What is Magic? Barry William Hale's magic case in the Creative Acts exhibition

 

In my last blog post about the Creative Acts exhibition at State Library Victoria I explained that each case of objects in featured artist Barry William Hale’s part of the exhibition would be explained. We will focus on the relationship between the cases and Hale’s commissioned artwork, his other artistic output, and magickal practice. In this blog post we will focus on the Magic case in general. Subsequent posts will examine individual objects within this case.

What is Magic?

The word ‘magic’ derives from the ancient Greek μαγεία (mageia) which referred to the ritual activity of Persian priests or magoi and which was so different to Greek religion that the Greeks categorised it as ‘magic’. Over subsequent centuries there have been many definitions of ‘magic’. As Wouter Hanegraaff says, ‘one will therefore receive very different answers depending on the historical period in question and the personal agendas of whoever is being asked’. Hanegraaff observes that magic has been defined as: ‘ancient wisdom’; ‘worship of demons’; ‘natural philosophy and science’; ‘occult philosophy’; ‘pseudoscience’; ‘an enchanted worldview’; and as ‘psychology’. Although ‘magic’ is understood differently within diverse historical and cultural contexts, in general it can be described as the use of ritualised words and actions, usually outside the sanction of official religions, which attract supernatural beings to influence events. British magician, Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), used the spelling ‘magick’ which he defined as ‘the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will’.

Magic may seem an obscure or fantastical practice but, along with religion, it is a method that has been used by humans to negotiate their relationship with the world for thousands of years. Barry William Hale’s magical influences and methods span the centuries from the ancient world until today. They include the power of Set, the ancient Egyptian god of the desert, chaos, storms and strength; the openness to inspiration characteristic of Bronze Age Minoan ecstatic religion; and the physical sensation and raw emotion typical of the worship of the Greek god Dionysus. Barry’s magical lineage continues through Jewish Kabbalistic letter mysticism, the Renaissance Hermetic magic of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, and the system of Enochian magic developed by Elizabethan court magician, John Dee, up to the magical revival in late 19th century France and England. From there, the magical current manifested in the most famous and notorious modern ceremonial magician, Aleister Crowley. His channelled text, Liber AL vel Legis (The Book of the Law), received clairaudiently in Egypt in 1904 and the basis for the magical religion of Thelema (Greek for ‘will’), along with the grandfather of modern sigil magic, Austin Osman Spare, are other direct influences on Barry Hale.

Objects in Hale’s magic-themed case include: illustrations by Austin Osman Spare (1886–1956) such as a double-headed herm; one of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa Von Nettesheim’s (1486–1535) Three books of occult philosophy (facsimile); composer Larry Sitsky’s (1934–) Trio. No. 7 [music]: Enochian sonata: for two violoncellos and piano; an anonymous work from the David Halperin Collection, Kabbalah on the laws of the transmutation of letters and words of the Hebrew alphabet and its combinations (before 1864); Aleister Crowley’s (1875–1947) The spirit of solitude: an autohagiography, subsequently re-Antichristened The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929); Aleister Crowley’s The Book of the Law Liber AL vel Legis, sub figura CCXX, featuring a tattoo imprint by Hale.

Also featured are a statue of the Egyptian god, Set, from Hale’s personal collection, a Seth amulet dating to 1294–30 BCE and a Minoan gold signet ring with an ecstatic scene (facsimile of CMS II.3 No.51) both borrowed from the Chau Chak Wing Museum; a bowl in the form of a Silenus mask (2^nd–4^th century CE) and a Greek lekythos vase depicting the god Dionysus, both loaned from the Ian Potter Museum of Art. An Aramaic incantation bowl was loaned by the Australian Institute of Archaeology; and an obsidian mirror made in Mexico is a personal loan by Hale. 

The Creative Acts exhibition at State Library Victoria is on until 31 May 2026. Come on down and check it out, You might even run into Barry or me there! We’re always happy to talk about the exhibition and related topics.