How Magic works?

[Malah]

I have always asked myself how magick works, and I have a few ideas, but still I am not sure, I just hope it is not the last item in my list

• Belief system: Occult magic is based on the idea that there are hidden forces in the universe that can be understood and manipulated through various practices.
• Rituals and ceremonies: Practitioners often perform specific rituals, which may involve chanting, meditation, or symbolic actions.
• Symbology: Symbols, sigils, and sacred geometry play a significant role in many occult traditions.
• Correspondences: Many systems of occult magic involve associating certain objects, colors, or times with specific energies or intentions.
• Altered states of consciousness: Meditation, trance states, or the use of psychoactive substances are sometimes employed to access what practitioners believe to be higher realms of consciousness.
• Tools: Various items like wands, crystals, candles, or tarot cards may be used as focal points or conduits for energy.
• Intent and will: The focused intention of the practitioner is often considered crucial in occult practices.
• Natural elements: Many traditions incorporate the classical elements (earth, air, fire, water) and celestial bodies into their practices.
• Entities that just take the contract you signed...

How do you think it works? Because it dose...

 

[motzfeldt]

All of those things.

 

[Shade]

Depends on the style as sigils would work slightly different than invocation and evocation and those work differently than astral projection, but mostly…
Intent , discipline, belief, work, energy behind intent, focus and will power towards the goal,
-the thought process behind sigils and creating them is pretty well explained so after charging it, be in the state of being in which you wish to manifest aka.. believing beyond believing but actually feeling, aligning your energy as if the goal has become the outcome already, and will it to be so as you use discipline and focus to cultivate the desired outcome.
As for astral projection remote viewing and all that, I wrote a thread on Penrose in the science section that at the bottom I wrote an interesting thing on tryptophan that I think might be a likely cause to why we see the astral body as purplish. The process of getting in this state is more about a whole body process rather than just the mind and Penrose’s theory would explain why.
invocation and evocation I couldn’t presume to know other than just a guess that they may be aspects of a collective psyche that’s being accessed in a similar fashion as to how we will do a spell or sigil and every so often, everything just kind of “clicks” as if everything aligned perfectly in that moment and you already know wow… there’s No doubt in your mind that something just shifted, something changed, something unnatural just happened and you felt it instantly like a snap of the finger. Invocation and evocation I see as moments like that where everything just aligns absolutely perfectly.

 

[beardedeldridge]

Sorta all of them if you squint and look from the correct angle. If I had to pick one from your list, I’d say your last one (sorry). I find a spirit based model to be the best explanation (tho contracts aren’t always used) just remember you’re also a spirit/entity. Most everything else on your list is an add-on/work-around/amplifier/simplifier of that.

-Eld

 

[Romolo]

I have a few ideas

You have a few ideas or AI has a few ideas?

 

[Robert Ramsay]

I have a wonderful explanation of how magic works, but this margin is too small to contain it.

 

[HoldAll]

Some common models of magic:

Book – PDF - Frater U.D. - Models of Magic (article)

Just a short article I copypasta'd from sacred-texts.com which I think is extremely important and even moderately famous. It was written by Frater U.D. (Ralph Tegtmeier) in 1991 and proved seminal and groundbreaking - in chaos magic circles and for magicians with a theoretical bent that is...

wizardforums.com

 

[Shade]

Some common models of magic:

Book – PDF - Frater U.D. - Models of Magic (article)

Just a short article I copypasta'd from sacred-texts.com which I think is extremely important and even moderately famous. It was written by Frater U.D. (Ralph Tegtmeier) in 1991 and proved seminal and groundbreaking - in chaos magic circles and for magicians with a theoretical bent that is...

wizardforums.com

In that article Frater UD writes “… Anton Mesmer, who was not an occultist but who was on the other hand regarded as a miracle worker” yada yada…
“Re-discovered amongst other things the ancient healing disciplines of hypnosis and magnetism.” I’m familiar with Frater UD, however I am not familiar with Mesmer, I fkn knew that magnetism was written about somewhere. Thanks for pointing me in that direction.
The magnetic field of biological life, the way energy works and the possibility of quantum fields able to form within the body and in everything else with microtubules is absolutely fascinating.
Put the 3 together and it’s mind blowing. Unfortunately I’m not well versed in math enough to get into if/how magnets may work on a particle (material or immaterial photons/electrons) in the state of quantum flux. Even if it is the electromagnetic wave that photons ride on.

How do you think it works? Because it dose...

Holdall was kind enough to remind me of magnetism, I believe that magnetism has a bearing in magick as well. We wouldn’t be here to experience “life” in the 3D/4D without the magnetic field/toroidal field let alone the implications magnetism may have in the field of physics and medicine 10-20yrs down the line or how big of a role it plays.

