Behind Closed Doors

A widespread belief in the magical community holds that any Ritual exposed to the public loses its power. As the saying goes, “Magic is stronger behind closed doors.” Therefore, whenever a new publication appeared in the press — such as I. Regardie’s “Complete System of Magic” — Magical Orders and Schools were compelled to alter their Rituals to preserve their efficacy, and neophytes were bound by oaths requiring them to keep silent.

The same reason underlay the druids’ prohibition against written records.

At the same time, without publication a Tradition sometimes risks losing its valuable acquisitions, ideas, and practical work — for example, the significance of the aforementioned compilation by I. Regardie is not limited to the fact that it opened the Golden Dawn System to a wide circle of interested people but also helped preserve that system.

This raises the questions: 1) does disclosure truly lead to a loss of Power, 2) what are the causes of this loss (if it exists), and 3) how, based on understanding these causes, one should treat published materials.

With respect to the first question — one must concede that the loss of secrecy indeed reduces the practical effectiveness of rituals.

The causes of this phenomenon are manifold. The first and most important reason is the mixing of worlds. The world of magic can only exist apart from ordinary life because the directions of energy flow in these worlds are opposite: people lose power over their lives, whereas magicians strive to accumulate it. Consequently, the disclosure of rituals and concepts of Magic leads to a blending of magic and everyday life, and therefore to a dilution of their energetic purity. Moreover, since such disclosure is usually accompanied by breaking oaths, there is also a violation of ritual purity, which further reduces a Ritual’s effectiveness.

The second reason is that a revealed secret puts its new holders in contact with forces previously inaccessible to them, and those forces are diluted among more wills. From this follows a very simple and ancient rule — there cannot be too many magicians; otherwise, their magic will weaken.

Finally, the third reason is the danger of profanation that arises from the breaking of the magi’s silence.

However, the real situation in modern times is that people live in a sea of information that surrounds them, is easily accessed, and is often distorted or falsified.

In this context, the strategy for finding one’s Way, not to pursue information (as in earlier times), is to resist information, and for the seeker himself the most important and difficult task is to resist cluttering his mind with the mental rubbish that fills the collective mind.

If, in these circumstances, one continues to keep secrets, Magic, though it will remain stronger, will play into the hands of predators who both provoke the prevailing intellectual chaos and drag the world down.

So if Regardie had not published his “Complete System of Magic…”, honest seekers would have been deceived by swarming imitators, and the total power in the world would have been less.

The third question is how to deal with such Rituals.

Many of the groups that faced this problem found a solution — they reworked the published Ritual, preserving its structure but changing details so that, depending on the skill of the developer, they would suffer only minimal loss or even increase its power.

This very approach, on the one hand, vindicates those who exposed magic such as Waite, Regardie, and Crowley, and on the other — fosters in the modern magus needed independence and creativity.