kaos

The last word on the intent of Trithemius must belong to the man himself, who in
his introduction to Book III clearly appeals to the magician as his natural reader, and it
does not sound to me he was merely creating a blind for a book that was a manual of
cryptography and nothing more:
This I did that to men of learning and men deeply engaged in the study of magic, it
might, by the Grace of God, be in some degree intelligible, while on the other hand, to
the thick-skinned turnip-eater (imperitis Rapophagis) it might for all time remain a hidden
secret, and be to their dull intellects a sealed book forever.
JOEL BIROCO
The necessity for secrecy in magick
Joel—You have written that magick and occult workings should be done in absolute
secrecy, that no-one should be told in advance of one’s intention. A simple question
from a beginner—Why?
TODD
Simple questions are both the best sorts of questions to ask and the hardest ones to
answer. This I cannot answer in anything like a satisfactory way, it goes into the whole
subject of the importance of secrecy in magick and knowing when to remain silent.
Suffice it to say in 20 years of practising magick in the early days I bought into the idea
of secrecy as being important so as not to “dilute” or “taint” what I was doing. Of course,
in the early days I just accepted this as reasonable and never sought to “update” my
views on it in such a way as to be able to provide an explanation to someone such as
yourself to keep in line with how my other views on magick evolved and grew, so I am
left clutching onto what may seem like a superstition without any intelligent way to
explain the whys and wherefores of it, because they are grounded in experience. But I
do know that on the one occasion when I did make the mistake of speaking of magick
I planned to do I had to abandon that working because I felt it had become tainted. But
it is more than a superstition. We all know of the classic example of a “native” thinking
a camera can steal his soul by taking a picture of him. And I expect when you were
younger, like me, you might have laughed at that native for being “uncivilised” or
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