With Apologies to Sebastian Morello

My final word on the matter.

Le Antichità Romane by Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Many thanks to Sebastian Morello for his latest article at OnePeterFive. I know that I said I wouldn’t write any more about this subject but I thought his latest contribution was very helpful, and I think it merits one further reply.

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I. Sebastian Morello and the Sorcerer’s Stone

The basis of my critique was basically this: The main theme of Morello’s book is magic, specifically Hermetic magic. Therefore, Morello must believe in—and most likely practices—magic. In his latest response, Morello offers the Petersonian rejoinder: “Well, it depends on what you mean by magic.” To quote Morello:

Davis only has one point, which is that there is a single univocal meaning to the word “magic,” and since I have used that word, I must be using it in his way. But that argument is very silly. What Davis should have said is: “I don’t know what Morello means by the word ‘magic’, but it connotes something negative for me, as it does for many, and I would caution him against using it.” Then, he and I could have had a much shorter conversation about the prudence of using the word “magic.” I would have had my reasons for using it, and he, his reasons against it. It is because his core argument is so silly, and the ice on which he stands is so thin, that for substance he has found it necessary to create a whole mythology about my private life and those with whom I am associated which bears no resemblance to reality.

Now, Morello more or less admits that the word magic has negative connotations in Christian circles. For instance, the Catholic Encyclopedia says the following:

Catholic theology defines magic as the art of performing actions beyond the power of man with the aid of powers other than the Divine, and condemns it and any attempt at it as a grievous sin against the virtue of religion, because all magical performances, if undertaken seriously, are based on the expectation of interference by demons or lost souls. Even if undertaken out of curiosity the performance of a magical ceremony is sinful as it either proves a lack of faith or is a vain superstition.

I’m not Catholic, of course, but I think that, when Christians hear the word magic, this is what pops into their heads. If Morello was using the world in a different way, he should have made that very clear in the book. The author’s job is to communicate his ideas clearly. It is not the reader’s job to correctly guess at his meaning.

So, I’m willing to grant—at least for the sake of argument—that Morello is not talking about “magic” in the sense defined by the Catholic Encyclopedia. What, then, does he mean?

In his essay, Morello clarifies this very point. He claims there are two senses in which he uses the word magic:

1. “To refer to the Neoplatonic world as a living emanation of the Creator, an account of the world that’s antithetical to the Enlightenment worldview which I oppose, namely that of a dead and mechanical universe.”

2. “The active participation by us in the created order so as to offer it to the glory of God, which I argue is futile and even dangerous if not baptized in Christ (given the diabolical character of unredeemed nature).

Morello then gives a few examples:

In terms of my own “magical” practices, they are these: I go to Holy Mass at least weekly and to Confession fortnightly; I begin each day by chanting the Benedictus, I say grace before each meal, I pray the holy Rosary everyday with my family, I regularly say the Jesus Prayer throughout the day, I sing prayers with my children before they go to bed, and I frequently give thanks to God for His love for us. (All that is quite magical enough for me.)

That’s all very wholesome! As I’ve said more than once, Sebastian strikes me as someone whose friendship I would enjoy.

And here is where I may have to revise my critique. Morello is right: I began my review with a certain presupposition. He claimed to be a perfectly normal layman, utterly devoted to Catholic orthodoxy and orthopraxy. And it’s true: I didn’t believe him. My response was essentially this:

Were that the case, then what’s the point of this book? Is it possible that Morello would introduce all of these Hermetic terms and concepts if he had no intention of introducing their Hermetic meaning? If he did, that would make his entire project just one big language game. And it’s a pointless game at that. After all, does anyone really think that Catholicism will suddenly become popular if it dressed up in Hermetic drag?

To put it another way, there are two possibilities:

1. Morello is perfectly orthodox.

2. Morello is not perfectly orthodox.

If #2 is the case then, clearly, Morello is introducing these terms/concepts in order to smuggle pagan or neopagan metaphysics into Christian theology. But if #1 is true, then Morello is simply giving new names to standard Christian beliefs and practices.

I’ll admit, I did subconsciously rule out #1. I never entertained the possibility that Morello was simply playing a language game. And I suppose I did this for two reasons.

First, as I said, it strikes me as a waste of time.

Second, the standard definition of magic (i.e., the one we find in the Catholic Encyclopedia) denotes such a grave and abominable sin that I couldn’t imagine any right-believing Christian using it in a positive way.

Now, Morello’s defenders will counter with: “But what about the Chronicles of Narnia? What about Lord of the Rings?” And that’s fair!

