Natural magic and black magic: How to tell? Draw a clear line between natural magic and the dark, or black, is not easy. It is not easy because the categories of assessment vary from one culture to another, if not from one person to another in a society like ours, and then decide what is good and what is bad becomes risky. On the one hand, we may tend to relativism, absolutism on the other hand, two things to avoid.
The first thing to do is find a common matrix, an archetype of the collective good and evil to put it to Jung. Since magic is born in a pagan and then developed, changing in various ways, in a Christian or at least dominated by the other major religions (Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and other Eastern religions) to begin to see what the pagan world was to be considered against nature. Let's start with the Greeks. For the Greeks, nature was sacred and I have already explained that this term means the entire universe with its cycles of life. The deities were part of this great and vital organ could not rebel against it. The order of nature would be followed by both men as gods. However, the gods could make aspects, as it were, negative. Could disrupt some events and do harm to people or otherwise intervene in their destiny and cause damage. Obviously I'm generalizing. The Greek pagan religion was not organized as a large religions of today and in reality we can rebuild some of his doctrinal corpus. Myths exist in several versions and can not say with certainty what was considered "orthodox" (my apologies for the misnomer), which is binding on the people, and what does not. The mystery religions, where he practiced many rites of magic, we know even less. However, there are fixed points.
The first is that all the gods had a positive and a negative side. A striking example is Dionysus, the god of wine. Positive appearance is linked to life (the vine is a symbol of life and rebirth), and in the negative and destructive impulses of passion (the wine drunk, confuses the senses). So even the triple goddess Artemis, goddess of the hunt as conceived in the positive polarity and as the goddess of the underworld and death in the negative. Just to Artemis in her dark aspect was linked to witchcraft. The Greeks looked with some fear the magic, like the Romans, although they practiced divination, necromancy and sexual magic in different areas of Greece (Thessaly famous for experienced witches of cursing and sexual magic). The magic word was combined with the religion and took on both positive and negative connotations depending on the intentions of the practitioner and appearance of the deity worshiped.
The second point is the magic of the late theurgic Paganism and Neo-Platonism. During the late paganism, mingle with the Eastern religions, the mystery cults are becoming increasingly important to them and is connected to magic and ritual theurgic recovery from certain strands of neo-Platonism (Neoplatonism in his first term not provided for the explicit use of magic) . Here you can make a real distinction between natural magic and dark magic. The magic of pagan Neoplatonism theurgic is so spiritual, but is based sull'invocazione of daemons and deities with the two polarities in balance. Neo-Platonism, in fact, conceived the gods as forms of thought, ideas, or emanations of the One Supreme Good. It is not meant a kind of Manichean or Gnostic dualism. The personifications of the traditional ideas translated into the language and the human experience.
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The third point is reached based on the ideal of harmony of the pantheon. Precisely because the Greek gods have a positive side and negative, must establish a balance between these two poles, and especially between the various gods and goddesses. Harmony is central to the greek pagan thought. To be harmony between the gods must be present so that the Dionysian side of the Apollonian, wanting to make a comparison with the two souls of the tragedy. The right balance needs of both the positive and negative. It can be concluded that the greek world the true evil and chaos, excess, the disorder, against which the gods themselves struggle. In some myths, there is the primordial chaos, but then comes the order, the regularity of nature. But in his incessant flow is not kind to men. The Greeks saw the progress, the breaking of the cycle, as something wrong.
So for the Greeks anything that goes against nature, distorting the rhythms, is considered as evil. Of course it is simplified, because there are so many different opinions in the culture and Greek philosophy on the nature, origin and become gods. I'm looking for the functional argument to my discourse.
This is what I said to the Greeks and, in large part, to the Romans. These Consumers had the numen, similar to the daimon, which allowed the magicians to perform magic. However, the Romans, from my point of view, the Greeks seemed more practical and less likely to recognize the sacredness of nature. The religion had a social function and contained the ethics followed by the public, was bound to maiorum mos. This is demonstrated by the violence shown in the clash with the Druidic civilization, not at all pragmatic and nature lover.
For other pagan peoples magic was always linked in large part to religion, even if sometimes mingled with superstition. In some cases, such as the tribal and shamanistic religions, everything was magical and haunted. Greek culture called this belief with the phrase, all nature is full of gods. These spirits can be benign or malignant cause of both the benefits of disasters. In the latter case enters the superstition, with various rites of exorcism to heal the sick and pursuing objects or persons to the spirits (not that this part is just superstitious, mind you). In eastern populations seems to me there was a conception of good and evil more dualistic. There was a polytheism but there were only good god and god is bad. For the Egyptians, Osiris was the couple-Seth, for the Babylonians existed in addition to the main deity triads divided into a number of negative entities, to Zoroastrianism Ahura Mazda was opposed to Ahriman, the God in Judaism and the angels were opposed to the devil and demons, for the people pre-Islamic and pre-Hindu were good and the bad genes and devas and asuras. The examples continue, and even among some of the rest of Indo-European peoples to a mold greek polytheism is accompanied by a certain duality. The Celts had their major and then do good and bad, people believed in the Norse god of chaos Loki.
These are two different ways of looking at good and evil. One sees them in terms of harmony and chaos, the other in a dualism which is between a Supreme Good and Supreme evil. In the first case it may be described according to et et, the be is in the second according to the either / or this or that.
said that, then what is good and what is evil? I believe it is wrong to identify the good and evil in the positive polarity in the negative. Is what creates positive, negative, what destroys it. Both of these features are on nature to live. Too much creative energy is unlikely to allow the formation of a nucleus, the main essence, and too much destructive energy may hinder the creative impulse leading to infertility. Evil is always an excess, a rupture of the natural balance. It is not necessarily pain or suffering. These negative polarity are useful to enhance certain characteristics. But if the balance breaks down and loses its center of reference, here's that produce chaos and therefore evil. Define some good and some bad qualities, according to a dual, not to deny the harmony of opposites. It means distinguishing what creates the chaos of what makes harmony instead of self-preservation.
Returning to the magic, the magic is not clear how natural birth and later become unnaturally by man. Upset the natural balance is always a black art. Also in this category any attempt to violate the right balance of things and people for their own purposes. So all the curses, the ligaments of love (sexual magic in general), and necromancy necromancy. But other practices can become natural magic black magic. If you want to force a balance going against the rules and the potential on which even a simple meditation in front of the candle turns into a dark ritual.
Often I ask this question: but if this magic is unnatural or against nature, as that works?. It works because men have more freedom to act and interact with the environment changing it, for better or worse, in every field (both material and spiritual). I would add that it works because there is chaos, for me that I am a Christian is the devil, and who does black magic powers it continuously with a similar result to the entropy. However, the idea that black magic works despite being contrary to nature is an illusion. Does not work, simply produces a disruption, something that is not contained in the draft in the field where it to act. Its effects are a disease, not the normal functioning of the natural order. It is a wound inflicted by force on something intact. At first there is the domain of the disorder, because the polarities are separated and can not cooperate, but then the wound heals. It heals just as destructive, just as nature does when it is damaged.
we must not think that black magic can completely destroy the natural laws. Can subvert them up to a certain extent. Can not spell disaster so serious to make all healing. The magic is different, however, by superstition.
