Eliphas Levi ~ Magic, Mysteries & Man

Noting that transiting Neptune is still closely conjunct my natal Jupiter in Pisces, I decided I should be writing about something, or someone, mystical and magical. How about Eliphas Levi? I didn't find any natal chart for him online - I should remedy that, at least!

Who was he then?

His birth name was Alphonse Louis Constant - but he is better known by his pseudonym Eliphas Levi. He was born on February 8, 1810, in Paris, son of a shoemaker. He died in Paris on 31 May 1875. He studied for the priesthood before becoming a writer, mystic, magician, and prominent name in that foggy realm . He had links to various characters of his time, famous within their own circles: socialist and feminist Flora Tristan; fellow mystic M. Ganneau, "messianic mathematician" Jozef Maria Hoëhne-Wronski; British novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton; and French sculptress Marie-Noémi Cadiot. He married Cadiot in 1846. He wrote two books on the magical arts, they were later combined and translated into English by Arthur Edward Waite in 1896 and titled Transcendental Magic, its Doctrine and Ritual. Several more books followed, and in the prevailing atmosphere of the times were well received.

Wikipedia indicates that it was Levi who incorporated the Tarot into contemporary practice. He influenced other mystics and magicians of his time and later on, including Aleister Crowley. He was also originator of a famous "Sabbatic Goat" image and the idea that a pentagram pointing upwards represents good, while one pointing downwards represents evil. See HERE.

Natal chart of Eliphas Levi, Paris, France on 8 February 1810; it's set for 12 noon as no time of birth is available.

First thing I noticed was that Levi had no planet in an Earth sign (we can't know whether his rising sign was in Earth without a birth time). The possible absence of Earth translates to a lack of any "feet on the ground" feel in his nature; no small voice at the back of his mind whispering : "but are you sure that's not pure imagination and fantasy?" Manly P. Hall, another mystical character, born some 90 years later, did have a solid Capricorn anchor to his chart, along with a comparable mix of Aquarius and Pisces to that of Levi. I suppose good helpings of Aquarius and Pisces could be considered as "usual suspects" when considering magically mysterious characters: Aquarius' inquiring Airy mind mixed with Pisces' deep, dreamy creativity.

Levi had Neptune conjunct Saturn, so Pisces modern ruler was conjoined with his Aquarius Sun's traditional ruler! He also had his Sun's modern ruler Uranus in Pluto-ruled Scorpio, in harmonious trine to his Pluto/Mars conjunction in Pisces. This might be a pointer to his draw towards "the dark side".

Aries Moon doesn't strike quite the right note. Moon would have been in Aries, whatever Levi's time of birth. Moon could well have been conjunct Jupiter though; Jupiter relates to religion and philosophy - maybe a reflection of his early training for the priesthood? Another reflection of that can be seen in his Sagittarius (ruled by Jupiter) conjunction of Saturn/Neptune.


The illustration which led me to write this post appears in an old book of mine; to save scanning the image from the book I found a version of the illustration on line, this one in colour. My book states that the drawing was produced for Manly P. Hall, astrologer and metaphysician (see my post on him and his natal chart HERE)

 The Grand Man of the Zohar

Text beneath the black and white illustration my book, Best of the Illustrated National Astrological Journal 1933-35

Eliphas Levi thus describes the Great Prototypal Man: “That synthesis of the word, formulated by the human figure, ascended slowly and emerged from the water, like the sun in its rising. When the eyes appeared, light was made; when the mouth was manifested, there was the creation of spirits and the word passed into expression. The entire head was revealed, and this completed the first day of creation. The shoulders, the arms, the breast arose, and thereupon work began. With one hand the Divine Image put back the sea, while with the other it raised up continents and mountains. The Image grew and grew; the generative organs appeared, and all beings began to increase and multiply. The form stood at length erect, having one foot upon the earth and one upon the waters. Beholding itself at full length in the ocean of creation, it breathed on its own reflection and called its likeness into life. It said: Let us make man—and thus man was made. There is nothing so beautiful in the masterpiece of any poet as this vision of creation accomplished by the prototype of humanity. Hereby is man but the shadow of a shadow, and yet he is the image of divine power. He also can stretch forth his hands from East to West; to him is the earth given as a dominion. Such is Adam Kadmon, the primordial Adam of the Kabalists. Such is the sense in which he is depicted as a giant; and this is why Swedenborg, haunted in his dreams by reminiscences of the Kabalah, says that entire creation is only a titanic man and that we are made in the image of the universe.” (From The History of Magic)

And from HERE:

The symbol of Primordial Man, the first being to emerge with the creation of the cosmos is common to a number of religious and philosophical traditions. The Upanishads describe a primal man composed of the very elements which were to become the world. According to the Upanishads this "gigantic divine being" is both infinitely far and deposited near the innermost recesses of the human heart. Indeed, in the Hindu tradition, the Primordial Man is identified both with the entire Universe and the soul or essence of all things.

