Towards an Understanding of Magic
Aug. 25th, 2021 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gullindaganIn order to become a Magician, one must at least try to understand what "magic" is. We are not making up "magic" out of whole cloth, but are given a tapestry woven by those Weird Sisters with which we might decipher, and learn, what "magic" means. "Meaning" itself is a tapestry, and is part of the tapestry; nothing means anything outside of it's relationship to everything else, at least, nothing meaningful . So we look to what has come before to understand the present and the future, and pull at golden threads till the treasure is revealed. Let's look at some definitions.
John Michael Greer often recites the definition given by Dion Fortune when asked what magic is. "Magic is the art and science of causing change in consciousness in accordance with the will." This is a riff on the definition of magic given by her elder contemporary, Aleister Crowley: " Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will"... as you can plainly see, Fortune altered her definition to emphasize that part about it changing "consciousness" in accordance with will. This makes it a little more specific than Crowley's definition, but it also makes it more accessible to a modern, materialistic, post-Freudian society while also keeping the back door open to Mystery. Yes, the mass psychological spells of advertising and propaganda are magic. So is psychotherapy! And New Thought! Since your subjective experience of the world is malleable, by changing your consciousness, you can literally change your life!
But, if everything is Consciousness, as many sages say, then what can't magic do?
Edred Thorsson/Stephen Flowers, in his book ALU: An Advanced Guide to Operative Runology defines magic as "a technique by which the human being is able, by the power of volition expressed through symbols, to influence events in subjective and/or objective reality." Now Thorsson/Flowers is known mainly for his work with Runes, which is a magical language; they are symbols used to express the will of the Magician, thus affecting the change. So he's a bit focused on the symbolic side. Isn't there more to magic than manipulating symbols?
Let's look at the main toolkit of the Golden Dawn magician: rituals. These also are constructed from symbols. The pentagrams, the divine names, the movements, all of these have meaning and that's the point. By repeating these rituals, you empower them with meaning, and you start affecting consciousness. Here it might be useful to remember a famous phrase from the psychoanalyst Jacque Lacan "The unconscious is structured like a language" Hmmm...
This still, seems rather limiting. Isn't there anything outside of language/symbols/meaning? Sure, lots. But how can you make sense of or describe "it"? In one way, this is what I see as the goal of the true Magician. To master their own consciousness, and to transcend it, or as JMG might say, to build the Mental body. The Spiritual realm is higher than the Mind realm though, and by connecting with the Divine, through symbols, one can connect to currents of power that are much farther beyond the human ken.
Most of the time, magic is about changing things in the world, look at all the folk magic traditions. Getting a lover, getting a job, healing illness, etc... In common terms, magic is about power. This is why the powerless look to magic, and why the powerful have their own kind to keep them in power. But power is worse than useless without wisdom. Without wisdom, power can actually be quite dangerous. Magic can rebound in unanticipated ways, can send the magician into spirals of malaise, can lead the one who wants to become more powerful into becoming a slave; to malicious spirits, to their own fears and desires, or to ignorance and senility. Good thing that because magic is an art and science that takes discipline to master it can be rather hard to wield magic effectively without wisdom. You must master "concentration, visualization, and memorization" as Thorsson/Flowers writes in his book Icelandic Magic: Practical Secrets of the Northern Grimoires. There are those though with inborn gifts, but I have heard as many stories of these souls burning out as becoming great Magicians.
This is why initiation is essential. Initiation aligns the magician with the divine forces of order in the universe, and helps the aspirant become more divine themselves. As Thorsson/Flowers says in Icelandic Magic, "Most of magical effort should be spent in gaining knowledge, wisdom and self-transformation. Most of your woes will be healed when this process is successful." This is something that I have found to be very true. Often times, just by focusing on my own transformation, the problems I have in the world take care of themselves. This is different than the "spiritual bypassing" that one sees so often in spiritual circles, where people escape the problems in their lives by chanting mantras or practicing mind-numbing kinds of meditation, or doing lots and lots of ayahuasca. In self-transformation you must confront your problems head on as part of your process of initiation. Often this can happen by such mundane pursuits as journaling, inquiring into your motivations, intentions, and trauma, or just feeling the feelings that come up and acknowledging them. This can also take the form of spiritual retreats, theurgic ritual, meditation, and scrying. But by developing these skills: of discipline, concentration, visualization, and self-knowledge, the problems of the world become much easier to deal with.
Of course, there may be still things that require magical action to affect. And by using that power, initiation is also furthered.
What does magic mean to you?
John Michael Greer often recites the definition given by Dion Fortune when asked what magic is. "Magic is the art and science of causing change in consciousness in accordance with the will." This is a riff on the definition of magic given by her elder contemporary, Aleister Crowley: " Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will"... as you can plainly see, Fortune altered her definition to emphasize that part about it changing "consciousness" in accordance with will. This makes it a little more specific than Crowley's definition, but it also makes it more accessible to a modern, materialistic, post-Freudian society while also keeping the back door open to Mystery. Yes, the mass psychological spells of advertising and propaganda are magic. So is psychotherapy! And New Thought! Since your subjective experience of the world is malleable, by changing your consciousness, you can literally change your life!
But, if everything is Consciousness, as many sages say, then what can't magic do?
Edred Thorsson/Stephen Flowers, in his book ALU: An Advanced Guide to Operative Runology defines magic as "a technique by which the human being is able, by the power of volition expressed through symbols, to influence events in subjective and/or objective reality." Now Thorsson/Flowers is known mainly for his work with Runes, which is a magical language; they are symbols used to express the will of the Magician, thus affecting the change. So he's a bit focused on the symbolic side. Isn't there more to magic than manipulating symbols?
