Between Black and White Magic There Is but a Cobweb Thread

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and William Quan Judge · Black versus White Magic Series · 10 pages

The title states the thesis of the entire series in nine words, and this is the document where it is argued directly. Blavatsky takes up Molitor on the virtue in names — Baalshem — and his contention that the Kabbalah, whatever the abuses of its present practitioners, rests on a profound and scientific basis. If it is claimed that before the name of Jesus every other name must bend, Molitor asks, why should other names not carry comparable power?

That question opens onto the study's real subject, which the running head names: the hexagon with the central point, or the seventh key. The figure is the interlaced triangles with the point at their centre, and the seventh key is the reading that unlocks its meaning — one of the seven keys the Secret Doctrine claims for the interpretation of every symbol. The argument that follows is that the same figure, the same names and the same operations serve either magic, and that what separates them is not technique but intention. Ten pages, and the philosophical centre of the series.

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