The Black Magician

I have been reading Valentin Tomberg's Meditations on the Tarot, his exploration of Christian Hermeticism. I've been pondering doing a series on the book, but the book is so out of the box I think many readers won't have the cognitive flexibility to enjoy or be edified by such an exploration. So we'll see.

And to calm any alarmed readers triggered by the word “tarot,” Tomberg’s book isn’t about divination. It is, rather, a Jungian-style meditation on the symbolism of the Major Arcana, treating them as archetypes. Tomberg was an orthodox Catholic, and the book comes with an appreciative theological appraisal by the Catholic theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar.

Anyway, I was struck by this passage yesterday in Meditations on the Tarot. Tomberg is discussing black magic, which a lot of Christians would consider to be the major threat of occultism, dabbling in the dark arts. Tomberg, however, who had a lot of experience with occultism, expresses a very deflationary take on black magic. According to Tomberg, a lot of what passes for "black magic" is sad, pathetic, and deluded. I'd suggest a lot of "black magic" is cosplay. But even if the black magician does make contact with dark powers, the one who is affected is the magician. Which is sad for them, but doesn't much hurt anyone else. According Tomberg, the real black magicians, the people we really need to worry about, are politicians. Politicians are the ones who are dabbling in black magic.

Here's Tomberg making this point:

I am not able to cite by name any black magician amongst the occultists that I know, whereas it would not be too difficult to name some politicians who, for example, have nothing to do with occultism--and would even be hostile to it--but whose influence and impact agree very well with the classical concept of that of the "black magician." Indeed, is it difficult to name politicians who have exercised a deadly, suggestive influence on the popular masses, blinding them and inciting them to acts of cruelty, injustice and violence, of which each individual, taken separately, would be incapable...and who, through their semi-magical influence, have deprived individuals of their freedom and rendered them possessed? And is not this action to deprive men of their moral freedom and to render them possessed the aim and very essence of black magic?

This remains a timely observation. We behold politicians who exercise a suggestive influence over their followers. The politician-magician casts a spell, a type of mass possession, in order to achieve their will to power. The Bible foretells and predicts these collective delusions. This is the heart of black magic.