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| In the days leading up to the first of May of the year 2001, the first feast of Beltaine and the first International Labor Day of the new millenium, I participated in a series of events and processes that led up to this, my present modest effort to bring together a body of persons that - at least for the time being - I have elected to name the Union of Radical Magi, with the fuller descriptive appellation of Magick in the Service of Humankind. I'll explain. Throughout the months of March and April - since Spring's beginning - I had read and studied a number of writings comprising what I suppose one could call a portion of the "Canon" of western esoterica, focusing on Hermeticism and classical Rosicrucian sources, for the purpose of re-acquainting myself with that Canon and re-immersing myself into a study that - while of decades-spanning involvement and passionate interest for me - I had been obliged to put aside owing to the demands of my professional life. Because I had fortunately obtained a bloc of "uncommitted" time to dispose of as I wished, the focus of my attention turned happily and expectantly to those disciplines that had been such an important part of my life long before. Little did I then think that the unforseen peregrinations of my will through the mundus imaginalis would lead me to all of a sudden first perceive and then attempt to utilize the astounding (yet disquieting) applications to the practical world of everyday affairs of these highly theoretical and speculative studies. This perception was given rise to by my study of several obscure but contemporary documents relating to Magickal and alchemical doctrine, practice and applications. That many of these documents were highly eccentric, heterodox, uncanonical (to say the least) and so radically out-of-alignment with the corpus of esoteric and Magickal literature as to seem sacriligeous parodies cannot be denied. At the same time, the informed and discerning reader approaching them without bias cannot reasonably deny their originality, brilliance, incisiveness or thought-provoking character. The most important of these, at least from my own humble perspective, includes the writing of Peter Lamborn Wilson and the pseudonymous (?)Hakim Bey, specifically the Communiques o the Association for Ontological Anarchism (Communiques no. 1(ii) and the special Halloween Communique encaptioned Black Magick as Revolutionary Action) and the essay "The Occult Assault on Institutions." Coupled with this was my reading of the essay "Unholy Alliance: Politics and the Occult," an interview by Tracy Twyman (editor of Dagobert's Revenge) with Peter Lavenda, and my re-reading of the chapter on "Magick and Revolution" from Dr. Arthur Evans' 1978 classic Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture. Spring of the following year (2002) saw my continued inward journeying and embraced my (re)reading of the Lovecraft 'canon' and its attendent Necronomicon pseudepigrapha, and after nearly a quarter of a century my (re)reading of Robert Anton Wilson's epochal Illuminatus trilogy and Frater Albertus' The Alchemist's Handbook. Other volumes of near-forgotten lore, most notably those by Fulcanelli, played large parts in this autodidact's curriculum, but of these I cannot and will not here write. Reading these works one experienced an event not unlike that of the sight of a man long blinded being restored: disbelief fell before astonishment, astonishment fell before skepticism. Finally, skepticism fell before acceptance and realization. The pivotal event in this chain of events was a visit by my dear friend and fellow pilgrim Jenn and myself to New York City's Metropolitan Museum for a viewing of the newly-opened exhibition of the works of William Blake - truly a Magician if ever there lived one. I knew not whether I was on Earth or in one of the Heavens, or looking at a print or staring out through a window into the other world. But what awoke excitedly in me, then and there, was a dizzying, all-pervading awareness of humankind's possibilities and powers, of the numinous and of the luminous, of the countless points of contact between the world of matter and the world of Spirit. And I knew then that just as this artist had called upon his art to allay in whatever way he could the evils of his age, so did I then instantly perceive one's own obligation, need and privilege to employ whatever instrumentalities are at hand to at least arrest and more hopefully reverse the resurgence of the darkness that bedevils the planet - the resurgence of fascism, xenophobia and greed that greets the dawning of the XXIst century. Not much is known about the politics of Magicians, at least at first hand. But it is well known that - for countless centuries and in every culture - the life of the body politic has been of critical interest to them. And very much indeed is known about the politics of their opponents, that is, of the enemies of Magick. |
| INTRODUCTORY REMARKS |
