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Magick: What's The Point?

a very good question. generally Magick (why the k - everyone knows the difference between stage illusions and 'real' magic!) could be anything supernatural - natural magick is meant to work by using the earth's magical field which is related to ley lines, black magic by conjuring demons/spirits and voodoo/healing magic by communing with the dead.

All of these can be summed up in this way: there are forces which normal people can't usually see or experience (let's call them supernatural forces); by a variety of methods (usually mental discipline, learning from other works/people and bodily purification or drug use) the mind can be altered to the extent where visualisation of magical or supernatural forces is possible; control of these forces is usually done through a medium - i.e. the magickian demands, entreats or otherwise arm-bends a goddess, nature spirit, soul or whoever is seemed most relevant to control the supernatural forces for the magickian.

Thus the unknown becomes known and this knowledge leads to control of both the external and internal world of the magickian.

or is that a load of BS?
 
I'd say magic is any process which allows you to tap into and shape energy reserves not usually available to the average bod on the street - be they your own hidden reserves, other people's, the Earths, or whatever happens to work for you.

On a deeper level (and probably rather iritatingly trite), I'd say magic is making connections between yourself and other.
 
Hi
What is Magick?

It's all over the place, in and through everything, it's what makes the World possible.
It's part of the weave of the fabric of reality.
It's what makes it possible for an acorn to contain all the necessary information to produce a mighty oak.
It's what attracts the oxygen and hydrogen atoms together to form water.

It's part of nature, something that we are all part of & can tune into.
We can't control it, but we can form a relationship with it by using our 'deep mind' and influence it gently to subtley have an effect on reality.

Wiccans use it for the good of all, some others don't - but then a gun in the wrong hands........

We know it exists, it's a tangible yet elusive force.

Perhaps it's a good thing that the main populous refuse to believe it exists or try to understand it.
What sort of World would we live in if everyone used it to achieve their petty materialistic pleasures?
A pretty mixed up one, I think.

BB
QS
 
It's what makes it possible for an acorn to contain all the necessary information to produce a mighty oak.
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It's what attracts the oxygen and hydrogen atoms together to form water.
Click to expand...

Oh come on! Neither of these processes have anything to do with Magick.

The fact is, we understand them because of science. And its because of science that we can manipulate the forces behind both these processes to affect the world, in a way which puts Magick very much in the shade.

If Magick is so potentially powerful, how come everytime a culture with technology comes up against a culture reliant on Magick, the result is always the same?

Technology 23 Magick 0
 
thought you couldn't resist!

Science is a way of explaining reality.
Magick is part of reality.
Science can't explain Magick.
Progress is not necessarily sympathetic to nature.
 
Progress is not necessarily sympathetic to nature.
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I'm not sure that means anything, and if it does, I don't see how it follows from your first three statements.

Science can't explain Magick.
Click to expand...

As Magick doesn't work, there is of course nothing to explain.

Assuming Magick does work, and co-exists with science, the question is why Magickians have never been able to convince scientists to try to expain it. Its not just about science being blinkered, its about the evidence not being there.

And even assuming that Magickians could, were they so minded (and its amazing how many spurious justifications for avoiding scientific testing some of them have!!) provide evidence, the whole point about science is that it would eventually be able to explain it; so even in the terms of your argument this should read;

'Science can't explain Magick yet.
 
Hello Wintermute, me old buddy.

Taking this very seriously aren't we?

You said "Assuming Magick does work, and co-exists with science, the question is why Magickians have never been able to convince scientists to try to expain it. Its not just about science being blinkered, its about the evidence not being there."

Well, Yeah.
a. Science can only deal with facts and proof, Magick can't be put in a test tube, have an electrical current passed through it or be subjected to spectographic analysis, so it's hardly surprising that science can't and will never be able to explain it.
b. What good would it do if science managed to do this? Magick would then become just another category and statistic, something else for the US government to add to their black projects.
c. Magick will only ever be real and exist for those people with a mind open enough to accept it. It's probably a good idea for those who don't to keep on thinking it doesn't exist.
d. Apart from some tingles in a monk's brain, religion has never been explained by science either. Does that not exist?

You said "I'm also interested in trying to divert people away from wasting their time on Magick,"

Tongue-in-cheek:I don't think people should buy and eat Marmite, it's digusting.
But I don't belittle the beliefs of those who DO buy and eat it.

