What is Magic?
Discussing what magic is, what it isn't, how it relates to science, and why I call it magic at all.
Long post below the cut with further reading at the bottom.
When I say "magic," I imagine the first things you picture are classical images that perpetuate around Halloween. Maybe your brain goes to green skin, wiry brooms, cackling and warts. Maybe it goes to a young British boy with a wand (though I'd rather it didn't, I completely understand). Maybe, if you're of the persuasion to be "not like other girls" (the phrase here not intended to restrict for gender), you might think of a strange New England house with an impressive garden and a family of women who always grows rosemary by the front door.
Before I started on the path I'm on now, my brain went to the Sabrina the Teenage Witch television series - the original, not the remake. It went to Halloweentown's Marnie and the Wizards of Waverly Place. I'd mentally wander through Hobbiton, watching the fireworks fly, or into an icy castle in Narnia. I would think of old Disney movies, especially Disney Channel Original Movies (DCOMs, if you're an early 2000s kid). And yes, I would think of the young British lad.
Magic in these settings is often grand. It has bright, fantastical effects, lightning and smoke and fireworks. It's a powerful, dangerous, world-shifting force that one can access with the flick of a piece of wood or the appropriate waving of a hand. You can bend reality to your will instantly with it - summon great storms or walls of fire, raise zombies and skeletons to do your bidding, transform unfortunate foes in to cats and the like. Hasn't everyone at least once dreamed of being able to do anything they want, get anything they want, be anyone they want, all in the blink of an eye?
Sadly, that kind of magic remains relegated to fiction. In the real world, flicking your hand is at best ineffective and at worst somewhat insulting (and potentially injuring to your poor tendons). Sure, we can achieve similar theatrics from science experiments and the popular smoke and mirror tricks of stage performers, but they take significantly more time, effort, and sometimes training to pull off. We've yet to figure out how to summon a storm on command - we can barely predict them with limited accuracy, again after many years of education and hundreds of years of scientific advancement. In the real world, the only way to shape reality drastically is to roll up your sleeves and put in the elbow grease. In the real world, there's no amount of wand waving that will solve all of your problems.
So how on earth can I talk about witchcraft? How can I claim to be a witch, using magic and casting spells, if none of it's real? Well, I didn't say that, did I? I said the theatrics aren't real.
The universal "force"
So what exactly do I am mean by "magic?" In my opinion, "magic" is best defined as the universal, unknowable force that powers everything around us, including us. It's the force that caused the Big Bang, the reason the planets spin and the stars burn, the power behind lightning and the force of the wind. It's the force that tells the plants to grow and then decay, that shifts the plates of the Earth, builds mountains and carves canyons. It's not something we can understand - it just is.
Here are some common definitions of magic you might see bouncing around in witchy spaces:
"The Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will," according to Aleister Crowley, 19th century ceremonial magician.
"Magic is a convenient word for a whole collection of techniques, all of which involve the mind," according to Margot Adler in her book Drawing Down the Moon. She includes things like manifestation and visualization in her definition.
"Magic is the practice of moving natural (though little understood) energies to effect needed change," according to Scott Cunningham, a prominent Wiccan writer and practitioner.
In my practice, this is what I believe God to be. I Am That I Am - the primal force that exacts change on the universe and the life force that we use to observe and participate in it.
Magic and science
It's perfectly reasonable to assume that magic and science are opposites, diametrically opposed forces that one needs to choose between. "Magic," some people say, "is for children and stories. Science is real, concrete, provable." If you believe in magic, then (in a young girl's heart or anywhere else for that matter), are you being childish? Are you making a fool of yourself?
Allow me to reframe this idea for you. If, as I explained before, magic is the source material of the universe, the driving force behind it, then what does magic do for us? Magic is the force that caused stars to explode into being, bringing light into the world, the force that brings planets to orbit the stars and controls the course of the moon and-...hm, now that would be gravity, wouldn't it? Among other principles, of course, but we know at least vaguely how that one works. Okay, well, maybe magic is the forces of nature, the clap of thunder and lighting streaking across the sky, the arc of light between points and-...okay, but that's electricity, isn't it? We understand that! We use it to power our homes and businesses! We can explain all of that, so it can't possibly be magic...right?
That's exactly what it is. Magic and science are two sides of the same coin in my book. Science is simply magic that we understand at least partially on a logical, measurable level. Magic is the blanket term for the "why" of it all, and science is the term we use for the "how."
Why call it magic?
So if magic and science are the same thing, why refer to it as "magic" at all? Why use such a silly, frivolous term for something so tangible and real? Why would I choose to call myself a witch rather than a scientist? A dabbler in theoretical physics and psychology? Do I really think witch is the right title for this?
To be completely honest, I call it "magic" because that feels like the most accurate term for the idea. For all of our thousands of years of research, record, and experimentation, we still only know a tiny fraction of the things there are to know. We have no idea how the vast majority of our universe works, and of the things we do think we know, we're constantly proving ourselves wrong. Science is the study of our world and the record of its tangible, logical results, but the universe is not always logical or tangible. There are things we cannot understand because they're beyond the scope of our current technology, in the same way that someone a few hundred years ago could never understand what an atom was because they had no way of seeing it or measuring it.
There are so many mysteries in the world that trying to record them all is silly, and there's a level of beauty in that. Magic gives respect to the vastness and depth of our existence and the existence around us - it gives us a term we can use to describe the beautiful things we can't possibly know now, and that we may never know.
And frankly, calling it "magic" is more fun, and the world could use a little more fun.
Further reading
Adler, Margot. Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America. Penguin Books. ISBN 9780143038191.
Crowley, Aleister. Magick. Samuel Weiser. ISBN 978-0-7100-7423-2.
Cunningham, Scott. Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner. Llewellyn Publications. ISBN 9780875421186.
NASA. Star Basics. https://science.nasa.gov/universe/stars/
Portland State University. Electricity Basics. https://web.pdx.edu/~rueterj/courses/ESM342-solar/WK3-GE-MC1-ElectricityBasics.pdf
Prata, Emyle D., Raztresen, Sara. Discovering Christian Witchcraft: A Beginner's Guide for Everyday Practice. ISBN 979-8986487649.