Interestingly, a similar image is found in Plutarch who relates that the entirety of the heavens is arranged in the form of a macroanthropos, a colossal human being who is conceived as a model for the human world. For Plutarch, the sun is at the heart of this being and the moon, the sun¹s androgynous messenger, is located in between the heart and belly.

The Primordial Man is also an important symbol in Gnosticism. The Gnostics inferred from the verse in Genesis "Let us make man in our own image" that the first earthly man was created on the model of a cosmic Adam on high.

I rather fancy an idea that, originally, before the Big Bang, there was one ginormous humanoid creature who disseminated - either accidentally or on purpose - to become us and our universe. Well...it's as believable as anything else on offer!

Arty Farty Friday ~ Brion Gysin & William S. Burroughs: what you get when the recipe calls for a heaped measure of Aquarius & a scant measure of Cancer

No pretty pictures today...because Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs. These two didn't produce much that was pretty, though they remain revered in certain circles. They were part of the Beat crowd and 20th century avant garde who weren't known for pretty.

I've already written a post on Burroughs, his artwork and natal chart (SEE HERE). In searching for an artist who had a birthday in late Capricorn I stumbled upon Brion Gysin, who, it turned out was a good friend and close collaborator of Burroughs, who described Gysin as ".. the only man I have ever respected. I have admired many others, esteemed and valued others, but respected only him.”

Gysin was a painter, writer, sound poet, tape composer, lyricist, and performance artist. He was, at one time, proprietor of a Tangier bistro called 1001 Nights; later became artist in residence at the Beat Hotel in Paris. He is the one said to have submitted the recipe for hashish brownies to the Alice B. Toklas cookbook; he introduced Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones to avant-garde sound recordings and the master musicians of Joujouka (Gysin's former house band).

From cover blurb on a biography of Gysin by John Geiger - Nothing is True – Everything is Permitted: The Life of Brion Gysin

Gysin (1916-1986) English-born, Canadian-raised, naturalized American of Swiss descent, who lived most of his life in Morocco and France. He went everywhere when the going was good. He dabbled with surrealism in Paris in the 1930s, lived in the “interzone” of Tangier in the 1950s and traveled the Algerian Sahara with Sheltering Sky author Paul Bowles before moving into the legendary Beat Hotel in Paris.

Gysin’s ideas influenced generations of artists, musicians and writers, among them David Bowie, Keith Haring, Patti Smith, Michael Stipe, Genesis P-Orridge, John Giorno and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. None was touched more profoundly than William S. Burroughs, who said admiringly of Gysin: “There was something dangerous about what he was doing.”

Official website for Brion Gysin - images of his artwork are there, along with biographical and other detail.


In addition to their writings and artworks Burroughs and Gysin were deeply interested in magic - not the "rabbit out of top hat" kind - the darker Aleister Crowley kind of "magick". More on that in a piece by Matthew Levi Stevens: The Magical Universe of William S. Burroughs.







I mainly want to compare natal charts of Gysin and Burroughs, but first a brief word about "cut-ups", a technique originated by poet Tristan Tzara in the 1920s, re-introduced by Gysin and appropriated by William S. Burroughs.
From Gysin's official website, linked above:

In the 1950s, Brion Gysin more fully developed the Surrealist cut-up method after accidentally re-discovering it. He had placed layers of newspapers as a mat to protect a tabletop from being scratched while he cut papers with a razor blade. Upon cutting through the newspapers, Gysin noticed that the sliced layers offered interesting juxtapositions of text and image. He began deliberately cutting newspaper articles into sections, which he randomly rearranged. The book Minutes to Go resulted from his initial cut-up experiment: unedited and unchanged cut-ups which emerged as coherent and meaningful prose.

Burroughs explains cut-ups:



In 1959, Gysin invented, with Ian Sommerville, the “Dreamachine,” a device intended to simulate lucid dreaming through the projection of light patterns on users’ eyelids.