You said "If Magick is so potentially powerful, how come everytime a culture with technology comes up against a culture reliant on Magick, the result is always the same?"

I said "Progress is not necessarily sympathetic to nature."
It's an answer, you see. If you need to me to explain it, it means that the progress that technology brings with it is useful, no doubt, but Nature provides us with valuable assets (including Magick).
Society is so distracted by materialism that no one stops to think about the more important things that Humanity has to offer.
What a waste.

Love n hugs
Quicksilver:)
 
magic and materialism

Quicksilver wrote:
"Society is so distracted by materialism that no one stops to think about the more important things that Humanity has to offer. "

Most of the magic texts and othe revidence surviving from the periods when everybody believed in it, *was* materialistic.
It's all curses, spells to influence the powerful, win at the races, bless the crops etc etc.

Back before Eastern dualism ruined our collective psyche, there was no matter-spirit divide. If you were materially successful, that meant the gods smiled on you, that you had a sort of spiritual power. e.g. Julian the Apostate, great exponent of Neoplatonism and old-style paganism, supposedly took out his wicked uncle Emperor Constantius using a sorcery and nobody thought him the worse for it (except for the Christians).

Maybe modern magic is about hugging trees and waving crystals to absorb negative energies. But old style magic, the stuff most people mean by the term, is supposed to actually do something tangible, even if the actual manifestation seems natural and non-magical.

"Magic" that doesn't really do something, that requires great spiritual expenditure with no expectation of useful results... isn't that "religion"?

(Or is "religion" just really ineffective "magic"?)

M
 
Some thoughts

Magick (however it's spelled:confused: ) has aways seemed to m to be another form of attempt to impose meaning on the world around you.

It seems to be living out life at a symbolic rather than literal level, in much the same way that poetry does. Something can have a symbolic truth and use that does not always tally with its literal truth. I suppose its a way of uncovering more information, opening out things to think about which previously would have remained closed, in a similar way to the exploration of dreams. For an understanding to be useful to the individual it does not neccessarily have to be empirically true. Magick in this sense seems to simply be another path to realising one's own potential by finding metaphors for the world that allow you to operate within to the best of your abilities.

Ritual has always seemed to me simply a way of 'getting outside yourself', getting past all of your doubts and worries about your own abilities. Obviously 'Magick' is only one of many ways of doing this fundamental human activity, the act of discovering your own powers.

Richard Cavendish in "The Black Arts" (Pan, London, 1972) quotes Crowley on ritual magic as saying

"The particular mental excitement required may even be aroused by the absurdity of the process and the persistence in it." p150

Magick just seems to be the use of a certain tool to find a comfortable relationship between the individual and the world on an individual basis. In its positioning of itself as one possble truth of many, which I think it does, it lays the world open to a variety of interpretations. It must be remembered that science is not without bias as to what it by concensus believes or disbelieves. If you don't acknowledge this check out "The Doctrine of DNA: Biology as Ideology" by R.C. Lewontin (Penguin, London, 1993)

Cavendish quotes Crowley again, writing of the various Spirits, Gods and conjurations at work in his writings.

"It is immaterial whether they exist or not. By doing certain things certain results follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them." p99

I also, by the way come from the Marxist school, and therefore think it is important to understand how all world views and 'truths' are constructed. Many things that are considered 'truths' are just as much created by how we look at things as 'beliefs' are.
 
...beg to differ

Mark wrote
"Magick (however it's spelled ) has aways seemed to m to be another form of attempt to impose meaning on the world around you. "

I must beg to differ. The above might be true now, but most historical and anthropological examples I've come across look like an attempt to do something practical. However, they do have a meaning-imposing side effect which probably explains their persistence (we're into mimetics here).

I'm curious though. I can quote lots of magic-as-technology examples. How about a concrete example of a magic-as-meaning-imposition? Then we can debate it properly.

Mark also wrote:
"In its positioning of itself as one possble truth of many, which I think it does, it lays the world open to a variety of interpretations. "

I've heard this sort of thing from postmodernists and other academic types and never quite been sure what they are talking about.

I mean, what do exactly do you mean by "truth"?

How can something be "true" if it doesn't work (e.g. see bullet holes in Native American ghost shirt recently returned by Glasgow Museums).

Do you mean "poetic truth"? Or do you really mean "world view"?

