My friend asked me, in regards to witchcraft, after I saged my house one evening, “how do you know it’s really real?” Another version of the age-old question, “where is the proof that it works?”
I told him that from the framework that he’s asking, I don’t, and we talked about how it’s not a physical thing, but a spiritual one, a mental one, an energetic one. That it has more to do with changing your mindset and intention-setting, through what is essentially ritual. I think skeptical people overcomplicate it, comparing it to what they see in fantasy and fiction. I told him to think of it like the “placebo effect,” if the thought of energy being a harnessable force is unrealistic to him. And no, not harnessable like in a superhero movie, but harnessable in a spiritual sense.
The placebo effect is when a person’s health or condition improves after taking a fake treatment, because they think it’s real medicine. The placebo effect is so interesting because what makes it work is the belief that it does. It’s a nice example of how powerful the mind can be, and a great reminder that believing is a power in its own right. That’s part of why it’s important to believe in yourself.
However, it’s necessary to note that believing isn’t the only part of the placebo effect. The other is action. If someone believes a placebo medicine will work, but they never take the medicine, they’re far less likely to convince themselves they’re healed, because nothing changed. Belief and action go together. I say this, because my friend had also asked me why I couldn’t just decide that the “bad energy” in my apartment was gone. Being witchy doesn’t mean I deny science. Science is a thing, and brains are still smart. You can’t truly convince yourself—or trick your brain into thinking—that something is different when your mind knows nothing has been done to influence change.
So in the case of magic, I don’t know if what I do “actually” channels any energy, or “actually” changes something unseeable about the state of my environment. I don’t know if the matter around me reacts to what I’m doing and bends to my will on a subatomic level that I can’t physically see. I don’t know. But, what I do know is that after I do it, I feel better. My space feels better. And in that way, it’s real for me.
