{"id":3500,"date":"2010-04-01T01:10:26","date_gmt":"2010-04-01T06:10:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paganpages.org\/content\/?p=3559"},"modified":"2010-03-23T11:37:11","modified_gmt":"2010-03-23T16:37:11","slug":"pagan-theology-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/2010\/04\/01\/pagan-theology-17\/","title":{"rendered":"Pagan Theology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pagan theology: You are it<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Off and on over the last few columns I have been talking about various ways of explaining magic.\u00a0 I divided the ways of talking about how magic \u201cworks\u201d into three broad categories:\u00a0 systematic, individual, and theistic.\u00a0 In previous columns I covered a variety of systematic explanations, all of which essentially use a set of rules to explain magical effects through some sort of cause and effect relationship.\u00a0 Systematic explanations say \u201cyou do this, the effect will occur.\u201d\u00a0 These systems can range from scientific to just plain made up.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now I\u2019d like to talk about individualistic explanations for magical effects.\u00a0 Here, instead of a \u201csystem\u201d or set of rules and laws that explain magic, it is the individual will that creates magic in the world.\u00a0 Systems can be used to frame and shape that individual \u201cpower\u201d but the power ultimately derives from the individual and not the system itself.\u00a0 An analog to this dichotomy would be the difference between physics and the social sciences.\u00a0 In physics there are a set of (Newtonian) laws that objects follow independent of who, or whether anyone, is around [1].\u00a0 Sort of a Platonic ideal of how the universe might work.\u00a0 These would be equivalent to the magical systems and Grimoires that instruct you on a set of procedures to follow in order to accomplish magic.\u00a0 At the same time psychology and social sciences attempt to explain individual and collective behavior that involve (relatively) subjective and malleable observations.\u00a0 Psychologists and behaviorists can talk about the probability that you will do something, but cannot in general guarantee it.\u00a0 This would be the equivalent of an individual approach to magic:\u00a0 the burden is on you to make it happen, or not.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most \u201csystems\u201d tend to say something about individual focus and power, and in fact many systems are designed to help the individual enter a magical mind state so the magic can happen.\u00a0 Even the purely scientific explanations, such as quantum effects or manipulating probabilities, link to the individual practitioner as something has to get busy affecting probable whosits and quantum whatnots in order to make the magic happen.\u00a0 However in untangling all these interrelationships it is important to understand exactly what it is we\u2019re after:\u00a0 why magic works.\u00a0\u00a0 Thus we\u2019re asking what comes first: the system, or the individual.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the case of individualistic explanations, the individual practitioner comes first. <\/span><\/p>\n

The purest form of individual magic involves psychic effects, such as precognition, psychokinesis, and telepathy [2].\u00a0 Ignoring parapsychologist\u2019s attempts to embed these effects into a scientific framework, which has not worked well so far, the fundamental idea of all the various psychic phenomena is that there is something within you that you control and manifest in order to have an effect in the world.\u00a0 This is often characterized as \u201cenergy\u201d or some sort of fooling around with quantum or unknown physical principles.\u00a0 However this, again, puts you into a scientific framework as an attempt at explaining what is happening.<\/span><\/p>\n

Crowley has a very thoughtful and interesting discussion about the relationship between the practitioner, their will, and the magical link between microcosim and macrocosim [3].\u00a0 Crowley defines \u201cMagical Operation\u201d as \u201cany event in Nature which is brought to pass by Will.\u201d\u00a0 Of course he himself admits this covers everything from \u201cpotato-growing to banking\u201d in addition to its more magical sense.\u00a0 Less famously, but more importantly, Crowley goes on to say much of the responsibility for magical operations lay on the individual, as opposed to relying on the \u201calmighty power of God\u201d or ritual practice alone:\u00a0 \u201cThe universe is a projection of ourselves; an image as unreal as that of our faces in a mirror, yet, like that face, the necessary form of expression thereof, not to be altered save as we alter ourselves.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

So, for Crowley (and many others), there is an intertwining between the macrocosim\/microcosim structure of magical effects and the individual.\u00a0 By changing ourselves, we change the world.\u00a0 At the same time the idea of an event \u201cin Nature\u201d being cause by will implies for Crowley that the event is really in nature and thus dependent to some extent on nature.\u00a0 \u201cThe distance of one\u2019s Magical target and the accuracy of one\u2019s Magical rifle are factors in the success of one\u2019s Magical shooting in just the same way as at Bisley.\u201d\u00a0 In other words, you cannot create something out of nothing, and what you are trying has to be in some ways possible.<\/span><\/p>\n

