Black Magic is Not a Myth in Articles by Aleister Crowley.

“The effect is completely ridiculous compared with the waste of spiritual forces required to produce it.” [via, also]

Consider also:

  1. “The ‘Black Mass’ is a totally different matter. I could not celebrate it if I wanted to, for I am not a consecrated priest of the Christian Church. The celebrant must be a priest, for the whole idea of the practice is to profane the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Therefore you must believe in the truth of the cult and the efficacy of its ritual.”
  2. “Six years later I experimented again with the elixir, taking precautions to avoid such drastic results. The result was that at 47 I was as powerful an athlete as any man of 30.”
  3. “I have prepared the elixir of life, that magical draught which gives eternal youth. Like the touch of Midas, it is not an unmixed blessing.”
  4. “I have been accused of being a ‘black magician.’ No more foolish statement was ever made about me. I despise the thing to such an extent that I can hardly believe in the existence of people so debased and idiotic as to practice it.”
  5. “Through their mediumistic acts, spiritists sometimes get hold of disintegrated pieces of the mental apparatus of a man or woman who has died recently.”