I’ve been playing around with magic (as in the metaphysical kind, not stage magic) for the past while, and even though I’m not very good at it yet, I think I have a way of explaining how it works that’ll make sense within a Western paradigm of reality. I’m not sure if the model I have is accurate in any way, but I think it’s a start.
First, I need to address the way we depict magic in movies and TV, because these depictions threw me off the scent for what magic is for a long time. Magic isn’t a “stuff” people have inside of them that they wield, nor is it a “stuff” that exists in the universe that we can harness and command. It also isn’t something people are born with, nor is it something that only the “chose few” have. And most importantly, it isn’t some kind of power we force out of our hands or out of a wand through pure conviction or sheer force of will.
Instead, magic is an art. It’s like painting or woodworking or knitting, where it’s the act of manipulating a specific medium to achieve an intended outcome.
The medium magic uses is the imagination. Children know exactly what this is, whereas most (Western) adults have completely forgotten what it is, confusing it with “creativity” or “innovativeness” or “our powers of visualization” or even just “fantasizing” when it’s none of these things. The imagination is the field we do all of our thinking through, whether that thinking is based in visuals, language, feelings, or otherwise. Someone does magic by moving their mind through this field like they’d move their body through physical space.
This isn’t going to make sense unless you try it, so let me give an example using a therapy technique: Let’s say you’re stuck worrying about something. The way you can diminish this worry is to imagine or pantomime sticking the thing you’re worried about in a bottle and putting that bottle away somewhere (make sure you’re bottling the subject-matter worrying you, not the emotion you feel because of it). By doing this action, you move your mind through an arc of events that tells your body “the situation has changed, and here’s how,” which causes the body to adapt accordingly.
We don’t call these kinds of therapy techniques “magic” because magic is about manipulating the universe, not just ourselves. Psychology only goes so far with this because it follows a Western approach to cognition, which assumes our minds are housed in our brains and therefore can’t/don’t extend beyond them.
But the truth is that we actually have no idea where our minds live. We have no clue if they’re produced by our biology, or if our biology is just a filter for our minds in some way. Some cultures assume the mind lives outside the body the same way Western society assumes it lives inside of it, and base their concept of reality around that.
In my personal experience, magic will always be incomprehensible and mysterious UNLESS you understand your mind has no borders and expands into the universe all around you. Once you understand yourself this way, then it’s possible to experience a reality where magic is as real as any other art.
Whenever we look at magic being performed, we see rituals, chants, drumming, and the use of candles, crystals, and other ingredients. Logically and visually these activities make no sense. But that’s because they’re just facilitating the actual manipulation taking place on the plane of the imagination, which we can’t see with our eyes. It’s like watching someone code a program when we a) can’t see the display, and b) aren’t aware that the display even exists.
Magic is very hard to describe from the doer’s perspective. I need to get better at it before I attempt to explain.
In case it hasn’t become obvious already, magic isn’t capable of breaking the laws of physics. Like technology, it involves intelligently using the mechanics of the universe to achieve a result normally not found in nature. The only reason why magic looks miraculous is because we can’t understand how it works just by watching someone do it, nor can we replicate the results by simply imitating the motions that person made with their body. It’s like how we can watch Bob Ross paint, and even mimic what Bob Ross does, and still not understand how he Did That™.
I also want to talk about the role “belief” plays in magic. Believing in magic can make it easier for someone to accept it as part of reality, but it’s not what makes magic powerful. Powerful magic is like powerful art; it comes with time, practice, discipline, and the development of skills. I know this isn’t as enchanting or inspiring as the idea of magic (or, frankly, art) being some kind of inborn ability someone’s blessed with, but it does means anyone in the world can learn it.
One last thing: If at some point mainstream Western society does recognize this as an artform, we probably won’t call it “magic.” “Magic” has become synonymous with the fantasy genre, and anything we once called “magic”—such as chemistry (as alchemy) and mathematics—we now consider sciences. Chances are, what I’m describing will likely become part of psychology. It’s all just a rose by another name.
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