The power and limitations of "magical thinking" - including in totalitarian bureaucracies (as well as Golden Dawn magical societies)

For the purposes of this post, I shall define magical thinking as the method of sustained concentration upon imagined content. Magical thinking is (or was) practiced by the Golden Dawn type magical societies; but also by such mega-mundane (and apparently anti-magical) organizations as those bureaucracies that dominate and typify the modern Western civilization. 

What happens is that there is a recurrent or continuous focus upon specific imagined content - the imagined content may be visual, conceptual - or any other, in principle. 

That imagined content takes-on an objectivity by being reflected back by others in the group, and by being thought-upon continually or recurrently. 

There is a further objectivity that derives from the process of mental training involved in making and sustaining these imagined content - practice and effort can develop powers both of concentration (of single point attention, of cutting out other potential contact); and also the ability inwardly to perceive the imagined content. 

Thus, a "magician" who is capable of this magical thinking, has "powers" with respect to other people; especially the psychological-social power to stay focused on a single objective in a world where most people are highly distractible and lack any core or coherence to their belief systems.

From the perspective of the magician, at least for a while, there is an apparent objective and predictive validity to their imaginings. The magician feels himself powerful, because he can (by the power of his concentration and "vision") influence other people into adopting - or going along with, his plans. 

Because of this psycho-social influence; the magician can also perceive reality in such a way that his plans seem to be coming to fruition, or at least moving in that direction... 

In the vicinity of the magician, people are talking about his vision, perhaps writing and in general communicating about it; more people are being drawn into these communications - and the communications are (in some way or another) having an effect on human behaviour more widely.  

It seems - and this impression may last considerable periods - if not stressed by other imposed pressures -  that the imagined reality is coming true; being brought to reality by the power of concentrated and sustained group-imagination. 

Those who have (like me) participated in large and professionalized bureaucracies (in my case, as a public health doctor in the National Health Service, and a participant in university management committees at several levels) do not, perhaps, realize the extent to which magical thinking is the basis of bureaucracy; and the way in which it is (or appears to be) validated by the experience of the bureaucrats and their leaders. 

For those on the inside; magical thinking - although that is not how it is conceptualized - really works... 

The committees are "inspired" by some imaginary "vision", and they keep focused on it, talking about it, debating its implementation, writing about it, "researching" it, making policies, monitoring "outcomes" and adjusting policies - until they are absolutely convinced of its reality. 

And convinced too that their imagined vision is destined to "come to pass". 

This kind of magical thinking is (more or less) how wholly-manufactured, incoherent, impossible phenomena like the climate agenda, the transagenda and antiracism; have arisen, been sustained, grown - and come to seem both real and inevitable by the totalitarian system participants. 

And the magical thinking of magical societies was very much analogous. Through their systems of study, practice, ritual - through training in concentration and imagination; they developed a quasi objectivity and sense of objective reality and progress that sustained them for some decades. 

But in this mortal and entropic world, magical thinking does not continue for very long unless infused by new personnel, resources, and top-down compulsion (supplemented by bribery and blackmail). These were not available to the magical societies, so they would decline and disappear, or fission and fight each other, or become assimilated to some other agenda that were more powerfully imposed - such as war. 

At an individual level I can attest to the way that a long-term daydream type fantasy - when combined with intense visualization and concentration - can take-on a sense of destiny; such that we automatically come to expect that what we imagine and desire - at least to some sufficiently focused and long-term degree - will sooner or later "come to pass". 

This has often been the case in my life, and so far only a very small minority of such apparent destinies have ever actually come to pass - and often those that were among the least vividly- and concentratedly-imagined.  

My purpose in this post is to suggest that magical thinking is a real thing, and has (from within, and to some extent in actuality) an objective reality - yet that it also contains many pitfalls and problems. 

It is not A Good Thing (of itself) to be able to imagine and concentrate upon chosen material - not in the way that the magical societies used to suppose - and the evidence for this is the way that analogous magical methods are employed by totalitarian bureaucracy. 

But neither is it necessarily a Bad Thing. 

Magical thinking can probably best be conceptualized as a trade-off, in which intensity and focus and progress on a narrow front; are achieved at the cost of a less general, less complete, understanding and participation in the totality of reality. 

The development of narrow sustained focus tends to diminish the capacity and possibility of self-correction; and reduces the chance of repentance when there are falsehoods, errors, and evils. 

It is, as always, a case of First Things First; and our fundamental reality and priority ought to be Christian - and "techniques" ought to operate only within that primary frame. 

The ultimate feebleness of magical thinking is evidenced by the way it is discarded when things get serious, when the chips are down - when the groups are destroyed, corrupted and co-opted to the larger socio=political agenda of the moment.

That is when we need Christianity, and we need a Christianity that is strong sustained, autonomous; and does not depend upon group validation.  

We must be ready and able to stand-alone with God, in spiritual terms; and to create and sustain That reality is our true priority.    

The magic of human institutions: Now absent, once always present; but never wholly sufficient

For most of recorded history until recently; many human institutions (organizations, formal groupings) were magical * - to some degree. 

The further back we go, the more magical they could be. The earlier in our life we go, the more likely that we would ourselves experience this magic. 

However, there were also not-magical groupings; and, no matter how magical the institution - there have always been those people who do not participate in it; being either immune to that magic, or susceptible but reject it. 

Furthermore, the innate magic of pre-adolescent childhood; means that - even now - groupings of such children often have a strongly magical ambience. 

The big difference across the generations relates to adult institutions - which used often to have a significant magical quality - but now are likely to be (almost entirely) soulless, dead, mechanical - and indeed purposively anti-magical... Zealous in their active destruction of any such qualities - typically by means of abstract and generic systems of bureaucracy and computerization. 

For instance; many educational institutions used to be strongly magical in their nature. This applied especially to small and localized institutions, or those with a mutually-selective character (i.e. both selected and selecting). 

Through my adult life I experienced educational institutions with considerable variations in the magical qualities; although I was also aware that most people were not consciously aware of such differences even when they spontaneously responded to them. 

Most people would speak against the reality and significance of such institutional aspects; and would cheerfully erode or eliminate magical aspects whenever this seemed expedient, from abstract ideology; or sometimes from sheer resentment-driven spite. 

Looking back; I could see that this institutional magic had, overall, been both more pervasive and common, and stronger (at least potentially stronger), the further back one went. 

Yet institutional enchantment was never complete. Human life was always and for everybody to some degree - marred by the "mundane" - this being the nature of our mortal state. 

The magic of institutions was therefore at its height (as I understand it) probably the major source of enchantment in human existence; while at the same time the very nature of institutions (plus the human beings who constitute them) meant that this magical quality was always both incomplete and contradicted.

 

And, through may adult life (from the 1980s) I could also see that this magic was innately ebbing - while also being purposively-expunged - from the educational institutions of which I knew. 

The difference across the decades was extreme. In my childhood and early adulthood the magical quality of (for instance) universities was (to me) palpable. By the time I retired from academia, the magic had been very-completely destroyed. 

Perhaps most evident when a soul-less, and indeed actively soul-destroying - institution, would attempt to cloak itself in the enchanted mantle of earlier generations. 

This would dishonestly be attempted using the mind-manipulating procedures of modern advertising and public relations; and would therefore fail to attain magic, but reduce enchantment to ideology, false promises of hedonism, fashion, and covert-appeals to status snobbery.  

While I devoted considerable energy to fighting this anti-magical trend, I now believe that a decline of that kind of spontaneous, largely unconscious, institutional magic was inevitable - due to the innate developments of human consciousness. 

When the human beings of an institution themselves come to lack spontaneous and unconscious magic; then enchantment is bound to wane from all institutions. 

The analogy with adolescence (nowadays) is close. Many children are spontaneously and unconsciously susceptible to enchantment; but the innate process of adolescence will abolish this; after which the capacity to know and live magically, must be the consequence of a conscious choice.  

In the later twentieth century, Western adults reached an "adolescence" of consciousness, so that spontaneous and unconscious magic receded - and if we were to continue to live any kind of enchanted life in our institutions; magic would need explicitly to be acknowledged as good, and purposively pursued.  

In sum: as we approached the millennium, magic needed to become self-conscious and consciously valued; or else there would soon be no magic.      

We know by now which of these happened! So complete has become the disenchantment of institutions, that (it seems) most people deny that things ever were otherwise! Most people assume that all institutions were always as they are now: spiritually-dead, exploitatively manipulative, habitually dishonest...

But such retrospective denigration is projection of our evil onto others; as can be seen if historical sources are experienced sympathetically. 

From where we actually-are; I find it hard even to imagine how institutions can be re-enchanted; because there is neither recognition of the problem, nor will to solve it. 

Furthermore; I am pretty sure that (from here, from now) institutional re-enchantment can happen only on the basis of Jesus Christ. 

Yet this needs to happen in a context where the churches are themselves very-thoroughly disenchanted - including by assimilation into the ideological materialism of totalitarian bureaucracy. 

