The Engineering of Coincidence: a scientific explanation of magic

What is magic? We all know that magic exists, but can it ever be explained? Over thirty years ago, I set out to answer these questions, and to look for a truly scientific explanation of magic.

Now, I'm not bright enough to invent new physics, or dumb enough to try and pick loopholes in the physics we already have, so my only choice was to take our most successful physical theories dead seriously, with as few assumptions as possible, and see where that led me.

My definition of magic is - as the title of the book says - 'the engineering of coincidence', or, more simply, "being lucky on purpose". The ability to influence our outcomes in life, purely by the way we think about them, as the root of all magical practice.

I am not claiming to have discovered any kind of ultimate Truth; my work is independent of any specific magical system.

Magic enriches our lives; is it too much to ask how it works, as well?

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This is my first published book; thank you to @SkullTraill for letting me post this.

 

[Morell]

The readable part is truly impressive. It's heavy enough to be keeping hard facts, light enough to be readable.

This is stuff well done.

 

[StoatCatcher]

I liked your book. It didn't have anything necessarily "new" to me with regards to how a more "psychological" or "scientific" model of magic might work but it for sure organizes it all into a neat package I can point to others. My only complaint is not really your fault so much as the fault of every other questionable author and grifter that likes to slap terms like "quantum" or "dark matter" everywhere to give their stuff an air of legitimacy (I saw an ad on TV for a "quantum energized" mattress this year, I am not making this up). It's sort of the modern day Magnetism. But I do think you use the terms and concepts in a better way than most, regardless of how tired I am of seeing it as an explanation for everything. Good stuff.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

I liked your book. It didn't have anything necessarily "new" to me with regards to how a more "psychological" or "scientific" model of magic might work but it for sure organizes it all into a neat package I can point to others. My only complaint is not really your fault so much as the fault of every other questionable author and grifter that likes to slap terms like "quantum" or "dark matter" everywhere to give their stuff an air of legitimacy (I saw an ad on TV for a "quantum energized" mattress this year, I am not making this up). It's sort of the modern day Magnetism. But I do think you use the terms and concepts in a better way than most, regardless of how tired I am of seeing it as an explanation for everything. Good stuff.

I totally agree with you about the random scientism where the author doesn't really have any idea. I read a book by one (well known) author which tried to explain things with both the collapse of the wave-function, and the multiverse, in the same book, despite the fact that these two interpretations are mutually exclusive.

I will admit to feeling a little hurt though, as this is precisely the kind of rubbish I wanted to avoid in writing my book I spent a few years making sure that the first section was both accurate, and self-consistent. And constantly asking myself: "Am I wrong?"

As I said, I'm not clever enough to make up any "new" physics, so I wouldn't have expected you to declare anything as new - except perhaps the way that you look at it. I usually compare it to being shown that the Earth goes around the Sun after a lifetime of thinking that the Sun went around the Earth.

There's a great book by Felix Flicker - 'The Magick of Matter' where he uses magick as a metaphor to explain some pretty complex physics. This paragraph stood out for me:

"The modern name for magic is physics, and the name for a wizard’s magic is condensed matter physics. Before we discuss what these names convey, you must understand that this book comes with a warning. Once you have learnt how a spell is cast, the effect of the spell will cease to appear to you as magic. It will become mundane. Everyday. Boring. This is the cost of magical knowledge. It will take a great deal of practice, and patience, for you to regain the sense of wonder you had when the magic was performed for you."

In actual magic, this happens because it is so rarely that anyone actually explains why magic works instead of just creating/using another magical system.

But again, I get it. When Grant Morrison's 'The Invisibles' came out, I read the first couple of issues and thought "I know all this already!" and stopped buying it. It was only later that I bought the whole thing as graphic novels and understood the scope of the things they were talking about.

 

[StoatCatcher]

I will admit to feeling a little hurt though, as this is precisely the kind of rubbish I wanted to avoid in writing my book I spent a few years making sure that the first section was both accurate, and self-consistent. And constantly asking myself: "Am I wrong?"

Oh don't worry, I do think you managed to communicate these ideas in their proper scientific context. I just get a little tired of seeing them pop up everywhere.

With regards to me not finding anything new in it I just mean it in the sense that I've been discussing and reading similar ideas elsewhere for some time now, so it felt more like an organized compilation rather than a completely fresh take, which I guess was what I was expecting. But it is a very clear and concise one.

Grant Morrison's 'The Invisibles'

I had a similar reaction when I first read Alan Moore's "Prometheia", maybe I need to revisit it one of these days.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

With regards to me not finding anything new in it I just mean it in the sense that I've been discussing and reading similar ideas elsewhere for some time now, so it felt more like an organized compilation rather than a completely fresh take, which I guess was what I was expecting. But it is a very clear and concise one.

