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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SSS-Druid" data-source="post: 121867" data-attributes="member: 613">Our ideas of wizardry - a scholarly pursuit, involving languages, arcane symbolism and the like - is highly influenced by ceremonial magic, which incorporated myriad occult practices into one (very disparate) whole.Those influences included Gnostic thought, Egyptian occultism (not the actual practices of old Khem, but the popular ideas of what they practiced), misunderstood Cabalism, gypsy superstitions and a huge body of alchemical lore left over from earlier times (which itself incorporated Hellenic and Islamic ideas).One of the things that many of these systems had in common was a refinement of the spirit, or the idea of nascent divinity in all human beings. From the pharoah-ideal of popular Egyptology, the touching of Godhead in Cabalism and the refinement of the Self that was supposed to be the core of alchemy, it is easy to see how the ceremonial magician earned himself the reputation as a seeker of power not for power's sake, but for the ability to become divine.</blockquote>