This means that any future source of enchantment must primarily (i.e. as a first step) be sought outwith the Christian church institutions - and Christianity (plus/ minus specific churches) regenerated from that basis. 

From the spiritual place we now inhabit and the people we actually are; I cannot see any way that a Christianity rooted primarily in institutional affiliation (to any kind of institution, no matter how idealized) can succeed in doing what needs to be done.

On the other side; the attempt to do without enchantment; to construct a religion that operates at the level of institutional power, rooted in the mundane, rational, functional (e.g. a religion designed to implement a particular kind of society) - well, this will surely fail. 

Fail because it will inevitably assimilate to the existing mundane, pseudo-rational, quasi-functionality of that system of totalitarianism that characterizes our civilization. With Men as we are; any possible church-based, institutionally-rooted Christianity will be secular and materialistic, totalitarian and political, and spiritually dead.  

The only path ahead, is the right path ahead. 

**

*"Magic" does not mean Good - since there is black magic (intended to manipulate people and creation), as well as white (in harmony with God and creation). But magic is, of itself, good; in the sense that it recognizes the reality of our participation in creation; and by enchantment we are aware of this participation. Whereas the exclusion or elimination of magic is intrinsically an evil because rooted in falsehood, and the intent to cause spiritual harm.   

Magical Thinking - The future of Magic

If the magic of Original Participation was Sympathetic Magic; and that of the modern Consciousness Soul era was Ritual Magic - then the magic of the future could be Magical Thinking.

Magical Thinking is Primary Thinking - considered as a form of magic. 

In Magical Thinking, the real self - that is the divine self, that which we inherited from God as being Sons and Daughters of God - knows, predicts and creates.

You have probably experienced this - for example during 'enchanted' times when you knew that the world was an unfolding delight, and that you could depend on 'synchronicity' to make good things happen. Those times and moods when you know that around that corner, over that hill, in that cafe there will be something important and delightful: and there always is.

As long as we stay in the enchanted mode of thinking, then life is good, we are involved-with the world and other people, and all will go well. This is Magical Thinking.

It is Enchant-ment but is Not Enchant-ed - this state of being is not 'imposed' by the surroundings, nor is it 'imagined' by our-selves - instead Magical Thinking is precisely that there is participation going-on between both self and world.

In Primary Thinking, our knowledge of the world is based on our participation-in the unfolding reality of the world; and therefore is bound up with the creativity of our real selves.

Creativity is intrinsic to the Final Participation situation, because Primary Thinking is the thinking of our real, divine and free selves: free in the sense of agent, and agent meaning that the divine mind is an origin of thinking (having 'free will' should be understood in this sense of being an uncaused cause: specifically, an uncaused-cause in the realm of Primary Thinking).

In different words: The real self is divine, hence generates thinking not merely caused, but itself causal - hence the real self knows reality, and is original and creative. The real self knows reality directly, unmediated; and this is also a consequence of Participation - the real self knows reality because in its Primary Thinking, it is identical-with reality.

(In the Original Participation of childhood or early tribal man, the individual also knows reality directly; because he lacks full consciousness, his self is passively immersed in reality. The purpose of the developmental evolution of consciousness is exactly that we become able to participate in reality again; but actively-participate; with freedom and creativity: the fully-divine mode of being.)

Thus in Primary Thinking the thinking is original and generative - it is intrinsically creative. The thinking participates-in the world and brings something new to this world.

Thus Magical Thinking is something by which you change the world, but not by 'manipulating' reality. Instead, the world inevitable changes as a consequence of the unity of the self with reality; and the fact that the self brings something new, original, self-generated to reality.

Magical Thinking is therefore our individual contribution to the God's ongoing creation. It is a real magic, because we personally can know reality including some ability to predict reality; and we personally make-a-difference to reality.

But by Magical Thinking we cannot and will not shape reality to our own personal ends - but only to divine ends.

Thus there cannot be a 'black magic' of Magical Thinking. Magical Thinking is (as we experience it) intrinsically good because it is the divine in us (God immanent) really participating-in the reality of continuing divine creation.

Magic in The Lord of the Rings - A Barfield/ Steiner perspective

During the journey to Gondor in The Lord of the Rings, the Riders of Rohan meet with a group of hunter-gatherers called the Druedain - Tolkien gives more information on the subject in notes published posthumously by his son Christopher in Forgotten Tales

http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Druedain

These are simple, ugly, short-lived, and illiterate Men - who have various kinds of natural magical abilities - for example, they can make statues of themselves (which the Riders call Pukel-men) which can be infused with abilities such as to be vigilant and defend their territory against enemies. Another magical personage who lives in Original Participation is Tom Bombadil.

Then there are the High Elves - such as Galadriel or Glorfindel, who are highly intelligent ('wise'), beautiful, 'immortal' (immune to illness, able to live for the duration of the earth's life, unless slain), and the inventors of language and writing. The High Elves are also magic, able to make food, drink, clothing and ropes with extraordinary properties; see true visions in water; also ring, jewels and weapons with remarkable properties. This High magic is not a matter of trance-like sympathetic identification - but is purposive and fully conscious process.

The other races are arrayed in between these magical extremes in a way which corresponds exactly to Owen Barfield's description of the evolution of human consciousness - from the first magical stage of Original Participation in which human consciousness blends with its surroundings; through a middle and non-magical stage in which consciousness is detached from the world, and

Hobbits and most Men (and, I would say, Ents) are of the completely non-magical stage in the evolution of consciousness except insofar as they become 'elven' - for example Frodo becomes somewhat magical after being formally made an Elf Friend by the High Elf, Gildor. Frodo's is therefore an example of the early stage of Final Participation.

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/i-name-you-elf-friend-blessing-of-frodo.html

Dwarves are slightly magical - mainly in their technology - for example the Arkenstone (in The Hobbit) is clearly a magical jewel along the lines of the Silmaril). My feeling is that this is a developed, intelligent and wise ability of only the most 'evolved' dwarves - and therefore a partial Final Participation.

The Numenorean Men are also magical - and this is again the elven magic of Final Participation - partly because of the lineage of HIgh Elven (and Maia - angelic) ancestry, and partly from a blessing by the Valar at the time of their dwelling in Numenor. We see this only in Aragorn and Denethor - for example their ability to control the Palantir, and the healing powers of Aragorn which can (uniquely) combat the dark magic of the Witch King Nazgul.

If we were to fuse Tolkien and Barfield (something which did not happen in 'real life') we would regard the elven strain in the Numenoreans and in Frodo as the first inklings of a return to a magical relationship with 'the world' which had been known to the Druedain - but at a higher, purposive and fully-alert way.

The terrible history of Numenor, and the sad fates of Denethor and (to a lesser extent) Frodo also show the perils of this future - in a pessemistic fashion very characteristic of Tolkien's Weltanschauung. Barfield, by contrast, saw this future as Man's destiny: desirable and in a sense necessary - but not inevitable.

Which animals are magical?

There are individual exceptions either way; but for an animal to be magical or not, doesn't correlate with whether that beast is good or not. 

While magic (as such) is A Good Thing in the sense of being better than life lived at a mundane, everyday, non-experiential and alienated fashion - there is plenty of magic in the world that is malign in intent and/or effect. 

Nonetheless, some kinds of animal are magical, while others are not - and this helps explain people's attitudes to them. 

It can work positively or negatively, for some people like and seek magical experience; while others hate, fear, and avoid it. 

So we can start by stating that cats are magical creatures, but dogs are not - and this has much to do with the well-known pattern of human types that are often divided between cat or dog lovers. 

Sheep and especially goats are magical; but cows are not - and neither are pigs (despite that oracular pigs feature in The Mabinogion!). 

Owls are magical - and so are corvids (especially ravens and magpies), swallows and swifts; but pigeons are not, neither are most songbirds, nor are ducks. 

Bears are magical, and so are hares, badgers, red squirrels, and moles; but shrews, mice and rates are not magical. 

And so on. Discuss among yourselves. 

Magical places, magical people?

Magic is primarily perspectival - in that if you can't see it, you won't see it. Many people go through life and almost-never notice magic.

But even if or when you can perceive magic, it is not everywhere. Young children, tribespeople, all discriminate - they recognise some places and people as magic, and others not.

There is no magic in bureaucracy (in a spiritual sense, this is the main point about bureaucracy); and that is why there is less and less magic in the world.

As the world is integrated into The System - so magic is suppressed and destroyed, so attention is focused on the world regarded as dead things to be manipulated. So fewer and fewer places are magical - not in the solid and dependable ways that some places used to be magical. 

And this applies to people, too. In my life there have never been many magical people in any environment, they were always a small minority; but now they are fewer, and probably for the same reason that there are fewer magical places. People who were magic, or would have been, are now substantially assimilated into The System (by the extension of mass and social media, by omni-surveillance and micro-management); and they are System-assimilated by their own choice.

If this was something that people resisted, seriously by deep conviction - their magic would up-well from the deep source of the true self...

