Return of the Sorcerers: Black Magic in the Modern World

Ancient man lived in a world of mystery, which resulted in a number of curious beliefs. The origins of magic (black, white and gray) are discussed, as well as the modern misinterpretations of ancient beliefs. 'In the beginning human beings were isolated in an environment which they did not understand. They lived in a world of mystery and the combination of mysteries and imagination resulted in the rise of a number of curious beliefs. We also realize that these remote people, in trying to explain the nature of Deity, were only able to imagine God as a powerful chieftain -- a cult hero, a venerable elder and to a great degree patterned after the living human heroes of the group under consideration. The gods of the Greeks and Romans were mighty kings and we have always had a tendency to create deities in our own image. We have assumed that all intelligence must be embodied and intelligence that impinges upon our experience must be embodied in a being of our kind. The moment we create such an embodiment, we bestow upon it not only our most noble ideals, but our most human and often delinquent tendencies. The deity of antiquity was an autocrat and ruled by the divine right of his own divinity, appointing his earthly representatives and bestowing upon them a divine right of kings. In these times also, strange fetish beliefs and mysterious factors in our social structure -- taboos of all kinds -- rose in primitive consciousness. It took many thousands of years for rulers to recognize that it was neither wise nor noble to bury their living followers with their own physical remains. Many a great ruler has been responsible for the killing of his entire court at the time or his own demise. These practices gradually faded away but only after thousands of years of what we might call mismanagement, cruelty, and savagery. Most of it in some way related to primitive religions, and we recognize in our background, and therefore to a large measure in our own subconscious life, that there are a number of moral dishonesties which have been deified or made to appear sacred. We have felt it perfectly right to persecute followers of other faiths, and in so doing were merely supporting our own deities and offering proper worship and homage. Even today in an entirely different environment, we find religious tolerance very difficult to maintain. We have made virtues out of many practices which have no essential merit, some of which are comparatively harmless, while others continue to be more or less menacing.' (Manly P. Hall)