Are some truths more true than others? I think we should be told...

M
 
Naturally, there are many different types of truth.

For example, there's the truth of the law. If someone is convicted of a criminal offense it is considered considered to be 'true' to say that they did it, despite the numerous cases where a little extra evidence turned up and proved it to be 'false'.

There's mathematical truth. X=a, Y=a, therefore it is 'true' that X=Y. But then outside of Euclidean and Newtonian space it is possible for this to be false (e.g. in Quantum space, where X might be equal to or not equal to Y at the same time).

There is ultimate truth too, which we can never know, despite the fact that most relegions claim to do so.

My point is that there may be such a thing as absolute/ultimate truth, but it's impossible for us human beings to know it since we just aren't capable of recieving and processing the amount of information you'd need. We only see rough approximations of truth, a bit like Plato's Idea of a cow, and a real cow.

Ok, I'm not being particularly eloquent here, so maybe I'll dig out some of my old notes and quotes on the philosophy of truth if anyone wants to hear them. *snore*

:eek:
 
*real* magic is something, much like religious experience, which can only be described as 'true' to the expereincer(s). There is 'truth' in each person, it manifests itself as cognition, and whether or not it can be said to be 'true' about the external world is to a large degree, irrelevent.

Here's a bad example: A witchdoctor casts a spell on a man (or that man believes this to be the case). The man in question suffers some sort of mishap (his penis disappears, for example). The man therefore believes that the magic cast has worked and tells everyone about it. His belief translates to these other people and they then believe that the witchdoctor is a powerful magician.

This happens alot. Scientists and psychologists can argue from here to eternity about psychosomatic effects, hypnosis etc., but the fact remains that the people involved believed it happened, and their attitudes and behaviours change accordingly. If the magic is in the mind or in the physical world makes no bones, the fact that the witchdoctor will be revered and feared does.
 
Back before Eastern dualism ruined our collective psyche, there was no matter-spirit divide.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure that dualism was an essential spiritual idea long before we had writing, so I'm not sure what you are talking about here. There has always been a matter-spirit divide, the only reason we hear more about it now is that scientific advances have pushed God (and by association other 'spiritual' entities and effects)out of the physical and into a spiritual space by finding no evidence in the physical one. The dualism we are left with is Cartesian in nature and resolutely western in tradition.

Moving on to a point which doesn't follow from that at all, has anyone else ever tried to jump across a stream that is too wide to get over? Or, more importantly one that you believe is too wide for you to get over, although in fact it is not. Nine times out of ten, when I try and do this, I take a run at it and then bottle at the last second.

That is jumping, something that I have done often from an early age, where I know it is possible and regularly see myself and other people doing it.

If you have never done something before and you have never seen it done and you don't believe it possible, what are the chances of your being able to do it? Could this be why magic has so little physical effect these days- even the practitioners do not believe it can work?
 
I think I can see the problem here. It's a result of exaggeration down the ages, to present fairy tales and movie-magic. I'll think up a quick allegory:



Person A has been told all their life that Australia is a large island off the East coast of Britain, but doesn't believe it exists. Person B knows all about the real Australia.

Person A: so prove that Australia is a small island off the coast of Britain!

Person B: What? off Brit... no, it's not.

A: Ha! then Australia doesn't exist!

B: No, it does exist.

A: but you said it wasn't there!

B: it's not where you said, it's somewhere else, and it's a continent, not a small island.

A: If it's not where they say it is, it cant be the real Australia. You might call it Australia, but it's not really.



And so forth.

I subscribe to the "Psychological" reality of magick, although I also think that description belittles it a bit. I'd rather call it "using the mind and will to their best effect" whatever that may be. Who would want to go through life half asleep?
 
How can something be "true" if it doesn't work (e.g. see bullet holes in Native American ghost shirt recently returned by Glasgow Museums).
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How succinct and how true! Nice one!
 
Apart from some tingles in a monk's brain, religion has never been explained by science either.
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Thats true, but we're getting there. We understand a lot about the way in which religions manifest sociologically, we know enough about psychology to be able to work out some of the reasons why religious belief is attractive, and we're even beginning to understand, through the work of Persinger etc., some of the mechanisms which generate religious experience, to the extent that they can be recreated in the lab.

We know that there are certain constants in the trance states that form an important part of shamanistic religions, and we are beginning to understand why that is.