This concept if often reflected in the less sophisticated characterization of magic (or prayer) as requiring active participation in order for it to succeed.\u00a0 If, for example, you wish for a million dollars, it is very unlikely to happen to you if you sit on the couch for the rest of time watching Gossip Girls [4].\u00a0 This \u201cget out there and make it happen\u201d is both logical: it probably won\u2019t happen unless you do something; and subtly motivational: sort of a polite way for the HPS to tell the coven members that they actually would be better off if they did something useful and productive. <\/span><\/p>\n

However there are a couple of more subtle interpretations of this concept that I believe begin to get at the central core of why magic is an important way of both being in and understanding the world. The first interpretation is that magic is a way of spiritual progress.\u00a0 In other words you practice magic so as to progress spiritually to greater and greater accomplishments.\u00a0 This you ultimately manifest in the world through changes in your understanding, behavior, and influence of those around you.\u00a0 You become your own magic and in perfecting yourself change the world [5]. <\/span><\/p>\n

This concept can be interpreted either as self-referential, or world-referential.\u00a0 In the self-referential interpretation you are practicing magic in order to change yourself and gain spiritual insight.\u00a0 Any changes in the world are secondary and only a by-product of your ever-closer approach to the Gods and Goddesses.\u00a0 This is both a theistic interpretation of magic, in the sense that magic brings you closer to the divine, but it also retains an emphasis on the individual, as you are the one approaching the divine.\u00a0 The world-referential interpretation is a bit trickier, here your inner change manifests in changes in your behavior and that in turn results in changes in the world.\u00a0 This is more or less \u201cself improvement by magic.\u201d\u00a0 By performing ritual, ritual that leads to being touched by both magic and the deity, you become more mature, capable, and self-aware in the world.\u00a0 How you behave in the world begets results in the world.\u00a0 Obviously this works better if you\u2019re doing magic to seek a love interest rather than a rainstorm, and is more or less an extension of the \u201cget out there and make it happen\u201d school of thought.<\/span><\/p>\n

The second way to interpret the idea of individual will as the precursor or foundation for magical action is essentially Jungian.\u00a0 For Jung\u00a0 the idea of \u201csynchronicity\u201d opened up a different way of interpreting reality [6].\u00a0 Typically we interpret the world through a causal model.\u00a0 If I do this, then this will happen.\u00a0 Chance, among other things, is created from the idea that even rare events actually do occur in the universe, and even a very improbable sequence of events will likely occur if the underlying set of possible events is large enough.\u00a0 To borrow an example from Jung, seeing pictures fish, hearing the word \u201cfish\u201d, and seeing a fish on a seawall all within the space of a day are a remarkable coincidence [7].<\/span><\/p>\n

Assuming nothing fishy (!) was going on there was not link between the different, seemingly happenstance, sightings.\u00a0 So the \u201clinks\u201d between the events are not causal in the normal sense of causation.\u00a0 Instead the link between all the various fish symbols occurs inside you.\u00a0 You and your interpretation, or the meaning you give them, are what link the non-causal events.\u00a0 This linkage through meaning is effectively what Jung was talking about when he described synchronicity [8]: <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCausality is the way we explain the link between two successive events, Synchronicity designates the parallelism of time and meaning between psychic and psychophysical events, which so far science has been unable to reduce to a common principle.\u00a0 The term explains nothing, it simply formulates the occurrence of meaningful coincidences which, in themselves, are chance happenings but are so improbably that we must assume them to be based on some kind of principle or some property of the empirical world.\u00a0 No reciprocal causal connection can be shown to obtain between parallel events, which is just what gives them their chance character.\u00a0 The only recognizable and demonstrable link between them is a common meaning, or equivalence.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

So in magical practice something else is happening that is not related to the typical \u201cI do this, that happens\u201d framework that we are all used to.\u00a0 The magician, and those affected by his magic, are using an alternative framework that replaces causation with meaning as the \u201cglue\u201d that holds the world together.\u00a0 Magic forms a separate network of meanings that is woven across events and objects in the world but is separate from our physical, scientific, understanding of the universe.\u00a0 Without us to give the web of magic meaning there would be no magic.\u00a0 Creating magic in the world is a uniquely human activity, one that arises out of our ability to give meaning to the universe. <\/span><\/p>\n

