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Sunday, March 26, 2017

Details Matter

One of the most striking -- and to the novice surprising -- features of magic is its meticulous precision. One of the instructions given to the Golden Dawn initiates is: "Above all things in everything occult we must earnestly beseech you to cultivate the greatest possible exactness. Every word should be accurately learned, every symbol accurately drawn." Whatever else the study of magic may be, it is a rigorous discipline of all the faculties of the human mind.

Kathleen Raine, Yeats, the Tarot, and the Golden Dawn, The Sewanee Review Vol 77, No. 1, Winter 1969, pp. 112-148. (Available on JSTOR)

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