 

[HoldAll]

The magnetic field of biological life, the way energy works and the possibility of quantum fields able to form within the body and in everything else with microtubules is absolutely fascinating.
Put the 3 together and it’s mind blowing. Unfortunately I’m not well versed in math enough to get into if/how magnets may work on a particle (material or immaterial photons/electrons) in the state of quantum flux. Even if it is the electromagnetic wave that photons ride on.

Holdall was kind enough to remind me of magnetism, I believe that magnetism has a bearing in magick as well. We wouldn’t be here to experience “life” in the 3D/4D without the magnetic field/toroidal field let alone the implications magnetism may have in the field of physics and medicine 10-20yrs down the line or how big of a role it plays.

I personally have become very cautious when it comes to using physics phenomena to describe magical processes, and it has even gotten to the point where I'm even loathe to use the term energy for the reasons explained in my reply to this thread concerning the use of strong emotions for charging.

Mesmer used 'magnetism' as a metaphor, not in any strictly scientific way. Lodestones have been accorded magical properties as early as in Antiquity, and for the longest time people were convinced that magnets would lose their power when rubbed with garlic (I think it was Pliny who started this particular superstition). Mesmer used 'magnetic' in the sense we today would speak of a 'magnetic personality', it has got nothing to do with force fields, and anyway he later discovered that he did not need magnets for his cures anyway.

Long ago my then NewAge girlfriend dragged me to a lecture by Mantak Chia who made liberal use of the words 'electric', 'magnetic', 'electromagnetic force', etc. to describe male-female polarity and the benefits of his own brand of Qigong. During a break one guy said quietly, "I'm an electrical engineer, and this is not how it works." I've encountered such a debunking of 'scientific' esoteric claims by professional scientists numerous times since, and it has become almost a cliché that occult authors who explain their epiphanies by means of quantum physics almost always get the science part wrong. I think quantum physics can teach us that much more appears to be possible in the material world than we previously thought but that's about it - I've already mentioned somewhere that some occult airheads seem to believe that just because subatomic particles may act weird sometimes, the same applies to, say, billiard balls since "As below, so above, it's a fucking Hermetic law, dude!" Or take the NewAge quack therapy of 'tachyon healing': a tachyon is a hypothetical particle that always travels faster than light, a purely speculative concept in physics. Does that stop NewAgers believing they can generate such particles which even the Large Hadron Collider is unable to and probably never will? No.

Barring the invention of the

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, we are still unable to detect magical 'energy' directly, whenever we feel it, it's always translated into some sort of tingling (only read about it), heat (for me) or light (for the visionary gifted), same as an oscilloscope will display invisible electrical information as optical stimuli on a screen. By this I mean to say that magical 'energy' isn't literally light or heat, it only appears as such to our woefully limited senses, and therefore doesn't exactly behave like light or heat which are subject to all kinds of thermodynamic laws and other restrictions. However, I tried to replace 'energy' with another more versatile metaphor (e.g. 'Meaning' as a metaphysical force for a while, for example) but got nowhere… it seems like we are willy-nilly saddled with 'energy' because it's just too goddamn convenient but nevertheless, the old exhortation applies: Don't confuse the map with the territory. Whatever models we use to describe or even explain magic - they're just models, not the actual truth. Duh. Might use 'tachyon quantum energy' after all.

Post automatically merged: Sep 14, 2024

You have a few ideas or AI has a few ideas?

Thank you for pointing this out. This AI plagiarism has led to an interesting discussion but may merit a Warning, I'll have to confer with the other forum Staff members.

 

[Shade]

I personally have become very cautious when it comes to using physics phenomena to describe magical processes, and it has even gotten to the point where I'm even loathe to use the term energy for the reasons explained in my reply to this thread concerning the use of strong emotions for charging.

Mesmer used 'magnetism' as a metaphor, not in any strictly scientific way. Lodestones have been accorded magical properties as early as in Antiquity, and for the longest time people were convinced that magnets would lose their power when rubbed with garlic (I think it was Pliny who started this particular superstition). Mesmer used 'magnetic' in the sense we today would speak of a 'magnetic personality', it has got nothing to do with force fields, and anyway he later discovered that he did not need magnets for his cures anyway.

Long ago my then NewAge girlfriend dragged me to a lecture by Mantak Chia who made liberal use of the words 'electric', 'magnetic', 'electromagnetic force', etc. to describe male-female polarity and the benefits of his own brand of Qigong. During a break one guy said quietly, "I'm an electrical engineer, and this is not how it works." I've encountered such a debunking of 'scientific' esoteric claims by professional scientists numerous times since, and it has become almost a cliché that occult authors who explain their epiphanies by means of quantum physics almost always get the science part wrong. I think quantum physics can teach us that much more appears to be possible in the material world than we previously thought but that's about it - I've already mentioned somewhere that some occult airheads seem to believe that just because subatomic particles may act weird sometimes, the same applies to, say, billiard balls since "As below, so above, it's a fucking Hermetic law, dude!" Or take the NewAge quack therapy of 'tachyon healing': a tachyon is a hypothetical particle that always travels faster than light, a purely speculative concept in physics. Does that stop NewAgers believing they can generate such particles which even the Large Hadron Collider is unable to and probably never will? No.