This introduces the interesting concept that magic happens neither exclusively inside us, nor exclusively in the world.\u00a0 It happens between the magician and the world, in a place that literary critics call L\u2019Entre-deux<\/em> [9].\u00a0\u00a0 This presents us with some real advantages as we work to understand what magic is based on.\u00a0 First synchronicity, and L\u2019Entre-deux, <\/em> are not predicated on a scientific worldview, so we don\u2019t draw in skeptics or get into arguments with (stage) magicians and scientists, And it also allows us to separate the religious aspect of magic and its practical aspect.\u00a0 In other words we don\u2019t have to rely on deistic intervention to justify magical workings.\u00a0 Finally it creates a magical space, a place that is here, but not here.\u00a0 A meaningful place in the world.\u00a0 Say, like a sacred space, or a natural wonder, or an experience of deity.\u00a0 A meaningful place that is not predicated on divinity or divine intervention for its creation. Which goes well with our placing the Gods and Goddess in this world instead of a different one. <\/span><\/p>\n

It now becomes important to note what I am not talking about here. I am not talking about some exclusively narcissistic view of magical working where the goal is entirely focused on the self and does not have any influence or interaction in the world.\u00a0 This is not a necessary requirement for us to still be separated from the howling critics of science and debunkers.\u00a0 We can still be connected and interrelated with the world, but we must borrow Jung\u2019s concept of a non-causal relationship between magical actions and results. <\/span><\/p>\n

At the same time I am not talking about abandoning the ability of magic to work in the world.\u00a0 A very plausible argument would be that magic happens within the magician by affecting the magician\u2019s perception of cause and effect creating a synchronous state between their actions and effects.\u00a0 This makes it very tidy since nothing magical slops out into the world, and into the viewfinders of the scientists and stage magicians.\u00a0 But that is not what I am arguing here.\u00a0 I believe it is possible for the actions of the individual magician to expand beyond his immediate mental state, in the same way that telling a story expands the author\u2019s world beyond their own inner mental state. <\/span><\/p>\n

I believe we are now getting somewhere in our discussion of magic.\u00a0 The individual is an inherent part of magic.\u00a0 Magic is a human endeavor prosecuted by people.\u00a0 Without the magician, magic will not happen.\u00a0 Thus magic is tied to the will and desires of the worker.\u00a0 But magic also opens up the space between the individual and the world, the same space opened up by story, art, and, dare I say, imagination.\u00a0 These exist both in the world, and within us [10].\u00a0 The magical art exists in this same space between us and the world.\u00a0 We call this space by a lot of names:\u00a0 \u201cbetween the worlds,\u201d \u201cthe astral plane,\u201d or \u201cfifth dimension.\u201d\u00a0 It is the very human process of giving the world meaning, of finding relationships in the world that really matter to us.\u00a0 That makes magic a very fundamental and powerful tool for how we as Pagans work with the world. <\/span><\/p>\n

[1] Sure, you\u2019re going to jump on me about quantum effects and observational collapse of probabilities.\u00a0 The only major problem you have is in fact observational:\u00a0 for the most part these effects don\u2019t matter in explaining day to day phenomena like birds, kites, and pirates.\u00a0 Unless you\u2019re doing quantum cryptography or light scattering.\u00a0 In which case I give it to you. <\/span><\/p>\n

[2] I really don\u2019t have much of an opinion on the subject of psychic effects.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure they exist for those involved, however there is a mighty crew of scientists and stage magicians who would strongly differ.\u00a0 Since I believe that applying scientific criteria, either as an explanation or as a justification, for magic is fatally flawed, I\u2019d have to say that parapsychology is also flawed.\u00a0 Its flawed because it seeks to understand the \u201cmagical\u201d effects using a scientific approach.\u00a0 I claim you cannot understand \u201cmagic\u201d with science.\u00a0 And, if they actually are doing science then they have failed (for now) because science depends on peer review and consensus.\u00a0 For me this whole discussion is about religion, not science. <\/span><\/p>\n

[3] Alister Crowley.\u00a0 Magic in Theory and Practice, Castle Books, New York, undated, chapter XIV.\u00a0 Crowley says a lot in this chapter, I\u2019m choosing just a couple of quotes to integrate it with what I\u2019m talking about.\u00a0 One fundamental idea is that the microcosim, or what happens under control of the magician, is in turn reflected in the macrocosim or real world.\u00a0 Another way of saying this is the Hermetic expression \u201cas above, so below.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

