Sufi magic mimics religion

A attempt to hide the obvious evil: Indigenous Ethnomagicology it is obvious that Shah does not wish to attempt to make any connection whatever between magic of a mystical character, or what is essentially compatible with mysticism, and that which could be described as 'magic for practical purposes' (as for love, sex, money, revenge), though he mentions two in passing (hatred, love). the next quote from Shah is far more interesting, as it begins to delve into what he prefers, at least in *this* context, to call 'magic', though apparently not ritualistic in form: *Occult phenomena associated with degrees of the Sufi Path:* They claim all religious miracles are magic thereby denying all religions and trying to create sect without God and only magic whereby those with a secret agenda benefit from the deception of those people who are used who are unable to see through the lie. Also denying the prohibtion of magic litterly mentioned in the holy scriptures, the Bible and The Quran! They mimic an existing religion (in this case Islam)to blend in a society where magicians are known to be evil working with satan. While claiming enlightenment they mislead the weak of faith and the ignorant. the magic becomes "permitted" by the spiritual authority. Shah characterizes these effects not as the result of spells, conjurations, or incantations, nor even as a result of the assistance by powerful beings, but just as 'occult phenomena', and we are left wondering whether they are legends intended to attract the convert and deny the speciality of legendary figures proclaimed unique in the religious history *Sihr* ('Lawful' or 'white' magic; performed by by permission of the Sheikh).

---------------------------------------------------------"Oriental Magic", Idries Shah, Arkana Books, 1993; p. 72.

Magic is a training system as much as it is anything else.

It may be based upon experience, upon tradition of celestial or other ascription, upon religion. Magic not only assumes that it is possible to cause certain effects by means of certain techniques; it also schools the individual in those techniques. Magic, as we know it today, may be subject to every form of rationalization. It embodies, taken as a whole corpus of collected material, minor processes such as small hypnotic techniques, and beliefs which attempt to duplicate natural happenings. While Sufism cannot be taken apart to see what its constituents are, the magical tradition, because it is a truly composite one, can in fact be so dissected. We are only concerned with that part -- a very large part -- of magic which is involved in the effort to produce new perceptions and to develop new organs of human development. [note the similarity of aim and conception with many other kinds of mysticism here, inclusive of the Hermetics -- haramullah] Looked at in this light, a great part of the human heritage of magical practice (which often includes religious practices) is seen to have geen concerned with this quest.

Magic is not so much based upon assumptions that things

can be done which transcend the normal man's capabilities, as upon the intuitive feeling that, if you like, "faith can move mountains." Those magical activities which are designed to exercise the projection of thought or ideas at a distance, or to see the future, or to attain a contact with a source of superior knowledge, all carry their echo of a dim human consciousness that there is a possibility of man's taking part consciously in the work of evolution; and the feeling of a stirring, evolving organ of perception beyond those senses which are formally recognized by physical science as it stands today.

Magic, then, to a Sufi, is judged according to Sufic criteria. Is it involved in the development of man? If it is, where does it stand in relation to the main Sufi stream? Magic is seen, Sufistically, as generally a deterioration of a Sufic system. The methodology and repute of the system continues, but the essential contact with the continuing destiny of the system is lost. The magician who seeks to develop powers in order to profit by certain extraphysical forces is following a fragment of a system.

Because of this, the warnings against terrible dangers in magical dabbling or obsession are frequent, almost invariable. It is too often assumed that the practitioners imposed a ban on casual magic because they wanted to preserve a monopoly. From the long-term viewpoint it is far more evident that the practitioners themeselves have an imperfect knowledge of the whole of the phenomenon, some of whose parts they use. The "terrible dangers" of electricity are not dangers at all to the man who works continuously with electricity, and has a good technical knowledge.

Magic is worked through the heightening of emotion. No magical phenomena take place in the cool atmosphere of the laboratory. When the emotion is heightened to a certain extent, a spark (as it were) jumps the gap, and what appears to be supernormal happenings are experienced.

Familiar as an example to most people are poltergeist phenomena. They appear only where there are adolescents or others in state of relatively continuous nervous (emotional) tension. They hurl stones, seem to cancel the force of gravity, move tremendously heavy objects.

When the magician is trying, shall we say, to move a person or an object, or influence a mind in a certain direction, he has to go through a procedure (more or less complicated, more or less lengthy) to arouse and concentrate emotional force. [note the psychicism-oriented and spiritualism-oriented perspective on magical technology and effects; perhaps this locates at least Shah and perhaps Sufis like him in time and space -- haramullah] Because certain emotions are more easily aroused than others, magic tends to center around personal power, love and hatred. It is these sensations, in the undeveloped individual, which provide the easiest fuel, emotion, "electricity" for the spark to jump the gap which will leap to join a more continuous current. When the present-day followers of the witchcraft tradition in Europe speak of their perambulation of a circle, seeking to raise a "cone of power," they are following this part of the magical tradition.

[this is also the contention of Satanists like Anton LaVey -his ideas about magic are emotion-based also, though he doesn't seem to want to believe it effective for more than personal transformation on the order of deconditioning (Greater Black Magick, these Satanists have named it; otherwise 'High Magic' as named by Hermetici magicians and even Shah here -- haramullah] But the seer, who places himself into a certain state in order to penetrate beyond the time barrier, and the magician, who undergoes a course of training in order to attain a specific object, differ from the Sufi. The Sufi's task is to so organize himself as to make it possible for the meaningful operation of an organ of perception and action which will have a continuing effect. The seer and the magician, like many of the Christian mystics, are not wholly regenerated or reconstituted in the process....

Everyone should read Miss Underhill's book, *Mysticism*; and almost anyone who is interested in mysticism will generally be found to have done so. She points out a similarity of thinking between the religious and the magicial, between the mystic and the magus. To the Sufi, this similarity is in the end contained in the concept of "forward-reaching." This is the origin of the human movement toward, among other things, civilization, toward progress, toward more knowledge. [there appears to be a shared focus upon knowledge amongst the Gnostics, Sufis, and Hermetics, perhaps as a remedy for the torment of uncertainty, perhaps in order to persuade toward conversion toward their preferred religions -- haramullah ] Miss Underhill considers that the mystic wants to "be" and the magically minded wants to "know." The Sufi attitude is undoubtedly that of "being;" but, unlike the familiar type of mystic, he will use "knowing" as well. He distinguishes between the ordinary knowing of facts and the inner knowing of reality. His activity connects and balances all these factors -- understanding, being, knowing.

Sufi methodology, too, organizes the emotional force, which the magician tries to explode, into a correctly running fuel for operating the mechanism for being and knowing.

Both high magic and ordinary mysticism, viewed in this light, become for the Sufi merely the struggling on of a partial methodology which will simply reproduce its own pattern. Unless it evolves far enough to enable it to reproduce more than it inherited, unless, in fact, there is a genetic amplification of scope and sufficient power of reproduction of that scope, the whole thing is a creaking anachronism. At the best it is an escape from the destiny of the individual and the community.

Are magical-type rituals a part of the genuine tradition of Sufis? They are not. For the Sufi, certain symbols will have associative and certain dynamic functions.

These he will use, or be influenced by, instinctively.

----------------------------------------------------"The Sufis", Idries Shah, Doubleday Anchor, 1971; pp. 378-81.

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