Theurgy in Iamblichus, Agrippa, and the Golden Dawn

Traces the theurgic thread from Iamblichus through Agrippa into Golden Dawn ceremonial practice.

This page records a PantheaCon 2015 presentation rather than a written essay, and Sam posted it as a slide deck rather than prose, with audio promised to follow. The talk traces the tap-root Sam identifies for the whole Golden Dawn system: the Neoplatonic theurgy worked out by Iamblichus in the fourth century, carried forward through Cornelius Agrippa's Renaissance magic, and inherited by the Golden Dawn founders as the basis of their ritual technology.

Because the original page is a slide deck rather than a written argument, the fullest prose treatment of this same lineage is Sam's companion piece On the General Guidance and Purification of the Soul, which works out in detail how the Order's three-phase Path — awakening the Augoeides Soma, achieving Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, and entering the Company of Heaven — descends directly from the Iamblichean theurgic model this talk surveys.

Originally published at samwebstermage.com →