The Masters

W.B. Yeats on being a magician:
The soul that separates itself from others,
that says, "I will seek power and knowledge for my own sake, and not for the world's sake," separates itself from the path and becomes dark and empty.

The great Adept may indeed have to hide much of his deepest life, lest he tell it to the careless and the indifferent, but he will
sorrow and not rejoice over this silence, for he will be always seeking ways of giving the purest substance of his soul to fill the emptiness of other souls. It will seem to him better that his soul be weakened, that it be kept wandering on the earth even, than that other souls should be lacking anything of strength and quiet.

He will think that he has been sent among them to break down the walls that divide them from one another and from the fountain of their life, and not to build new walls. He will remember while he is with them, the old magical image of the Pelican feeding its young with its own blood; and when, his sacrifice over, he goes his way to supreme Adeptship, he will go absolutely alone, for men attain to the supreme wisdom in a loneliness that is like the loneliness of death. No "group", no, not even a "group" "very carefully organized", has ever broken through that ancient gate.

From Yeats' Manifesto to the Order of R.R. & A.C.
March, 1901

 Israel Regardie on ceremonial magic:
 Let it be admitted that Magic is an artificial  system of props and aids. It is as such  principally of value to the beginner in that it  disposes towards or confirms a habit of will,  aspiration or mental concentration. It  produces these as few other systems of  props or aids is able to. These artifices may  be discarded when the exigencies of  preliminary training have been fulfilled.

Yet for this very reason it is totally erroneous with but an occasional exception to eliminate that training before skill has been acquired. These ceremonial methods teach the aspirant to walk magically, and from experience with them he may learn how to run. The technique is for the beginner. And there is no shame to admit this. For in the path towards the ineffable Light, and in spiritual things generally, most of us are beginners. We therefore cannot possibly afford to dispense with the little artifices and conventions which provide the necessary discipline, thus stimulating the spiritual power, to assist our onward progress...Israel Regardie

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