(Malayan exorcist with a chicken in his mouth, from Thurston's Omens and Superstitions of Southern India, 1912)
E-mail question from a visitor to Supernatural World --
I was writing in regard to spells. I was wondering do they really work? I'm not really into casting bad ones, but I am interested in influencing people in a positive way to better themselves and to help me in my career moves.
A very popular question from readers of my books and visitors to this Web site is, "Does magic really work?" I am asked this question in different ways regularly by letter, e-mail, telephone, and by those I meet.
It is impossible to answer without knowing the expectations of those who ask it. What do they mean by work? If they mean, can you mutter a few well-chosen words and rise up into the clouds on a Persian rug, or make a hand gesture or two and open a locked bank vault door, or stare hard at a very old parrot and restore the bird to youth, then the answer would be no, magic does not work. But if by work they mean, does magic accomplish significant results for others, does it cause important changes in one's own life, does it bring about startling effects of a tangible, measurable kind, then the answer would be yes, magic does indeed work.
When it comes to accepting the possibility of magic, more than half the battle is letting go of the childish preconceptions about this subject that have been drummed into our heads from early childhood. There is a great deal of truth in fairy tales and legends, but it is presented in a simplistic and materialistic manner. Real magic is more elusive.
Those who have grown up with this fairytale impression of magic want it to be either completely external and physical, or completely internal and imaginary. It is difficult to convey the possibility that magic lies somewhere between these extremes; that it exists both in the physical world and the world of the mind, and straddles the two worlds, uniting them into one seamless reality.
Thanks for writing. Magic works, but not always the way you hope or expect it to, and not always when you want it to work. It's impossible to pin down and predict. That's one of the things that makes magic different from a science such as mathematics. In math, 2 + 2 = 4, but in magic 2 + a - b X c = 4, and you can never predict what those variables are going to be. Often even the result is not quite what you expect, though you can usually recognize it as the solution to your problem. That is, it's 4 all right, but it might be (1 + 3), or (2 X 2), or (2 + 2), or any other possible combination of factors.
One of the aspects of magic that is not widely appreciated by those who have had limited experience with it is the human part of the equation. Magic does not operate in isolation. Its working is an interaction between the purpose of magic, the circumstances surrounding that purpose, the individual doing the magic, and even others who have no direct involvement with the magic, but merely know about it.
If you want a thing strongly, your emotions can actually prevent its achievement through magic. Desire can block the action of magic if you desire at the wrong time. During the actual working of the ritual -- what you might call the spell -- desire must be strong and focused, and must be expressed by words, symbols, and symbolic actions. But after the completion of the ritual, it is equally necessary to let go of this desire, to put the purpose of the ritual completely out of your mind and heart, almost to forget about it. In this way you release that ritual purpose into the greater world to find its fulfillment.
When others around you know that you intend to work magic for some reason or another, their thoughts and emotions can interfere with the fulfillment of your ritual purpose, or even completely frustrate it. In order for magical energy to be shaped and sent on its way, so to speak, it must be handled by a clear, precise mind that knows exactly what it wants without any doubt, fear or other negative feelings confusing the process. Others often treat magic as a joke, or sneer at it, or simply have in the back of their minds that it is impossible. When you tell such a person what you intend to do by magic, it is an almost certain way of insuring that your magic will fail. That is one of the reasons magicians in past centuries were so secretive.
Another way for a beginner to spoil the working of magic is to demand that it fulfill itself in a specific way. You might want a new car, and work magic to get it. If you set as your ritual purpose that you will obtain the use of a car that will serve your purposes in time to meet your needs, you are very likely to discover that a way has been opened for you to get the car. On the other hand, if you set as your ritual purpose that you want a brand new red Mustang in your driveway in exactly seven days time when you wake up in the morning, the magic is apt to fail, or to express itself in a distorted way -- for example, you might wake up on the day in question and find that a car catalog in a plastic wrapper, with a new red Mustang on its cover, has been left by the delivery boy in your driveway.
The presence of the catalog would show that your magic struggled to fulfill itself, but that your expectations were too narrow and rigid to allow its perfect expression, so it did the best it could.
You need to give magic room to breathe. One of the eternal truths about magic is that it cannot be predicted. Those who think they can make a ritual work exactly when they want and how they want time after time, with mechanical precision, are kidding themselves. There is nothing mechanical about magic -- it is a living, breathing entity that chooses its own path and seeks its own fulfillment. In ritual, all you can do is make very clear what you need to have happen -- then you must let magic find its own unique course to the fulfillment of your purpose.
Because so many people have false expectations of how magic is supposed to work, they are always disappointed, and end up dismissing magic as fake. There is not much I can say to these people. If you throw an apple into the air and expect it not to fall to the ground, you are likely to be disappointed. Similarly, if you expect magic to work as predictably and easily as turning the key to start your car, with the same results every time for little or no effort, you're expectations will not be met.
Magic requires practice and mental discipline. You have to know what you are doing, both in the external world and inwardly, by the controlled manipulations of your thoughts, imagination and emotions. A certain amount of technique is needed that is only acquired by long hours of training over months and years. You have to be able to both strongly want the fulfillment of your purpose, and at the same time, be able to completely put that desire out of you life as thought it were of no importance to you at all. Under these conditions, magic does work. But magic is never the easy solution to any problem, and those who work it with this expectation are foredoomed to failure.
Donald Tyson