[4] I believe this can be demonstrated by examining the number of teenage girl millionaires compared to the popularity of Gossip Girls, but I digress.<\/span><\/p>\n

[5]\u00a0 This is also known as theurgy. <\/span><\/p>\n

[6] While it\u2019s no surprise to bring in Jung, I\u2019m not bringing in his whole worldview, rather the specific idea of synchronicity and its\u2019 placing the individual\u2019s interpretation of events at the center.<\/span><\/p>\n

[7] Except for the fact they are drawn from a space where you could have seen a bear, frog, apple, or any number of other objects in sequence, but you simply either were presented with the image of the fish, or chose to notice the sequence this time you saw it. I am not entirely convinced of Jung\u2019s characterization of \u201cprobable\u201d and \u201cimprobable\u201d as these are subjective measures.\u00a0 Every random or pseudo-random event will have a likelihood of occurring, so nothing, in theory is \u201cimprobable.\u201d\u00a0 Some things have a low probability but then you have to consider your sample space which for Jung\u2019s examples is large.\u00a0 But I digress. <\/span><\/p>\n

[8] Carl Jung, \u201cOn Synchronicity\u201d in the Portable Jung<\/em>, Viking, 1971.\u00a0 In his essay Jung brings in all kinds of stuff about PSI, precognition, and whatnot.\u00a0 I do not believe these are necessary or interesting.\u00a0 In fact I think they weaken his argument which has an essential simplicity and, dare I say, postmodern subjectivism about it in the sense that assigning meaning to events places our understanding in a very subjective and personal place.\u00a0 This is quite different than the objectivist, consensus based, approach inherent in modernism and science. <\/span><\/p>\n

[9] Readers, viewers, or others enter L\u2019Entre-deux<\/em> when they find themselves lost in the story, even temporarily.\u00a0 While they fully realize that they are sitting in a chair or theater, they are suddenly so overcome with the reality of what they are experiencing that everything else is momentarily lost.\u00a0 This is related to Coleridge\u2019s concept of \u201csuspension of disbelief,\u201d but that is another story (so to speak).\u00a0 See, for example, Noelle Batt,\u00a0 \u201c\u2019L’Entre-deux,\u2019 A Bridging Concept for Literature, Philosophy, and Science,\u201d SubStance<\/em>, 23:2:74, (1994), pp. 38-48<\/span><\/p>\n

