWORD
9
Before very long, I had tracked down and purchased everything
the mysterious W.E. Butler had ever published at that time,
including the minor masterpiece,
The Magician, His Training and
Work.
The books were my introduction to the Western Esoteric
Tradition, a
corpus hermetica
I had not even realized existed.
From Butler I moved on to Fortune, Regardie, Crowley, Mathers
and the vast compendium of Qabalistic lore which so profoundly
influenced them all. I took training in London and, inevitably,
eventually added a little to the source material by writing some
occult books of my own.
The glamour which surrounds occultists is directly proportional
to the distance from which they are viewed. While family and
friends quite rightly consider my interests eccentric to the verge of
lunacy, three young Californians once hitchhiked some 3,000 miles
in the hope oflearning face to face those deep dark secrets which are
never committed to paper. In the event, they were disappointed.
Since there is less to me than meets the eye, the only benefit I could
offer them was home-made beer. Tongues loosened under its
influence, however, and they finally admitted our meeting was not
the sole purpose of their amazing pilgrimage. They had, they said,
already met a most impressive man whose photograph they
produced. His name was Ernie Butler.
Ernest, it appeared, had made their trip worthwhile. God
knows what they had expected, but what they found was a
friendly unassuming individual who knew more about the art of
magic than the rest of us might hope to learn in half a dozen
lifetimes. He did not set out to impress, because he did not have
to. He spent more of his time listening to their theories than
propounding his own.
I have always envied those three Californians, for I never met
Ernest Butler face to face
.
I learned from his books and
trained
in
the organization he founded, but the closest we came on a
personal basis was the correspondence which passed between us.
It began when he took gentle issue with my use of the term
'mesmerism' in one of my books and continued for pernaps a year
or two before dwindling into oblivion.
Not all his letters dealt with esoteric themes. I learned, for
example, that he was coping with a heart complaint which had
already manifested in a full blown cardiac attack. It did not worry
him unduly: he had a job to do and assumed
,
he would be
permitted time to do it.
Years later I
'
learned with sorrow of
the
horror which
accompanied his death; and with pleasure of the fact that, having
passed beyond the pain, he was sensibly using his occult talents to
communicate with some of those close friends and co-workers still
in
incarnation.
And for the rest of us, he continues to communicate through
the magic of the printed word. His published books are still in
print, as eminently useful and satisfying today as they were at the
time of their first editions. The loosely-knit group he founded,
now
called Servants of the Light, continues to expand its
influence through a world-wide training programme.
The present, somewhat reluctant, head of SOL is
the
experienced
ritualist, Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki, a friend, pupil
and admirer of W.E. Butler and his esoteric work. Like Ernest,
Dolores has a job to do; and part of
it
at least is ensuring as few as
possible insights of a remarkable man are lost to those who enter
the Western Esoteric Tradition now. This book is one result - a
compendium of information garnered from unpublished sources.
Read it and enjoy. It will be a long time before you meet his like
again.
J
.H. Brennan

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