(priests exorcising a demon, from a bas-relief on a 7th century water jug)
E-mail question from a visitor to Supernatural World --
I am a person who has grown up with many of the ideals of the Catholic Church, so I can't help but have the impression that all connected to magic is wrong in a moral sense. In order to have a better grasp of magic, I, and I think many others who are either misinformed or uninformed about magic, need a factual explanation on the mechanics of magic. Is magic something more or less complex than praying to a deity and trying to fulfill their wishes in everyday life?
A large part of my thinking and writing about magic involves an effort to understand it as a unique human activity, and to explain the mechanism by which it operates. Most of us intuitively know what magic is, and how it differs from other disciplines such as science and religion, but magic is a surprisingly difficult concept to pin down with a brief definition.
Part of the confusion arises from the similarities that exist between magic and religion. Magic uses aspects of religious practice, and religion uses aspects of magical practice. Prayer is employed magically in religion to achieve desired goals, yet prayer and magic are not the same thing. I took the opportunity in my response to a woman with deep religious beliefs, who wrote to me asking how magic works, to attempt to differentiate between prayer and magic, and also to suggest very briefly how magic functions. The text below has been somewhat expanded from that of the original e-mail in an effort to clarify its message.
Magic is predicated on the assumption that there is a source of transformative power that can be accessed by human beings for their own purposes.
Most prayers are based on pretty much the same thing. In prayer, we ask for help, or for something to be done that we want to have happen. This presumes a source of power capable of causing change.
Yes, there are prayers of praise that don't ask for anything, but I suspect they are few in number in comparison with the prayers that ask for change. Even the prayers of adoration are often covert pleas for help, in that those who make them believe that by somehow getting on God's good side, they will be more likely to receive blessings in their lives.
A distinction between magic and a prayer is than magic is worked with the expectation of an effect, whereas a prayer is spoken in the hope of an effect. In magic, you are telling the universe what you want; in prayer you are asking the universe for something.
Most of the religious beliefs that magic is somehow evil arose because magic exists outside the bounds of religious control. The priests and bishops feared and hated this occult power that functioned independent of the approval of Christ and the angels, and independent of the acquiescence or condemnation of the priests themselves. The miraculous effects described so frequently in the Bible are obviously magical, but because they are done within the bounds of religion, they are never called magic. As one of the Brothers Grimm once wrote, magic is somebody else's religion (or words to the same effect). The operative mechanism underlying both magic and miracles is the same.
What is that mechanism of magic? To access this source of transformative power, it is necessary to alter ordinary human consciousness, even if only for an instant. That moment of change opens a gate to the Unmanifest that allows the power of magic to operate in the world. It is my personal view that the source of the power of magic is indistinguishable from God, and that when we alter our consciousness in working magic, we unite, however briefly, with the divine. Only God can work miracles -- therefore, to work miraculous effects by magic, we must become, for an instant at least, gods.
The method for opening this doorway to the Source of all power has taken countless forms. Ritual has proven effective. It encourages a change in consciousness by creating a limited environment that is unlike the common material universe in which we believe ourselves to dwell most of the time. When we draw a magic circle, we define the dimensions of this altered world, and when we work a ritual within the circle, we specify the nature of that smaller world's reality.
Ritual is a general tool, and for this reason can take countless forms, depending on need. For example, if there was a need to obtain the use of a car, one approach would be to draw a generic picture of a car, draw a figure driving it, and then write your own name on the side of the image. Cast a circle, speak a short declaration of your purpose, meditate for a time on your purpose (without being specific about the make of car, its year, or how it is to be obtained). Burn the image of the car and your name in a candle flame while focusing for a few moments your entire will and desire upon your purpose, and holding in your mind the certain knowledge that the figure in the car is you. Speak a short declaration that the purpose of the ritual has been achieved and will fulfill itself in its own time, then turn your mind completely away from the desire for a car, doing your best not to think about it at all, or to feel any emotion about it of any kind.
It would be even more effective if, during the brief channeling of your desire while the image is burning, you used emotional energy such as love or anger to empower your will. Other things can be used to add this power, and some of them such as erotic energy are in part responsible for the bad reputation that magic has attained. The emotional energy acts as a kind of engine that propels your willed desire through the gate to the Unmanifest. Thus, the form of the emotional energy is not important for the purposes of the ritual, only its strength. Some magicians have used highly questionable means to heighten their emotions at this critical moment, such as blood sacrifice, sexual climax, and so on. They are intent on the result of the ritual, not the means. As long as their means are not actively destructive or hurtful of others, the specific method they adopt is a matter of little importance.
Conscious intention has no productive effect in magic. It does not matter how determined in your mind you are to succeed, how long you brood about your magical desire, or how strongly you focus your thoughts. On the contrary, conscious consideration of the intended purpose of a magical operation, particularly after the ritual has been worked, actually hinders the fulfillment of the purpose. Magic requires that in some manner, the magical desire be transmitted from the conscious mind to the unconscious mind. This cannot be done by thoughts alone, because the unconscious does not use or recognize ideas that are expressed in rational language. To transmit the desire from the conscious awareness to the deeper levels of the mind requires the use of symbols.
Ritual provides a symbolic structure that channels the desire, borne on the wings of the will, so that it reaches its fulfillment. It also encourages a heightened and altered state of emotion, and provides a framework for habitual repetition that allows the ritual to penetrate from consciousness to the subconscious levels of the mind. Important elements, historically, have been prayer, chanting, song, music, dance, rhythmic movements, spinning, scents, colors, symbolic forms, costumes, gestures, postures, and so on. Not all these elements of ritual need be employed, but all have proven effective over the course of human history.
I should mention that there is often an overlap between magic and prayer. Pure magic does not ask for favors from anyone or anything -- it follows a structure of action with the assumption that there will be a successful outcome. However, this type of magic is rare. Often it is mixed with prayers to a higher being such as an angel or deity. Magic is pragmatic. The underlying assumption is that prayer cannot hurt the working of the ritual, and may help. It is this mixed type of magic that was so commonly used by the priests of the Christian churches, and it is still the most common type of magic worked today by magicians.
Prayers for help in specific matters are very natural, and in my view quite potent, especially when combined with a simple ritual structure and repeated daily. When the emotions are enflamed for a few brief moments during each voicing of the prayer, its message is more likely to pass through the hidden gateway to the source of divine power, and be effective. If a sacrifice of some sort is added, as is so often the case when Catholics pray to saints and offer to perform some act if their prayer is realized, it can be even more successful, because it becomes more powerful emotionally and psychically to the person voicing the prayer.
However, I did want to point out to you that in magic in its most primal form, prayer is not used, because nothing is asked for. The effectiveness of magic is assumed to be a natural consequence of its correct working. When we throw a ball, we do not pray that it will fall to earth, because it is the natural order of things that it will fall. In pure magic, when we work a ritual, we expect certain results to follow, although in practice those results are never predictable. We know a magic ritual, properly executed, will produce an effect tending to accomplish our desire, but we do not know and cannot predict exactly how that accomplishment of desire will express itself.
One of the reasons the priests on the early Christian Church had such antagonism toward magic is the Hermetic view that magic can control the gods. Since pure magic produces effects in the universe that are inevitable consequences of its working, and since the gods are assumed to be a part of the universe, even though on a higher plane of existence than that of humanity, they were held to be subject to the power of magic.
Donald Tyson