Trithemius and the Magic of Free Will.
Integrity, some say, is what you do when nobody is watching. And G*d, others say, is always watching. Yet neither of them, from a magician’s perspective, is hitting the mark. A fire has no centre and no periphery. A sea’s heart is everywhere and nowhere at once. The entire being of a storm is embedded in each gust. A storm is no more or less storm in the squall that touches you or her.
In the same manner, I suggest, a magician should think of themselves. Not as a being installed in skin, but as a cloud of consciousness, expressing all of itself in each act. Whether we grant significance to this act or not is entirely irrelevant. For the significance that matters resides beyond the sphere of the living. It is a different place altogether. One where our biggest decisions are just equal to our smallest. Where each mortal’s step matters, and at the same time doesn’t. Where fates are woven by a glance and a cue, and yet weaves continue eternally. On this level, we humans too are a natural force. Each one of us a tiny portion of it. And this natural force called humanness can only be experienced when it encounters the rest of the world. Malkuth. Now, what determines this force’s quality and nature is entirely up to us. And that is why this force is so magical and unique; it carries a seed nothing else in Malkuth was granted. The seed of free will. And the only way to experience this force that we are, and this seed that we were given, is to watch a human applying themselves against the world. Free will is nothing at all - unless we awaken it, by holding ourselves up against the world. It is in the contact between each human and the world, that the game the gods once began will end. Tikkune.
How we hold ourselves is everything - not because G*d is watching, but because there is nothing else that we are. We are empty from within. Just like fire, oceans and storms are empty from within. There is nothing other to them than being fire, being oceans and being storms. Each of their expressions, each time we encounter them, they are perfectly expressed. And so it is with us humans. Our way of being, our way of seeing, the way we decide to hold ourselves towards the world. That is all we have. Because it forms the prism through which flow all of our acts. Each breath. Each step. And there is nothing else.
For a magician this should not come as a surprise? For isn’t this how we came to think of the spirits - of storm demons and chthonic sleepers, of hive-beings and angelic structures. None of them are mounted in skin. All of them seem as fleeting as free. They are able to come and go, to apply themselves against the world and to withdraw from it, like a magical tide. All their myths and personas over centuries were not made up by who they are deep down in their insides, by what they were born from, or what they strive towards - but only by how they behave towards the world. Each being, may it be angelic, human or otherwise, is defined by its encounter with the world. Without it, we are nothing but potential enshrined. The world is the divination bowl, filled with black waters, into which the gods stare, and see us.
Johannes Trithemius believed evil angels were G*d’s way of testing our free will. According to him, demons held no agency in themselves, unless we granted them access to the seed that was given to us: free will. Integrity according to such a worldview is nothing we strive to achieve for G*d or others. It is not at all a social good. But it is the most essential of all magical capabilities: To let each of our decisions count, as if we were standing at the scales of Ma’at. And yet not to become self-judging or orthodox, but to stay connected to the flowing tides of life, like fire does. What an exquisite challenge.
The ‘white magic’ I rediscovered in the works of Johannes Trithemius and his alleged teacher Pelagius is like nothing I have ever encountered before. It is magical for it focusses entirely on how we apply our free will towards the world. It teaches the handling of magic as a force, not for escaping, but for pulling closer into the world. And yet Trithemius’ ‘white magic’ is maybe even more mystical than it is magical. Because it strips away anything unnecessary. Like most mystical paths, it appears Saturnian towards the world, and is unconditional in its demand towards how we show up to the world.
I was sitting on a rusty bench in the courtyard of an old abbey as I reflected on the above. The people here opened an exhibition today called ‘Tugendreich’, that is German for ‘rich in virtues’. I actually like both etymologies at lot, the one of the German word as well as the English: The word virtue derives from the Latin word for man (vir). However, it must not be read as referring to some kind of manliness, but rather humanness. A human, according to the root of the word, is a being that knows how to hold on to virtues. The German word, Tugend, on the other hand stems from an old root that expresses the idea of ‘being good enough for’ (taugen). Thus, it is only through virtues that humans become good enough for this world.
Believe me, this was a wonderful place to sit and think. And maybe take photos, as you can see below. While I have significant personal problems with Catholicism, my heart recognise this site as a venue full of integrity. The nuns who lived here, whatever they did, however flawed they were themselves, they for sure applied themselves beautifully towards the world when nobody was watching. For they lived in strict conclave for hundreds of years. And yet they left something behind, that I can still hear singing, beautifully, when I only silence myself enough.
In the end, and as we see in the world around us today in blinding light, little in life matters as much as virtues do. Now, if like me, you were born with rather brittle chivalry, falling over to the side of your vices more often than not, then welcome to the conclave. I reckon, all of this can change. Right now. For there is no better way to draw out from ourselves the virtues we didn’t even know existed, than by seeking real-life communion with angels. White Magic.
