Demonic Chaote

Is magic real?

To determine this, magic must first be defined. One of the more popular definitions I have heard (and one of my personal favorites) comes from Aleister Crowley: “The art and science of causing change to occur in conformity with the will.”. Certainly according to this definition magic is not only real, but every intentional action taken to cause change in one’s life is in and of itself a magical act. I’m sure most of us who practice magic can get behind this as true, but if that’s all there was to it then this question – “is magic real?” – wouldn’t be so provocative. For the purposes of this discussion perhaps the Wikipedia definition is a more accurate one: “Magic is the application of beliefs, rituals or actions employed [to] manipulate natural or supernatural beings and forces.”. Since this is closer to what people mean when they ask if magic is real than Crowley’s definition, this is the one we will use for now.

In my time as a magical practitioner I’ve taken several breaks from my practice because of this question. I’m not one to believe in things with no evidence, and in a true scientific fashion I cannot in good faith take personal experiences as evidence (despite the myriad of them that I’ve had), and have had to take several steps back from magic to re-evaluate a couple of times . I simply have not been able to justify my beliefs and that has caused me to put a pause on my spirituality – pauses which I on at least two occasions had intended never to return from. Yet I kept coming back. Why? Why do I continue to practice despite the lack of evidence?

There are several individuals who have attempted to explain magic using a scientific framework. They argue that magic is the manipulation of energy, and since everything is made of energy, magic is just attuning ourselves to the energy all around us.* It’s science we don’t understand. But this is not really an explanation. I want to make this perfectly clear: I am not in any way disparaging these individuals. This is an understandable belief to hold, and does an excellent job at explaining magic to those who need a rational reason to believe. But the simple fact remains: despite it’s seemingly scientific nature it has no evidence. It’s conjecture. This, to me, is the crux of the issue. In addition, this line of reasoning has always reminded me of the “God of the gaps” argument that many Abrahamic models employ. For those unfamiliar, the “God of the gaps” line of reasoning argues that anything that “can’t be explained by science” (i.e. that we don’t yet understand) must be because God caused it. While on their surface these arguments may not seem similar, the sole purpose behind them both is the same – an attempt too soothe our minds when we don’t understand something about the universe or have difficult questions about our belief systems. “God of the gaps” says “Not enough evidence for God’s existence? Look at everything we don’t know yet! That has to be God!”. “Magic is just science we don’t understand” says “Not enough evidence for magic? Well everything is made of energy and magic is just energy! It has to be real!”.

So where does that leave us? I haven’t made a very good case for magic so far. However, despite the lack of empirical, testable evidence for magic as a phenomenon, I still believe that it is real and (more importantly) that is worth practicing. Why?

1. My experiences are my reality.
   Reality is a tricky thing. There is objective reality – the planets, nature, atoms, physics, and so forth. But there is also subjective reality – what we as individuals experience to be true. Not all of subjective reality is objectively true of course, but does that mean we should discount subjective reality entirely? To be frank, we can’t. Our own subjective realities are the only means through which we can experience anything at all. For example, on the topic of free will, author and youtuber Hank Green says “Whether or not [it] exists isn’t that important to me…[I am] experienc[ing] free will. Whether or not that’s an illusion doesn’t really matter to me because I am experiencing it.”. To me, magic and magical experiences are much the same. Whether the visions I see in a deep trance meditation are illusions or objective reality don’t matter much, because I am experiencing them in my subjective reality, and since I am experiencing them, they have the power to help me enact change in my life in so that I can live in accordance with my will.
2. I refuse to gaslight myself about my experiences.
   Many of us have had profound spiritual experiences that have shaped our lives, changed our minds, and helped us grow. While mental illness and spiritual psychosis is not something to be taken lightly, most people who will have a personal experience with something they (or someone else) might label as ‘supernatural’, ‘spiritual’, or ‘magical’ are not in a state of active psychosis or even particularly at risk for developing it. So then should we all just pretend our experiences didn’t happen, or try and find any way we can to explain them away? Perhaps it’s the most scientific route to take, but it also teaches us to doubt ourselves. By ignoring the very real impact of these experiences, whether it be a spell working a little too well, a prayer being answered swiftly and specifically, a scarily accurate tarot reading, or anything else that happens that we know is magic in our guts, we train our minds to ignore our intuition. Intuition isn’t just useful for magical purposes – it has an evolutionary purpose as well. Our intuition allows us to rapidly and unconsciously come to conclusions based on somatic, sensory, and emotional input that can save our lives (literally or metaphorically). It is the sense of knowing, but not knowing how you know. If you second guess and doubt every experience you have, how do you know when to trust yourself? Or even if you should trust yourself? After all, everything can simply be explained away – a misunderstanding, just a coincidence, “it didn’t really happen the way I/you remember it.”. What is more mentally unwell – believing that my late aunt came to comfort me when I was missing her or quite literally gaslighting myself into doubting my own mind, memory, and emotions? I’m apt to say the latter.
3. It helps me to live a better life.
   In the words of Phil Hine, author of Condensed Chaos, “Magic is fun. Otherwise, why do it?”. And that, at the core of it, is why I keep coming back and why I believe magic is worth it. Our lives on this earth are short. We have a little time and then we’re gone. Maybe we live on after death somehow, in another realm. I have had experiences with ancestors of mine that certainly lead me to believe that’s true. Or maybe we don’t. Maybe humans are just afraid of death and it’s permanence, so since the beginning of our species we have told stories about how the people we love aren’t really gone forever, they’re off somewhere else and waiting for us, and we won’t really be gone forever either. I prefer to live my life as though it’s second, despite my personal beliefs, and if this time here on earth is all we get I want to spend it in exactly three ways: loving myself and those around me, making the world a better place for those who come after me, and having the most fun I can. Magic is an excellent path to accomplishing all three.

As always, I hope someone else out there found this to be helpful in some way. Feel free to leave a comment if you have other thoughts, want to continue the conversation, or disagree with me completely. Or don’t, it’s up to you. Either way, I hope you have a good one!

-J

*There are, obviously, numerous other frameworks for understanding and believing in magic, but since this post is about my own struggle to find good reasons to believe in and continue my spiritual practice I found other frameworks to be a tad irrelevant to discuss in this post.