Aleister Crowley in the context of "Pentacle"

Ceremonial magic (also known as magick, ritual magic, high magic or learned magic) encompasses a wide variety of rituals of magic. The works included are characterized by ceremony and numerous requisite accessories to aid the practitioner. It can be seen as an extension of ritual magic, and in most cases synonymous with it. Popularized by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, it draws on such schools of philosophical and occult thought as Hermetic Qabalah, Enochian magic, Thelema, and the magic of various grimoires. Ceremonial magic is part of Hermeticism and Western esotericism.

The synonym magick is an archaic spelling of 'magic' used during the Renaissance, which was revived by Aleister Crowley to differentiate occult magic from stage magic. He defined it as "the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will", including ordinary acts of will as well as ritual magic. Crowley wrote that "it is theoretically possible to cause in any object any change of which that object is capable by nature". John Symonds and Kenneth Grant attach a deeper occult significance to this preference.

Thelema (/θəˈliːmə/) is a Western esoteric and occult social or spiritual philosophy and a new religious movement founded in the early 1900s by Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), an English writer, mystic, occultist, and ceremonial magician. Central to Thelema is the concept of discovering and following one's True Will, a divine and individual purpose that transcends ordinary desires. Crowley's system begins with The Book of the Law, a text he maintained was dictated to him by a non-corporeal entity named Aiwass. This work outlines key principles, including the axioms "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" and "love is the law, love under will", emphasizing personal freedom and the pursuit of one's true path.

The Thelemic cosmology features deities inspired by ancient Egyptian religion. The highest deity is Nuit, the night sky symbolized as a naked woman covered in stars, representing the ultimate source of possibilities. Hadit, the infinitely small point, symbolizes manifestation and motion. Ra-Hoor-Khuit, who is believed to be a form of Horus, represents the Sun and active energies of Thelemic magick. Crowley believed that discovering and following one's True Will is the path to self-realization and personal fulfillment, often referred to as the Great Work. The Creed of the Gnostic Mass also professes a belief in Chaos, Babalon, and Baphomet.

Magick, Liber ABA, Book 4 is a book by 20th-century occultist Aleister Crowley with Mary Desti and Leila Waddell. It is widely considered to be Crowley's magnum opus.

Magick is a lengthy treatise on ceremonial magic (which he anachronistically refers to as 'magick', to distinguish it from stage magic), synthesised from many sources including yoga, Hermeticism, medieval grimoires, contemporary magical theories from writers like Eliphas Levi and Helena Blavatsky, and his own original contributions. It consists of four parts: Mysticism, Magick (Elementary Theory), Magick in Theory and Practice, and ΘΕΛΗΜΑ—the Law (The Equinox of The Gods). It also includes numerous appendices presenting many rituals and explicatory papers.

John Symonds (12 March 1914 – 21 October 2006) was an English writer known for his biographies of Aleister Crowley, as well as novels, plays, and children's books. His literary career spanned several decades, covering a wide range of genres and subjects.

Symonds met Crowley in 1946 and became his literary executor, later writing multiple biographies, including The Great Beast (1952) and The Magic of Aleister Crowley (1958). While initially intrigued, he grew critical of Crowley’s practices, particularly regarding sex and drug use.

Kenneth Grant (23 May 1924 – 15 January 2011) was an English ceremonial magician, novelist, and advocate of the Thelemic religion. A poet, novelist, and writer, he founded his own Thelemic organisation, the Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis, later renamed the Typhonian Order—with his wife Steffi Grant.

Born in Ilford, Essex, Grant developed an interest in occultism and Eastern religions during his teenage years. After service with the British Army during the Second World War, he returned to Britain and became the personal secretary of Aleister Crowley, the ceremonial magician who had founded Thelema in 1904. Crowley instructed Grant in his esoteric practices and initiated him into his own occult order, Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.). When Crowley died in 1947, Grant was seen as his heir apparent in Great Britain, and was appointed as such by the American head of O.T.O., Karl Germer. In 1949, Grant befriended the occult artist Austin Osman Spare, and in ensuing years helped to publicise Spare's artwork through a series of publications.

A table of magical correspondences is a list of magical correspondences between items belonging to different categories, such as correspondences between certain deities, heavenly bodies, plants, perfumes, precious stones, etc. Such lists were compiled by 19th-century occultists like Samuel Liddell Mathers and William Wynn Westcott (both members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn), who in the 1890s prepared an (unpublished) manuscript called The Book of Correspondences. This manuscript was later reworked by Aleister Crowley, who anonymously published it in 1909 as Liber 777. These tables of correspondences were meant to be used in a ceremonial context, where specific magical objects were assigned to specific deities or Kabbalistic emanations (sefirot).

Francis Israel Regardie (/rɪˈɡɑːrdi/; né Regudy; November 17, 1907 – March 10, 1985) was an English and American occultist, ceremonial magician, and writer who spent much of his life in the United States. He wrote fifteen books on the subject of occultism.

Born to a working-class Orthodox Jewish family in the East End of London, Regardie and his family soon moved to Washington, D.C., in the United States. Regardie rejected Orthodox Judaism during his teenage years and took an interest in Theosophy, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jewish mysticism. It was through his interest in yoga that he encountered the writings of the occultist Aleister Crowley. Contacting Crowley, he was invited to serve as the occultist's secretary, necessitating a move to Paris, France in 1928. He followed Crowley to England before their association ended. Living in England, he wrote two books on the Qabalah, A Garden of Pomegranates and The Tree of Life. In 1934 he then joined the Stella Matutina—a ceremonial magic order descended from the defunct Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn—but grew dissatisfied with its leadership and left. He also studied psychology, being particularly influenced by ideas from Jungian psychology, and explored Christian mysticism.