When it comes to magic, what is real and what is the provenance of the real, one can only work forwards on the basis of whatever primary thinking intuitions emerge. This is what has emerged, so far:
I assume that real and Good magic was an 'everyday' possibility for people in the remote past, but seems not to be at present. Examples of real Good magic would include Ancient Egyptian priest-magicians who accomplished supernaturally-enabled feats of building and making, the British builders of megalithic monuments, and most recently some reports of some tribal shamans or medicine men.
But magic was not really 'used' in the past, not used to attain human will; rather, men were immersed-in the divine; and insofar as a man conformed to divine purposes, he was able unconsciously to be a conduit or coencentartion of divine powers. This was therefore a kind of channelling, and not of human will manipulation nature (the human mind serving as a channel for divine powers and purposes). I presume that magical rituals were mostly about the mental preparation that made this channelling possible.
As human consciousness, the autonomous, agent self, became stronger through human history; so this magic became impossible. Men were no longer immersed-in the spiritual but stood apart. The spirit world was invisible, imperceptible - only exceptionally and by more and more extreme measures (and finally not at all - many modern people never-and-cannot perceive the spirit aspects of reality).
From about 1500 onwards in The West, Men stood apart from the divine; and from that time attempts at magic were attempts of the self, of 'the ego' to coerce nature, to compel results - they were driven by human desire and will.
And Renaissance magic was ineffective, in terms of its stated goals. Its effects are explained by changing of human minds (the mind of the magician, and the mind of any human subjects) - in a kind of self/ other brainwashing, and also by evil magic done by subordinating the self to serve demonic forces.
Good magic became impossible because Men were (due to the evolutionary-development of human consciousness, in-line with divine destiny) no longer immersed-in God's creation. Men increasingly stood apart from creation, the personal self became differentiated-from the divine; and therefore Men's powers were derived only from Men.
That is the current situation (although it was meant to be a brief and temporary phase - we are stuck-in-it due to wrong human choices; we are stuck in spiritual adolescence - refusing to move on to spiritual maturity. We are stuck because maturity requires each person's explicit choice and wish).
Here and Now, most claims at magic are bogus - in the sense that they are done by convincing the self or other people that magic has-been-done: modern manipulative magic is psychological (and any benefits are a kind of psychotherapy).
Attempts to control reality, to make reality to conform to explicit human wishes, by magical systems such as spells and rituals, are not effective; they do not do what they set out to do by the mechanisms they posit. And what they do do, is not what was intended, nor are the means correctly known.
Rare instances of real Good magic are either done unintentionally, by accident, due to an unpredictable, unplanned, unconscious and momentary alignment of a person's purposes with divine purposes.
Real and evil magic can be done, in a way; but they are not done in conformity with the magician's will; the magician is not controlling supernatural reality, but is being-controlled-by it. When a magician really summons a demon, and some magical consequences ensue; the magician is being manipulated by the demon, not vice versa.
And evil magic can do only what demons can do, what immaterial spirits can do - which seems to be done by acting on minds; tempting, persuading, convincing, via sins. Demons cannot create, cannot affect divine creative activity: creation is solely divine.
The magic of the future will happen insofaras an individual person attains primary thinking, or Final Participation; when someone consciously and voluntarily aligns their thinking with the universal reality of God's thinking - which is creation-in-action.
We may then, as individuals, participate-in the ongoing work of creation. And that is our proper goal now (i.e. theosis) - but especially in post-mortal resurrected life.
When we think In Reality, we must be aligned with divine purposes. We are (or may be) doing real magic in this world, and doing it consciously and purposively; those purposes coming from that which is divine in us (what we inherit as children of God) - but these purposes are not 'devised', the purposes are emergent-from that divine mind in us. That which makes this possible is Love - specifcially love of God (which, for us, is Jesus Christ) and of our divine family, consisting of God's loving children.
Thus any idea of a person 'using' magic to attain human purposes is nonsense. We may participate-in the Good magic that is ongoing divine creation (either unconsciously and immersed-in, or consciously and voluntarily in primary thinking); or we may be used-by the demonic powers in their work of sabotaging and inverting divine creation. Ultimately these are the only two options.
You include in your history of "good magic" many instances which would be the manipulation of volitional but indifferent (to human destinies, at least) forces which we may call natural.
ReplyDeleteThis category includes sailing of small craft, especially on the open sea but really anywhere, as well as surfing, para/hang-gliding, even some advanced martial arts and similarly trained forms of physical activities like climbing or swimming. It would also contain some performance arts like music and high-level dance.
These arts are not at all impossible for modern people, though they have been shouldered aside from being sources of significant power by technology (which has always had a deep relationship with magic, both natural and diabolical).
Alternatively, the "good magic" of divine origin, which the original Magi (from whom we take the term 'magic') practiced, was religious priesthood. True priesthood, calling upon the power of God rather than exploiting the credulity of men, as priestcraft does. To say that this is not currently possible is to ignore a vast body of well-documented accounts of miracles wrought through faithful appeal to divine intervention. Of course, some of these accounts really are just priestcraft, the 'evidence' is produced by a hysterical reaction to social pressure from an authority figure.
But not all.
I've been present for enough exercises of legitimate priesthood to know that it can produce physical phenomena which are not possible by mere socially induced hysteria (or by any hysteria). That said, I can do many similar things through my affinity for certain volitional natural forces, especially fire and magnetism. And frankly, given that I usually seek licit permission to exercise that affinity, it can be hard to tell the difference. But there definitely is one.