CONCLUSION
THE ceremonial literature of White and Black Magic has now spoken for itself in the catholic sense of the words. We see exactly what the Rituals had to offer, by the hypothesis of their own claim, to those who followed in their putative practical courses. I presume once more that it is unnecessary to debate whether the Olympic Spirits will make gold in a moment by Magic, transport precious stones, prolong life to several hundred years, teach all arts and provide the operator with ministering spirits in visible and corporal form. These claims merely externalise the cupidity and other desires of the artist. Hereof at least is the domain of the occult working where it happens to suffer the title of transcendental; its entire term and horizon are within the limits of low material gain and pleasure; and the ambition of the Magus was to secure these advantages--firstly--by the trickery and artifice of the occult world, instead of by his proper activity, and--secondly--on a very much larger scale than was normally likely or possible.
When we turn, however, to the Rituals which I have classed as composite, we shall find that we are dealing with a much more valued and popular series of handbooks, and the head or crown of all is held in the polite opinion of occult circles to be white by its essential nature and only Goëtic in its accretions. As a matter of fact, it is Goëtic by intention and essence, and white only in the sense that some of its distracted processes might, apart from their sanguinary nature, be termed
