I am going to define three terms and then we'll go from there. The first is 'Keys'. One thinks of keys as the means of enabling us to get in out of the cold. The key to a lock. We get the idea of the key enabling us to open a lock, simply that. It doesn't enable us to look into a room which has closed doors, it doesn't enable us to see things which are not opened by that particular key. It only enables us to open that door, and look in as far as we can. And any key which is given to us performs that function only. We must not expect to use that key as a 'Master Key' to get into all the rooms in the house, all the rooms in the Temple.
Now the next term is 'Practical'. Have you ever seen a chimney sweep's advertisement? 'So and so - Practical Chimney Sweep'. Ever seen a theoretical chimney sweep? Well, if there's a practical one, there must be a theoretical one. But it wouldn't do your chimney much good if you brought a theoretical chimney sweep along. So we have to define practical. What is a practical occultist, a practical magician? Well according to Dion Fortune it is one who causes changes in consciousness by will - changes in states of consciousness. Crowley had a more literal definition - change in things generally. And there are many definitions of what that might be. Now most people think of the word practical in terms of 'What do I get out of it?' Just that. We all do, I do. We all do because that's innate within us, we are born that way. The acquisitive interest is but an instinct to acquire. It's come up through millions of years of evolution, you don't throw aside the habit, the rut, of millions of years just by saying, 'Oh, I'll be very good, I'm going to be selfless, and I'll never think of anything for myself '. That is pure foolishness. We always relate everything to ourselves. We've got to. We can't help ourselves. We are persons, individuals, and we have a personal way of looking at everything, so we say 'What does it mean to me?' Well, the esoteric sciences mean to you whatever you like to make them mean. You can either make them an opportunity to serve God and man, or to serve yourself entirely, or to have what is more usual - a glorious mix-up of all three.
So we serve God, we serve our fellow man, and we serve ourselves, and the proportion in which we do those things determines whether we are on the right-hand path or the left-hand path. You know that is again such a false dichotomy. There are those on the right-hand path who are Lords of Wisdom and Love, and those on the left-hand path who are Lords of Hatred, and of Separation. But in between is a vast body of us all who are simply grey - some a nice pearly irridescent shade of grey, and some are a rather gloomy kind of grey, and some - that the angel of Revelation in Apocalypse spoke about - lukewarm, neither one thing nor the other. And the angel said, 'Because thou art lukewarm I will spew thee out of my mouth.' What he means is, I've got no room for you. If you're lukewarm you'll get nowhere, and if you go into magic in the spirit of the atheist who was dying and who said, 'O God (if there is a God), save my soul (if I've got a soul)' then you won't get very far. You have to have dedication in magic, just as you have to have dedication in esoteric science. And you must have some guiding line to start with.
Well, that being so, that solves that one - practical, and then we have to think about the term 'Magician', one who practises magic. But magic can be of many kinds, don't forget that. And many a mother smoothing her child's head as she helps him through a difficult time is performing true magic. But many a person who would shriek with horror at the word magic will nevertheless do quite a lot of magical work by the power of their thought. And you will find that the word magic and magician simply comes from, in the end, 'wise men'. You know in the new translation of the New Testament in the New English Bible, they've translated 'Wise men from the East' in a different way: 'In the days of Herod the King, there came astrologers from the East.' Now that's emasculated as effectively as it could be emasculated. But wise men means also 'men of power' - magi - and they were called the Magi, not merely astrologers, although astrologers can be men of power too if they use their astrology correctly.
But that's reduced the thing down. The name just means 'man of power', a man who gets things done. I want to explain one more definition, and this is Mysticism. Let's get out of our heads that hybrid term mysticism, when it's used in connection with the esoteric sciences. Mysticism has a meaning all its own: the word itself is pinched from the ancient mysteries, the ancient Greek mystae were those who were the thyrsus bearers, those who were initiated in the mysteries, and they were called the mystae, and from that comes mystic. But mysticism, whether it be the theocentric mysticism of Islam, Buddhism, or Hinduism, or the Christo-centric mysticism of Christianity, has nothing whatever to do with esoteric science as such. You can be a mystic and see nothing, hear nothing, have no experience of psychic matters whatsoever, and be a true mystic.
Or, on the other hand you can be an esoteric scientist and have all the knowledge you like, and it's nothing in the eyes of the mystic. Because the mystic is seeking the One in a direct approach to reality, spurning everything of manifestation, of diversity, in his search for the unity. The esoteric scientist is searching for the One in the diversity, he's working with all manifest things in Malkuth, the Kingdom of Diversity, and through them, reaching through to the Angel of the Countenance which is in Kether to the unity behind. They are two different methods of approach.
Extract from 'Keys In Practical Magick' by W E Butler