I suppose my answer would be that those stories take place in a completely different metaphysical context. In the real world, magic is a practice that (in theory) anyone can take up. In the stories of Lewis and Tolkien, these are inborn traits. In Middle-Earth, for instance, “wizards” are not humans with special knowledge and/or powers. They’re essentially angels or demigods.

Anyway, this seems to reify the theory that Morello & Co. are simply playing a game. There have been countless books, essays, articles, podcasts, and academic courses devoted to elucidating the Christian themes in Lewis and Tolkien’s fantasy. I remember at one point the Catholic influencer Brandon Vogt tried to create a “Catholic Hogwarts.”

Some people enjoy these things. Others just find them nerdy. I enjoy them while also recognizing their nerdiness. But it’s not obvious to me that Morello’s project doesn’t fall into the same genre.

That may sound like a put-down, but I don’t mean it to be. Essentially, all of these projects have the same goal: to make Christianity more interesting by having it LARP as high fantasy.

Those who engage in these games generally have no desire to undermine the traditional Faith. Just the opposite. They are attempting to promote the Faith by dressing it up in a fun costume—something more interesting than ordinary Christian garb.

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II. Overly Familiar

Again, for the sake of argument, I will accept that Morello made a good-faith attempt to elaborate a traditional Christian worldview using the language of Hermetic magic. But then a further question presents itself: Was it prudent?

Personally, I think the answer is no.

The main problem with the book is that no one seems to know what Morello is talking about. And in his latest rebuttal, he claims this was by design:

One objection to my book concerns my reluctance to offer many abstract definitions. Thus, it has been said that I appear to utilize ambiguity to avoid the charge of being heterodox or even heretical—which, were I less ambiguous, it is supposed it would be revealed that I am. I understand the criticism but, following the tradition with which I engage in the text, the purpose of the style is more to “initiate” the reader into a habit of thinking rather than define a set of abstract terms.

Well, I’m not sure how the reader was supposed to know this. Moreover, Morello’s book often comes across as less of an “initiation” and more of a confrontation.

Take, for instance, the first sentence of the book’s forward by Charles Coulombe. It reads:

You hold in your hands a book, which is destined to arouse controversy. From Descartes on, the author tackles a number of sacred cows dear to traditional and modernist Catholics alike.

I have no idea which “sacred cows” that are “dear to traditional Catholics” Morello was meant to be “tackling,” if not all the magic is bad stuff.

Likewise, in the first paragraph of his preface, Morello writes:

Those who know me, know that I have long harbored esoteric interests. When I taught at a catechetical institute in London, I was always accompanied by my whippet Pico, named after the fifteenth-century Christian Hermeticist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, a man whom St. Thomas More described as “a perfect philosopher and a perfect theologian.” The name which I affectionately bestowed upon my familiar was partly to signal to the initiated that I too was a lover of the Secret Fire.

For those who don’t know, a familiar is “a spirit or entity that is bound to a witch or magician, acting as a companion, guide, and/or assistant in their magical work.” Familiars usually take the form of an animal. This is the origin of the superstition around black cats.

Now, does it sound like Morello is gently inviting you to look at your Catholic faith from a slightly different, more “Enchanted” angle? Or does he sound like a sorcerer?

And as Morello’s critics have argued—and as Morello himself has conceded—nowhere does he explain these terms. He never reveals in what sense his dog is a “familiar.” He never explains what he was “initiated” into, or by whom. He never describes this “Secret Fire.” He just waves these esoterica under our noses, one after the other, as if to show them off.

Again, this would be understandable if Morello were trying to soft-peddle magic (in the Catholic Encyclopedia sense) to Catholics. But if that’s not the case, the exercise is pointless. Morello is trying to use Hermetic symbols to “Enchant” our Christianity. But how can he do that if he doesn’t explain what those symbols mean, or how they correspond to Christian theology?

In fairness, Morello does occasionally try to draw these connections. Many of his critics have zeroed in the example of the egregore, which the dictionary defines as an “autonomous psychic entity that is composed of, and influences, the thoughts of a group of people.”

Morello quotes a certain Catholic theologian who also happened to be a Hermeticist to illustrate this point: “As Joseph de Maistre detected, the people did not lead the Revolution; the Revolution led the people. In such cases, it looks a lot like we are dealing with egregores.”

