Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Esoteric Texts

Magick in Theory and Practice

Thelemic Texts

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The core instructional volume of Crowley system, part of the larger Book Four, presenting his theory of magick as the science and art of causing change in conformity with will. It covers ritual, banishing, invocation, evocation, divination, and the disciplines of the aspiring magician. It defines magick with a k to distinguish the spiritual art from stage conjuring.

Facts
Origins
Era of Composition
1929 1
Language
English 1
Attributed Author / Compiler
Aleister Crowley 1
Discipline
Ceremonial Magick 1
Text
Literary Form
Philosophical treatise 1
Attributions
Tradition
Thelemic and Ceremonial 1
Learn More
The Core of 'Book Four'

Magick in Theory and Practice is the central instructional volume of Aleister Crowley's magical system, forming the third part of the larger work known as Book Four (Liber ABA); this part was first published in Paris in 1929-30. It presents his general theory of "Magick", spelled with a k to distinguish it from stage conjuring, famously defined as "the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will," a deliberately broad definition under which every intentional act becomes magical.

The book covers the practical disciplines in turn: banishing, consecration, invocation and evocation, the use of the ritual weapons, divination, and the training of the will and the body, all organised around the Thelemic axiom that the aim of magick is to discover and carry out one's "True Will." Written with Crowley's characteristic mixture of technical precision, erudition and provocation, it remains the most systematic single statement of his practical method and one of the most influential magical manuals of the twentieth century.

The Definition, and the Manual Around It

Magick in Theory and Practice is the third part of the work Crowley called Book Four, and it is the operative section: after the parts on mysticism and on the instruments of ritual, this is the part that tells a reader what magick is and how it is performed.

It opens with the definition he is best known for, that magick is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will, and with a set of numbered theorems developed from it. The definition is deliberately wide. Crowley's own footnote gives writing a book and even an ordinary act of will as examples, and the width is the argument: he is claiming that ritual is a special case of intention rather than a separate category of act.

The chapters that follow treat the formulae of ritual, banishing, consecration, invocation, evocation, divination and the eucharist, and they are written as instruction with commentary. The book also contains, in an appendix, the passage about the sacrifice of a male child that Crowley later said referred to something else entirely, and which has followed his reputation ever since.

The atlas describes the work rather than presenting it as instruction.

Book Four as a whole was assembled from material written across two decades and did not appear as a single work in Crowley's lifetime; the four part arrangement most readers use is a later editorial construction.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

1929, Years

Aleister Crowley's Magick in Theory and Practice, the core instructional volume of his system and part of the larger Book Four, is dated to 1929.

Source Aleister Crowley and Western EsotericismHenrik Bogdan and Martin P. Starr (eds.)
Thelema, Religions

Attests

One Star in Sight, appended to Magick in Theory and Practice, is where the A A grades and the tasks attached to them were set out in print.

Source Aleister Crowley and Western EsotericismHenrik Bogdan and Martin P. Starr (eds.)

One Star in Sight describes the Magister Templi grade in the terms Crowley chose to publish. What a holder of it was understood to have done is his account of it, not an independent one.

Source Aleister Crowley and Western EsotericismHenrik Bogdan and Martin P. Starr (eds.)

Crowley published the A A ladder, the Probationer among the grades, in One Star in Sight, printed as an appendix to Magick in Theory and Practice. The Probationer's year of work and the record kept during it are described there rather than withheld.

Source Aleister Crowley and Western EsotericismHenrik Bogdan and Martin P. Starr (eds.)

Attributed To

Part three of Book Four, and the fullest statement of Crowley's working theory of magick.

Source Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister CrowleyRichard Kaczynski
Sources
1. Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism
Henrik Bogdan and Martin P. Starr (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2012chapters on Crowley's magical theory
Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley
Richard Kaczynski, North Atlantic Books, 2010on Book Four and Crowley's system of Magick
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