by James Palmer (jrp36@hermes.cam.ac.uk)
Taken from Carterís ANATOMY OF MAGICK, ed. Ashrow, Henry and Brandt, Margaret (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967, orig. pub 1608), p. 268-269.
Part 3, Section 2, Member 3, Subsection 5
On the nature and Origin of Ritual
Tho. some say that all Magick is but Ritual, for what is a spel but a Rite, a repeated Patterne of actes & sayings, yet I point you to those Magicks which are produced ex tempore, and so formed at the moment of nede by the Sorceror, without recourse to ancient Ceremony. Also a spel is founded upon the paradox and logick of a schoole of Magick, so that the Theurgists have Rites of Exorcisme, banishing, summoning, compulsioun, the Spy-Magi those of secrets, umbra, lyes, the Schismurgists devision, Religion, rending, and divers other passion, whereas each Ritual is a-part from any schoole and may be cast by any man, whatere he knows of the hidden Ways.
These Rituals, too, are all of ancient Origin, found onlye in antique Tomes, wherein they were wrate by the wonder workers of Greece and Rome, and the Art of their making hath been entirely lost to our time, due to the purges of that foul beast the Papacy. So these Rituals, then, seem to lacke any logic as to their composition, but are assembled from disparate partes and Non-sence words, yet these Rituals are much proven in their efficacie.
Letter from Margaret Brandt to Derek Jackson and Janet Kumyar, 19/11/97.
"[Ö] but I have been researching rituals for thirty-five years now, and have only come across five reliable rituals, with only two of those of any actual use. Uncertains ñ perhaps ten. Consider that I must have looked at the accounts of perhaps a thousand of these blasted things, and you will understand what a frustrating task this can be.
The great mystery, of course, is where rituals come from. Conventional occult wisdom, if there is such a thing, sees the art of their creation as having been lost in the chaos of the Dark Ages and the fires of the Inquisition. I believe this is a naïve and untenable view, however. In all my research, I have never come across an account of the creation of a ritual, as opposed to its repetition. Lively puts this down to an invocation of the glamour of the past by magicians in order to impress their colleagues and clients, but Iíve been through private notebooks, family letters Ö everything. Rituals have always been learned, not crafted. A close examination of the few genuine Graeco-Roman texts on magic we possess, as opposed to the numerous fakes of the Renaissance, shows that they considered these rituals to be of equally ancient origin, often attributing them to the Egyptians or the gods. Strangely enough, I believe the second theory is probably the most accurate.
Let me explain. Although the acts of some rituals appear to have symbolic meaning, most of them are just clusters of random words and actions, with no discernable logic. I have found in my research that any ritual to which I can quickly give a cultural explanation is almost certainly a false one ñ for the purposes of magick, anyway, they were no doubt socially efficient.
I believe the truth is this. The members of the last Invisible Clergy, who now form the Godhead, shaping the very fabric of our universe, at least as we humans perceive it, lived originally in a world that was doubtless totally separate from our own, in terms of culture, traditions ñ perhaps even physical laws. Rituals mimic the Godheadís memories of its members previous existence, and so alter the universe in a particular direction. Perhaps "sushem crechab" meant "shield me against poison" in a tongue of the last world, or olives and apples mixed together caused hiccups. When it created our new world, these memories leaked from the Godhead into our collective consciousness, and the knowledge of rituals was born.
This may all be nonsense, of course, but itís as plausible an explanation as any I know. The only person who might know the whole truth would be Saint-Germaine, and good luck finding him. Now, about our meeting [Ö]"