[10] Note we can do a bit of causal reasoning here:\u00a0 we are in the world, the world is, obviously, in the world, and so the space that we open is also in the world, even though it does not manifest in the same way that the natural world does.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pagan theology: You are it Off and on over the last few columns I have been talking about various ways of explaining magic.\u00a0 I divided the ways of talking about how magic \u201cworks\u201d into three broad categories:\u00a0 systematic, individual, and theistic.\u00a0 In previous columns I covered a variety of systematic explanations, all of which essentially use a set of rules to explain magical effects through some sort of cause and effect relationship.\u00a0 Systematic explanations say \u201cyou do this, the effect will occur.\u201d\u00a0 These systems can range from scientific to just plain made up. Now I\u2019d like to talk about individualistic explanations for magical effects.\u00a0 Here, instead of a \u201csystem\u201d or set of rules and laws that explain magic, it is the individual will that creates magic in the world.\u00a0 Systems can be used to frame and shape that individual \u201cpower\u201d but the power ultimately derives from the individual and not the system itself.\u00a0 An analog to this dichotomy would be the difference between physics and the social sciences.\u00a0 In physics there are a set of (Newtonian) laws that objects follow independent of who, or whether anyone, is around [1].\u00a0 Sort of a Platonic ideal of how the universe might work.\u00a0 These would be equivalent to the magical systems and Grimoires that instruct you on a set of procedures to follow in order to accomplish magic.\u00a0 At the same time psychology and social sciences attempt to explain individual and collective behavior that involve (relatively) subjective and malleable observations.\u00a0 Psychologists and behaviorists can talk about the probability that you will do something, but cannot in general guarantee it.\u00a0 This would be the equivalent of an individual approach to magic:\u00a0 the burden is on you to make it happen, or not. Most \u201csystems\u201d tend to say something about individual focus and power, and in fact many systems are designed to help the individual enter a magical mind state so the magic can happen.\u00a0 Even the purely scientific explanations, such as quantum effects or manipulating probabilities, link to the individual practitioner as something has to get busy affecting probable whosits and quantum whatnots in order to make the magic happen.\u00a0 However in untangling all these interrelationships it is important to understand exactly what it is we\u2019re after:\u00a0 why magic works.\u00a0\u00a0 Thus we\u2019re asking what comes first: the system, or the individual.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the case of individualistic explanations, the individual practitioner comes first. The purest form of individual magic involves psychic effects, such as precognition, psychokinesis, and telepathy [2].\u00a0 Ignoring parapsychologist\u2019s attempts to embed these effects into a scientific framework, which has not worked well so far, the fundamental idea of all the various psychic phenomena is that there is something within you that you control and manifest in order to have an effect in the world.\u00a0 This is often characterized as \u201cenergy\u201d or some sort of fooling around with quantum or unknown physical principles.\u00a0 However this, again, puts you into a scientific framework as an attempt at explaining what is happening. Crowley has a very thoughtful and interesting discussion about the relationship between the practitioner, their will, and the magical link between microcosim and macrocosim [3].\u00a0 Crowley defines \u201cMagical Operation\u201d as \u201cany event in Nature which is brought to pass by Will.\u201d\u00a0 Of course he himself admits this covers everything from \u201cpotato-growing to banking\u201d in addition to its more magical sense.\u00a0 Less famously, but more importantly, Crowley goes on to say much of the responsibility for magical operations lay on the individual, as opposed to relying on the \u201calmighty power of God\u201d or ritual practice alone:\u00a0 \u201cThe universe is a projection of ourselves; an image as unreal as that of our faces in a mirror, yet, like that face, the necessary form of expression thereof, not to be altered save as we alter ourselves.\u201d So, for Crowley (and many others), there is an intertwining between the macrocosim\/microcosim structure of magical effects and the individual.\u00a0 By changing ourselves, we change the world.\u00a0 At the same time the idea of an event \u201cin Nature\u201d being cause by will implies for Crowley that the event is really in nature and thus dependent to some extent on nature.\u00a0 \u201cThe distance of one\u2019s Magical target and the accuracy of one\u2019s Magical rifle are factors in the success of one\u2019s Magical shooting in just the same way as at Bisley.\u201d\u00a0 In other words, you cannot create something out of nothing, and what you are trying has to be in some ways possible. This concept if often reflected in the less sophisticated characterization of magic (or prayer) as requiring active participation in order for it to succeed.\u00a0 If, for example, you wish for a million dollars, it is very unlikely to happen to you if you sit on the couch for the rest of time watching Gossip Girls [4].\u00a0 This \u201cget out there and make it happen\u201d is both logical: it probably won\u2019t happen unless you do something; and subtly motivational: sort of a polite way for the HPS to tell the coven members that they actually would be better off if they did something useful and productive. However there are a couple of more subtle interpretations of this concept that I believe begin to get at the central core of why magic is an important way of both being in and understanding the world. The first interpretation is that magic is a way of spiritual progress.\u00a0 In other words you practice magic so as to progress spiritually to greater and greater accomplishments.\u00a0 This you ultimately manifest in the world through changes in your understanding, behavior, and influence of those around you.\u00a0 You become your own magic and in perfecting yourself change the world [5]. This concept can be interpreted either as self-referential, or world-referential.\u00a0 In the self-referential interpretation you are practicing magic in order to change yourself and gain spiritual insight.