Audio: Three Schools of Magick

The Three Schools of Magick, 11th December 2022

The Three Schools of Magick is something I've only ever seen articulated in one place - or I should say I've only ever seen Crowley explain it. It comes from The Vision and the Voice, which is Crowley’s visionary exploration of the aethyrs from the enochian magic system.

The Three Schools of Magick: you have the yellow school, the black school, and the white school. As if it wasn't confusing enough, having black magic, black brothers, and the left hand path. Black lodges, white lodges, the great white brotherhood. But these are not the same thing. These three schools of magick are something else.

So, I thought I would begin with the quote from the aethyr. Here's the excerpt that describes the three schools:

And a voice cries, ‘Cursed be he that shall uncover the nakedness of the Most High, for he is drunken upon the wine that is the blood of the adepts. And Babalon hath lulled him to sleep upon her breast, and she hath fled away and left him naked.

She hath called her children together, saying, ‘Come up with me, and let us make a mock of the nakedness of the Most High’.

And the first of the adepts covered his shame with a cloth, walking backwards and was white; and the second of the adepts covered his shame with a cloth, walking sideways and was yellow; and the third of the adepts made a mock of his nakedness, walking forwards and was black. And these are the three great schools of the magi, who are also the three magi that journeyed unto Bethlehem.

And because thou hast not wisdom, thou shalt not know which school prevaileth, or if the three schools be not one.’

So three schools are three different fundamental ways of relating to the world. Traditions fall into these three camps and they are in some senses rivals, but then there's some hint that they may be one in the end.

There are ideas in that description that should remind you of the story of Noah. Yes, because gets drunk, doesn't he? And ends up naked. And it's a great shame. His sons come and laugh at him and make a mock of his nakedness.

It doesn't help with this description that Crowley goes on to say:

This parable is itself an example of an exceedingly subtle black magical operation, and the contemplation of such devices carried far enough brings us to an understanding of the astoundingly Ophidian processes of magicians.

Let not the profane reader dismiss such subtleties from his mind as negligible nonsense. It is cunning of this kind that determines the price of potatoes. 

The Black School

I'll describe what the black school is first then.

Now the colour black represents the darkness of ignorance as the primary principle for understanding the nature of the world.

Maybe it's best expressed in terms of the Buddhist principle of the first noble truth: Everything is sorrow. Existence itself is sorrow. Everything sucks.

And even if you can describe something that's good, or joyous or enjoyable, you will be instructed to consider the fact that nevertheless it is subject to a conditional beginning and an end, and that it will vanish with impermanence being the the rules of the game. It doesn't matter if something's enjoyable, ultimately everything is heading towards nothing. And so it's best that you find some way of escaping the situation.

Now Crowley says it nicely, why he finds this school so detestable - and this is the black school, so you find it expressed in many different ways. And some versions of Buddhism you can see that it's the black school. Some versions of any tradition you'll find elements from these three different schools, let's put it that way. So he's not just talking specifically about Buddhism. But - why Crowley finds the black school so detestable is because it's this idea that:

All actions and experiences are unavoidable, but at the same time, some kind of sin.

Some kind of mistake. Some kind of a problem. And therefore, what you need to do is you need to escape,

So, evangelical Christianity is apparently a great example of the black school. It's this idea that everything is terrible and fallen, and you need to make sure that you behave in such a way that you'll be able to escape it.

The more refined versions of the black school will pinpoint the origin of the blackness itself as ignorance. Eventually it'll be said that the situation you find yourself in is an illusion. Actually, this unavoidable sin that we all find ourselves in is an illusion, and what we need to do is we need to uncover the roots of that illusion so that it ceases to arise.

And the roots of it are ignorance.

In the parody of Gnosticism that's extraordinarily popular at the moment, you could say that it falls into this school. It's the idea that things are fallen and that you need to escape. That's a parody. The real nature of Gnosticism actually falls under the white school, but we'll get to that in a moment. 

How to manage the destiny of the human race

The Three Schools of Magick, what they're concerned with in scope is not merely the personal initiation of someone who belongs to the school, but more broadly speaking, with the development of the planet itself, the best course of action for the human race.

The black school would advocate escaping suffering, removing suffering, making sure it doesn't exist anymore. Isolating yourself from the consequences of existence. This is another way of putting it.

I'm bringing that in here just for you to think about where you might encounter that in your life.

Or if we were to think about the schools, as I'm describing them, what the current state of the world would suggest in terms of which team is winning or having their way, to put it that way. 

The Yellow School 

The yellow school sees things differently than the black school. What the yellow school has determined is that any action in any direction is folly. To try and prevent bad things is folly, to try and ensure good things happen is also folly. And instead, the best course of action is to minimise internal friction in terms of the flow of events.

The highest expression of the yellow school is found in Chinese Daoism and the Tao Te Ching being the finest literary example, it's highest refinement.