Now, as I pointed out in my review, the strict Hermetical definition of egregore is incompatible with Christianity. We do not believe that the spiritual can “arise” from the material. This violates the ontological hierarchy. In fact, the Catholic Church teaches that God alone can create spiritual entities. Even in sexual reproduction, a man and a woman only create the body of a child; the soul is given to Him directly by God at the moment of conception.

After I published my review, a reader wrote to me asking if I wasn’t being too hard on Morello. This person asked: “Couldn’t it be said that an egregore is, in some way, comparable to a demon? There have certainly been Catholic writers who compare revolution to a demon.”

I told the reader that he can do whatever he wants, of course, but it seemed like a pointless exercise to me. Why refer to a demon as an “egregore” when you could refer to it as… a demon?

Some might argue that it gives us an interesting insight into the psycho-spiritual nature of mass phenomena such as revolutions. But that’s not true, either. It’s not true at all. Again, Morello defines an egregore as “falsehoods that become spirits.” To say that mobs create the egregore of Revolution is, metaphysically, the opposite of saying that mobs succumb to the demon of Revolution. The demon preexists the mob; it influences but is not influenced. The egregore does not preexist the mob; it both influences and is influenced.

Now, it’s not that there are zero similarities between demons and egregores. It’s that the differences are too great for us to use terms like “egregore” and “demon” interchangeably. Again, there is nothing in the Christian metaphysical system that is comparable to an egregore. Morello’s analogy obscures the truth rather than elucidating it.

So, he is either trying to introduce novel concepts into Christian theology or he’s just playing word-games. Morello insists that it’s not the former, so it must be the latter. But these terms do not “Enchant.” They confuse and mislead.

I’ll make one more point on this subject before moving on to the next one. I was struck by the title of Morello’s first rebuttal: “Snuffing the Pyre”. Morello’s insinuation is that I want to burn him as a witch.

This reminded me of a note his friend and fellow occultist Michael Martin had posted on Substack: “If Orthobros and Militant Catholics had any power, I’d be tied to a post on a pile of smoldering sticks.”

I don’t think Morello and Martin really believe I want to kill them. At least, I hope they don’t. Even if I thought they were “proper magicians,” that’s the very last thing I’d want. I remember sobbing like a baby in the arms of my Presbyterian minister, confessing all the terrible things I’d done in by days as a neopagan and a Satanist. I remember the Christlike compassion in Pastor Rob’s eyes—the tears of pity and joy running down his kind, bearded face—as he promised me that God’s love was infinitely stronger than my sins.

Again, I’m not saying that I (necessarily) believe Morello and Martin are witches. But if I ever did catch a witch, the very last thing I would do is burn him. So, why would they say these things?

I think it’s part of their game. Actually, I talked about this during my interview with Matt Fradd. Practically everyone I’ve ever met who is drawn to any kind of “magic” has a persecution fetish. They want to view themselves as a member of a small intellectual and spiritual elite that must suffer the abuse of ignorant plebians who don’t understand their true greatness. I call this having a Lucifer complex.

This is further evinced in Morello accusing me of having a “near-pathological obsession with [him] personally,” which is rather strange. Surely he can’t think that I’m especially interested in Sebastian Morello qua tweedy, forty-something academic from Bedfordshire. My interest in him begins and ends with his efforts to synthesize Christianity and Hermeticism—to whatever extent he attempts that synthesis.

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III. Universalism and Traditionalism

Which brings me to my final point.

Morello and his supporters have repeatedly dismissed his critics as stupid and uneducated. We are not entitled to an opinion on his work because we lack the proper credentials. For instance, in his latest, Morello says I could benefit from “a little bit of training in analytic philosophy.” In fact, I have a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Sydney.

Morello also identifies—though perhaps only loosely—with the Perennialist movement. He claims that I speak from “near-total, if not indeed total, ignorance” of the Perennialist tradition. I have also studied in the Department of Religion at GWU with Seyyed Hossein Nasr, the greatest living Perennialist.

To be clear, I don’t consider myself a Perennialist anymore. Perennialism is, in my opinion, fundamentally incompatible with Christianity.

For those who don’t know, Perennialism—also known as the Traditionalist School—is a body of ideas founded by the twentieth-century French intellectual René Guénon. We may say that Perennialism has three basic tenets:

1. All true religions share a common basis in a primordial, metaphysical Reality: the perennial philosophy.

2. Man’s religious understanding evolves over time, from animism to polytheism to monotheism.

3. As we draw closer to the perennial philosophy, our religion moves from the exoteric to the esoteric.

According to Perennialists, all of these religions are true paths to God (universalism). However, we must choose one path and follow it faithfully (traditionalism). For the Perennialist, it doesn’t really matter if you’re a Catholic or a Hindu or a Sufi. But if you’re going to be a Sufi, you have to be the best darn Sufi you can be.

