Egyptian Magic in Egyptian Magic by Florence Farr.

“So in Egypt we find side by side with the high Theurgic mysteries (of which a good idea may be formed from the writings of Iamblichus), a more material development of Magical Art.” [via]

Consider also:

  1. “This was the highest work of magic, the Spiritual Alchemy or the Transmutation from human Force to Divine Potency. As is said by the great Iamblichus, in section iv., chapter ii., of The Mysteries: ‘The Priest who invokes is a man; but when he commands powers it is because through arcane symbols, he, in a certain respect, is invested with the sacred Form of the Gods.'”
  2. “You will thus perceive, Brethren, that the F.C. degree, sometimes regarded by us as a somewhat uninteresting one, typifies in reality a long course of personal development requiring the most profound knowledge of the mental and psychical side of our nature. It involves not merely the cleansing and control of the mind, but a full comprehension of our inner constitution, of the more hidden mysteries of our nature and of spiritual psychology.”
  3. “To the high initiate there was no question of choice in this matter. He knew that the heart turned inward on itself was a very poor alternative for that expansion of being that belongs to the development of the whole latent Divine Powers of the Microprosopus. In other words, the perfect formulation of the Osiris soul, the Holy Spirit of the Divine, made manifest and eternal.”
  4. “To the Ancient Egyptians the most eminent man was he who had by hard training gained supremacy over the Elements, from which his own body and the Manifested World were alike formed; one whose Will had risen Phœnix-like from the ashes of his desires; one whose Intuition, cleansed from the stains of material illusions, was a clear mirror in which he could perceive the Past, the Present and the Future.”
  5. “In symbolical language, the N. always signifies the place of imperfection and un-development; in olden times the bodies of suicides, reprobates and unbaptized children were always buried in the north or sunless side of a churchyard. The seat of the junior members of the Craft is allotted to the north, for, symbolically, it represents the condition of the spiritually unenlightened man; the novice in whom the spiritual light latent within him has not yet risen above the horizon of consciousness and dispersed the clouds of material interests and the impulses of the lower and merely sensual life.”