But people do not resist, and on the contrary they have identified-with The System at a deep motivational level, at the level of primary assumptions and convictions; and thereby have joined-in with crushing their own source of magic. Hence the focus upon appearances, impressions, and manipulation of perceptions - the modern Self is become merely a Public Relations executive for the Modern Man.

Lacking the help of magical places, people, institutions... we are, as usual, thrown-back on our own resources; and must find for ourselves (from ourselves) much that used to be absorbed passively from outside.

If we value a magical world; we ourselves must become more than magic detectors; more than mobile connoisseurs of enchantment -- we must become, if only for our-selves, geniuses of magical creativity.   
  

Magical thinking - but does that mean it's untrue?

The kite flyers - by William Arkle

It's funny, but in my mind I often label secular Leftist arguments as 'magical thinking' - yet on this blog I often advocate... magical thinking. In other words, recognition of the world beyond the five senses (and scientific measurements).

So, is magical thinking good or bad? The answer is magical thinking is bad (incoherent) if it is based on a metaphysics that rejects the validity of magic; but merely rational if the metaphysical foundations include 'supernatural' realities.

So, what is wrong with the 'magical thinking' of the Left is that they have chosen to accept only a materialist universe of whirling atoms making partly deterministic, partly random patterns (which are only patterns in the mind of a beholder, not objectively); in which death is extinction, and life has no objective purpose or meaning... A life with no base or basis; and yet they speak of, and are attached to, magic hopes.

Of course, this is a good thing from the point of view of their possible salvation - since they continue to recognise what is necessary; even as, with another part of the mind, they reject its reality. At some point they may become aware of their cognitive dissonance, and do something effectual about it.

But for someone like me it would be dishonest not to practise and advocate magical thinking! Indeed, it is a habit I need to cultivate - and perhaps this need is primary.

Magical not in terms of 'ritual magic', which is a quasi-scientific attempt to control the world (in practise, nearly always for personal gain); but in terms of recognising and trying to understand the wide world of causes and entities, outwith the bounds recognised by modern consciousness.

Religious *and* spiritual: Prejudicial hostility to non-normal states of consciousness, mysticism, magic, 'the occult' etc among (real) Christians

Many modern Christians, including real Christians, have a reflexive and inflexible hostility to 'Religious Experience' - that is, to anything like mysticism, magic or what they term the occult.

Such attitudes come-out, for example, in the visceral hostility to JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, and Harry Potter as being demonically-inspired and/ or tending to lead people into evil preoccupations and practices - such as conjuring spirits.

This particular mind set is associated with Low Church, Charismatic type Protestants (especially in the USA). Such people claim to be able to draw a sharp line between Religious Experience (such as speaking in tongues or faith healings: good) and Magic (bad), usually defined on the presence of key words or practices such as wizard, witch, divination and spells. 

Similar - albeit 'less extreme' attitudes are also prevalent in a mind-set to be found among Western and Eastern Catholics of a Traditionalist type, and the more traditionalist, scriptural Protestant churches.

What this amounts-to is the belief that normal everyday consciousness is the only 'safe' way to be - and any form of altered consciousness - such as is associated with mystical, magical and occult experiences or knowledge - is to be avoided, absolutely (or rejected if it happens) as being likely to be of demonic origin.

In a nutshell, such people are real Christians - and yet they are solidly against Religious Experiences, in the modern world; because these may be evil in origin or effect. 

Such traditionalists will acknowledge that in theory Religious and mystical experiences may also be of divine or angelic origin (as is amply attested in The Bible, the early church, among Christian Saints of the past etc.). This might be taken to imply a middle path - of approving mystical experience but with caution; and indeed that is my own view of things.

But in practice, Traditionalists are prejudiced against Religious Experiences - by which I mean they pre-judge all claims of mysticism to be fraudulent or deluded unless-proven-otherwise; and in practice there never-can-be objective, public proof otherwise.

Such people will never actually be convinced of any proof of or evidence for the validity of mystical experience - at least not when mystical claims are made by people or groups they dislike - which amounts to people outwith their own denomination +/- a shortlist of other approved churches.

(Part of this is that they typically have an unexamined assumption that true Religious Experiences only happen to those of exceptional sanctity; and such people are extremely rare, especially in the modern world. Where they get this assumption, given the vast number of Biblical and real-life counter-examples - and the fact that Jesus came, and Christianity was founded, explicity for sinners - I can't imagine: but they clearly do assume it.)   

I am sure that the Fundamentalist or Traditionalist prejudices against Religious Experience/ magic and mysticism is a very major error of modern Christianity; because Christianity is essentially a mystical religion, and if mystical aspects (whether they are labelled magic, occult or whatever) are excluded; then the faith is dead - becomes a mere matter of obedience to a bureaucracy or set or rules.

(Obedience to legitimate authority is a virtue - true; but I see not the slightest sign that Jesus regarded it as the primary virtue!)

Particularly damaging is that this prejudice against Religious Experiences implicitly consigns modern Christianity to operate within Modern Consciousness - which is of its nature materialist, reductionist and positivist. Indeed Modern Consciousness is a truly horrible thing; which drains contemporary life of felt meaning and purpose; so that the Christian who lives within it can have a faith only 'in theory' - because any validating mystical experiences will be rejected as demonic.

If ever there was a playing into Satan's hands, and doing just exactly what he wants: then this is it! - A Christianity which (from a secular perspective) has all the disadvantages of an absurdly magical foundation; yet vehemently rejects all possible experiential advantages of a magical consciousness!

So we get the weird spectacle of the adherents of a magical religion, with a magically validated organisation (i.e. a church), who spend their time reading and discussing magical events (in the Bible, lives of Saints etc), and performing magical rituals such as the Eucharist and Prayer... yet living within a distinctively modern and rootedly anti-magical discourse which expends great energy in distancing itself from any people who actually experience magic in the here and now and strive to live in a more expanded and sensitive consciousness than that of a modern bureaucracy!

In sum Christianity need to be spiritual as well as religious; and must not be squeamish or prejudiced against mysticism, magic, the occult.

Yes, this is a risk; but Life is a risk: intrinsically (Christianity takes a middle-way about pretty much everything except Love, Repentance and Forgiveness) - and the opposite risk of promoting a dry, legalistic, merely doctrinal Christianity is to advocate a mere corpse of Christianity.

Mysticism is, simply, a risk we have to take.

Why can't our life have a "magical" or transcendent quality at all times?

It seems like, even when life is going well, we cannot experience it at the best and highest level "on demand". 

We sometimes experience the "romance" of this-life, a magical moment, or even magical hours and days; but this state does not become continuous - nor can we have this magic whenever we want it, nor even when we may feel we most need it. 

There are always mundane periods, and these may be normal; there is of course suffering, illness, ageing, and the prospect of death all around and about. But even when we are not immediately affected by such things, life may be experienced as mundane; that is dull, everyday, trivial, niggling... just stuff that happens. 

And sometimes, oft-times, we cannot snap ourselves out of this, nor can we do anything that genuinely works in attaining that magical and romantic state we may desire or even crave. 

The question is whether this inability of ours is something that might in principle be overcome. The question is whether or not it is theoretically possible that "life at its best" could become everyday life? Whether and/or when we feel most trapped in everyday life, or most in need of elevation and enchantment - we could learn how to rise from that dull situation to live life at its best, again?

I think we tend to go one way or another, and end-up claiming something that is untrue or impossible. 

Mainstream secular materialism has it that this life is really mundane; and that the romantic and magical is illusory, a temporary subjective aberration merely - and this is also the view of "oneness" spiritualties such as Western Buddhism. 

On the other side are claims that the romantic, magical, enchanted life of "higher consciousness" can (and should) become either permanent, or else available on demand - perhaps by some kind of spiritual self-improvement, or by practice of some kind of technique, method, skill - or maybe by adoption of a right attitude. 

But the basic idea is that this-life in this-world could and should become a paradise. 

For me, neither of these one-sided extremes are valid. It is an evil form of despair to assume that the bad things in life are real and the good experiences are illusory. Yet, there is nothing solid (just wishful thinking and unsubstantiated claims and rumours) to indicate that it is possible to live a magical life at all times or on demand - nobody ever seems to have done it. 

Christianity is the only form of understanding that I know, which takes both sides into account - both the reality of the romantic, and the inevitability of the mundane; and which goes beyond them.

Jesus Christ knew that paradise is real but temporary, and never available "on demand" because of the nature of this life and world (which is both entropic and evil); therefore the only really-real and actually possible paradise is by resurrection to life in Heaven, which lies outside this world, beyond our "biological" death. (And which, of its nature, can only occur by personal choice.) 

Only Heaven is "romantic" on-demand and eternally; and that only because Heaven has left-behind both death (entropic change) and evil, which are intrinsic aspects of this-world. 

It is exactly because Heaven on earth is real, that Jesus was able to create Heaven and make it possible for us to want and choose Heaven; and it is exactly because we cannot have a permanent or on-demand Heaven in mortal life and on this earth, that Jesus enabled resurrection and created the sustained and everlasting romantic-reality of Heaven.   