I'd be interested to know which books you're talking about, because I've not seen my ideas (as I present them) anywhere else. Of course the subject matter is the same, because, well, it's physics, but whenever I see people talking about it, they're always talking about the universe being a dynamic thing, where the only dynamicism is where we are, on the inside.

 

[StoatCatcher]

I'm not so much talking about the theoretical and physics section but the rest of the book. I've seen the exact same formula of

1) Create a statement of your desire.
2) Find something to represent your statement of desire.
3) Bring the representation into your subconscious
4) Try to give the whole thing no further thought.

in pretty much every Chaos Magick and CM-adjacent book with different techniques and wording. But here it's stretched out to be a generic framework to fit any sort of magical working. The specific technique given for creating the sigils, the good old letter-removing technique, is so widespread it even showed up in

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as a bonus minor technique from the west. The Speculations section is a nice surface level overview of why the issues are interesting but they ultimately remain as hypotheticals (not that I think it's actually possible to prove something concretely related to these topics) that can be replaced with any other found in specialized books about the subjects.

So I think my core issue is that, although you have an original perspective of magic based on science and physics, you're not expanding that foundation to stimulate more rigorous scientific experimentation or record keeping on for the practical part but rather remaining very theoretical. Theres not even a mention on how important keeping a journal or record of your rituals is to figuring what actually works and what doesn't, or a mention of regular meditation to clear away biases that might be getting in the way of the work (aside from a brief mention of it in the stage of bringing a goal into the subconcious) or how it can help with noticing and observing results more objectively.

These two little things alone would do wonders to sell the idea that I'm not just using a new hypothesis to base my magic on but actively trying to test and improve on it with empirical data from my experiments, trying to improve and iterate on it with new ideas. As it is now it feels like you've outlined a formulaic approach that anyone could extract and put their own theory behind it, which I'm not against necessarily but doesn't feel very scientific to me.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

I'm not so much talking about the theoretical and physics section but the rest of the book. I've seen the exact same formula of

in pretty much every Chaos Magick and CM-adjacent book with different techniques and wording. But here it's stretched out to be a generic framework to fit any sort of magical working. The specific technique given for creating the sigils, the good old letter-removing technique, is so widespread it even showed up in

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as a bonus minor technique from the west. The Speculations section is a nice surface level overview of why the issues are interesting but they ultimately remain as hypotheticals (not that I think it's actually possible to prove something concretely related to these topics) that can be replaced with any other found in specialized books about the subjects.

So I think my core issue is that, although you have an original perspective of magic based on science and physics, you're not expanding that foundation to stimulate more rigorous scientific experimentation or record keeping on for the practical part but rather remaining very theoretical. Theres not even a mention on how important keeping a journal or record of your rituals is to figuring what actually works and what doesn't, or a mention of regular meditation to clear away biases that might be getting in the way of the work (aside from a brief mention of it in the stage of bringing a goal into the subconcious) or how it can help with noticing and observing results more objectively.

These two little things alone would do wonders to sell the idea that I'm not just using a new hypothesis to base my magic on but actively trying to test and improve on it with empirical data from my experiments, trying to improve and iterate on it with new ideas. As it is now it feels like you've outlined a formulaic approach that anyone could extract and put their own theory behind it, which I'm not against necessarily but doesn't feel very scientific to me.

Ok, I'm glad you haven't seen the theory section everywhere else

For the practical magic section, you are quite correct - it is not original because I was trying to find the most barebones way possible of expressing it so that I can directly relate aspects of it back to the theory. And you have me there; I am, primarily, a theoretician. I mean, theoretical physicist is a proper job - why shouldn't theoretical magician be one too?

It's a very good point you make about meditation; it's only recently (i.e. after I published the book) that I've come to realise how important meditation is for long term magical success. I'm putting it in the second edition

The reason there's nothing about journal keeping is simple - and controversial - I don't keep one. You are right that if I was a more experimental magician, I would be keeping one.

Ok, I see your frustration now - you were expecting this to be a different, more experimentally practical type of book. In my defense, there are loads of those, written by people way more experienced than I am. But there are no theory books. This, IMO, is why parapsychology has stagnated. They have 150 years of data and no decent explanation for any of it. Although I think they might be a bit pissed off if I told them that a great wedge of their subject is a subset of magic...

 

[StoatCatcher]

It's a very good point you make about meditation; it's only recently (i.e. after I published the book) that I've come to realise how important meditation is for long term magical success. I'm putting it in the second edition

It'll be a good addition! I look forward to seeing you expand and develop your theory more on future editions. I think we for sure need some more "secular" type hypothesis for how magic behaves.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

It'll be a good addition! I look forward to seeing you expand and develop your theory more on future editions. I think we for sure need some more "secular" type hypothesis for how magic behaves.

