Note
This text was, briefly, the public-facing declaration of the Aurum Solis, from which the Ordo Astrum Sophiae is descended. Written by Melita Denning and Osborne Phillips, it remains a clear and concrete statement of our theurgic practice.
Manifesto
The development of the individual towards perfection we hold to be a sacred duty, and we work for the common good as a means of achieving this goal.
The work of magic is the work of humankind. The famous schema of the Qabalah, the ‘Tree of Life’, which indicates an entire philosophy by means of ten circles and twenty-two connecting lines, is sometimes taken to be an objective plan of the universe. It is not. It is altogether subjective. It is the plan of the universe interpreted through the focusing lens of human nature. That is both the limit of what we can know and the limit of what concerns us. The perfection to which we aspire must be perfection of the human kind.
This aspiration towards perfection is essential to all who follow the path of Magic. Here is no place for scruples about spiritual narcissism or pride or anything of that sort. To reject this harmony would be to will a disharmony in the universal fabric, and would be at least as great a catastrophe as the defects it might seem to avoid. This aspiration and reverent sense of purpose are the sure mark of the true student of Qabalah.
There is the human being, the microcosm, containing within the self a reflection of all those forces perceived in the external universe and, step-by-step, in magical training, becoming aware of those forces and at the same time learning to evoke and control them. For this is the truth, which the guardians of the Qabalah have known through the ages: the inner world and the outer are more closely related than is ever dreamed of by the average person, who thinks of the self as the victim of external circumstances; and the inner world is the more potent.
We make our world, or we are crushed by the worlds made by others. The greater our understanding and the more enlightened our spirit, the better we will carry out this essential task.