Barring the invention of the

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

, we are still unable to detect magical 'energy' directly, whenever we feel it, it's always translated into some sort of tingling (only read about it), heat (for me) or light (for the visionary gifted), same as an oscilloscope will display invisible electrical information as optical stimuli on a screen. By this I mean to say that magical 'energy' isn't literally light or heat, it only appears as such to our woefully limited senses, and therefore doesn't exactly behave like light or heat which are subject to all kinds of thermodynamic laws and other restrictions. However, I tried to replace 'energy' with another more versatile metaphor (e.g. 'Meaning' as a metaphysical force for a while, for example) but got nowhere… it seems like we are willy-nilly saddled with 'energy' because it's just too goddamn convenient but nevertheless, the old exhortation applies: Don't confuse the map with the territory. Whatever models we use to describe or even explain magic - they're just models, not the actual truth. Duh. Might use 'tachyon quantum energy' after all.

The more I was reading on Mesmer the more I realized he wasn’t using magnetism in the scientific sense, but finding his book in English was a failed attempt however, when I was reading about his successor, that made it clear. I was trying to understand what magnetic fluid he was talking about and it sounded more like the flow of qi in the flowing sense of qigong but the more calming expect of reiki, his successor seemed to drop most of that and focus on hypnosis.

however I did dig a bit deeper into magnetic healing and magnets are used in scientific research for healing purposes via both static and electromagnetic therapy. I just am pretty positive I’ve read about it in more occult literature. Although magnetic bracelets may not do anything, there’s some validity to using magnets . Very strong neodymium (I actually wear one) and the more powerful electric kind where I read they used that on astronauts to see the effects they may encounter in space before the moon missions quite a while back but I can’t seem to find anything before 2020 on it now.
I do agree that science and magick does not often line up and yes, new ager’s and occultists alike kind of took the concept of that documentary on “what the bleep do we know” and ran with the concept of the way they portrayed the double slit experiment. It’s somewhat reassuring to know that new agers took it a step further and used the word “tachyon”, I instantly thought of Star Trek it sounds like they were trying to sound super sci-fi by trying to explain healing at a distance via the “spooky action at a distance” aka the quantum entanglement issue. Which I mean, by all means try if they want but if they use “tachyon” they should expect push back.
I have been thinking about “energy” more so lately and the other day I was really curious if there is a difference between people that feel it in different ways or if the applications are different. I feel it as the tingling/static so I don’t know how intense the heat feeling gets except times where I focus really hard as feeling it as warmth instead of tingling but then idk if the warmth/heat is psychosomatic because it’s negligible compared to the static sensation for me. (I will likely make a thread on this later today in occult discussion) .
You make good points as far as “don’t confuse the map with the territory” and yeah “energy” is seemingly the best way to apply it, perhaps science just hasn’t caught up to being able to detect that “type” of energy? I’ve heard of photographs where they take a picture of someone’s aura but idk the legitimacy of it or really dived into it at any length. Assuming they are legitimate they need people that feel the energy different to do some tests where they focus it on one area of the body and take a photo and see what, if anything changes. Then again whether they are two different phenomena is another thing entirely. well dang, I know what rabbit hole I’m going to go down later. Imma be low key disappointed if the photos are easily debunked although I suspect and somewhat expect it at this point
Thanks for your input Holdall, hopefully the OP Malah is enjoying the back and forth of discussing the inner workings of magick. Especially between those who are cautiously hopeful that it’ll be explained by science one day and those who are disenchanted with the prospect of it happening.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

hopefully the OP Malah is enjoying the back and forth of discussing the inner workings of magick. Especially between those who are cautiously hopeful that it’ll be explained by science one day and those who are disenchanted with the prospect of it happening.

I've been through all this before, and I know people don't want to hear it again, but I've spent thirty years finding a model which could explain magic and still be 100% compatible with current science. I'm not clever enough to make up new science, and I'm not one of those people who claim to have found a loophole in relativity that allows anti-gravity spaceships

 

[sherab]

The universe is the magical expression of consciousness and the waking state is a shared, group dream. Viewed lightly in this way, a lot of stuff makes more sense.

 

[OberonFromTheHills]

I also tend to think there are different models of magick :

Ceremonial and religious magick works through calling big spirits through rituals.

Shamanism/spirit work is about reciprocity and direct contact through channelling or ritual (or both)

Witchcraft is about using the natural properties of things and direct them toward a goal through ritual, enchantment or agreement with the thing.

Energy magick uses the manipulation/creation of astral patterns to create a change with no tools at its core.

Chaos magick is like all that + nutting on a sigil + creating a servitor.