I am currently working on a chapter tentatively called "The Brain"

 

[Jadugar]

I somehow never put two and two together to realize you're the same guy as the Engineering Coincidences! I think that's one of the first books I got to add to my exploration of chaos magic

 

[Robert Ramsay]

I somehow never put two and two together to realize you're the same guy as the Engineering Coincidences! I think that's one of the first books I got to add to my exploration of chaos magic

Why thank you! I hope it was useful to you!

 

[Xasthur]

I've read the book and I'm going to write my thoughts now.
1. You're talking about the Necker cube as a little magic. I totally agree. In psychology, there are a huge number of experiments that show that the observer influences the observed. For example, in the movie "Interstate 60," the cards trick shows that people see what they expect to see. If you don't remember, they showed cards with a red color of spades, and the main character mistakenly thought that these were not red spades but red hearts. This is a perceptual property known to all psychologists. When we see something unusual, our perception immediately pulls out a similar image and puts it on like a costume. This easily explains why in the dark or hallucinations we see monsters, angels or demons that we have already seen somewhere before, for example in drawings or in films. A person experiencing death or a religious experience sees images that are familiar in their culture - Christian, Arabic, Indian, and so on. I have many more thoughts about the possibilities of perception, but I want to switch to another topic.

2. I don't understand anything about physics, but nevertheless I can say that many of the ideas from your book are very similar to the ideas of the super-popular author Vadim Zeland in Russia. his series of books Transurfing Reality has sold millions of copies, including those published abroad. You call your model a Timeless Multiverse. Zeland also focuses on quantum physics and calls his model The Space of Variations. You describe your model on 90 pages, and Zeland spent 5 books on it, lol, and this is only the main series, not counting over 10 more books that develop/repeat his ideas. You're talking about magic, whereas Zeland's main tool is visualization. But in reality, both tools work the same way. Why? Here, Zeland is talking about such a thing as intention. Not a desire, but an intention. What is the intention? Zeland gives a brief definition: the Intention is the determination to own and to act.. A simple example: when you go to your refrigerator to get a carton of milk, that's the intention. Determination to own - you have no doubt that you will receive a carton of milk. You don't believe it, you know you're going to get it. Determination to act - you have done everything in your power to take a carton of milk. That is, you got up from the couch and went to the refrigerator. Speaking esoterically: You have shown God/The Universe/Higher Power that your desire to drink milk is not just a desire, but an intention. This can be compared to how an applicant shows interest in a future job at an interview. Looking at his burning eyes, his interest in work, and his passion for the topic, the employer thinks, "Yes, this dude really has a great intention to develop in this topic. That's why I'm hiring him." If you don't have the determination to own ("I'm not worthy!") or the determination to act ("I'm just dreaming and not doing anything else"), then nothing will work. That is, magic and visualization work because the intention is triggered. And from this point of view, in fact, ritual or visualization is not necessary. It is enough just to set the desired goal and go to it every day with the firm knowledge that you will definitely achieve your goal. And then the intention will work sooner or later.

3. However, the above does not explain some points. For example, I know that black magicians regularly encounter poltergeists when summoning entities. Windows open, things fall, and there's a knock on the door. In my opinion, this can no longer be explained by intention alone. Intention works with probabilities. You perform a ritual or visualize, and the universe increases the likelihood of achieving what you want. But the universe can't increase the chance that your doors will start slamming and things will fall off the table during the ritual. For this reason, I am already expanding the model here and admitting that there really is an otherworldly world in which live... revived ideas. People have been worshipping gods, demons, and angels for so long that they have truly come to life, taking on form and character. The intention of millions of magicians worked, and the ideas came to life. For this reason, if a magician knows how to work with these entities, he can summon a real demon/bes (this Russian word is a "бес", in English it is translated as a demon for some reason, but a bes is still not a demon, but another dark entity known in Orthodox culture). That is, to summon not just as a hallucination or a focus of one's perception, but as a real being from an invisible otherworld who is able to influence our physical world.

These are my thoughts at the moment.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

Indeed, I don't (yet) have any idea about poltergeists, or anything else that seems to blatantly go against the laws of physics. Yes, visualisation is a method of doing magic. There was a special deal on one of Zeland's books (Master of Reality, looks like a fairly fundamental one) , so I bought it. I'll let you know how I get on.

It's a shame you say "I don't understand anything about physics". One of the aims of my book is to show enough about the physics to give the reader an idea of what I'm trying to achieve. Otherwise it's just "blah blah blah relativity blah blah quantum physics blah blah entropy blah blah chaos theory blah blah". I know that even Crowley said "you don't need to know how a tractor works to drive one" but this is not good enough for me. How can you extend Zeland's ideas if you don't understand them properly in the first place?