Fascinated by "magic"... But only a small bit of it

I have been reading magical fiction and fantasy since discovering Tolkien in 1972, and continued with a (partly academic) study of animism and shamanism in the early 2000s; but I began reading about 20th century magic at the start of 2020. 

In this I was, belatedly, following-up a recommendation by William Wildblood to read The Magical Battle of Britain by Dion Fortune edited by Gareth Knight. 

Since then I have read, and often re-read, scores of such books - nearly-all by Dion Fortune and Gareth Knight, and their close associates.

This; despite that I have near-zero interest in practicing ritual magic of any kind, and even less in participating in the kind of formal, initiating magical group that DF then GK were trained-in and led - this sustained interest in magic is strange, even to me.

Indeed, I soon concluded that this kind of ritual magical society has become nigh impossible nowadays - or, at least, it is now very weak in the pursuit of positive spiritual development, whether of individuals or (even more) of society. 

Clearly, I have got, am getting, significant satisfaction from at least some of this reading. 

But what? I would characterize it as a kind of enchantment that (sometimes) comes over me while I am reading - of a similar nature to that when reading a good fantasy novel, when encountering elves or entering faerie.

However, it is significant that DF and GK were both explicitly self-identified Christian - albeit of a very different kind than me (but then that applies to almost everybody, anyway). 

Even during the active lives of DF, and even more so GK, there were relatively few ritual magicians who considered themselves Christian. 

Nowadays; it seems that those who practice magic are almost all "neo-pagans" of one sort or another; and those that I have encountered express "anything but Christianity" at best, but are mostly (and often vehemently) anti-Christian.

(This opposition usually boils-down-to an opposition to the constraints that Christian churches have placed on sex and sexuality - i.e. they hate what they regard as Christianity "because" they support some aspect of the sexual revolution of which they desire to avail themselves.) 

While several neo-pagan magical writers seem like decent people in themselves, and surely no worse overall than many/most devout Christian church-members; I cannot shake off a solid awareness of a kind of shadow that lies behind, motivates, and tends to corrupt neo-paganism - whether magical or any other kind.

Consequently I have little interest in the present day practitioners of ritual magic - and very seldom find myself "enchanted" by their work -- indeed more often I experience the opposite: a repulsion.

So my conclusion is rather like Sturgeon's Law: probably 99% of Ritual Magic is crap - but then 99% of all actual Christian Churches (including the best) is crap. In this actual world, here-and-now, 100% of most institutions is crap. If we find something that contains even one percent that is good; then we should cleave to that tiny proportion, and set-aside the rest. 

But experiencing such repulsion when sensing the deep motivations of modern people is actually the norm for me. 

And, on the other side, I find the underlying personal character of both Dion Fortune and Gareth Knight to be very appealing and indeed inspiring; even when I regard them as mistaken or on the wrong track in many specifics.

I find that I am less and less impressed by superficial agreements or disagreements with those who I read; more and more my discernments of good and not-good people, seem to be rooted-in (what I infer to be) some much deeper level of character and attitude. 

This is yet another way in which I find myself at odds with traditional, group-based, external-authority-rooted ways of understanding the purpose and meaning of life; and of the Christian Life specifically. 

It seems to me that anybody - including those corrupted, or even of of deeply evil nature - can make public affirmations or rejections of whatever checklist of doctrines or dogmas will get them accepted by some kind of institution or social group. 

This kind of stuff (which is 99% of "religions") is nowadays (it was not always so) just about gatekeeping, boundaries, gang-membership - in short: attempts to increase this-worldly power. 

And therefore it already-is, or soon-becomes, assimilated to the aims and methods of the ruling totalitarian System; which is why in 2026 all institutions (including all churches) are converged or converging with the evil-strategies of atheistic-materialism.  

On the other side; I am both interested and grateful when I encounter a person (alive or dead) whose motivates are genuinely good; and who is working, in his inner life, for positive and spiritual goals.

I believe these to be the truest followers of Jesus; in the sense that such people are much the most likely to desire, accept, and embrace Christ's offer of post-mortal, resurrected eternal life in Heaven.  

And with such rare people, I will take them where I find them and enjoy the experience, and try to learn from it - whether such individuals are located in or out-of the institutions of ritual magic, or elsewhere.    

Ritual-Ceremonial Magic is nowadays (yet) another externally-imposed and institutional belief-set - hence probably net-evil

I continue to be intrigued by 'ritual' or 'ceremonial' magic, which in the UK was,  I believe, often (in the practice of such as Dion Fortune and Gareth Knight) a valid means of Christian living - up into the middle 20th century. 

But (I think) is nowadays insufficiently-effective (that is; insufficient to resist the strategic evils of our society and civilization) - or net-malign an influence (i.e. when it has 'converged' with the values of globalist-media-totalitarianism). 

This is because ritual magic was (it seems) rooted in the learning and repeated practice of directed imagination. Initiates were trained by being told what to do, and what to think about or imagine: what to visualize and to feel - while doing prescribed rituals or exercises. 

And the rituals or exercises were repeated multiple times; so that performing them either in real life, or in imagination, would lead to these inner sensory and emotional outcomes. At the end of such training, initiates were able to control their own responses to rituals, symbols, narratives ("path-workings") so as to experience them intensely. 

Beyond this, magic works by making 'contacts' with spiritual beings; and these beings were traditionally specifically named and sought - although in later years there was also the possibility of seeking a contact, making contact, and then (perhaps) finding out who that was (to a greater or lesser degree). (By this stage, Magic had begun to overlap substantially with New Age "channeling", in its various manifestations.) 

The purpose of these spirit contacts was perhaps instructional - intended to get information from the contacts; and partly the actual process of interaction with a contact may itself provide intense experiences of consciousness.  

So, for its adherents, magic could provide information about the nature and functioning of the world; and enable the initiate to have experiences of more intense consciousness - imaginations that are visual, auditory or via any other perceptual sense; and accompanied by strong emotions. 

Consequently, the motivational power of a magical kind of Christianity could be enhanced - in directions that depended upon the content of material that was being inculcated, top-down; by the magical society or individual leader.  

This type of Magical practice recognizes that Modern Man can and does (unavoidably) 'make his experienced-reality'; which is the 'reality' he knows and lives-by. Magic responds to this, by attempting to train people to make a more-or-less standard particular and desired reality for the members of a particular magical group. 

In other words; reality is given to magical adherents in a top-down fashion, analogous to the situation ins a traditional church. 

And this is exactly why I believe that ritual/ ceremonial magic has become essentially obsolete. 

Almost all institutions and formal groups have nowadays become converged with the secular-leftist materialism and its Litmus Test issues via which this agenda-of-evil is being pursued throughout Western civilization, and the places and people influenced by it. 

Since organizations are compulsorily politicized by bureaucratic means and through relentless mass-social media pressure (and usually politicized willingly, enthusiastically; since this evil corruption is so widespread among the masses); then this will affect more and more of the activities of ritual magic - the content of which is more and more leftist hence evil. 

In other words; ritual-ceremonial magic is susceptible to exactly the form of corruption that are the "Christian" churches; and for the same reasons. 

Men make their own experienced-reality - but the only true reality corresponds with that of God's creation. All others oppose created-reality, and lead away from resurrection to eternal Heavenly life. They lead, indeed; to self-chosen, self-made, self-imprisoning hells - of various kinds. 

I believe that already and increasingly; all forms of top-down influence are net-evil (that is, they contain some Good, because all that is created contains some Good - but overall and by motivation they are evil); that is. they are encouraging and enforcing one or many of the false realities in opposition to divine creation. 

As of 2023, these top-down experienced-realities are not just destructive of truth and Goodness; but often invert real values: therefore the methods of ritual magic, insofar as they retain effect, will tend to be dishonest and enforcing of lies; will tend to support and promote sin; will call ugliness beauty and reject the truly-beautiful as being ugly and oppressive.  

My conclusion is that here-and-now we cannot trust the content or motivations of any external sources - including magical traditions or societies; because they will very probably, implicitly if not explicitly, be training us in ways-of-being that net-oppose divine creation and serve the powers of evil.  

Group-ish and top-down (e.g. initiatory) practices that were possible, effective and overall Good just a century ago, or eve more recently; now almost always are the opposite; and are either merely ineffective or feeble, or else their power is harnessed against the divine and transcendental values. 

Like it or not; we are forced back upon our own powers of discernment; and the taking of active personal responsibility for our beliefs and practices.

And - as part of this - a recognition that our defense against corruption and possibility of pursuing Good is almost always by becoming aware-of, and actively-choosing-of, much that used to be unconscious, passive, taken for granted, taken on trust. 

Magical Thinking versus Malthus was Correct (except for a blip)

*

One of the most important books I have ever read was Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms: a brief economic history of the world; because he makes clear that Malthus was essentially correct, and more people does mean less food per capita - over the long term.

Malthus is the normal, what we have had since about 1800 is a blip.

