To know, to dare, to will, and to keep silence. We explore the magical virtues (specifically, “to keep silence”), known also as “The Powers of the Sphinx”, encountering along the way: the gift of dreams; how keeping silence still protects magicians; how silence can also harm magicians; why I am not silent about my experiences; an oddly pertinent dream; musicians playing music in silence as an analogy for how magicians stand in relationship to each other; the silent recognition of a shared link to the ineffable; the audible as different for everyone, but silence as the same to all; Éliphas Lévi on the Powers of the Sphinx; correspondences of the powers; why I find these unconvincing; Crowley’s take on the powers and their correspondences; Crowley’s added power, “to go”, as an equivalent to the tao or dharma; how the concept of the powers might be useful; the nature of human will; human experience considered as a straddling of realms and bodies; the physical and emotional bodies as “objective”; the mental body as “subjective”; imagining the objective mental body; machines versus angels; an answer to the question free will; the choice between free will and true will; humiliation as the human condition; the powers as ideals, indicating directions of growth and evolution; a less-than-perfect world; keeping silence as cultivating inner silence, and the silence of the divine; Anonymous and Crowley on the primary significance of silence; true will and silence; dreaming as an underrated practice.

Errata: What Nishida Kitaro actually wrote was this: “If we see God externally, it is merely magic” (p. 77).

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Anonymous (2002). Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism. New York: Tarcher.

Aleister Crowley (1943). Magick Without Tears. https://tinyurl.com/3yzx3644 (consciouslibrary.com). Accessed February 2022.

Aleister Crowley (1991). Little Essays Towards Truth. Scottsdale, AZ: New Falcon.

Éliphas Lévi (1896). Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual, translated by A.E. Waite. London: George Redway.

Nishida Kitaro (1987). Last Writings: Nothingness and the Religious Worldview, translated by David Dilworth. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii.