Modern Magic
With the death of Agrippa in 1535 the old school of magicians may be said to have ended. But that is not to say that the traditions of magic were not handed on to others who were equally capable of preserving them. We must carefully discriminate at this juncture between those practitioners of magic whose minds were illuminated by a high mystical ideal, and persons of doubtful occult position, like the Comte de Saint-Germain and others. the beginning of the seventeenth century we find many great alchemists in practice, who were also devoted to the researches of transcendental magic, which they carefully and successfully concealed under the veil of hermetic experiment. These were Michael Meyer, Campe, Robert Flood, Cosmopolite, D'Espagnet, Samuel Norton, Baron de Beausoleil, and Van Helmont; another illustrious name is also that of Philalethes. The eighteenth century was rich in occult personalities, as for example the alchemist Lascaris (q.v.) Martines de Pasqually, and Louis de Saint- Martin (q.v.) who founded the Martinist school, which still exists under the grandmastership of Papus. After this magic merges for the moment into mesmerism, and many of the secret magical societies which abounded in Europe about this period practised animal magnetism as well as astrology, Kabalism and ceremonial magic. Indeed mesmerism powerfully influenced mystic life in the time of its chief protagonist, and the mesmerists of the first era are in direct line with the Martinist and the mystical magicians of the late eighteenth century. Indeed mysticism and magnetism are one and the same thing, in the persons of some of these occultists (See Secret Tradition) the most celebrated of which were Cazotte, Ganneau, Comte, Wronski, Du Potet, Hennequin, Comte d'Ourches, and Baron de Guldenstubbé, and last of the initiates known to us, Eliphas Levi (all of which see).
That Black Magic and sorcery are still practised is a well-known fact, which requires no amplification in this P E Magical Diagrams place (See Devil Worship): but what of that higher magic which has, at least in modern times, attracted so many gifted minds? We cannot say that the true line of magical adepts ended with Levi, as at no time in the world's history are these known to the vulgar; but we may be certain that the great art is practised in secret as sedulously as ever in the past, and that men of temperament as exalted as in the case of the magacians of older days still privately pursue that art, which, like its sister religion, is none the less celestial because it has been evolved from lowly origins in the mind of man, whose spirit with the march of time reflects ever more strongly the light of heaven, as the sea at first dimly reddened by the dawn, at length mirrors the whole splendour of day. (See also Abraham the Jew, Black Magic, Ceremonial Magic, Egypt, Magic Darts, Magical Diagrams, Magical Instruments, Magical Numbers, Magical Union of Cologne, Magical Vestments, Mediæval Magic.)