Pursuing Sacred Magic

The practical aspect of the scientific ideal is revealed in the progress of modern science from the eighteenth century to the present day. Its essential stages are the discoveries and putting into man's service, successively, steam, electricity and atomic energy. But as different as these appear to be, these discoveries are based only on a single principle, namely the principle of the destruction of matter, by which energy is freed in order to be captured anew by man so as to be put at his service.... [T]he practical aspect of the scientific ideal is the domination of Nature by means of putting into play the principle of destruction or death.

Imagine, dear Unknown Friend, efforts and discoveries in the opposite direction, in the direction of construction or life. Imagine, not an explosion, but rather the blossoming out of a constructive “atomic bomb”. It is not too difficult to imagine, because each little acorn is such a “constructive bomb” and the oak is only the visible result of the slow “explosion”—or blossoming out—of this “bomb”. Imagine it, and you will have the ideal of the great work or the idea of the Tree of Life. The image itself of the tree comprises the negation of the technical and mechanical element. It is the living synthesis of heaven and earth, it constantly synthesis that which descends from above and that which ascends from below.

Now, the ideal of Hermeticism is contrary to that of science. Instead of aspiring to power over the forces of Nature by means of the destruction of matter, Hermeticism aspires to conscious participation with the constructive forces of the world on the basis of an alliance and a cordial communion with them. Science wants to compel Nature to obedience to the will of man such as it is; Hermeticism—or the philosophy of sacred magic—on the contrary wants to purify, illumine and change the will and nature of man in order to bring them into harmony with the creative principle of Nature (natura naturans) and to render them capable of receiving its willingly bestowed revelation. The “great work”, as an ideal, is therefore the state of the human being who is in peace, alliance, harmony and collaboration with life. This is the “fruit” of the Tree of Life.

—Anonomous (Valentin Tomberg), Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism (1980)

'this fury to deface'

The wall of the burial-ground had fallen in: an angel had lost one of its stone wings, and what grave-stones were left undamaged leant at an acute angle in the long marshy grass. One image of the Mother of God had lost ears and arms and stood like a pagan Venus over the grave of some rich, forgotten timber merchant. It was odd—this fury to deface, because, of course, you could never deface enough. If God had been like a toad, you could have rid the globe of toads, but when God was like yourself, it was no good being content with stone figures—you had to kill yourself among the graves.

—Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory (1940)