So...Burroughs and Gysin were a pair who revelled in being, and producing things, far out of the ordinary. Burroughs in his writing, but also, as shown in my 2009 post, he dabbled in art as well. Gysin dabbled in the far-outer fringes of most of the arts.



Taking a look at their natal charts:

William S. Burroughs, born 5 February 1914 in St. Louis, Missouri at 7.40am (Astrodatabank)

I wrote back in 2009 -

Wowee!! 5 planets and ascendant in Aquarius (including Aquarius' ruler, Uranus); 3 planets in Gemini, two in Cancer. So much Air (Aquarius and Gemini) cannot be good for a body - or a mind! Here's another instance of "too much of a good thing". I've seen it before, but never quite as extreme an example as this. Too much Air blows away anything of substance, literally and metaphorically.

This guy had potential to spare, yet he squandered it. It seems to me almost as though he was born drugged and drunk - from the overdose of Air in his chart. Oh, the literary elite coo over his books with exaggerated praise. Does the average reader, though, see anything praiseworthy, or just a case of the emperor and his new clothes?

Brion Gysin born in Taplow, near Maidenhead, UK on 19 January 1916. Time of birth isn't known so this chart is set for noon.

Well..turns out their charts are quite similar - pity we don't know Gysin's time of birth.

Though Gysin had Sun in late Capricorn he also had plenty of Airy Aquarius going on, with planets conjoining some of Burrough's Aquarius planets; he doesn't have Burrough's additional Gemini, Air though. Instead he has three Cancer planets, including Moon (whatever his time of birth), and Jupiter in Pisces both of which bring in a much softer, more sensitive and intuitive feel to his nature.

Burroughs did have some Cancerian flavour - his Mars and Neptune are both in that sign, whereas the same two planets in Gysin's chart are in Leo. In both cases at least one of the Cancer or Leo planets is striking a balancing opposition with planets in Capricorn or Aquarius. So there is a similarity, even there.

The Aquarius/Cancer mixture they both had in different proportion was, I suspect, what led them in the paths of magick and psychic experimentation. Aquarius alone wouldn't necessarily head in that direction.

It's not difficult to see how these two men, when their paths crossed, would easily become friends. Their work isn't easy to like, unless one is naturally on their far-out wavelength. I'm not. I find their natal charts more interesting than anything they produced, but then, at their levels, even with my own Aquarius solo Sun to assist, I remain a Philistine.

In a conversation at AnOther Magazine website John-Paul Pryor answered the questions:

Do you think that Gysin’s symbiotic relationship with Burroughs may have held him back as an artist?

The two were certainly joined at the cerebellum, but Gysin shines a tremendous light in his own right, especially in the field of visual art. Burroughs was an underground phenomenon and the platform for Gysin’s livelihood, but it’s true that he also shadowed him. One area of contention has to do with who invented the “cut-up.” Burroughs tried his entire life to tell people that Gysin invented the cut-up, but because Burroughs ran with the idea, producing numerous novels, he is the one credited. It’s important to think of Gysin as an idea generator above all.

Do you think they were driven by a desire to be subversive?

Yes, it was a choice for them. They took their energy from being counter, and I think it was enormously important for that generation to be counter to the structure of contemporary culture in every possible way. These were guys who were stateless, gay, psychotropic experimenters (and in the case of Burroughs, also a murderer and a junkie). They used drugs very consciously as tools that supposedly allowed them to get out of where they were. There is a lot of talk about cultural subversion now, but I don’t think anybody could beat these guys at that. Gysin was also interested in the straightforward notion of magic. The calligraphic style he created was a personal glyph that consisted of drawing his initials over and over again; it was, in its way, a spell.

It all fits rather well!

A Kind of Magic(k).....

Magick with a k - it's different from conjurors' magic. Magick aka sorcery resides in the deepest darkest corners of "woo", and is too vast a subject for a modest blog post; I'm simply skimming the surface of Western-type magick's background.

Astrology may play some part in the supposed workings of magick - the timing of spells or procedures, the preparation of a talisman, for instance. Mediaeval magicians would almost always need some level of astrological knowledge, for them astrology was part and parcel of occult practice. I see it as otherwise - but that's just me.

From relatively modern times, Aleister Crowley is the first name that springs to mind when contemplating magick. The name alone gives me the creeps. A predecessor by several centuries, John Dee, has a much better feel for me. Distance does indeed lend enchantment!

