What is Magic

[imrithril]

In the weekly Magic Monday posts on John Michael Greer's dreamwidth people often use the acronym TSW: This Shit Works! to describe the moment in which a new practitioner of magic suddenly experiences an event so obviously supernatural that they drop their wand in fright, 'Good heavens, I'm not just larping, this shit works!'

Me, I'm still larping a beginner. I can't say that I really understand what magic is, or even if it is. Same goes for God. But I'm open to learning.

So here's a post that I hope to come back to in a year or two. I'll cringe at my ignorance and say, 'Good gracious, what a fool I was, this is all wrong.'

So here I am: Dion Fortune said: I define magic as the art of causing changes to take place in consciousness in accordance with will. And Lionel Snell re-arranged all my categories by pointing out that this means advertising is a form of magic. If your a/b testing shows that a certain colour on your website drives up sales by 40% then you've performed magic. It's not exactly supernatural, but it's a good hard example of changing consciousness in accordance with will - in this case it's other people's consciousness and your will, and the ethics of that are up for debate.
I'm still fuzzy about how performing magic rituals in your bedroom actually makes real world changes out there - but it's easy to see how it can make real world changes in here, which is to say, I can understand magic as a sort of psychology and magical practise as a sort of combination self-therapy and spirituality. How 'real' it is, I don't know. I don't think I'd do very well in a philosophy debate where I had to begin with a definition of real.

I do know that years of reading sound scientifically based self-help books have not really assisted me in becoming a better person, and I'm hoping that with an older, time-tested practise I might do better. And hey, if I don't, at least magic has a superior aesthetic and has introduced me to some nice incense.

Comments

[open_space]

Hi Imrithril,

I enjoyed reading your post, thank you! I agree with you that reading books on self-help can have little thrust. What I found out personally is that most self-help books are about the author showing off their success rather than trying to get something across, something like watching a tenis match instead of learning how to smash a ball with spin across a net an into a corner of the court. Magic is not like that —though the ascetic is seriously superior. To me Magic changes you from within and it is not about thinking about how you are going to incorporate this or that ideology, you just do it and you find yourself doing and thinking different things and suddenly you are in a completely different place instead of wading in the mud of our limitations.

[imrithril]

Magic changes you from within

Yes, that's such a good point. My experience of self-help stuff was that I really enjoyed the insightful feeling of understanding my problems and yet could never overcome the resistance to doing something about them.
With magic it's the opposite. I understand nothing, and the effects occur anyway! :D

[prayergardens]

Don't underestimate the incense! :)

[imrithril]

I know, right? The shoyeido stuff is great!