While I know some religious people find this threatening, as a vaguely religious person myself, I find it fascinating and wonderful. Just as the experience of a wood is intensified the more you know about the organisms and ecology that make it up, so the religious experience can only be enhanced the more knowledge of its causes and effects we have.
 
Magic[k] can't be scientificly codified much the same was as music can't. You can scientificly explain sound but not music, because music is a subjective thing where as science is objective.

So there!

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistingushable from magic" Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law.

Niles "Any sufficiently advanced magic is inditinguishable from technolgy, so there!*"

(*GURPS IOU)
 
Definitions

Reading back over this discussion, the problem seems to be one of definitions.

In common usage "Magic" refers to the stuff in fairy tales, occult horror movies and ancient and forbidden tomes. It does things, produces flash-bang-raise-the-dead results. I'll call this Gandolf/Merlin magic.

To modern (Western) magicians, "Magic" is (1) a kind of performance art/feng shu/spiritual yoga that does stuff, but only internally, or (2) a way of addressing cosmic powers (similar to prayer) that might or might not produce results in an indirect sort of way if it suits the said powers. Either way, it doesn't require objective proof because its effects are subjective.

So, in why term what modern magicians do, "magic"? Presumably because it sounds more impressive than "syncretic ritual meditation" or "prayer directed at obscure deities".

And why is the term "magic" impressive? Because of the traditional Gandolf/Merlin definition that it seeks to downplay.

This all seems horribly familiar.

"Science" is has a ring of respectability because, well, it usually works. For this reason, pseudosciences seek to borrow some of this respectability....

...new age healers award themselves doctorates and wear white coats, and talk in terms of energies and vibrations (instead of the sympathies and corrospondences, which would be more honest).

...Christian Scientists steal the term "Scientist" because it's much more impressive than "Christian Fuzzy Thinker". But it's impressive because it borrows the laurels of the very tradition that it opposes.

...Creation Science - SCIENCE? Need I say more.

Of course, you can use any term you want to describe an activity.

But it seems to me that modern Western magic isn't really "magic" in any meaningful way.

It does share the Gandolf/Merlin world view (what an earlier writer called a "truth") but it doesn't seek to do anything practical with it.

To be fair, this is probably because Gandolf/Merlin world view simply isn't true in the it-stops-bullets sense.

As somebody else pointed out, if it actually worked as described, then why aren't we ruled by Mage Lords?


Martin
 
WHY MAGICK DOESNT WORK - ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATIONS

I like these for their skewed elegance!

1) Magick does work, and much better than we suspect, we all have Magick powers, and we use them unconsciously all the time. However, because in Western consensus culture we strongly reject the idea that the occult has any foundation, we collectively use our Magickal powers to ensure that any Magickian's work fails whenever it seems about to upset the applecart. This is why people report success in occult practice, but this only ever works for sole practioners, or among tight-knit groups of believers, and never ends up with demonic servitors walking abroad in the shopping malls.

2) Magick does work, but its a case of 'those who know do not speak'. All those SHC's, bizarre sightings, assaults by invisible assailants etc, they're all the work of Magickians who've got enough on the go doing the business without having to take time out to argue in places like this, or write dodgy spell books. (I think John Keel suggested this first, but I'm not sure)
 
Nice one Wintermute

Re option #1: Tie sin with the way standard occult tomes send the magician to out of the way places to cast magic (e.g. Abramelin)

Re option #2: Would explain the top 10.
 
You know this old debate of science versus magic(k) is quite comical since science was invented by magicians.

Chemistry is a direct descendent of Alchemy, basing much of the early 'discoveries' on Alchemical 'spells', and the tradition didn't stop there the Benzene ring was 'discovered' in a dream - how vision questy do you want to get?

Physics is no better, the Greeks from Socrates and Aristotle were as interested in spirits as they were in science, they postulated that magnetism was caused by invisble spirits (geniuses?) that dragged iron toward lodestone (and vice versa). Newton famous for the apple on the head (gravitation) also did work on the spectrum of sunlight falling through a prism - this was Alchemical study, science would postulate then experiment in an attempt to disprove, not dangle crystals in a shaft of light. Sounds a bit new age to me...

In fact all science has its root in magic- it is magic, both are attempts to shift and control and understand the world around us by force of will and force of mind.