It's well nigh impossible now to get a true feel and understanding of what life was like in John Dee's time and place: 16th century England and Europe. Let's see, what was going on around then? Religious reformation, exploration of the globe, discovery and colonisation of new lands, plagues, The Renaissance, developments in philosophy, science, art, literature and politics continued apace. Magic(k) was an integral part of life in the 16th century. At times it must have been difficult to differentiate between magick and reality, living in the midst of such seemingly eccentric change.

Intellectuals used magick in their efforts to discover "the meaning of life". Men like John Dee, scholar, mathematician, alchemist, occultist, astronomer, and astrologer, had sincere aspirations. They often fell foul of religious leaders who sensed that the knowledge they were aiming to acquire could weaken religion's control of the masses. John Dee was fortunate to enjoy patronage and protection from Queen Elizabeth the First for many years, as her advisor. Lesser mortals, namely women - witches - who involved themselves in magic to help themselves, neighbours and friends, were ostracised at best, tortured and executed at worst.

There's an entertaining article on John Dee by astrologer Dr Z : Who's the Original 007?

Magick in the 16th century, and now, covers a varied range of occult activity, the focus of all: to cause change, material or otherwise. Rituals of various kinds play a major part in magickal preparation. These rituals (I'm guessing) could exert an effect of some abnormal kind upon the proponent's brain function. Sexual connections occasionally crop up too. Don't they always?

A broomstick, accessory of any respectable Hallowe'en witch, was thought, in reality to have been annointed with an ointment made from hallucinogenic plants, the ointment then being transferred to the mucous membrane of the broomstick "rider" for rapid absorption, with the result of...well, a feeling of flying I guess. I feel I should add "Don't try this at home!"

Sex sells - whether car, broomstick or magickal ideas. A sexual link does exist in magick. Some lines I had saved but have now, unhelpfully, lost the link:

The Anglo-Saxon k in Magick is a means of indicating the kind of magic which Crowley performed. K is the eleventh letter of several alphabets, and eleven is the principal number of magick, because it is the number attributed to the Qliphoth - the underworld of chaotic forces that have to be mentally conquered before magick can be performed. K has other magical implications: it corresponds to the power or shakti aspect of creative energy, for k is the ancient Egyptian khu, the magical power. Specifically, it stands for kteis (vagina), the complement to the wand (or phallus) which is used by the Magician in certain sexual magick aspects of the Great Work

The $64,000 question: does magick work? Is it possible to "cause" change? Some obviously think so, otherwise the idea wouldn't still be around. This desire to change things seems to be tightly woven into human nature. A favourite quote from Edward Fitzgerald's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

Ah love! could you and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits -
And then Re-mold it nearer to the heart's desire!

A tale from personal experience. Many years ago, after a period of misfortune, ill health and downright bad luck, as a last resort I enlisted the assistance of a so-called magician to change circumstances, by removing what I sensed as a bad influence affecting myself and my late partner. To cut a long story short what he did (if he did anything at all other than take a lot of money from me) might have been instrumental in our losing everything we owned, almost lost our lives too, in a fire. I'll never be certain that there was a connection, but the timing was sinister to say the least.

My advice about magick: leave it alone. Better to be safe, meeting challenges in more usual ways, than sorry after trying to change things using occult means. Stick with the song....Queen:

It's a kind of magic
It's a kind of magic
A kind of magic
One dream one soul one prize one goal
One golden glance of what should be
It's a kind of magic
One shaft of light that shows the way
No mortal man can win this day
It's a kind of magic
The bell that rings inside your mind
Is challenging the doors of time
It's a kind of magic
The waiting seems eternity
The day will dawn of sanity
Is this a kind of magic
It's a kind of magic
There can be only one
This rage that lasts a thousand years
Will soon be done
This flame that burns inside of me
I'm here in secret harmonies
It's a kind of magic
The bell that rings inside your mind
Is challenging the doors of time
It's a kind of magic
It's a kind of magic............................

Word Magic

I needed to retire to a spare room, far from my computer, while a couple of guys steam-cleaned the living room carpet on Monday morning. I took with me a couple of slim, tatty old paperback books which had been sitting on a shelf beneath my computer for years: The Ordeal of Change and The True Believer, both by Eric Hoffer, both originally published in the mid-20th century.


As I read the following my mind slid back to other words read recently, words of Chris Hedges, words of Russell Brand - two very different sources featured in posts in the past couple of weeks. Words to stir the blood, to energise the mind, to encourage thought, to reassure that there are others out there who feel as we do..... There is magic in words.

Mr. Hoffer suggested:

Nothing so baffles the scientific approach to human nature as the vital role words play in human affairs. How can one deal with a physiochemical complex in which reactions are started and checked, accelerated and slowed down, by the sound or image of a word - usually a meaningless word?

