-- Dion Fortune, The Training & Work of an Initiate, page 85.
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"Nature is a magician, every plant, animal, and every man is a magician, who uses his powers unconciously and instinctively to build up his own organism; or, in other words, every living being is an organism in which the magickal power of the spirit in nature acts; and if a man should attain the knowledge how to control this power of life, and to employ it conciously, instead of merely submitting unconciously to its influence, then he would be a magician, and could control the processes of life in his own organism, and perhaps in that of other beings."
-- Franz Hartmann, M.D. Magic: White and Black, page 24.
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". . . . of all hindrances to Magickal action, the very greatest and most fatal is unbelief, for it checks and stops the action of the Will. Even in the commonest natural operations we see this. No child could learn to walk, no student could assimilate the formulas of any science, were the impracticability of so doing the first thing in his mind."
-- MacGregor Mathers, The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, p. xxiv
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"Magick is the art of manipulating the unseen forces of nature [. . .] A white magician is one who is laboring to gain the confidence of the powers that be, and to prove, through the purity of his life and the sincerity of his motive, his worthiness to be entrusted with the great arcana [. . .] A black magician is one who seeks to gain authority over spiritual powers by means of force rather than by merit. In other words, he is trying to storm the gates of heaven; he is one who is seeking spiritual power and occult dominion with an ulterior motive. [. . .] The black magician's motto is: "might is right" (survival of the fittest.) The white magician's motto is: "right is might" (survival of all.)
-- Manly P. Hall, Magic, pages 14-15
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"By means of the traditional Theurgic techniques it is possible to contact conciously this (astral) plane, to experience its life and influence, converse with its elemental and angelic inhabitants so-called, and return here to normal conciousness with complete awareness and memory of that experience. This, naturally requires training. But so does every department of science. Intensive preparation is demanded to fit one for critical observation, to provide one with the researches of one's predecessors in that realm. No less should be expected of Magick. . . ."
Israel Regardie, The Art and Meaning of Magic, page 19.
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"What would be a world without the magick power of love of beauty and harmony? How would a world look if made after a pattern furnished by modern science? A world in which the universal truth were not recognised could be nothing else but a world full of maniacs and filled with hallucinations. In such a world art and poetry could not exist, justice would become a convenience, honesty be equivalent and imbecility, to be truthful would be to be foolish, and the idol of "Self" the only god worthy of any consideration."
Franz Hartmann, M.D. Magic: White and Black, page 28
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"The path of knowledge is that of the occultist and the sage; that of love is that of the mystic and the saint. The head or heart approah is not dependant upon the ray, for both ways must be known; the mystic must become the occultist; the white occultists has been the saintly mystic. True knowledge is intelligent love, for it is the blending of the intellect and the devotion. Unity is sensed in the heart; its intelligent application to life has to be worked out through knowledge."
Alice A. Bailey, A Treatise on White Magic, page 120
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". . . when I speak here of Magick I have reference to the Divine Theurgy praised and reverenced by antiquity. It is of a quest spiritual and divine that I write; a task of self-creation and reintegration, the bringing into human life of something eternal and enduring. [. . .] The result which the Magician above all else desires to accomplish is a spiritual reconstruction of his own concious universe and incidentally that of all mankind, the greatest of all conceivable changes. The techniques of Magick is one by which the soul flies, straight as an arrow impelled from a taunt bow, to serenity, to a profound and impenetrable repose."
Israel Regardie, The Tree of Life, pages 31-32
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