In the end, the idea is to look at the world in the same way as someone who has been told that the Earth goes around the Sun, even though it looks to them as if it is the other way around.

With regard to intention, yes, intention is super important and must be constructed correctly. The determination part is usually programmed into you so that it gets in below the level of your pesky conscious mind. Yes, you can get yourself to the point where you can throw away the scaffolding, but that scaffolding will be needed for a while, whilst you are learning

What you talk about are egregores, and you don't need to postulate another world for them. One of the central ideas I have is that defining a thing as real mean that the consequences are real. And those consequences can be magical in nature. Things are a lot simpler if you don't need to make up a whole other world. Our world is already full of things that are real, even though they don't actually exist. Money, for example.

If you treat the "entity" as something real that you actually summon, then its consequences will also be real as if you had actually summoned it.

Are poltergeists egregores? An interesting idea, but I can't yet comment.

 

[Xasthur]

Indeed, I don't (yet) have any idea about poltergeists, or anything else that seems to blatantly go against the laws of physics. Yes, visualisation is a method of doing magic. There was a special deal on one of Zeland's books (Master of Reality, looks like a fairly fundamental one) , so I bought it. I'll let you know how I get on.

It's a shame you say "I don't understand anything about physics". One of the aims of my book is to show enough about the physics to give the reader an idea of what I'm trying to achieve. Otherwise it's just "blah blah blah relativity blah blah quantum physics blah blah entropy blah blah chaos theory blah blah". I know that even Crowley said "you don't need to know how a tractor works to drive one" but this is not good enough for me. How can you extend Zeland's ideas if you don't understand them properly in the first place?

In the end, the idea is to look at the world in the same way as someone who has been told that the Earth goes around the Sun, even though it looks to them as if it is the other way around.

I should clarify that I understand the essence of the double-slit experiment or quantum entanglement, but I don't understand them enough to have a dialogue about it, offer an alternative opinion, and so on...In my opinion, true understanding lies precisely in the ability to maintain a dialogue, and not just repeat what you have heard. My classmate became a physicist, and when I told him that the observer influences what is observed, and therefore the Moon exists as a macro object only when people look at it, he replied, "Nonsense! An observer is not only a human being. Atoms constantly interact with themselves, that is, they "observe" each other, and for this reason the Moon exists as a macro object even when no one is looking at it." And I couldn't answer him just because he's a professional physicist, and I studied physics from popular videos on YouTube. I know psychology and neuroscience quite well, and this helps me understand many aspects of the work of magical practices, but I still do not have enough knowledge about physics, so there is still a lot to learn here. I think your concept of a Timeless multiverse will perfectly fit as a starting point from which I will study physics in more detail.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

My classmate became a physicist, and when I told him that the observer influences what is observed, and therefore the Moon exists as a macro object only when people look at it, he replied, "Nonsense! An observer is not only a human being. Atoms constantly interact with themselves, that is, they "observe" each other, and for this reason the Moon exists as a macro object even when no one is looking at it."

What he's talking about is decoherence - which I talk about quite a bit in the book

Humans can normally only perceive a single outcome at any one time, so when people normally talk about "waveform collapse", I talk about selecting an outcome. You don't change reality; you experience the version of reality where the change is present.

You, not the universe, are the thing that is changing.

 

[Xasthur]

Are poltergeists egregores?

no no. They summon a bes who has a name, but during the ritual things begin to move, that is, the simplest explanation is that the bes really came, and despite the fact that he is invisible, nevertheless he influences the real world by moving things. An egregor? Well, personally, I try to apply the word "egregor" to an inanimate system: capitalism, communism, transhumanism, and so on... At the same time, I understand that the word "egregor" can also be applied to a person, say, Hitler or Stalin, who were raised to a cult during their lifetime. In this case, yes, any god/demon can be considered an egregor simply because they are worshipped.

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What he's talking about is decoherence - which I talk about quite a bit in the book

Yes, but I hadn't read your book at the time, so I wasn't prepared for his objection.)

 

[Robert Ramsay]

no no. They summon a bes who has a name, but during the ritual things begin to move, that is, the simplest explanation is that the bes really came, and despite the fact that he is invisible, nevertheless he influences the real world by moving things. An egregor? Well, personally, I try to apply the word "egregor" to an inanimate system: capitalism, communism, transhumanism, and so on... At the same time, I understand that the word "egregor" can also be applied to a person, say, Hitler or Stalin, who were raised to a cult during their lifetime. In this case, yes, any god/demon can be considered an egregor simply because they are worshipped.

I understand an egregore to be a multi-person version of a servitor. There have been discussions on the forum as to whether all gods and spirits are in fact egregores.

With the poltergeist, yes, somehow those things are moving, but if there's one thing I've learnt from physics, it's that the simplest explanation is not always correct.