Modern science may have forgotten its roots (with a few exceptions) but fundamentally the reason that 'technology' always defeats magic is that it is older more powerful magic, longer refined and studied. Codified into a structure and taught universally rather than in an apprenticeship manner. No magic should be dismissed as a trick, there is still skill involved there.
 
Magic: It's Not Just What's In Your Hat

Magick is focusing will and effort to change things. Transforming the mage is key, and none of it contravenes physics in any way. In fact, belief in the supernatural is anathema to a mage's development. Affecting the world and bringing it closer to one's will is magic's purpose, but its goal is to transform the magician toward enlightenment.

Or so I was taught.
 
Re: Magic: It's Not Just What's In Your Hat

Originally posted by FraterLibre
... Affecting the world and bringing it closer to one's will is magic's purpose, but its goal is to transform the magician toward enlightenment.

Or so I was taught.
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I have never been "taught", but this has always been exactly how I believe magic(k) is. To me it is a very natural thing.

~ zw ~
 
ithaqua said:
You know this old debate of science versus magic(k) is quite comical since science was invented by magicians....

Newton famous for the apple on the head (gravitation) also did work on the spectrum of sunlight falling through a prism - this was Alchemical study
Click to expand...
No, no, no!

Newton was an alchemist (and into a lot of other things that today we might call Fortean), but his experiments in optics were perhaps the very foundation of modern experimental science.

Dangling crystals indeed! Wash your PC out with soap and water!
 
Different Fuctions Form to the Rear

Magic is a way of affecting the world.

Science is a way of interrogating the world.
 
And after the interogation has produced some answers, Science can affect the world too.

You're looking at an example right now - your PC - that is the end result of hundreds of years of scientific research. Of course, if you'd rather try scrying or some other magical process to access my profound thoughts on this and other matters, feel free!
 
Re: Different Fuctions Form to the Rear

FraterLibre said:
Magic is a way of affecting the world.

Science is a way of interrogating the world.
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Nice apophthegm, but we now know (through the scientific process) that you can't interrogate a system without affecting it.
 
Reducio As Conundrum

That's true, Heisenberg's such a pest these days, eh? lol

The error is in thinking observer and observed can in any meaningful sense be considered two distinct, separate things, which of course they cannot. We don't look AT the universe, but are a part of it.

All is One, No Separation, as the Zen say. It's that simple and that complex.

And yes, the implication then becomes that magic is science, and vice versa, which will greatly disappoint the cartoonish among us.
 
rynner said:
Dangling crystals indeed! Wash your PC out with soap and water!
Click to expand...

It is true that Newton entered the school of modern science around the time of this initial experiment. At the time he was simply trying to work out why his new telescope didn't work properly. Only when he progressed to thin film did he begin his true experimentation. The initial results were based on comparison with aristotlian results. Also Newton held off on the publication of the Study because for thirty years nobody could reproduce the effect anywhere in Europe, and most physicists considered the idea that white light was composed of component indivdual colours to be alchemical, because colours were thought to be modified forms of homogeneous white light. As in if you put stained glass infront of white light it becomes modified to that colour. Newtons idea that rather than changing the light it filtered all the other coloured light out was not considered scientific at the time.

I suppose you also believe that the 'Invisible College' was scientific in nature, where as most evidence points to it being a drinking club. Newton was less scientific than many of his contemporaries. Certainly less so than Hooke, and perhaps Boyle who also was an accomplished alchemist, but who challenged the Aristotelian, non-empirical approach to science. Converting many (Newton inclusive) to empirical evidence simply because it was at the time radical and unfashionable with the older physicists of the enlightenment.

You seem to have missed the point of my remark rynner, rather classically. It does not matter whether he used science or magic. They are two legs of the same trousers. Only a dedicated scientist or magician could be so enshrouded in their discipline to miss it. Or so assured of their belief not to do the true fortean questioning of themselves and what they believe.

Who cares why planes fly. It can't have anything to do with Bernoulli as planes can fly upside down, they still fly though don't they, and science was what got them up in the first place.
 
Getting Up

Minor quibble: Planes, when upside down, fall unless designed to be able to fly upside-down, such as modern fighter jets. The wing and in fact lifting-body shape of the fuselage must be such that it provides lift both rightside up and upside down or all the plane does is fall until righted.

Other than that, nicely done.
 
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