*

The blip is that since 1800 there has been an era in which productivity has outrun population growth - so far for about eight generations. The population of the world has gone from 1 billion to 7 billion - and another billion will come in about 14 year and another about 18 years after that...

The blip has an explanation - the blip is not something to be taken for granted.

In a nutshell, the blip boils down to food production - the planet used to yield enough food for 1 billion people, but now yields enough for 7 billion people.

So the blip was caused, or enabled, by an era when technological breakthroughs in food production (and the implementation of those breakthroughs) came so thick and fast that massive population growth was sustainable, and the average amount of food per person also increased.

*

But this outrunning will only continue if relevant technological breakthrough/ implementing also continues.

This is not due to a magic cause, it is not in the nature of things - there were specific historical reasons, operating in actual places, and among individual human beings - which led to technological breakthroughs. 

So the root of modernity is... whatever enabled technological breakthroughs from about 1800. And the sustaining of modernity depends on the sustaining of... whatever enabled technological breakthroughs from about 1800.

All the evidence I have seen shows that the rate of relevant breakthroughs has been declining for some considerable time, probably the past couple of generations (since the mid twentieth century).

This would not be at all surprising, it would indeed be what we would expect - so long as we do not succumb to magical thinking. 

*

What was the cause of the take-off in productivity which became visible from about 1800 hundred and enabled a great increase in food production? Whatever it was, it has to be something new, which wasn't possible before - something contingent, and not in the nature of human society.

Greg Clark's book makes clear that the only coherent explanation for the 'industrial revolution' and the (contingent) escape from the Malthusian norm, was a change in human capability - a change in the abilities and motivations of human beings which (in the case of England) can be observed and measured to be building-up from early Medieval times.

It should not be surprising that human capability is collapsing - and modern societies are in practice unable to do things which used to be done easily. It should not be surprising that the dense concentration of relevant technological breakthroughs - and the capacity to implement them - has gone.

*

Things have causes, modernity is not magic; food production requires the production of food - the production of more food to feed billions of extra people requires breakthroughs.

The usual situation in human history is that when extra people are born, they die of starvation - because there is no food for them. We now have an extra six billion mouths to feed above the norm, and plenty more coming.

Most people seem to act like feeding six billion extra people is something that just happens, by magic, like there is some invisible hand that inevitably produces what ever is needed.

But no. It is not magic. Technological breakthroughs were made by specific people in specific places and under specific circumstances - when these change, then the normal state resumes: very few breakthroughs or none at all; and the extra productivity no longer sustainable, technology forgotten or not usable.

*

Modernity was an achievement - a wicked achievement in many ways; but by achievement I mean that it happened for particular reasons; and if or when those particular reasons disappear or cease to operate then we have six million people too many - and more on the way.


Reality is a Red Queen situation - population and food production (and the rest of it) are so far out of equilibrium that we have to keep running hard to stay in the same place. Mess-up the capability or implementation; and food production soon collapses.

(Food is the bottom line, but of course the same arguments apply to other necessities).

*

That is realism. But what we have is magical thinking.

Magical thinking on the politically-correct, 'Liberal' Left and also magical thinking on on the mainstream conservative/ libertarian 'Right'.

The magical thinking of socialists who see productivity increase as 'normal' (the graph rises) and the main problem as spreading it around, sharing-out the food which magically appears; and the magical thinking of libertarians and capitalists who think that - however big the population - enough food will always be forthcoming so long as the incentives and institutions are correct - the invisible hand fed an extra six billion since 1800, and can feed another two, four or six billion if necessary.

Both are fantasies. The reality is that society is entropic, and keeping the extra six billion alive needs not just sustaining past capabilities but continually developing more.

*

We need relevant breakthroughs and they need to be applied or billions of people will start dying off.

Nature cannot hear our rhetoric, nature will not be fooled - either we are doing this or we are not doing it.

Everything in modernity depends on those breakthroughs! Where did they come from? WHO did they come from? Do those situations and people still exist, do they still generate breakthroughs - are they even trying to generate breakthroughs?

*

This is not a threat. In fact I believe that we cannot generate enough breakthroughs to sustain the blip,  because we are not clever enough - but if we understood the realities and were actually trying to do something useful about them, then the end of the blip would not be so bad as otherwise. 

*

Modernity was a blip, made possible by the ability to feed billions more people.

But the blip had causes, and if or when those causes are removed or have already been removed - or if population outstrips relevant capacity - the blip will stop blipping, and the world will return to normal Malthusian equilibrium

And there are currently maybe six billion people in excess of that equilibrium...

*

2020 Synchronicity Magic, following after the leaching of enchantment from life

One of the most painful - although, it turns-out necessary - trends through my life, has been the leaching of magic, of enchantment, from all institutions, and almost all places. 

This is the familiar 'public world' of materialist assumptions: that the world is made of 'things'; that subjective mind (consciousness) is separate and thoughts are epiphenomenal; that Beings are ultimately mere artefacts of the 'laws' of physics and statistical chance...

Although the theme of modern life becoming disenchanted goes back a long way, to the first Romantics around 1800; and the sociologist Max Weber defined it as characteristic of modernity more than a century ago. And it was also Weber who also named the Iron Cage of bureaucracy, which has been the primary mechanism by which enchantment has been destroyed. 

For me, the disenchantment of universities was probably the most painful of these trends; since I had grown-up the son of a 'professor' (consultant/ senior lecturer in dentistry) and known from an early age that this was a known world I felt organically a part-of. I was an insider. 

Right into the 1990s, there was a residuum of magic about academia - albeit a thin and dwindling stream compared with the height of the middle ages. 

But it was evident - here and there, again and again; and I valued that magic despite that hardly any of my colleagues noticed it, and even fewer liked it. Indeed, as an atheist, I depended on that enchantment at a deep level; for a sense of meaning and purpose in life, larger than myself.

The process of diminishing enchantment was partly driven by the evil destructiveness of bureaucracy (whose 'reforms' were always based upon lies and denied, unexamined false assumptions) - but also, underlying, by the long-term trend that Men were progressively less and less susceptible to enchantment. 

Magic, gradually, ceased to work. 

 

This can be seen everywhere - indeed, even in the world of magic itself: I mean the 'esoteric' societies of ritual magic that grew up from the late 19th century. 

In the late 19th century people were claiming all kind of magical manifestations; the rituals seemed objectively effective, indeed potentially dangerous - hence they were kept secret. But by the 1980s or 90s nobody was even claiming this, thus there seemed no need for secrecy; and the activities of magical societies were hard to distinguish from group psychotherapy, artsy 'happenings', or ritual pageantry. 

For most people, nearly all the time; Magic just doesn't work anymore. 

 

The old systems and symbolisms (alchemy, astrology, numerology, ritual objects and actions...) - are left looking more like bureaucratic flow-charts. People can still learn about the history of magical stuff, and intended correlations; but it is clear that objects and actions no longer animate people. 

The objectivity that linked magical things and doings with predictable real world effects has gone. Such correlations have become merely theoretical - or else reduced to (transient) feelings.  

The human mind seems to have become more and more resistant to magic. 

And not only among Westerners. The 19th century Amerindians 'needed' to introduce peyote in order to attain the mystical states that had previously arisen spontaneously. However, peyote is a mild, slow-acting psychedelic; requiring additional supportive group immersion and ritual actions. 

But among Westerners the psychedelic drugs of the 1960s were relatively a 'necessary' chemical sledgehammer of ultra-potent, or mega-dose, brain impairment agents; such extreme measure needed in order to create some warped simulacrum of the 'larger consciousness' that most people could experience naturally earlier in human history. 

Psychedelics are a last gasp of the idea that spiritual experience should come from outside, be objective and irresistible, should overwhelm the mind... and, of course, psychedelics have overall proved to be not merely a failure as 'entheogens', but actively counter-productive.

Cause and effect have worked together - and by now I find that the disenchantment of public life and my compelled withdrawal of reliance upon it has been an advantage - a necessity; as the whole organisational world moves ever deeper into more explicit evil. 

Anyone now mentally-dependent on any kind of institution is drawn into supporting the agenda of Satanic evil which has swept the world in 2020. 

Enchantment of our social world is now an illusion rather than an insight - albeit a flimsy and ineffectual illusion in a world where all institutions are permanently convulsed by externally-bureaucratic-media-imposed transformations, driven by global Establishment priorities (birdemic, climate change, antiracism, sexual revolution...). 

 

Here and now any magic must come from within - and modern institutions have no 'within'; they are permeable and hollow; the imperatives of The System sweep through them unopposed and uncontradicted - they are mere subsections of The One System.

This is related to an increased awareness of synchronicity as a 'mechanism' of enchantment. Synchronicity as the basis of a way of life was the core message of the 1993 bestselling New Age 'novel' The Celestine Prophecy; and this is indirect evidence that there are no longer effective magical 'systems'.

Magic is now something that unpredictably happens-to us - our job being to recognise and understand it when it happens. 

 

But mainly; our 'job' is to create the frame of mind (frame of Being) in which synchronicities happen more often, more powerfully and meaningfully; become 'normal', and link-together towards Good ends. 

