Hey all I have a question about some confusing terms:
Sometimes, low magick is denoted as folk magick, that is, rootwork magick, such as in hoodoo magick, which involves using herbs and fetishes. At other times, it is labeled as here above.
Another confusing term is pathworking. For example, pathworking can be explained as visionary magick like LHD or Goetia Pathworking, or it can refer to an extended series of rituals like the nine gatekeepers of Ea Koetting.
Low magick is any form of magick which is intended to affect the physical world around us whether that be miraculous or ritualized.
High Magick is any form of magick which evokes/invokes divine spirits, especially gods/goddesses, to unite with said divine spirits.
The terms “high” and “low” originated from the type of practitioner rather than the type of magick.
In ancient times, things like candle magick, rootwork, etc, were practiced by the slaves, servants, farmers and the uneducated, the people mostly concerned with just getting through the day. Magick for the harvest, weather predictions, rain making, the use of plants for healing, the use of animal parts for amulets and talismans, balms, and salves, were the domain of the lower caste, hence the term “low magick.”
High magick, on the other hand, was originally the domain of the educated nobility. It required the ability to read and write, knowledge of mathematics, chemistry, physics and languages such as Latin and Arabic. Operations utilized precise astronomical calculations based on planetary positioning and often used complex diagrams (look at John Dee’s Enochian journals as a good example). Such operations could take several hours or days to perform, but of course the upper classes had all the necessary leisure since they didn’t have to work for a living.
In modern times, the majority of people are now much more educated than those of ancient nobility so the terms high and low are less used but when they are, they are generally used to refer to certain magical practices instead of the practitioner and have taken on a somewhat moral or ethical perspective, high magick, being mainly theurgy and focused on improving the self and becoming like unto God, and low magick being thaumaturgy, and more concerned with material needs. However, the truth is there is quite an overlap as the high magical operations of theurgy could be used for material ends (and often are) and the low magick operations could also be used to become closer to God (or gods).
As for pathworking, the name comes from the Kabbalistic practice of walking the 22 Paths of the Tree of Life. It did not originally directly involve spirits, but only certain correspondences and imagery specific to the Sephiroth one was seeking. However, it has now becoming a catch-all term used to generally refer to any imaginative sensory imagery used for spiritual contact.
I’m not sure who started using the term pathworking for such operations, but I think it may have come about because such workings generally involve a select group of spirits and a specific purpose or goal for the magician, and hence can be considered a “path.”
I saw you had two definitions for path working so I was excited to point out there was a third definition but DarknestKight beat me to it. When I’m on this forum I usually use path working to mean visionary magick, but elsewhere I’m a little bit more cautious. Some people get real upset if you use the word to refer to anything other than kabbalah.
Overall I think words tend to get different definitions from different communities. It gets real confusing but you just have to figure out how a particular author is using it. I think most of us on this forum like solo practice better than anything else, but having a shared vocabulary is one benefits of being part of an order, it makes communication easier.
I think in most modern practical magick books high and low magick are used like the text you quoted. Also, path working is used as in visionary magick. At least from everything I’ve read recently it seems to be the most common usage right now.
More scholarly works have varying definitions but those books usually define their terms so you won’t be left guessing. Books from BALG tend use path working as a series of workings/rituals. If you talking to someone you might end up just having to ask how they are using the term if they don’t clarify.
That’s interesting. I’ve been using low and high for witchery vs ceremonial, though that kinda sounds like the same thing put another way. And to be fair, witchcraft can be ritualistic and ceremonial anyway.
I’ve noticed that too - I’ve ended up sidestepping the whole thing by not using these terms and referring more to the tradition or techniques directly. I can usually figure out what the person means in context anyway, but they might not be able to interpret me as I intended, so I leave all terms with ambiguous usage out of my vocabulary. My posts are long enough without having to add definitions. 