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| MANIFESTO of the UNION OF RADICAL MAGI: Magick in the Service of Humankind |
| At this, the turn of the millenium, a battle is being fought, with the planet Earth, its wealth and its population as the spoils of battle. This war is being fought over the fate of the Earth and its inhabitants, and it is being waged on two fronts, which are the spiritual and the material planes. It is nothing less than a battle between Good and Evil, and I am sorry now to have to say that - at least on the plane of matter, the forces of Evil are in the ascendency. It is in the nature of Evil to lie about itself, for who would take up arms as its partisans if it did not disguise itself as Good? So it is, that its minions pass themselves off as the Defenders of Righteousness, and their evil deeds as - at worse - regettable necessities in their defense. Given its propensity for camoflage, how can we know certainly what and where Evil is? How can we recognize its promoters? It is sometime (not always) difficult, but it is not impossible. It has - like every other process, event or actor, properties by which it might be recognized. |
| Good promotes Human Freedom: Evil opposes it, calling into play a host of reasons for its opposition: order, morality, reputation, God's will, nature, cultural taboo, purity, tradition, patriotism and free trade. The list is very, very long. Good promotes Human Happiness: Evil opposes human happiness, and again, has a list of reasons to offer for its opposition. Good promotes Love: of all kinds, in all places, between and among all kinds of beings. Evil, knowing it cannot defeat love, seeks to lmiit love's presence in the world by imposing qualifications on it, by making it sick, sinful, illegal, inconvenient or dangerous. Evil makes public, frequent, extravagant and exclusive claims about itself, its power, its appeal to 'the masses,' its knowledge of God's will and its access to God's audience. Good does not need to make such a show of itself.Evil clothes its servants in vestments of exquisite brocade; Good keeps its ministers well-hidden. Until this day, Evil has had one additional distinction: consonant with its claims to be something other than what it is, it has sought to utilize and pervert the power of Magick, most especially the power of Evocative Magick, or as it is often called, the power of prayer. It has sought to focus the power inherant in the human hope for deliverance from suffering (whilst causing most of that suffering itself) to work a fundamental change in the warp and woof of Creation. So far, it has failed. But perhaps later today, or tomorrow, it will succeed. Faced with this potential tragedy of cosmic proportions, the Union of Radical Magi founded today calls upon its members, its masters and its unaffiliated friends and allies, the amorphous, nameless Friends of Righteousness everywhere to undertake these efforts: IDENTIFY EVIL IN YOUR COMMUNITIES: the commercial enterprise contemptuous of its workers' rights; the Christian, Jewish or Muslim or other enclave preaching damnation as the only alternative to embracing its cultic agenda; the political party that shows itself to be an enemy of human freedom, health and happiness. Select and examine the institution in your community that clearly embraces Evil, whether it be Wal-Mart, the Republican Party or the Knights of Columbus. PUBLICALLY IDENTIFY THE FOREGOING, and publically elaborate a magickal campaign for that entity's curtailment, failure or destruction. UNDERTAKE A REGULAR AND RIGOROUS PROGRAM of prayers, meditation, visualization, and - according to your tradition's custom and usage - Magickal ritual for the express purpose of thwarting the agent or agencies of Evil. PUBLICALLY PROMOTE YOUR EFFORT and periodically announce its progress. PRINCIPLES IN DEALING VIRTUOUSLY WITH EVIL: The point of our organizing the Union of Radical Magi is to utilize Magickal modalities in thwarting Evil, and in that effort not fall prey to becoming promoters of Evil ourselves. It is often all too easy to become one's own enemy. Thus, the efforts we undertake are never undertaken against individuals or their property, but only against the results of their actions. The measures we implement are never imposed without offering a recourse to the Evildoer: when the Evildoer's promotion of Evil ends, so do our efforts. The scope of Magickal forces applied to a situation are rightly both proportional to the damage threatened by Evil as well as of an intensity sufficient to end Evil's depredations. Gross, physical violence carried out by physical modalities on the material plane are never consistent with the ethical principles of Ritual Magick, and are the surest means for making certain that our efforts fail. |