I'm also very excited to see this coming together even though I am working through another book (Druid Magic Handbook in my case)!
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.
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timeasmymeasure
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.