Aleister Crowley – The Book of Thoth: A Short Essay on the Tarot of the Egyptians, 1944.

The title of ninth Sephira, or emanation of the Tree Of Life, is YSVD (Yezod). It is the Sephira of the Lunar magick of Aub, or Ob, the Serpent (whence “obeah”).
The Serpent is a Symbol common to the Yezidi, Voodooists, Tantrics, and Thelemites.
Yezod or Yesod as the secret center of the Yezidi is an apt description of the Sephira wich corresponds to the sexual center in the human body. Yesod means “Foundation”, and the Hadit of the Thelemites, is the Foundation of the World, as Yesod is the foundation of the Tree Of Life.
The accursed God of the South is, then no other than the lord of the reproductive forces typified by the southernmost Sephira-Yesod.
Yesod is attributed to the Moon. not to the Sun. The curious symbolism is explained by the connection of the Serpent or Dragon with the lunar current typified by Babalon- “for he is ever a sun, and she a moon”. The symbolism may be fathomed at the Hindu level of mythology where Shiva (the Indian Seth) is called “the god with the crescent” (i.e the moon) in the Bhagavad Gita. Also, Thoth the Moon-god, was originally the God of Sirius, identical with the Star-God-Seth, before the luni-solar mode of reckoning time supplanted the stellar reckoning.
This is the reason why the inverted pentagram, or pointed towards the south is usually abhorred as a seal of the devil. Is the seal of Satan because it invokes the snake sex, snake Obeah. The osirisian, and Christians, fled from this aspect of existence, and the pentagram of Set, the south, was considered the symbol of impurity and of abomination. It is still the star of Satan for those who consider the use the current of sexual magic as “evil” that is diabolic. Originally there was no moral pollution; it comes from the hands of the followers of the cult of the old Aeon, those represented in myth by God Dying: Adonis, Osiris, Christ, etc

Kenneth Grant
“The Magical revival”

Source: therion-esoterictattoo

Opening by Watchtower – An Enochian Miscellany – Hermetic Library

Magic

westernmystery:

I personally feel this description / defenition of magic is too narrow and simplistic.-

As a matter of fact i question wether terms such as magic, religion and so on are even relevant in a cross cultural / historical anthropological analyzis.

Magic is the claimed art of altering things either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult natural laws unknown toscience. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical analysis, whereas practitioners of magic claim it is an inexplicable force beyond logic. Magic has been practised in all cultures, and utilizes ways of understanding, experiencing and influencing the world somewhat akin to those offered by religion, though it is sometimes regarded as more focused on achieving results than religious worship. Magic is often viewed with suspicion by the wider community, and is commonly practised in isolation and secrecy. Modern Western magicians generally state magic’s primary purpose to be personal spiritual growth, many seeing magic ritual purely in psychological terms as a powerful means of autosuggestion and of contacting the unconscious mind. Modern perspectives on the theory of magic broadly follow two views, which also correspond closely to ancient views. The first sees magic as a result of a universal sympathy within the universe, where if something is done here a result happens somewhere else. The other view sees magic as a collaboration with spirits who cause the effect.

omniasolart:

“The philosopher’s stone, the universal medicine, the transmutation of metals, the squaring of the circle, and the secret of perpetual movement are neither scientific hoaxes nor wild dreams; they are terms that must be understood in their true sense and express all the different uses of the same secret, the different characters of the same operation, that we define in a more general manner by simply calling it the Great Work. There also exists in nature a force much more powerful than steam. With its use, a single man who could seize it and direct it, could disrupt and change the face of the world. This force was known to the ancients: it consists of a universal agent whose supreme law is balance and whose control is directly related to the great arcanum of transcendental magic. Through the control of this agent, we can even change the order of the seasons, produce daytime phenomena at night, communicate instantly from one end of the world to another, see like Apollonius what is happening on the other side of the world, heal or strike at a distance, give speech a real impact and a universal effect. This agent, which just barely revealed itself with the fumbling of Mesmer’s disciples, is precisely what the adepts of the Middle Ages called the raw material of the Great Work. The Gnostics made of it the flaming body of the Holy Spirit, and it was that which they adored in the secret rites of the sabbath or of the temple, under the hieroglyphic figure of Baphomet or of the androgynous goat of Mendes.”

— Éliphas Lévi – The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic: A New Translation p.14-15