Today, not only have the origins of civilization changed beyond all recognition, but even the very word has begun to dissolve under a less Eurocentric analysis. Developments in geology, genetics, astronomy, archaeology and linguistics strain to breaking the underlying premises and assumptions of scientific materialism. The western esoteric tradition has the opportunity to (finally) do away with the High Victorian assumptions that constitute our understanding of the origins of magical culture and rebuild atop some much better data. The picture that emerges in doing so is stunning in its implications. This is not history. This is not archaeology. This is not folklore. This is a new skill. But it is also an old one. It is not the skill of organizing data points into a sequential historical narrative. It is the skill of context. Of recontextualising the Western magical tradition as it has arrived in our hands here in the twenty first century, rather than seeking to replace it wholesale with each new development, as if it were last year's smartphone.