To speak the language of Schopenhauer, magic is used in the service of the Will and is therefore akin to applied science; whereas pure science and art are concerned with the disinterested contemplation or investigation of nature and life. Two great branches of magic, astrology and alchemy, illustrate this distinction. Astrology is applied astronomy, based on observation of the heavens and on mathematical calculations. Alchemy is experimental chemistry. Both were founded on the belief in one principle underlying the universe. Astrology aimed at controlling and guiding the destinies of man by means of foreknowledge; alchemy was intent on discovering the secrets of nature in order to secure the prepotency of the individual over life and even over death by means of the philosopher's stone or universal medicine. These ends have proved incapable of achievement; and the means adopted suffered from inaccurate observation, erroneous assumptions and false conclusions; yet the belief in a universal spirit or principle animating the world has always been powerful. Moreover, the unremitting, if fruitless, labor, the infinite patience, the ingenuity, imagination, fanaticism and skill expended and wasted throughout the ages on these two branches of magic witness to the strength of the obsessive desire; and should clear the serious practitioners or victims from the charge of charlatanism in the minds of the candid.

Ceremonial or ritual magic, the third great branch of the subject, aimed principally at control of the spirit world. The means were complex and various, ranging from short spells and charms to lengthy and highly elaborate ceremonies, in which prayers and invocations played the major part. In the preparation for this kind of operation, however, the material world was also pressed into the service of the exorcist; and a whole science was reared on the hypothesis of a natural affinity between the separate planets and luminaries and the metals precious stones, birds, beasts, flowers, herbs, colors and scents believed to be proper to each and therefore capable of attracting the spirits inhabiting them or the gods who governed them into the orbit of the magician. The argument was for the most part from analogy, often of a most fantastic kind, but often too quite simple, as for instance in determining that gold was under the province of the sun, and red the color of Mars. On these principles rings and amulets, garlands, sacrifices and incense were prepared as a preliminary step to the invocation of spirits in nearly all developed rituals which, from very early days, were bound up with astrology and demanded careful observation of the planetary aspects in choosing the appropriate times for the operations. In averting or curing diseases magical medicine of an occult or sympathetic or naturally efficacious kind was used; and a great deal of accumulated lore on this subject is to be found in the rituals. All this, and more besides, constituted the science of ceremonial magic which its devotees call the Art. And not without some justification. For the inventors and practitioners of the rites, however deeply versed in the lore of their subject and however obedient to its rules, often gave proof of the artistic temperament, to the advantage of the literature which has survived. The aim, like that of astrology, alchemy and applied science as a whole, was strictly practical; the means show evidence of creative instincts, poetical imagination and feeling for beauty and drama, in however crude and embryonic a state. This is what makes the study of ritual magic still interesting to-day; for the aesthetic element, inherent in the nature of ceremonial, can be detected struggling to emerge: as craftsmanship in the fashioning of talismans and rings, of instruments and amulets; as draughtsmanship in the inscriptions, diagrams and lettering; as plastic art in the modeling of figures, in the cave-drawings of animals, in portraits of the spirits; as poetry in the prayers and hymns; as drama in the urgency of the invocations, in the manifestations and occasional utterances of the spirits, as well as in the form of the ceremony as such.

The creative power of ritual, manifest in the dynamic nature of many of the printed texts, has been fully recognized in our age; and it is very generally held that religious rites and ceremonies formed one of the sources from which myths and legends originally sprang. By the time they were sufficiently stereotyped to be preserved in written form, however, the creative energy had largely spent itself, and the invocations and exorcisms were addressed for the most part to spirits and gods whose names, powers and attributes were already part of the mythological inheritance of the authors, as in the Greek magical papyri and the Jewish and Christian rituals. At this stage of development, the myth conditions the ritual, reversing the earlier process. In the oldest magical documents known, the Akkadian-Chaldean inscriptions, an intermediate period of interaction appears to have been reached. . .