Roman Catholic Worried... Options

As you can tell from the topic title, all this stuff interests me and I'd like to be able to perform some of it, but everything about the Golden Dawn, Hermeticism, and Ceremonial Magick in general tends to freak me out. I'm a Roman Catholic and I'm obscenely worried about my spiritual self getting into some trouble by doing this stuff. Are there any 'Judeo-Christian' roots to these rituals? I mean it doesn't take a lot to notice the archangels and God's names in the rituals, but seeing videos of people using sinister voices and generally acting like they want to be Lucifer's best friend during said rituals is a little worrisome.

If anyone has any advice for me I'd really appreciate it. I want to be closer with my HGA and thereby God by doing a little magick everyday, I desperately want Him to work through me, but what if unwittingly I allow myself to be worked by an entity with less than amiable goals? Etc., etc.

Thanks in advance..

Hi

I am new to this forum, having just joined today, and have been reading this post with some interest. My own religious background is High Episcopalian but over the years I have explored a number of paths ranging from Thelema to Russian Orthodoxy. As I see it, Religion and Magic are both about the search for Truth, a Truth that is too vast, and too holy, to be ever fully contained within a single vessel.

I do not see that there is any contradiction between the practise of Magic and faith in Christ Jesus. Spiritual Magic was an integral part of the Gnostic Tradition in the centuries before the Council of Nicea began the process of transforming a syncretic, libertarian religious movement into an instrument of state and social control.

My own introduction to what I would call the magical use of the imagination came through meditation techniques taught to me by a Benedictine Monk who acted as my spiritual director when I was at university & in his own way he was one of the most effective magicians I have ever met.

Many of the great Magi of the Rennaisance and of the 17th and 18th centuries were devout Christians, I think of men like Dr John Dee, Pico Della Mirandolla, Elias Ashmole & Robert Fludd off the top of my head. Anna Bonus Kingsford converted to Catholicism as did (at least according to Ithell Colquhoun) did MacGregor Mathers.

Even in more recent decades, a high percentage of the members of the Stella Matutina were Christians, and a considerable number of them were also clergymen.

There are certainly some schools of magic, mainly the Rosicrucian, Cabalistic and Hermetic, that are probably more compatible with Christianity than others and I would certainly say that if a particular technique or practise feels wrong than one should initially abstain but also spend time medititating on your reactions to determine whether they are due to adherence to a dogma or to a genuine conflict with your personal spiritual core.

It should also be said that magic is about intention and acting with knowledge, a good grounding in Cabala, Hermetic Philosophy and the works of some of the great western saints and mystics will provide a storng theoretical framework but without translation into daily life and action it remains only headstuff. My personal feeling is that working within a religious paradigm helps to ground and focus ones magical work. Putting it into the context of the daily ups and downs of growing, developing, slipping back etc.

One book I can definitely recommend is called Patterns in Magical Christianity - it takes a number of basic magical meditation and visualisation exercises and puts them into the broader framework of Christian Theosophy. I can also recommend anything by David Goddard.

Hope this is of some use to you!