Black Magic Is in Full Sway Amidst Mankind

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Black versus White Magic Series · 20 pages

The claim is contemporary rather than historical, and the tone is caustic from the first line. Mankind, Blavatsky writes, is at best a sorry herd of Panurgian sheep, following blindly whichever leader suits it at the moment; the majority hate to think for themselves and ignore the tremendous problems of man's inner nature. Against the comfortable assumption that magic belongs to a superstitious past, she argues that old times are exactly like modern times — that nothing has changed in magical practice except that it has become more esoteric and more arcane, the adepts growing more cautious in proportion as the curious grow more inquisitive.

An epigraph from Gautama Buddha sets the moral frame: live hiding your good works and showing your sins. What follows is an overview of the main ideas rather than a single argument, and it ranges across the forms Blavatsky held sorcery to be taking in her own century — in the consulting room, the laboratory and the lecture hall as much as anywhere darker. It is among the more accessible entries in the series, and a reasonable place to begin with it.

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