Let's look at the main toolkit of the Golden Dawn magician: rituals. These also are constructed from symbols. The pentagrams, the divine names, the movements, all of these have meaning and that's the point. By repeating these rituals, you empower them with meaning, and you start affecting consciousness. Here it might be useful to remember a famous phrase from the psychoanalyst Jacque Lacan "The unconscious is structured like a language" Hmmm...
This still, seems rather limiting. Isn't there anything outside of language/symbols/meaning? Sure, lots. But how can you make sense of or describe "it"? In one way, this is what I see as the goal of the true Magician. To master their own consciousness, and to transcend it, or as JMG might say, to build the Mental body. The Spiritual realm is higher than the Mind realm though, and by connecting with the Divine, through symbols, one can connect to currents of power that are much farther beyond the human ken.
Most of the time, magic is about changing things in the world, look at all the folk magic traditions. Getting a lover, getting a job, healing illness, etc... In common terms, magic is about power. This is why the powerless look to magic, and why the powerful have their own kind to keep them in power. But power is worse than useless without wisdom. Without wisdom, power can actually be quite dangerous. Magic can rebound in unanticipated ways, can send the magician into spirals of malaise, can lead the one who wants to become more powerful into becoming a slave; to malicious spirits, to their own fears and desires, or to ignorance and senility. Good thing that because magic is an art and science that takes discipline to master it can be rather hard to wield magic effectively without wisdom. You must master "concentration, visualization, and memorization" as Thorsson/Flowers writes in his book Icelandic Magic: Practical Secrets of the Northern Grimoires. There are those though with inborn gifts, but I have heard as many stories of these souls burning out as becoming great Magicians.
This is why initiation is essential. Initiation aligns the magician with the divine forces of order in the universe, and helps the aspirant become more divine themselves. As Thorsson/Flowers says in Icelandic Magic, "Most of magical effort should be spent in gaining knowledge, wisdom and self-transformation. Most of your woes will be healed when this process is successful." This is something that I have found to be very true. Often times, just by focusing on my own transformation, the problems I have in the world take care of themselves. This is different than the "spiritual bypassing" that one sees so often in spiritual circles, where people escape the problems in their lives by chanting mantras or practicing mind-numbing kinds of meditation, or doing lots and lots of ayahuasca. In self-transformation you must confront your problems head on as part of your process of initiation. Often this can happen by such mundane pursuits as journaling, inquiring into your motivations, intentions, and trauma, or just feeling the feelings that come up and acknowledging them. This can also take the form of spiritual retreats, theurgic ritual, meditation, and scrying. But by developing these skills: of discipline, concentration, visualization, and self-knowledge, the problems of the world become much easier to deal with.
Of course, there may be still things that require magical action to affect. And by using that power, initiation is also furthered.
What does magic mean to you?
no subject
Date: 2021-08-25 08:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-25 08:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-26 02:27 am (UTC)I'm afraid I don't have much more to add to the discussion since most of my thinking on magic has been drawn from/influenced by the same set of sources. One thing I might add, though, is less "definitional" and more descriptive: from my own limited experience and slightly less limited reading, it seems that magic is highly empirical.
That is to say in the sense of "empirical" as contrasted with "theoretical". There's lots and lots of stuff in magic where the only reason teachers can give for doing it one way versus another is "because it works this way and not when you change it", rather than "well, because the X interacts with the Y resulting in a Z, which causes the effect you're looking for".
I believe this is significant because the modern worldview is pretty deeply entrenched in faith in theoretical approaches and skepticism of empirical. The classic example is, of course, Ignaz Semmelweis, who observed that midwives who washed their hands before delivering babies had fewer stillborns than doctors who did not. Without a germ theory of disease, theory-based rational doctors rejected these observations and refused to take action. I believe that the same deep rooted difficulty with accepting things that you can't break down and explain bit by bit drives a lot of rejection of magical practices and also makes it hard for those of us raised accepting the dominant paradigm to work out exactly what to do to cause changes in consciousness in accordance with will.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-26 02:05 pm (UTC)Indefinability
Date: 2021-08-27 03:37 pm (UTC)That said, the basic idea was already present in some of Crowley writings, so the atheopaganism and Chaos Magick would almost certainly have arisen with or without Fortune's influence.
Ultimately I think that the term "magic" is like "supernatural": it's impossible to pin it down without reference to some metaphysical framework. For example, within Christianity, the distinction between the supernatural and the natural is explicit and clear, but from other perspectives the spiritual world is just as much, if not more, a part of Nature as the physical.
Likewise, in a framework such as the Golden Dawn that traces out the flow of manifestation/creation through the planes, magic can perhaps be defined as causing changes on the higher planes that then flow into the lower. But outside that framework, it could take any number of forms.
The core intuition, if there is one, is that magic uses some sort of non-physical forces or forces to cause change. Even that's debatable — JMG has suggested multiple times that science and technology are the magic of the physical world. And probably we could come up with some use of non-physical forces that doesn't count as magic.
Re: Indefinability
Date: 2021-08-27 04:21 pm (UTC)"Magic uses some sort of non-physical forces or forces to cause change."
Right, but is thought physical? Meaning? Whether or not we posit or experience levels above thought and meaning, we are already in murky waters.
Re: Indefinability
Date: 2021-08-27 08:18 pm (UTC)This leads to the awkward implication that eliminative materialists believe that there are no beliefs!
Re: Indefinability
Date: 2021-08-27 08:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-10 06:04 am (UTC)That's one way to look at it. Another is that repeating the rituals brings you into alignment with their current, which then allows you to channel their power.
Really excited about this project.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-10 04:34 pm (UTC)