On the Origin, Idea, Scope, and History of Ancient and Modern Magic

in this way, visible nature in its countless forces and appearances was idolized in itself, without relating the manifold to a single, communal, higher spiritual principle, it was quite logical that the entire world of gods, which had nothing to do with the inner being of man, was subordinated to fate, and indeed to the recognizable laws of nature, as their ideal-symbols, but not as the gods being worshipped as masters, rulers, or moral lawgivers.

According to the pure principle of paganism, Zauberglauben magic-belief—insofar as it rests by its idea on the cooperation of higher spirit beings—would therefore have been impossible.

But this type of superstition, and especially that which conditions the fundamental idea of magic-belief—the striving for independence from nature and fate—is so deeply rooted in the inner being of man that we find it quite differently in reality.

Instead, the magic of Heidenthum paganism took the direction where one, in order to rise to be the master of nature and fate and to make the gods themselves submissive, divided the personhood of the divinity against itself through magical arts, conjured the less powerful god through the more powerful one, drew the dark, doom-laden powers of fate into one's interest through vows, nightly sacrifices, magic spells, and bans, and thus defied gods, nature, and fate simultaneously with a wild pride of independence.

In Christenthum Christianity, whose entire new religious worldview was founded on the principle of unity,