Do You Believe In Magic?

N.B.: This post is a follow up to last night’s entry, The Sinner’s Prayer. If you haven’t read that one, you might want to go back and check it out first.

What’s fascinating about magic is the subtle interplay between three ingredients: the will/heart of the magician, the form of the magic/spell that is performed, and the changes (or lack thereof) that occur in either the physical or spiritual environment.

In all fairness to evangelicals, I suspect few if any really believe that reciting the Sinner’s Prayer actually "changes" God. Theologically speaking, evangelical Christianity would assert that God has freely offered salvation to all people because it is in God’s pleasure to do so. Reciting the Sinner’s Prayer, therefore, amounts to saying "Yes" to this grand offer.

What the Sinner’s Prayer changes, therefore, is not so much God, but the sinner. Yes, it opens up the doors of heaven (at least, as evangelicals see it). But ontologically speaking, the doors of heaven were already opened — that happened with the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. So, from the viewpoint of orthodox evangelical theology, it’s more correct to say that the Sinner’s Prayer opens up one’s heart to the ability to walk through those always-open doors.

Frankly, approaching evangelical theology from this perspective makes it far more less objectionable, to my mind. I’m still catholic enough to insist that salvation is more of a communal than individual event, but I’ll save that for another day.

Now, compare all this to this wonderful little saying found at the website of Lon Milo DuQuette, who is a leading Thelemitte magician (and a truly lovely and funny man): "I can change only one thing with Magick — myself."

So I still think the Sinner’s Prayer functions like a spell, but like DuQuette’s magic, it’s a spell that only changes one thing: the person who’s working the juju. God, the universe, everything else remains as before.

• • •

Lon DuQuette can get away with his rather bold statement because he is an acknowledged authority of ceremonial magic, i.e. magic-with-a-k. If just about anyone else asserted that their magical ability only enabled them to change themselves, they would be dismissed as weak, inefffectual magicians. But for someone of DuQuette’s stature to make this statement, is to shine a light on all of the pompous and overblown language that characterizes so much of the ceremonial, neopagan, and Wiccan communities: that despite all of magic(k)’s grandiose claims to change things, at the end of the day the only "thing" magic really changes is one’s self, or perhaps one’s consciousness. Now, just as the change of heart that the Sinner’s Prayer signifies is believed by evangelicals to "change everything" in the sense that it facilitates a new life in Christ (i.e., being born again), so too the practitioners of magic will insist that the self-change or consciousness-change that magic effects literally changes the world — often tied into metaphysical beliefs such as that the self is one with the world, or creates the world, or the world is merely a projection of the self, and so forth. For simplicity’s sake, I’d like to distinguish between two understandings of magic: "primitive" and "high" (these are arbitrary terms I’m using, and may or may not correlate with other usages of these terms in the world of magic/magick).

• Primitive magic is the idea that casting a spell effects real, observable, and perhaps even measurable changes in the physical environment: I cast this spell, and a gorgeous someone falls in love with me, something s/he never would have done if I hadn’t cast the spell.
• By contrast, high magic is the idea that casting a spell effects real, observable, and perhaps even measurable changes only in the self/consciousness of the magician, which might have subsequent impact upon the environment: I cast this spell, and I become more self-confident around members of the opposite sex, and that enables me to make friends and eventually experience a romance with someone special — something I never would have done if I hadn’t cast the spell.

Now, apply this to the Sinner’s Prayer:

• A primitive magic approach to the Sinner’s Prayer would hold that reciting the prayer (with the correct heart intention, of course) literally gets God to stop condemning the soul to hell, and instead save the soul, as evidenced by Christ’s and the Holy Spirit’s presence in that person’s life.
• A high magic approach to the Sinner’s Prayer would maintain that God is not changed by the reciting of the prayer, but the sinner is; this change results in the sinner opening his or her heart to the presence of Christ and the Holy Spirit, thereby accepting God’s freely given gift that had been offered, but left unopened, as it were, until the moment the sinner recited the prayer.

So, where am I going with all this? I’d like to contrast both primitive and high magic with mysticism.

• • •

Mysticism is sacramental, rather than magical, in nature. As I see it, both sacramental theology and magical theory celebrate the presence of wonders in the world. But whereas magic places the emphasis on the actions of the mortal self, sacramental theology keeps the focus on the mighty acts of God. Sacramental theology makes no sense in those forms of Wicca, neopaganism, or ceremonial magic where there is no belief in a transcendent God distinct from the universe (or the self). But to those who do acknowledge such a transcendent reality, the difference between sacramental mysticism and magic might be seen this way (again, using the Sinner’s Prayer as my example):

• Primitive magic: I recite the Sinner’s Prayer (with the correct heart intention, of course) to get God to save me.
• High magic: I recite the Sinner’s Prayer to open my heart to Christ’s/the Holy Spirit’s presence and to accept God’s freely given gift of salvation.
• Sacramental mysticism: God loves me. Whatever I do (or don’t do) in response to that love simply pales in comparison.

It’s a fine line indeed that separates mysticism from magic. Most mystics would still insist that, no matter how insignificent our response may be in relation to Divine Love, a response is necessary nevertheless, to complete the circle as it were. The gift of the Eucharist is not complete until the wafer and wine are consumed. The proper response to mysticism is not total, infantile passivity! So in this way, mysticism dances with high magic. But even if it’s fuzzy logic that disinguishes the mystical from the (high) magical, nevertheless both approaches to the spiritual world have their distinct centers of gravity. Mystical spirituality endeavors to keep its center firmly focussed on the love and action of God, while acknowledging that in this physical world of ours, some sort of response is necessary, and that response will look like a magical act, even though it is an action taken in the cascading light of a love over which we mortals have absolutely no control.

This helps to explain infant baptism: many evangelicals reject infant baptism because they think you gotta understand it and assent to it in order for it to have meaning (i.e., in order for the magic to work). But in sacramental terms, since the focus is on God’s love rather than on human response, baptising infants makes perfect sense. After all, God loves babies just as much as God loves adults! 

Now, to finish this post I’ll answer the question found in its title: do I believe in magic? Well of course! But that’s like asking me if I believe in loving my self. Well, I think it’s a good thing to love one’s self, even if Christian theology has often been rather unhelpful in this regard. But I also believe that self-love is only possible in a world where love radiates out from a higher source. Christian theology has historically been so hard on self-love because it tries to get people to unhinge egotism and hold the self in the higher light of Divine Love. And so it is with mysticism and magic. If magic can be compared to the art of self-love, then mysticism celebrates the love of the wholly other, transcendent God, whom we nonetheless can experience immanently since the wholly transcendent God is also wholly present. To immerse our lives in the mystical light renders magic both possible but also unnecessary.