Because - although this is seldom recognised - synchronicity entails a loving creator God. Acknowledgment and understanding of synchronicity takes us most of the way to Christianity!

Thus a modern Christian - at his most Christian - would experience life as a continuous-web of synchronicity. Quite naturally so - because a life of meaning and purpose would be full of positive and striking 'coincidental' happenings; one leading onto another. 

Our mortal life is sustained because of our need to learn - to learn for the resurrected life to come; and sychronicity is a kind of learning-opportunity. 

Thus synchronicity is not a code - not a system of objective correlatives, like the old magical system; but a natural aspect of a Christian life in this 2020 world where all meaning must come from God and from the divine within; because pretty much all of external life has become evil, meaningless and purposeless. 

2020 Magic just is Christian; not institutional. 

Note: moderated commenting has returned...

The spiritual Battle of Britain - then and now

I am reading a book that was recommended by my Albion Awakening co-authors: The Magical Battle of Britain, a selection of letters from the Second World War by Dion Fortune, edited by Gareth Knight (1993). 

Dion Fortune was the pseudonym of Violet Mary Firth, who was perhaps the most respected and influential magical practitioner of modern times to come from Britain; and importantly, from my point of view, she was a sincere and devout Christian - of an Esoteric kind.

Her idea was that - after war was declared, and as Britain prepared for the possibility of invasion, it was important to encourage people by spiritual means: to build-up the folk and racial soul of the British; by means of directed meditations of many people.


Reading the book, it seems distinctly possible to me that what she did was of genuine benefit - especially when regarded as one specific manifestation of a spiritual 'mobilisation' that had multiple facets - most obviously seen with Winston Churchill becoming the national leader.

It is noteworthy that DF herself displayed an extremely unusual, and admirable, combination of strength of character, creative inspiration, ethical solidity - and yet a disinterested and altruistic absence of ego.

What she 'asked for' in these magical-group-meditations was always, it seems, very carefully restricted to the spiritual level (not seeking specific physical results, not personal advantage); and was therefore benign. She was, in her small scale fashion, one of the rare examples of an effective and natural woman leader - a mini Elizabeth the First!


However, as I read I also developed the conviction that this Magical Battle of Britain was probably the last time that such a thing was possible. Indeed, even before the end of the 39-45 war, the British national consciousness had changed qualitatively - and in the direction of being both less spiritual, and less group-ish.

The way that Dion Fortune used symbolism (sword, sceptre, grail), the concept of a national soul which was also a racial soul, the use of visualisation (eg of guarding angels)... these are essentially the spiritual categories of an earlier, pre-modern phase of human consciousness. By 1939 they were merely residual in the spirit of Albion; and became possible and effective only briefly and for one more time, under the exceptional demands of that era.

Very rapidly afterwards there was a dwindling and disappearance of both symbolic power, and the capacity of an individual to immerse in the group-soul. Before the war was done, Britain had begun to become pretty much what it is now; materialistic and anti-Christian; hedonically aiming at 'comfort and convenience'; and its national ideology established as Leftist-bureaucratic and totalitarian (as Orwell made clear, based on his wartime experiences).


My understanding is that these changes were underlain by that developmental change in British consciousness which was only briefly interrupted by the Swan Song described in the Magical Battle of Britain.

As symbolism and immersive group spirituality dwindled and then became impossible; so the churches dwindled, leftist-hedonic-materialism waxed.

And (as I see it, anyway!) the necessity for a Romantic Christianity became incrementally more and more obvious and urgent.

The esoteric occult focus: From Far East, through Middle East, to Celtic

The Occult Revival in the West (esepcially the UK, spreading to Europe and the USA) began with Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society in the late 1800s which led to the Golden Dawn magical societies. 

This regarded the fount of secret wisdom and magical power to lie in the Far East of India, China, Japan - but especially India in the early 20th century. 

Theosophy also gave a structural emphasis to the Qabalah/ Kabbalah; with its Hebrew origins in the Middle East, and a fascination with Ancient Egypt. 

The favoured religions were Hinduism, and later Buddhism and (Islamic) Sufism - with a selective and much-subordinate interest in mystical Christianity from the Neo-Platonic tradition. A uniting feature was belief in progressive reincarnation towards deity.  

The second phase, which regarded itself as "Western" is most associated with Rudolf Steiner and later Dion Fortune, and was most active in the early decades but especially the era between WWI and WWII.  - but their idea of the West was relative. 

They discarded the Far East focus, but retained a basis in the Qabalah; instead were interested by Egypt and the Middle East of Palestine. Steiner was much interested by the specifics of native European "folk souls" but Anthroposophy never developed an explicit magical practice, nor was it regional in practice or aspiration - being much focused on the power centre of the HQ in Dornach, Switzerland. 

This era of magic is Christian, or at least pro-Christian (depending on interpretation) - at any rate, many of them (including Steiner and Dion Fortune) regarded themselves as strongly Christian in essence. However, progressive reincarnation (rather than salvation and resurrection) remained at its heart. 

From the post WWII era (e.g. Robert Graves's The White Goddess) but especially from the 1960s and 1970s; the magical tradition began to focus on genuinely Western sources, and especially on the (supposed) Celtic aspects of Britain and Ireland before the Roman conquest. 

This led to the various manifestations of Neo-Paganism such as extremely popular Witches/ Wiccans, Druids; and the modern magical societies and groups (including much of the broad "chaos magic" tradition.  

Modern occultism and esoteric actuiivity has retained the idea of progressive reincarnation towards divinity. 

However, in contrast with the early 20th century occultism of Steiner and Dion Fortune; post millenial occultism is, and increasingly, essentially anti-Christian/ "anything-but-Christianity" - usually actively and vehemently so. 

Indeed, 21st century occultism typically embraces the Christianity-inverted values of mainstream Western culture - especially with respect to morality; which among Neo-Pagans is often explicitly and deliberately transgressional in its ideals and actuality. 

Magic and the Christian priesthood; magic in everyday modern life...

It seems distinctly possible that there can be no viable priesthood, including Christian priesthood, that is not understood to be magic-using: that is, understood to be magic-using both by the laity and the priests themselves.

(When I speak of magic here, I use the word in the loose fashion employed by modern secular people- and typically a belief in which is imputed to others (rather than the speaker himself) - which would include 'belief in' things such as healings, foresight and divination, revelations, answered prayer, angelic and demonic beings, ghosts, talismans or other objects with special power... anything which is associated with the world beyond the material. To the modern mind everything of this type is equally 'magic'; and all real religion is therefore magic.)

Magic is probably essential for priesthood authority - and for this authority to be legitimate the magic must be real - at least to the extent that there is some real magic being done by some of the priesthood.

*

I make this inference based on history, especially that of the longest-lived societies. Pre-Christ Egypt - with its magician priesthood ruled by a supreme god-priest - sets the benchmark; since then the Byzantine empire is the longest enduring polity, and it was a society saturated with magic, and the spiritual leadership was based-upon miracle-working monastics and hermits (who, by this analysis, were the true 'priests' even though mostly not-ordained).

The Roman Catholic church likewise seems to have been strongest when most associated with magical occurrences and a society which expected these - of course The Mass is (by this definition) a magical event which can only be done by a priest.

Among Protestants of strong faith, there is much magic - faith healings, revelations, explicit divine guidance via prayer, direct instruction from scripture, speaking in tongues and so forth; however, for Protestants these are not associated with priests but available throughout all faithful church members: priests have no specially magical authority or powers qua priests (but only perhaps as charismatic individuals), consequently they are not regarded as priests - and indeed the word is seldom used.

Among Mormons, all members have direct revelations from the divine concerning their own lives and other topics; all men in good standing are priests, and have special access to magical powers such as blessing and healing. Designated priests (Patriarchs) have a special clairvoyant power of foresight and wise advice; church general authorities - and especially the Prophet - uniquely have such powers concerning matters to do with the whole church.

*

Modern culture - and much of the best of it, that which seems to oppose the demonic hedonic materialism - has an explicit focus on broadly, or indeed specifically, magical themes. Magic is everywhere - yet many Christians affect to oppose this magic, while yet (as I describe above) devout Christian's lives are permeated with  (what seems to secular people) magic.

This weakens Christianity; maims it, sets it at war with itself and its potential allies.

The point about magic is motivation. The modern people who describe themselves as 'magicians' (witches, wiccans, warlocks, druids, wizards etc) and make a big thing about magic-described-as-such are (whatever they may claim) mostly intending to use magic as a form of power used to get what they personally want (which is often of a sexual nature - as generally happens outwith religion; sex being the second most powerful motivator, on average).

What is wrong with modern magicians is not their magic but their motivation - which is either personal or if not, then secular Leftist; hence (to put it bluntly!) evil. 

*

On the one hand we ought not to regard magic as anything other than a natural part of real life. Societies that deny the reality of magic destroy themselves - first spiritually, then materially.