It is of interest that the practice of magic where nature is concerned - the attempt to manipulate nature by words - rested on the assumption that nature is not unlike human nature, that methods of proven effectiveness in the manipulation of human affairs may be equally potent when applied to nonhuman nature. It can be seen that such an assumption is the mirror image of, and not infinitely more absurd than, the assumption implied in the scientific approach that human nature is merely an aspect of nature.

We know that words cannot move mountains, but they can move the multitude; and men are more ready to fight and die for a word than for anything else...................Words and magic are particularly crucial in time of crisis when old forms of life are in dissolution and man must grapple with the unknown. .............A movement is pioneered by men of words, materialized by fanatics and consolidated by men of action.
― Eric Hoffer, The Ordeal of Change

Words: "abracadabra", "ooo-eee-oo-ah-ah-ting-tang-walla-walla-bing-bang" - two silly examples of magic words, the first from stage conjurors' playbooks, the other from an old pop song The Witch Doctor. They are throw-backs to an ancient belief that words and/or sound could indeed bring about change, drastic change even.

Words put together with talent and skill can sway human nature, for good or ill....(hmm a rhyme!) Full effects of words only become visible when the time is right though. More wise words from Eric Hoffer, this time from The True Believer - Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements:

"For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power. They must also have an extravagant conception of the prospects and the potentialities of the future. Finally, they must be wholly ignorant of the difficulties involved in their vast undertaking. Experience is a handicap."

Words, for now, are all we have.

Magical Illusion

Magic: I'm always intrigued when things fall synchronistically together for me. Three things related loosely or directly to "magic" did so this week.

First, a rather loopy contestant on the opening show of this season's America's Got Talent caused jaws to drop, even that of former Spice Girl, Scary Spice - Mel B, who has joined the panel of judges this year. The contestant, who calls himself Special Head, showed us what levitation looks like. Had to be an illusion or trick, of course, a real practitioner of this kind of "magick", a yogi, shaman or whatever, would not be cavorting on America's Got Talent.
Still it was fun to watch:




Fun to watch, too, was the movie we saw this week at the cinema Now You See Me - all about four professional magicians/illusionists and the mysterious person who gathered them together so's they'd become a peculiarly named (in the circumstances) foursome: The Four Horsemen. They proceeded to carry out some latter-day Robin Hood-type magical capers in Las Vegas, New Orleans and New York. During their shows beaucoup $$$$$$$$$$$ of certain other individuals or bodies, for reasons which do not become apparent until the last scenes, are re-distributed. There are hints thrown in of an ancient Egyptian connection to magic, which I'm not sure were fictional or actual.

The movie offers an entertaining couple of hours, as long as viewers don't think too deeply or care too much about logic. Treated as pure fun it's a good night at the flicks. The film will attract all age groups, unlike many on offer just now. Its cast list has some young bloods: Jesse Eisenberg and Dave Franco; some mid-lifers : Woody Harrelson and Mark Ruffalo; and older actors: Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine. Female interest, which I feel could have been better represented with stronger actresses and better chemistry with the guys: Isla Fisher and Melanie Laurent. I think the producers spent all available casting cash on CGI and the guys - a pity.

Trailer:



Third reference to magic - or illusion - came quite unexpectedly when we got home from the cinema. We decided to listen to some music for what remained of the evening. I did my usual, random, blind selection from husband's shelves of CDs and came up with Days of Future Passed, The Moody Blues. Blast from the past, and not the husband's usual fare by any means. Nice CD artwork though, with zodiac signs and moon phases included. We chose track 7 from this "concept" CD: THE NIGHT - Nights in White Satin (Justin Hayward). Now....I know the song very well, always enjoyed it when played on radio in the UK, but I had never heard this particular track before, the extended version with a narrated poem at the end of it. The last lines of the narration were what made me catch my breath for a moment:

Cold hearted orb
That rules the night
Removes the colours
From our sight
Red is gray and
Yellow white
But we decide
Which is right
And
Which is an Illusion

Narration begins around the 5.50 point:




Full narration transcript:

Breath deep
The gathering gloom
Watch lights fade
From every room
Bedsitter people
Look back and lament
Another day's useless
Energy spent

Impassioned lovers
Wrestle as one
Lonely man cries for love
And has none
New mother picks up
And suckles her son
Senior citizens
Wish they were young

Cold hearted orb
That rules the night
Removes the colours
From our sight
Red is gray and
Yellow white
But we decide
Which is right
And
Which is an Illusion


For the astrologically-inclined : I just noticed that transiting Neptune is minutes away from my natal Jupiter in Pisces.
Neptune is known as planet of illusion (and magic too, I guess) - perhaps that transit is alerting me to see the synchronicity in such things ?

