Three Schools of Magick

Crowley had to say the following about the Three Schools of Magick in Chapter VI of Magick Without Tears.

There have always been, at least in nucleus, three main Schools of Philosophical practice.  (We use the word "philosophical" in the old good broad sense, as in the phrase "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for the Advancement of Knowledge.")

It is customary to describe these three Schools as Yellow, Black, and White.  The first thing necessary is to warn the reader that they must by no means be confounded with racial distinctions of colour; and they correspond still less with conventional symbols such as yellow caps, yellow robes, black magick, white witchcraft, and the like.  The danger is only the greater that these analogies are often as alluring as the prove on examination to be misleading.

These Schools represent three perfectly distinct and contrary theories of the Universe, and, therefore, practices of spiritual science.  The magical formula of each is as precise as a theorem of trigonometry.  Each assumes as fundamental a certain law of Nature, and the subject is complicated by the fact that each School, in a certain sense, admits the formul� of the other two.  It merely regards them as in some way incomplete, secondary, or illusory.  Now, as will be seen later, the Yellow School stand aloof from the other two by the nature of its postulates.   But the Black School and the White are always more or less in active conflict; and it is because just at this moment that conflict is approaching a climax that it is necessary to write this essay.  The adepts of the White School consider the present danger to mankind so great that they are prepared to abandon their traditional policy of silence, in order to enlist in their ranks the profane of every nation.

Bibliography

Crowley, Aleister. Magick Without Tears. Tempe, Arizona: New Falcon, 1991.