Perennialists will often use the metaphor of a mountain. At the summit, we have the philosophia perennis. There are many paths one may take to the top of this mountain. Some of the older paths, like Tengrii, are little more than a trail of worn-out grass, while the newer paths, like Buddhism, have steps and handrails. However, one must choose a single path and follow it. One must always be moving upward. One can’t always be moving between paths. Perennialism stresses the vertical over the horizontal.

As a rule, Perennialists are not big fans of the Renaissance. To quote Frithjof Schuon, for instance:

The pseudo-Christian art which the neo-paganism of the Renaissance inaugurated only seeks and only realizes man. It suffocates the mysteries it should suggest in the superficial and powerless hubbub which inevitably characterizes individualism, and in any case inflicts, chiefly by its ignorant hypocrisy, very great harm on society. How could it be otherwise seeing that this art is only disguised paganism and takes no account in its formal language of the contemplative chastity and the immaterial beauty of the spirit of the Gospels? How could one unreservedly call sacred in art which, forgetful of the almost sacramental character of holy pictures and forgetful, too, of the traditional rules of the craft, offers to the veneration of the faithful carnal and splashy copies of nature and even portraits of concubines painted by libertines?

I doubt many traditional Christians would be willing to critique Renaissance art root-and-branch. However, I do think they would agree with the Perennialists that the Renaissance did, to some extent, weaken the Catholic foundations of Western humanism by introducing these elements of humanism, individualism, and secularism.

Perennialists generally view Christian Hermeticism as a bright spot in the Renaissance. That may seem strange, given the above. But for Perennialists, the “universalist” element is no less important than the “traditionalist” element. This is why Seyyed Hossein Nasr praises the Christian Hermeticists:

The work of Steuco De perenni philosophia was influenced by Ficino, Pico, and even Nicholas of Cusa, especially De pace fidei which speaks of harmony between various religions. . . . Following Gemisthus Plethon, the Byzantine philosopher, who wrote of this ancient wisdom and emphasized the role of Zoroaster as the master of this ancient knowledge of a sacred order, Ficino emphasized the significance of the Hermetic Corpus and the Chaldean Oracles which he considered to have been composed by Zoroaster as the origins of this primordial wisdom. . . . Ficino’s compatriot Pico della Mirandola was to add to the sources of the philosophia priscorium, the Quran, Islamic philosophy, and the Kabbala along with the non-Christian and especially Greco-Egyptian sources considered by Ficino, although he followed the perspective of Ficino and emphasized the idea of the continuity of a wisdom which is essentially one throughout various civilizations and periods of history.

To summarize: Morello’s heroes are men who supported the idea of the “harmony between various religions” and the idea that all wisdom is “essentially one throughout various civilizations and periods of history.”

Now, I’m not going to argue against this view here and now. I’ll simply point out that this is what Perennialism is. So, when Morello identifies (however loosely) with both Perennialism and Hermeticism, this is the tradition he’s tapping into.

Morello would probably deny being a true Perennialist. He will probably disavow their universalism, etc.

If that’s true, however, then it simply adds to the overall confusion of Morello’s project. Not only terms and concepts, but thinkers, movements, and periods of history are simply waved under the reader’s nose—and for what? If they hold any significance for Morello, he never really tells us. We have no idea what to take figuratively and what to take literally. We have no idea what to accept at face value and what to place in their historical context.

But maybe, as Morello suggests, this is actually my fault. Maybe I should have known that by “magic” he didn’t mean magic, by “Hermeticism” he didn’t mean Hermeticism, by “familiar” he didn’t mean familiar, by “egregore” he didn’t mean egregore, by “theurgy” he didn’t mean theurgy, by “Perennialism” he didn’t mean Perennialistm, etc.

If so, I sincerely apologize.

Even if all of that’s all true, however, I would still have to question the book’s merits. Morello himself may never cross the line from analogy to apostasy, his book blurs that line something awful, leaving the “uninitiated” reader helpless to discern orthodoxy from heterodoxy.

But long as we’re on the same page—as long as we all agree that Morello’s use of Hermetic terminology is just a game he likes to play, where he finds less precise terms from other religions and applies them to Christian ideas, like Disconnect the Dots, for reasons known only to himself—I’m happy to leave it there and wish Morello the best.