More About Magic…

My friend Liadan writes to me: 

I’ve read your article ("Do You Believe in Magic?"), but I don’t think it really says why you don’t believe magic is "necessary."

She goes on to describe two instances where she used magic and found it "very useful," describing two dire situations — one involving her mother’s experience of a serious illness, the other concerning a threatening natural disaster — both of which ended happily after a spell was cast. She concludes,

If magic is unnecessary, what else could have been done?  Prayer didn’t work here.  And I am Christian. I don’t think I did anything wrong, and I couldn’t think of anything else to do.  I prayed in advance for advice if God didn’t want me to do this.

Once again, I go back to what Lon Duquette says: "I can only change one thing with magick — myself." Liadan, I am so happy that you experienced two wonderful miracles, first with your mother’s healing and the second with the averted firestorm. I hope and trust that you will understand that I have no desire to criticize you or attack your experience, even while in all honesty I can only say this: that I believe the spells had no influence on the force which manifested those miracles.

 You admit that you "prayed in advance for advice" and yet you claim that "prayer didn’t work here." Says who? How can we know that the miracles are not the result of the prayers, rather than the magic? Of course, I could just as easily play the skeptic and say, why should we believe that either prayer or magic  has any influence on the physical world? After all, somebody else in the same situation as yours may have said prayers and cast spells, only to experience the loss of their loved one or the natural disaster. Why does your prayer/magic work while theirs didn’t? Is God capricious? Or, perhaps, is there a deeper force at work here, a force that no human effort (magical or otherwise) can control or even influence?

Does prayer only "work" if the results are exactly what we expect or demand? That’s a mighty small God, who is merely a puppet whose strings we pull to manifest our desires. What happens when God answers our prayers, only not as fast as we would like (which is what appears to have happened in both your scenarios)? Or, more difficult still, what happens when God’s answer to our prayers may not be what we had hoped? Some people pray — or do their magic — and the disaster happens anyways. Christianity teaches that this is an opportunity to trust in the sovereign goodness of God that extends far beyond our own finite hopes and desires. But magical philosophies seem to say that if a spell doesn’t "work," then the person who cast it did something wrong. Frankly, I think that’s a terrible worldview. That means if your mother had died — or your house had gone up in flames — it would have been all your fault, since you didn’t do the magic right.

I’m sorry, but I can’t worship a God (or Goddess) who is so petty.

It’s a plain fact of reality: with all the prayers and all the spells in the world, we don’t always get what we want. So either we have to trust that the Divine has everything under control (which is what I understand mysticism to advocate), or we have to keep trying to learn a better or more effective spell, which is what magical systems seem to be saying.

 To me, when I can approach impending loss or disaster from a place of trust, I find that prayer is more than sufficient. I can say to God, "Hey, this is what I REALLY want…." But once I speak my mind in my prayer, then I can release my wanting into a deeper trusting. And in that depth of trust, sometimes a miracle happens, and sometimes it doesn’t. I know I can’t control the outcome.

Magic, by contrast, seems to be a continual effort to attempt to control what we just can’t control. It’s a direct violation of the serenity prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. 

I believe that when we live according to the principles of this prayer, we do not have to rely on magic to make things happen. Instead, we can relax into the serenity (trust) that allows us to face those things which are too big for us to control; and we can find empowerment to take on those things which are within our ability to influence; with a deep wisdom to help us discern the distinctions between those two spheres. All of this creates a deep psychic space where true freedom and real love can flourish.

And in that space, I maintain, magic — at least of the cast-a-spell variety — is unnecessary. 

Once again, please know that I am so happy for you that miracles happened in your life. As a person who seeks to live by faith, I take great comfort in knowing that the miracles I’ve experienced come from a source that is far, far bigger than I am.