The Dhammapada might be the finest literary expression of the black school.

In terms of the future of the human race, it is for human beings to develop a kind of elasticity to anything that might come along, without holding on to either extreme, and finding a way to travel through the opposites, maybe that's one way of putting it. 

The White School

The white school: so I've already mentioned Gnosticism. Gnosticism is -correctly understood - a great example of the nature of the white school.

Egyptian traditions, the Chaldean tradition, you can see they feed into Gnosticism. Christianity is what would be considered a white ritual that's been covered over with black doctrine, so that it started off a certain way, but then it's gone in a different direction. It's been hijacked.

Now, the core principle of the white school is - actually I'll read a little quote:

We may define the doctrine of the White School and its purity in very simple terms. Existence is pure joy. Sorrow is caused by failure to perceive this fact. But this is not a misfortune. We have invented sorrow, which does not matter so much after all, in order to have the exuberant satisfaction of getting rid of it. Existence is thus a sacrament.

The man who denounces life merely defines himself as the man who is unequal to it. The brave man rejoices in giving and taking hard knocks, and the brave man is joyous.

He understands that the only joy worthwhile is the joy of continual victory, and victory itself would become as tame as croquet if it were not spiced by equally continual defeat.

I'm reading from Magick Without Tears. I would say, increasingly I'm of the opinion, that if you want somewhere to start with Crowley, and you really want to understand what he thought, this is the best place, this is the best book to read.

It's a series of letters that he wrote towards the end of his life. And so if you really want to know what he thought about things in the end - we can put it that way - this would be the book.

So, here's this idea: the principal of the white school is, ‘Yes, there is sorrow. Yes, there is suffering, but what we want to do is take that suffering, and turn it the right way up, or travel through it, perhaps, or transform it’.

And the process of going through that challenge, even if it includes failure - in fact, it has to include failure of some description - is what makes existence pure joy, what makes creation pure joy. 

The Three Schools & Magia

Three schools then.

One of them: everything is sorrow and suffering, and we have to escape it.

The second one, the yellow school: best to cultivate elasticity going to neither extreme and allow things to unfold as they'll naturally unfold.

And the third school, the white school: existence is pure joy. We will meet suffering and overcome it, transform it.

Does anyone have any thoughts on which school of magick Magia would belong to?

Yes, the white school.

The white school. Because it's interesting, isn't it though? If you look at the three schools, the first part of the tree in Magia is to recognise the blackness, that everything is sorrow.

The principle of binding is - the first move - is recognising that what you've been pursuing and the promise made by the role actually leads to its opposite, to destruction. To the destruction of the thing that you care about. So what's the point?

Or you know that there's something more beyond this world. And haven't I said a number of times that the more you progress along this path, the darker you'll see this world actually is? That it's pitch black?

And even the idea of illusion, how do we escape the illusion of the sin? The unavoidable sin? We travel into the heart of the ignorance that gives origin to the illusion, don't we? So it's in there, isn't it? But, we don't stay there, do we? That's only one part of the story.

What about the yellow school? The yellow school is the idea that there's no point in trying to get rid of suffering, just as there's no point in trying to make things good. Instead, we should find the way of traveling through those opposites.

Isn't that what we do when we travel up the tree? We go through the different stages, encounter the darkness - you could put it that way. Then we encounter the light, but we're going to go beyond both of them and travel through in an effortless fashion. So an effortless unfolding or a disclosure of the nature of things. Sounds very Dao.

But - the white school! Existence is pure joy. The going itself is what's pure joy and in fact, we even invite the darkness in. Because we see it as something that wants to go home, so we invite it in. And we recognise the reason we've incarnated is to encounter darkness by varying degrees of intensity and profundity, commensurate with our capacity to deal with it.

That's what we've come here for. We do that, and we turn it the right way up, and it's the joy of going through that process - that's the joy of creation - and each time, it's like we're asking for a greater challenge.

Yeah? So completing the circle of creation.

Does it make sense to say that you could see that all three schools are contained in Magia, except the white school is the highest expression of the overall position or orientation?

Summary as three attitudes

The principal thing is the attitude.

The black school is like finding problems and then lamenting the problem.

The yellow school is recognising the futility of action, and therefore, being frictionless is the best approach.

The white school would be enjoying the process of encountering suffering and joy and going beyond both. 

Which school currently dominates the Earth?

If we looked at the state of the world at the moment, which doctrine would we say is winning?

If there was a competition between the three of them, what would we say?

The black school. Yes. T he avoidance of suffering, getting rid of suffering, that's possible as a project. That we can transform society and culture in such a way that we can remove these things. 

Magia as the finest literary expression of the White School

So from the white school's perspective - and ultimately if we would say this is like the orientation of Magia - when it comes to going around the mountain or completing the circle of creation, the aim can never be something like getting rid of all delusion, or getting rid of shadows, because why do shadows matter?