But there is something necessarily new and different about the modern attitude to magic - due to the change in consciousness which has come over us as cultures and as individuals. As Owen Barfield described so well; our modern minds work in a different way from minds of the past - we are so self-conscious that we can even distinguish our selves from our thoughts (such, during introspection, even that our own thoughts may seem alien).

Magic may be natural, but we moderns cannot naturally be magic in the same way as a Medieval European, a Byzantine or an Ancient Egyptian was magic - we can only attain such unselfconscious immersion in magic via altered states of consciousness, by some kind of intoxication (deliberate self-impairment of thinking, especially in terms of clarity and purposiveness - a stripping-away or suppression of the self); including the group-frenzy of crowds focused on a charismatic magician/ priest,

But this is on the one hand a temporary and encapsulated magic, inadequate to our purposes; on the other hand it is misleading in terms of what is most needed and wanted.

Of course we need to acknowledge and live-by magic - but in a way that gives full authority to the self-aware modern mind; the magic we regard as real and effectual requires to be integrated fully into ordinary everyday, practical, social consciousness - not just for extended-moments of solitude or recreation.

In conclusion; we want and need magic in our lives; if we are to have priests they must be a group acknowledged to be especially 'expert' - knowledgeable and skillful - in the use of magic; but modern magic must not be (merely) a revival of the magic of the past - accessible only to children or those in altered states of consciousness: the magic of now and the future must be everyday and supersensory, spontaneous and purposive; powerful, but only in the service of divine destiny.

The "magical system" of Jesus's miracles

I was thinking about the magical systems in fantasy fictions that I am currently reading by 'Mr Magical System' himself (ie. Brandon Sanderson) - when it struck me that the magic we know most about, that of Jesus's miracles, was very different indeed.

While magic in books is usually an 'impressive' matter of light, electricity, noises, super strength/ speed/ endurance/ healing etc - the common feature is that you can See It Being Done.

Whereas nobody reports seeing the miracles of Jesus being-done, actually happening - instead people seemed to notice that they had-already-happened.

People noticed that the water had turned to wine, that a few loaves and fishes had (somehow...) already fed a vast crowd; that soldiers or a mob were surrounding Jesus intending to arrest or kill him - but that Jesus was gone, that after having mud on their lids - the eyes of a blind man could see...

Jesus walked on the waters, which was spectacular - but it just happened, they realised that he was already doing it.

Jesus's miracles re-arranged reality to produce the desired result - and this process of rearrangement was invisible, imperceptible - apparently took place 'behind the sces' or as if in another dimension: to human perception all that was noticed was that things-had-changed.

How to understand this? One way is by the idea of levels of being, or consciousness - in which higher levels are imperceptible - by more real - than the lower levels. So in normal life we are like a simple visible-light-detecting machine - and when what is happening is not light (but is instead accomplished by ultraviolet frequencies, or sound, or smell...) then the dial does not register any change.

Another is to recognise that a higher being might be able to re-arrange things to produce the desired changes, but without those who are changed knowing about it.

This is like a dream - in at least two ways. In a dream the situation is that things change - landscapes change, things appear or disappear, personalities shift.. and usually we see that they have-changed, we don't see it happening.

And when we are dreaming a vast amount can happen in dream time - a hundred times faster than things can happen in waking time. An epic and detailed dream narrative takes only ten minutes by the clock.

In the dream there is a dream-er, of which we who are dream-ing are typically unaware, or only partially and intermittently aware - and of whose exact nature we are uncertain (and it may vary). But the time-scale and level of operations of the dream-er is such that he can accomplish a great deal which is imperceptible to the mind that is dream-ing. 

I presume something of this general-kind may partly explain how Jesus's miracles occurred - and how magical results were observed without any sign of magic being-done.


Note: Among fictional magical systems that I know - the nearest to what I mean is the metal Atium in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy. 'Burning' of this metal by a mistborn in a fight, does not interfere with foes free agency, but predicts events slightly ahead of their reality by revealing consequences of actions already-initiated - at the same time the mind and body of the Atium-burner is as-if relatively accelerated so that he can calculate trajectories and take rapid compensatory or evasive actions with astonishing rapidity. So the mistborn can pass through a crowd of soldiers by knowing in advance where each sword blow will fall, and having time to dodge them all. 
     In the later Mistborn books, the Wayne character uses a 'bubble' to slow his own time, relative to the time outside the bubble. From within the bubble, the real world is seen as ultra-slo-mo - so the bubble can be erected to allow planning and evasion, even while (for example) a bullet is approaching. To those outside the bubble, Wayne repeatedly 'disappears' from imminent danger (only a brief blur is perceptible), to reappear somewhere safe.  
     If this sort of thing can be imagined greatly accelerated; and capable of reaching into the very innermost levels of matter - to adjust molecules, for example; then we may have a crude picture of the ways that divine powers could make magic seem already-to-have-happened without perceptible evidence - as with Jesus's miracles, perhaps.  

The "magical scientist": Ceremonial Magic and Science

From the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game

I am re-reading Wizards: a history, by Peter G Maxwell-Stuart (2004); and reflecting on the use of ceremonial magic throughout recorded history; including in the Bible itself, and other early Christian texts where the magic attributions were sometimes vastly amplified.

It all seems to confirm my strong impression that magic and science were pretty much the same thing through most of history, and constituted part of the "this worldly" and social aspect of religions. 

So how and why did they separate - or is science still actually a kind of magic? Maybe...

The virtue (or otherwise) of magic was mainly a matter of the (genuine) motivations of the magician - whether, for instance, these were selfish or spiteful; or else altruistic and intended to benefit good causes. 

And to a lesser extent, the quality of magic was influenced by the good, neutral, or evil nature; of spiritual beings that were contacted and summoned, and whose cooperation or aid was sought. 

But mostly magic was regarded as method; a way of getting things done; such as a means to learn information or accomplish a desired goal. As are science and technology nowadays. 

 

Therefore the main question about any particular usage of ceremonial magic* was - does it work?

And the answer seems to be - Yes! Magic did work... 

Which is to say that magical ceremonies worked sometimes - magic sometimes did what it was intended to do. 

But magic typically worked (it seems to me) partially; by which I mean that although effective, the effects were achieved with great effort on someone's part, sometimes achieved only slowly; sometimes the magic only partially solved the problem. 

And the outcomes were often controversial - accepted by some, denied by others. 

And the explanation of any specific magical effect was also controversial; as we see in relation to Jesus in the New Testament. 

We see differing views of miracles. Was the "magic" done by Jesus himself (as a divine being); by God via Jesus; by angels or demons Jesus had enlisted; was there a natural explanation; or was the miracle some kind of illusion, trick or fraud? 

Much the same could be asked of any magician - since some magicians claimed (or were asserted to be, by followers) divine avatars or emanations (i.e. themselves a god), or to have assimilated to the divine. 

 

Therefore, although it can be said that magic "worked"; there remains the deep question of what it means that magic works; and (in sum) it is evident that any evaluation of any kind of "working" cannot be made wholly objective and impersonal. 

That is: different people, different societies, different social contexts - all affect evaluations of whether a procedure is "working", and to what extent. 

But it is possible to regard modern science (say, from the 1600s onwards) as a systematic and communal attempt to make magic work more reliably by diminishing the personal and contextual. 

Such that a given scientific procedure can be counted-upon to produce a given result, to a greater extent than was the case with ancient magic. 

And this goal was pursued, over several generations of scientists, even when the results were more modest, less spectacular, than the results claimed for magic.

The point was that scientific results could be relied-upon in a way that was less dependent on the qualities of the scientist and the specific situation, than was the case with magicians. 

Science required much less training and knowledge than magic; and the accepted societal applications of science became much wider than achieved by magicians - indeed, science became almost universal. 

"Less" dependent - but still dependent to a degree; because any reflective and critically-minded real-scientist would know that the results of science still depend on many of the aspects of ceremonial magic: the knowledge and skills of the scientist, elaborate procedures and equipment etc. 

My conclusion is that the magical elements of science were never eliminated, and science could still, therefore, be regarded as a type of magic. 

However; the successful attempt to reduce the magical aspects in science came at a cost; because the trend led, incrementally, to the eventual elimination of the divine and spiritual from scientific discourse... 

The point at which the spiritual and divine were altogether eliminated from scientific thinking (in the later 20th century); was the point at which science ceased to be real and became, instead, merely a branch of the totalitarian bureaucracy; and scientists merely a species of research bureaucrat.  

In sum: Real science is a sub-branch of magic built-upon those areas of life where the desired effects can most reliably, and more completely, be achieved...

Which also means that many aspects of life are ignored by real-science because outcomes are unpredictable; or depend too much on individual persons and circumstances. 

*By "ceremonial" magic; I mean that requiring some combination of knowledge or scholarship; training and practice; and using some kind of (more or less complex) physical procedure, actions, words, and/or material artefacts.  

Gareth Knight - Romantic Christian

In 2011, Gareth Knight (1939-2022) published an autobiography titled I call it Magic which is easy and enjoyable to read on the surface; yet contains several deeper layers of implied content that have only revealed themselves on re-reading.