\u00a0 Any changes in the world are secondary and only a by-product of your ever-closer approach to the Gods and Goddesses.\u00a0 This is both a theistic interpretation of magic, in the sense that magic brings you closer to the divine, but it also retains an emphasis on the individual, as you are the one approaching the divine.\u00a0 The world-referential interpretation is a bit trickier, here your inner change manifests in changes in your behavior and that in turn results in changes in the world.\u00a0 This is more or less \u201cself improvement by magic.\u201d\u00a0 By performing ritual, ritual that leads to being touched by both magic and the deity, you become more mature, capable, and self-aware in the world.\u00a0 How you behave in the world begets results in the world.\u00a0 Obviously this works better if you\u2019re doing magic to seek a love interest rather than a rainstorm, and is more or less an extension of the \u201cget out there and make it happen\u201d school of thought. The second way to interpret the idea of individual will as the precursor or foundation for magical action is essentially Jungian.\u00a0 For Jung\u00a0 the idea of \u201csynchronicity\u201d opened up a different way of interpreting reality [6].\u00a0 Typically we interpret the world through a causal model.\u00a0 If I do this, then this will happen.\u00a0 Chance, among other things, is created from the idea that even rare events actually do occur in the universe, and even a very improbable sequence of events will likely occur if the underlying set of possible events is large enough.\u00a0 To borrow an example from Jung, seeing pictures fish, hearing the word \u201cfish\u201d, and seeing a fish on a seawall all within the space of a day are a remarkable coincidence [7]. Assuming nothing fishy (!) was going on there was not link between the different, seemingly happenstance, sightings.\u00a0 So the \u201clinks\u201d between the events are not causal in the normal sense of causation.\u00a0 Instead the link between all the various fish symbols occurs inside you.\u00a0 You and your interpretation, or the meaning you give them, are what link the non-causal events.\u00a0 This linkage through meaning is effectively what Jung was talking about when he described synchronicity [8]: \u201cCausality is the way we explain the link between two successive events, Synchronicity designates the parallelism of time and meaning between psychic and psychophysical events, which so far science has been unable to reduce to a common principle.\u00a0 The term explains nothing, it simply formulates the occurrence of meaningful coincidences which, in themselves, are chance happenings but are so improbably that we must assume them to be based on some kind of principle or some property of the empirical world.\u00a0 No reciprocal causal connection can be shown to obtain between parallel events, which is just what gives them their chance character.\u00a0 The only recognizable and demonstrable link between them is a common meaning, or equivalence.\u201d So in magical practice something else is happening that is not related to the typical \u201cI do this, that happens\u201d framework that we are all used to.\u00a0 The magician, and those affected by his magic, are using an alternative framework that replaces causation with meaning as the \u201cglue\u201d that holds the world together.\u00a0 Magic forms a separate network of meanings that is woven across events and objects in the world but is separate from our physical, scientific, understanding of the universe.\u00a0 Without us to give the web of magic meaning there would be no magic.\u00a0 Creating magic in the world is a uniquely human activity, one that arises out of our ability to give meaning to the universe. This introduces the interesting concept that magic happens neither exclusively inside us, nor exclusively in the world.\u00a0 It happens between the magician and the world, in a place that literary critics call L\u2019Entre-deux [9].\u00a0\u00a0 This presents us with some real advantages as we work to understand what magic is based on.\u00a0 First synchronicity, and L\u2019Entre-deux, are not predicated on a scientific worldview, so we don\u2019t draw in skeptics or get into arguments with (stage) magicians and scientists, And it also allows us to separate the religious aspect of magic and its practical aspect.\u00a0 In other words we don\u2019t have to rely on deistic intervention to justify magical workings.\u00a0 Finally it creates a magical space, a place that is here, but not here.\u00a0 A meaningful place in the world.\u00a0 Say, like a sacred space, or a natural wonder, or an experience of deity.\u00a0 A meaningful place that is not predicated on divinity or divine intervention for its creation. Which goes well with our placing the Gods and Goddess in this world instead of a different one. It now becomes important to note what I am not talking about here. I am not talking about some exclusively narcissistic view of magical working where the goal is entirely focused on the self and does not have any influence or interaction in the world.\u00a0 This is not a necessary requirement for us to still be separated from the howling critics of science and debunkers.\u00a0 We can still be connected and interrelated with the world, but we must borrow Jung\u2019s concept of a non-causal relationship between magical actions and results. At the same time I am not talking about abandoning the ability of magic to work in the world.\u00a0 A very plausible argument would be that magic happens within the magician by affecting the magician\u2019s perception of cause and effect creating a synchronous state between their actions and effects.\u00a0 This makes it very tidy since nothing magical slops out into the world, and into the viewfinders of the scientists and stage magicians.\u00a0 But that is not what I am arguing here.\u00a0 I believe it is possible for the actions of the individual magician to expand beyond his immediate mental state, in the same way that telling a story expands the author\u2019s world beyond their own inner mental state. I believe we are now getting somewhere in our discussion of magic.\u00a0 The individual is an inherent part of magic.\u00a0 Magic is a human endeavor prosecuted by people.\u00a0 Without the magician, magic will not happen.\u00a0 Thus magic is tied to the will and desires of the worker.\u00a0 But…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3500\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}