And I've said this in other ways, which is: the bottom of the tree is supposed to be like this.

It's like the soil that the tree grows from.

If we were taking an alchemical view, we would say it's the base matter that we use. That's the material required to create gold.

But the doctrines that come out of the black school would lead you to think that you can get rid of the soil. In fact, we should aim to do that.

With the white school, we recognise that there's suffering and we see it as a an adventure. Because what are we going to discover at the heart of it?

And ultimately this is a way of understanding what it means for the gods to cast their shadows into time from the fire of eternity and then take those shadows to be themselves.

There's only one explanation really, it's not to escape suffering is it?

It's also not as a result of mere indifference.

It must have something to do with the recognition that if you are indestructible and infinite in capacity that any experience that you might have is in fact an extraordinary adventure.

And therefore creation itself becomes an act of joy.

And what was that phrase Crowley used? He said, every experience is a sacrament. Or a wedding - that might be another way of putting it. A meeting of two things coming together and the joy of the dissolution that happens as a result of that, and what's created comes out of that union.

Which school does materialism belong to?

I think there's a lot of yellow in materialism, as in nothing matters, I'll just do whatever.

What is the aim of materialism?

Materialism seems to be about enjoying yourself, comfort. You accumulate things, you have comfort - enjoy yourself while you can and then you're dead and that's it.

In doctrine, it would seem to me that would be - perhaps - more like the black school: you need to avoid anything that might be uncomfortable. And even the idea that we're just born and then we die and then that's it, there's nothing else we have to worry about, is itself an avoidance of suffering.

Despite what atheists say about religion being comforting fairy tales, materialism is the biggest comfort of all, isn't it? The biggest avoidance of considering the perhaps terrifying prospect of encountering forces larger than yourself, particularly when you die. That there might be something more, and that there's consequences to how you behaved. 

Magick is the science of the incommensurables

So which schools admit the reality of magic?

The second definition that he gives of magick in this book:

Magick is the science of the incommensurables. 

It is particularly to be noted that magick, so often mixed up in the popular idea of religion, has nothing to do with it. It is, in fact, the exact opposite of religion. It is, even more than physical science, its irreconcilable enemy.

The religious man is, as such, incapable of understanding what the laws of nature really are. Whereas in magick, we're interested in what those rules are.

So there have always been, at least in nucleus, three main schools of philosophical practice. We use the word philosophical in the old good broad sense, as in the phrase, ‘Philosophical transactions of the royal society for the advancement of knowledge’.

It is customary to describe these three schools as yellow, black and white.

It's not necessarily this idea that the three schools of magick teach particular magical techniques. Rather it's the understanding of what's considered the appropriate philosophical attitude to the rules of nature. Or divine law.

Magick exists in all three of those schools. 

Let me give you another example. So I'll put it into practical terms.

So that idea of going from doing specific acts of practical magic, to aiming at the highest and then letting the highest determine what magical results happen - you've heard me describe this many times, it's like moving from the Bailey to the Motte, in terms of the magical castrum or castle - unbinding practice is like that.

Well, so is Daoist practice. So in, in Daoism, you have various different practices that you might do, energetics, rituals and working with spirits, that kind of thing. But then you've got Daoist meditation. It corresponds, doesn't it? If that makes sense. 

The White School as a relevant alternative

I'll finish with this in terms of talking about the three schools. 

There is a kind of a paralysis in our culture when it comes to thinking about what it is that we should do.

What direction should we move in? What is the big idea?

There are many visions in our culture of a world free from suffering. Or it’s some kind of gesture in that direction and that's what we should be aiming at. Living forever, getting rid of all disease. Everyone being fed, infinite energy, whatever.

The notion that if we can have some kind of material abundance above and beyond anything we've had before, and indeed that's the promises in it of our technology, at least the promises people are buying into, it promotes this sense of paralysis or of waiting for the inevitable as things unfold, where things will be getting better and better.

And ultimately what we have to do is seek our comfort where we can, whilst we spend all of our time seemingly recycling culture from the past, I don't know, let's say a hundred years, something like that.

Where's the new organic cultural movement or artistic expression or something like this?

What do we have other than these dreams of increasing domesticity?

Anyway, the three schools give you an attitude or an orientation.

And I think, a lot of the time, you see this in political circles. Of whatever stripe, they all seem to be in the black school. It's always this notion of getting rid of the wrong thing.

The orientation of Magia, or the orientation of the white school, is recognising that something like that isn't possible. These things shouldn't be aimed for because they're silly.

Being able to be honest enough to see where we are deluding ourselves and what’s possible in a given situation, but not in a way where we lament where we find ourselves and get depressed about the situation.

Instead, we say, what an extraordinary adventure! What incredible time to be alive!