(portion of the cover from the 1976 Dover Publications edition of Crowley's Magick In Theory and Practice)
E-mail question from a visitor to Supernatural World --
You don't use the 'traditional' Crowleyan term Magick for you literature...why? In Magick In Theory and Practice Crowley gives a decent explanation for the terminology...
Legacies from Aleister Crowley's teachings crop up with surprising frequency. One of his more pervasive influences was to change the way the word magic is spelled when it is applied to occult subjects. Apparently he felt as did Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland, who said: "When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less." Like Crowley, Humpty Dumpty was in the habit of concocting his own terms for things (see his poem "Jabberwocky" in Carroll's book).
Crowley was hardly alone in deciding that he could arbitrarily change the spelling of a word to make it wholly his own, but he was perhaps one of the earliest to adopt a practice that is depressingly familiar in modern times, when pop singers change the spelling of their boring names in an effort to make themselves appear less average, when advertisers change the spelling of everyday words for the purposes of transforming them into trademarks, and when occultists and those involved in esoteric disciplines change the spellings of words in the mistaken belief that this will somehow transform or clarify their meaning.
This silly practice is likely to continue for as long as those who indulge in it can escape the ridicule of the general public. Fortunately for them, the public spends most of its time sleeping, so this sort of minor infraction passes without notice.
A while ago I received a question from a visitor to this site asking why I persist in the strange and archaic practice of spelling the word magic as it is spelled in the dictionaries. Below you will find my response, somewhat expanded for this page to clarify several points.
For centuries the term magic meant occult magic, or ritual magic. There was never any need to distinguish it by spelling because everyone knew what was intended.
When stage magic began to grow in popularity, and respect for occult magic declined among those who considered themselves enlightened, confusion arose over whether occult magic or stage illusions were meant by the term "magic." Illusionists, as they should be called and as they sometimes refer to themselves today, took over the term magic for their own use without even so much as a by your leave. In the early days of stage magic (so-called), stage magicians pretended to be working true occult magic. They no longer attempt to keep up this pretense in modern times, but the name for their craft was retained.
Aleister Crowley probably got tired of constantly explaining to those he talked to that he was interested in true magic, not stage illusions. So he took to spelling occult magic with a "k" to distinguish it from stage magic. This works fine on paper, for those who understand the distinction and do not assume that Crowley simply didn't know how to spell, but since the "k" is silent, it is not of any use in speaking about magic.
The main reason I haven't adopted Crowley's convention is a personal stubborn disinclination to allow stage illusionists to take over the spelling "magic" exclusively for their own use. Let them change the name of what they do, and call their clever tricks illusions or prestidigitation or juggling (an old term for stage magic that was itself stolen by acrobatic entertainers), but let them leave the word "magic" alone, so that it can continue to mean what it has always meant: a miraculous act that can't be explained in any conventional, physical way.
It is probably as futile as jousting against a windmill to attempt to restore the meaning of the word magic to its old sense. Still, it hasn't completely been lost from the language even yet. Many authorities use the spelling "magic" although they often feel compelled to qualify it as "ritual magic" or "ceremonial magic" or "occult magic" or "real magic," just as I have done, above.
My continued use of the usual spelling of the word for magic of the supernatural kind is also an expression of my fundamentally conservative nature. I resist making changes unless they are truly beneficial in the overall scheme of things. To a lesser extent, I have a disinclination to be led by Aleister Crowley, who was not a man to follow blindly in anything. Simply because Crowley said it does not make it so; because he did it does not make it a wise action to emulate.
I have noticed that the spelling "magick" is becoming more common as a general term for all forms of occult magic, not merely the magic of Thelema, Crowley's personal occult current. This process has been accelerated by its use in Internet news groups and on Web sites. So, who knows, perhaps in a few years I will be forced by the sheer weight of convention to adopt the spelling "magick" in my own work.
Magic with a "k" was not actually an invention of Crowley's -- this spelling was used centuries ago, before the spelling of words in English became standardized by the publication of the earliest dictionaries. You will find this form of the word in the Complete Oxford English Dictionary, along with many other forms such as "magique," "magike," and "magict." The earliest citation of the word is from the writings of Geoffrey Chaucer, who wrote in 1384:
And Clerkes eke which konne wel Alle this magikes naturel That Craftely doon her ententes To maken in certeyn ascendentes Ymages, lo, thrugh which magike To make a man ben hool or syke.
It was not commonly spelled in the way that Crowley has made popular until around the end of the 16th century. Both Shakespeare and Milton employed the form "magick" in their writings. None of these many variant forms has any special significance -- today we would regard them merely as errors in spelling.
It is not so much the minor variation in spelling I object to -- it is the abandonment of the word "magic" no matter how it is spelled to the stage illusionists and street performers. The word has a noble history, and was in ancient times accorded the highest honor by philosophers, before the witch-burning hysteria in Europe brought it into disrepute.
I will continue to spell magic without the "k" for as long as it makes reasonable sense to do so, with the hope that my readers are intelligent enough to understand that Crowley's spelling of the word with a "k" was merely a change in convention adopted by Crowley for his own use, and has no greater meaning or power attached to it.
Donald Tyson