“Magic and religion are co-terminous . . . in any given society. Both generate power. Wrongly directed, by any given convention, that power is Black Magic. Black magic, and dabbling in it, seeking to gain and not to give, to achieve and not to contribute, is what the addicts know as the Left-hand Path. They claim that it is very powerful, and (with the aid of the drugs and practices it imposes) practitioners indeed often end up out of their minds.”

—Pennethorne Hughes, from Witchcraft, 1952.