Magic - good and evil

There are two wrong attitudes to magic - currently prevalent. The obvious one is a fascination with magic, used as a means of personal (usually sexual, but sometimes power related) gratification. This was the version that corrupted (and consolidated the corruption of) Charles Williams as it has, and does, so many others who propagate it.

But it is also wrong to shun-as-evil all forms of magic, and reference to magic - which is the path adopted by too many Christians; who render their religion merely materialistic, legalistic - and who render the supernatural incomprehensible, arbitrary; a thing to be submitted-to and obeyed merely; and in practice a mask for worldly structures of totalitarian authority.

As nearly-always with Christianity; the path of goodness resembles a middle path found by discernment - or rather, it is in actuality the path of love. Love naturally refuses to be captured or  constrained by simple rules regarding means and methods.

The problem is with magic-rejectors is that Christianity is an objectively magical religion - with Jesus Christ known (by disciples and enemies alike) as a doer of all sorts of supernatural feats, including raising a dead man - which, to one who did not regard Jesus as the Son of God, is simple necromancy: the worst kind of black magic.

So, the only reasonable stance a Christian can have towards magic is to support good, and oppose evil, magic; and the Gospels tell us that the difference is in whether the supernatural serves God's will and destiny, or is done with the aid of, and ultimately in service to, demons.

So, it is a matter of motivation. And I mean real motivation - what a person's motivation really is; not what they tell other people, nor even what they tell-themselves - but what their motivation really is.

How can we know motivation? Well, on the one hand, we can't know another person's motivation for sure in any way that can compel agreement of others (there cannot be compelling, undeniable, evidence); although we may know it for ourselves with certainly - due to intuition.

On the other hand, we must judge the motivation of others, as best we can. Yet this judgement is - like all true discernments - a thing which cannot be done by the mere algorithmic application of a flow chart. We are back to intuition - the bottom line of all judgement.

Thus is life. Because motivation is the most important aspect of Life; the most important matters are ones that are least amenable to 'proof' and procedure.

And we should embrace the fact, not try to avoid the truth, and distort it, by arbitrary application of simplistic schemes.

Magic is real: some is Good, some is evil; and we need to/ must decide for ourselves which is which... Taking-into-account what seems to be relevant evidence and what we (intuitively) regard as authoritative opinion...

But in the end making an explicitly intuitive discernment.