Ritual Magic (Magic in History Series) [Paperback]

Elizabeth M. Butler (Author)

Book Description

Series: Magic in History | Publication Date: December 1, 1998

Occult knowledge and practice can be divided into three main branches: Astrology, which aims to guide human fortune by means of foreknowledge; Alchemy, which tries to secure power through the agency of the philosopher's stone; and Ritual Magic, which seeks to control the spirit world. In this classic book (first published in 1949), Butler explores ritual magic using a wide range of texts from the pre-Christian rites of the Akkadians and Chaldeans to the Solomonic Clavicles of medieval Europe. Throughout, there is extensive quotation from the documents themselves, providing the reader with an authentic sense of the richness and power of these texts.Butler also examines the careers of noted magicians of the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries, the history of ceremonial magic in England, the myth of Satanism, and the rituals involved in the Faustian pact with the devil. Ritual Magic is essential reading for all interested in the history of magic and in the way magic traditions have altered as they move from culture to culture and from century to century.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Elizabeth M. Butler (1885-1959) was Schrzoder Professor of German at the University of Cambridge.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Pennsylvania State Univ Pr (Txt) (December 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0271018461
• ISBN-13: 978-0271018461
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #758,237 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars That ole Black Magic still makes us want to dance, February 11, 2002

By 

Anita Fix (Alcazar in the Land of Enchantment) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ritual Magic (Magic in History S) (Paperback)

This second part of Eliza Butler's trilogical survey of Faustian Literature is rightfully established as an incomparable classic in historical/scholarly works of ceremonial Magic. In words set to atone for the whole, she remarks: "How tenacious those ill weeds that have grown apace on the field of magical ritual, that ominous tract which, all agree, Hides the Dark Tower"...I, mere Dedicated Literary Servitor, feel blessed to have been fortunate enough to have come across the blazened trails wending strange ways through those fields Butler charted herein while composing my own work setting out to establish the origins of Gothic Literature, & malefic fictions in general. Having found their incubation chambers within the Renaissance Malefic compendiums of the Witch-Hunters, and innumerable fantastic works in response, respect, or revolt against the remnants of Medieval superstition, Butler's works provided the missing arcane key to "What constitutes the Science of ceremonial magic which its devotees call the Art"...so essential if one is to ever makes sense of divers historical arenas such as Art History or Intellectual & Esoteric History.
"For the inventors & practitioners of the rites/often gave proof to Art/to the advantage of the Literature which has survived/its means show evidence of highly creative instincts, poetical imagination and great feeling for beauty & drama/This is what makes the study of Ritual Magic so interesting today"
Butler speaks with a respective authority that avoids disrespect of her human, all too human subjects; all the while exacting the magical crux of the ritual matter without sacrificing the scholarly critical outside-looking-inside perspective. She writes with a surgeon's sharp intelligibility, without becoming cold as the over-scrutinizing scalpel she wields like a pro. A more profound exegesis and wider span of written works of Ritual Magic is to me, inconceivable. Voluminous quotations from original first & critical second-hand sources graces Butler's pages, revealing the odd often monstrous apparitions that people mankind's collective psyche, which have found a wide deep harbor in the texts and treatise' Ritual Magic, whether they be of Nec-Romantic, Goetic & Theurgic persuasion.
From Akkadian Tableture & Greco-Egyptian papyri; to the great Epic Poems of Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome,& even Iceland; to the Hebrew wisdom of Old-testifying Clavicles of Solomon along with Cabalistic Magic tomes; and of course the French Grimoires (those infernal Grammar books of the underground crypts); and finally, into the very heart of Butler's work: The Germanic works of both Magia Naturalis et Innaturalis, as told of FAUSTUS & MEPHISTOPHELES and All the progenitors, Disciples and Poets of each of these categories and sub-categories; from olden times to new.
Butler's works is..."as subtle and as rich as Sprenger, Bodin, Wierus or de Lancre ever imagined; a whole world of wicked spirits, whose personalities are carefully distinguished, their attributes precisely determined, and their hierarchy learnedly classified" (Lenormant's work on the Magic of Chaldea; Butler,5).
Elizabeth Margaret Butler fearlessly summons all the Harrowings of Hells, the Raising of the spirits of Cain. Spanning through brilliant biographical summations of all variety of Black Magi, she treads on Holy and Accursed grounds. From the Wiley likes of Casanova, the Infernal court records and murderous inhuman charges against poor suffering Bluebeard of Orleans; the penultimate renaissance man of viceful passions Cellini and that Nigromant of Norcia; Dee and that earless rogue Kelly and all exponents of the Dark Arts until finally, after extending her hand carefully into the epitome of more modern times she draws many insightful conclusions from the works of LEVI, Francis Barrett, Mathers, Waite, and even Crowley; until laying a stake through the heart of The Myth Of Satanism, she sets the stage for part three. There the Origins of Faustian Literature in Ritual Magic shall have the same genius applied to them in an equally brilliant exposition on the MAGIC OF LITERATURE----having just come in this work from the dangerous adventure of surmising the LITERATURE OF MAGIC---and as pt.2 was to Occultism, exploring Ritual Magic by means of generous quotations and examples drawn from historical and biographical detail; so shall the next work, The Fortunes of Faust, bring Butler's trilogy round full circle, that snake eating itself continuously, the Ouroboros of the world's magical History, which is Our Own.

Postcryptum: Part one of Butler's Faustian work is entitled 'The Myth of the Magus', and is presently available at the Amazonian encampment through Cambridge press Canto editions. Pts.2 & 3 are (re)published by Penn State's Press's extraordinary 'Magic In History' series, perhaps thanks to the Societas Magica, an entirely scholarly unsecret society dedicated to the discipline and adventure of assessing honestly, and finally, the History of Magic.