Of particular interest was his account of the transformation in his own 'magical life' throughout his adult life; especially the changes in what he 'called' magic, the means by which he reached the state of enchantment or poetry, and the actual content of these magical-states. 

Knight began as a formal ritual magician, ascending through the prolonged training and initiatory steps of the Society of the Inner Light (founded a generation earlier, as a Christian organization, by Dion Fortune); he went on to found his own ritual magic group - on similar, though looser, lines; then to 'staging' much larger annual weekend events (almost 'happenings') at an anthroposophical centre called Hawkwood. 

By Knight's own account, in the 1970s to the early 1980s, these weekends attained a very powerful level of magical activity among the participants (who had been trained in the requisite methods of concentration and visualization). He then stopped doing this, and moved on to less formal and more improvisatory styles of magic either alone, with his wife and daughter, or in small and private groups. 

After the turn of the millennium his magic practice had changed further. In December of 2004 he was invited back to the Hawkwood weekend; which had changed considerably over the previous couple of decades (the following quotations are from Chapter 31 of I called it Magic) :

The occasion was a jolly romp, with the place filled to capacity, and a rich variety of activity. [But] Power was not ramped up to the degree that it had been in the early Hawkwood days...   

In other words, the experience was less-strongly magical, less enchanted than it had been. In other words; this corresponds to my observations on the declining power of symbolism and ritual through the late 20th century.  

Knight does not draw attention to the meaning of these changes for his inner life; but describes how in fact his practices changed - in the direction of becoming more individual, personally based, and exploratory (rather than relying-on an established and quasi-objective system of symbols, rituals, and group activity). 

Rooted in his study of French language and literature (in which subject he did a degree in later life); Knight embarked on an engagement with the medieval French Arthurian poet Chretien de Troyes:

I took upon myself the task of going through each of Chretien's romances as if both he and I were present, travelling through the whole scenario from start to finish as a kind of directed visualization, and writing it all down...

It then filtered into my head the realization that much that I had witnessed in this was was not chivalrous knights going to the aid of damsels in distress but accounts of their initiation into fairyland - for there was a strong case for seeing the principal female characters as faery rather than human. 

This led on to what Knight termed faery 'contacts' - which then led to writing several books deriving from these contacts. What this meant he explains further: 

It dealt in imagery but with a philosophical intent, yet a wisdom expressed more through the medium of a story than by intellectual definitions. To make the contact it was necessary to build a scenario [i.e. in imagination] something like a questing knight discovering a castle in a particular symbolic shape, and then entering into it... with a ... direct feeling of relationship with the fabric of the building itself. 

After further description of his imagined but real-seeming experiences; Knight elaborates the resulting new and deeper engagement with nature:

This kind of thing was at a different level from local countryside experiences where contact was virtually devoid of intellect but impacted more on the emotional and etheric levels... Along with contacts... came a greater sense of presence and communion with the world of nature, and particularly trees...

It may well be that experience and wisdom of this nature comes with age, which is [an] aspect of the Merlin and Nimue story... But there is no real need to await one's dotage for a realization of these things.

  

What Gareth Knight seems to me to be describing here, is a kind of recapitulation of Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield's scheme of the development of consciousness. The ritual magic was the Intellectual Soul era, characteristic of classical and medieval culture. 

Contact bears some relationship to 'channeling' of spiritual Beings - which he also did for example in a channeled series of direct communication (much like taking dictation) of 1993, published as The Abbey Papers. 

But 'contact' comes across to me as much more of a two-way interaction between himself and a spiritual Being - and not necessarily in words, nor in images - i.e. more direct than language- or symbol-mediated. 

Knight then moved towards what sound very much like Final Participation - which is something like a recapitulation in conscious thinking of what was a much more passive and unconscious in the spontaneous animistic Original Participation of early childhood and tribal Man. 

Animistic, because it recognizes the world as consisting of living, conscious Beings with which one may have relationships and communication. Knight also seems to be moving towards a communication less based on perceptions and visions, and more a matter of what I have called Direct Knowing: that is direct, wordless and imageless communication in thinking. 

In other words, a direct communion between Beings, such that the thinking of one is participated-in by the thinking of another. 

Once Gareth Knight had reached this kind of 'magic' I think he has largely left-behind the formal and institutional roots of his practice, and indeed its 'objective' aspects, where experiences were shared via a common language and symbolism that could be relied-upon to evoke the same inner states in its participants.

It seems he has - in practice, if not in terms of theorization - fully Romantic Christian; in that he takes an inner, intuitive and personal responsibility for whatever 'methods' he uses to attain magical states of mind (within the over-arching and primary Christian metaphysical framework).   

Knight puts this change down to his own personal development, experiences, expediency, and ageing - but such is the generality of such a development that I interpret it as driven by inner and divinely-destined changes in the human consciousness of Western Man. 

What all this seems to mean is that (here and now) we cannot rely upon external and institutional forms of spirituality to attain 'participation' in the world; and the language of 'objective' communication of spiritual experiences has weakening and withered. 

Yet, on the positive side, we can develop distinctive (perhaps unique) personal 'aids' and methods (i.e. 'contacts' occurring inside thinking, rather than as external 'events), that will achieve the participation which is natural, good, and divinely-intended. 

Also, that strong forms of achieved participation are likely to be more animistic and personal - engagement with particular Beings - than the abstract forms of earlier symbolism. 

     

Whether Gareth Knight would have agreed with my interpretation of his life and development is perhaps doubtful... 

It does rather involve a cutting-off of the branch upon which his life's work rested: that is, the general validity of some particular kinds of ritual, symbols, group-activity; and the communication of these in abstract and written forms, and by speech. 

But his desire to use more narrative story-like communications; his primary mode of magic in later life being a personal, inter-Being and two-way 'contact'; and the continually-evolving nature of the subject matter and formal techniques of his magic - all suggest that there was exactly such an evolution; and that Gareth Knight's life ended with him being implicitly a genuine and fully-realized Romantic Christian. 

If hobbits were still alive... What then?

When I first read Tolkien in my early-middle teens; I had a yearning desire that hobbits, elves, dwarves should still be alive in the world. I felt that - if this could only be the case - then life would become magical and beautiful... or would it? How exactly?

Nowadays, I regard this as one of the traps of materialism. When half of us 'knows' (because we are materialists) that there are no other speaking peoples than man, no giants or dragons, no magical wizards or ghosts... 

Then the other part of us - which remains spontaneously and naturally spiritual - automatically concludes that If such things were real For Sure, our world would be magical, re-enchanted, romantic...

And in this half-way house of hope-less yearning - we Get Stuck. 

Because, it would not really be the case that hobbits would make a better world - not unless our way of thinking also changed. 

Because the reality of hobbits somewhere in the world would not transform our condition any more than the reality of the pygmies; the reality of magical sorcerers would just be a different kind of 'science'; the presence of invisible fairies would be just some novel electromagnetic phenomenon... 

Because we are so materialist, so mundane in our way of thinking, that these would be just more facts about the dull, thin, alienated reality which we perceive asif looking-out at a TV screen from inside our brains. 

This, indeed, is exactly what happened with New Age spirituality - it just became another (mundane) alternative-science - based on consciousness understood as vibrations, frequencies, energies or fields (a quasi-physics, mostly); and a branch of 'therapy' - but using acupuncture, crystals and shamanism instead of surgery, drugs and counselling.   

Even meditation - which used to be regarded as the most advanced form of mystical spirituality - is now materialized to the mundane activity of 'mindfulness' (and taught with state approval by mega-bureaucracies). 

Fundamentally; the problem is not in the world, but in our-selves; or rather our lack of real-selves. 

It is because we-our-selves are self-aware at a superficial and externally-imposed level of thinking: our personality, our thoughts, and even our thought processes are passively assimilated from our environment; and our environment in one that is officially dead, meaningless, purposeless; and operating on the basis of some mindless mixture of causality and randomness. 

We take the world, ideas and concepts, and our experiences; and we make them mundane.  

The first step in escaping this Black Iron Prison is to cease assisting in its construction and maintenance. Every thing, all knowledge and understanding, entails mind; so our miserable and pointless world is mind-made; made (partly, and essentially) by our own minds. 

We are our own jailers and tormentors. It was we who painted ourselves into this corner from which we perceive there to be no possible escape. 

Habits are hard to break - especially when it is habitual thinking - as such - from-which we need to escape. 

Yet it can be done; and we can recognize and value when it is done - and repent when it is not. We can understand our lives as the best times when we know the world to be alive, conscious, created; and that the other mundane materialist times are an evil spell with which we collude. 

The materialist mundane miserable reality is real; but only because we help to make it real. The enchanted romantic reality is also real, but only when we acknowledge it as such. 

As usual, it is a choice; and nowadays (and increasingly - for most people) a binary choice. 

Cease hoping for rescue

By hobbit and elf, 

By dragon or spell;

And repent our complicity

In the thinking of-Hell.