PS:
Other magic/illusion related posts from the archives:
Two Minds
Wednesday Woo-woo: Magick

Wednesday Woo-Woo ~ MAGICK

Magick with a k - different from conjurors' magic. Magick aka sorcery resides in the deepest darkest corners of Woo. It's a vast subject, if taken from a global perspective, too vast for a modest blog post. I'll simply skim the surface of Western-type magick and its background.

Astrology may play some part in the supposed workings of magick - the timing of spells or procedures, the preparation of a talisman, for instance. Mediaeval magicians would almost always need some level of astrological knowledge, for them astrology was part and parcel of occult practice. I see it as otherwise - but that's just me.

From relatively modern times, Aleister Crowley is the first name that springs to mind when contemplating magick. The name alone gives me the creeps. A predecessor by several centuries, John Dee, has a much better feel for me. Distance does indeed lend enchantment!

It's well nigh impossible now to get a true feel and understanding of what life was like in John Dee's time and place - 16th century England and Europe. Let's see, what was going on around then? Religious reformation, exploration of the globe, discovery and colonisation of new lands, plagues, The Renaissance, developments in philosophy, science, art, literature and politics continued apace. Magic(k) was an integral part of life in the 16th century. At times it must have been difficult to differentiate between magick and reality, living in the midst of such seemingly eccentric change.


Intellectuals used magick in their efforts to discover "the meaning of life". While men like John Dee, scholar, mathematician, alchemist, occultist, astronomer, and astrologer, had sincere aspirations, they often fell foul of religious leaders who sensed that the knowledge they were aiming to acquire could weaken religion's control of the masses. John Dee was fortunate to enjoy patronage and protection from Queen Elizabeth the First for many years, as her advisor. Lesser mortals, namely women - witches - who involved themselves in magic to help themselves, neighbours and friends, were ostracised at best, tortured and executed at worst.

There's an entertaining article on John Dee by astrologer Dr Z : Who's the Original 007?

Magick in the 16th century, and now, covers a varied range of occult activity, the focus of all: to cause change, material or otherwise. Rituals of various kinds play a major part in magickal preparation. These rituals (I'm guessing) could exert an effect of some abnormal kind upon the proponent's brain function. Sexual connections occasionally crop up too. Don't they always?

A broomstick, accessory of any respectable Hallowe'en witch, was thought, in reality to have been annointed with an ointment made from hallucinogenic plants, the ointment then being transferred to the mucous membrane of the broomstick "rider" for rapid absorption, with the result of...well, a feeling of flying I guess. I feel I should add "Don't try this at home!"

A sexual link can be found in the first few lines of Wikipedia's "Magick" section:

The Anglo-Saxon k in Magick is a means of indicating the kind of magic which Crowley performed. K is the eleventh letter of several alphabets, and eleven is the principal number of magick, because it is the number attributed to the Qliphoth - the underworld of chaotic forces that have to be mentally conquered before magick can be performed. K has other magical implications: it corresponds to the power or shakti aspect of creative energy, for k is the ancient Egyptian khu, the magical power. Specifically, it stands for kteis (vagina), the complement to the wand (or phallus) which is used by the Magician in certain sexual magick aspects of the Great Work

Sex sells - whether car, broomstick or magickal ideas.

The $64,000 question: does magick work? Is it possible to "cause" change? Some obviously think so, otherwise the idea wouldn't still be around. This desire to change things seems to be tightly woven into human nature. A favourite quote from Edward Fitzgerald's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

Ah love! could you and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits -
And then Re-mold it nearer to the heart's desire!

A tale from personal experience. Many years ago, after a period of misfortune, ill health and downright bad luck, as a last resort I enlisted the assistance of a so-called magician to change circumstances, by removing what I sensed as a bad influence affecting myself and my late partner. To cut a long story short what he did (if he did anything at all other than take a lot of money from me) might have been instrumental in our losing everything we owned, almost lost our lives too, in a fire. I'll never be certain that there was a connection, but the timing was sinister to say the least.

So.... my advice about magick: leave it alone. Better to be safe, meeting challenges in more usual ways, than sorry after trying to change things using occult means.