Theories of Magic/Magick

[frater_pan]

Generally modern occultism has proposed a model of five general theories of magic/magick:

• Psychological Model
• Energy Model
• Spirit/gods/God Model
• Information Model
• Meta Model

These can be found in numerous sources online and used to be widely discussed. Additionally these five models have historical support in reports from magicians, wizards, witches, etc.

 

[Morell]

Interesting.
I'm aware of first three, the last two I didn't hear about yet.

Though they are defined, I doubt that people tend to use only one of these models.

 

[frater_pan]

I edited the original posting to expand briefly and give a couple of examples but the edit didn't take.

The information model says that reality is pure information and can be manipulated directly. Superficially it sounds the same as the energy model.
The meta model says that all four models of magic are true (or valid or useful) as would be any other model that delivers results. The difference is that the magician then uses the models as they need to. This is particularly favored by chaos magicians.

 

[Asteriskos]

Interesting.
I'm aware of first three, the last two I didn't hear about yet.

Though they are defined, I doubt that people tend to use only one of these models.

A "chaote" would likely use which ever model provided the best fit for any particular operation, including mixed models too.

 

[frater_pan]

The psychological model says that the conscious mind projects reality and thus reality can be directly manipulated using psychological manipulation (think La Vey's psychodrama).
The energy model says that reality is pure energy and can be directly manipulated.
The spirit/gods/God model says that the spirits have objective existence and they directly effect magic.

Additionally, any other kind of magic can be subsumed into the first four. If one asserted that ritual alone accomplished magic by itself then this could be seen as falling under the psychological, energy or information models. If someone asserted that ritual is necessary but spirits actually did the magic then it would fall under the spirit model.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 6:06 PM

A "chaote" would likely use which ever model provided the best fit for any particular operation, including mixed models too.

That is exactly the meta model.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 6:18 PM

So apparently this presentation is from Frater UD, although I remember a lot of discussion in occult forums in the old days on this topic.

Here is a link to

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on Sacred Text's dot com.

 

[HoldAll]

It all goes back to

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by Frater U.D./Ralph Tegtmeier (a better formatted pdf file can be found here). It's main innovation was to demolish the limited Energy Model that made armchair occultists assume that magical energy had to obey the laws of thermodynamics, could neither be destroyed nor generated, etc. The very apex of this literalist dumbassery for me was a discussion on an occult subreddit concerning the best materials for wands - one guy suggested hazel twigs whereupon some clever pants piped up and wrote, "I wouldn't recommend hazel because after all, wood is a poor conductor." Can you believe the sheer stupidity of this comment? Instead, Frater U.D. advocated the Information Model because it wouldn't be limited by people's association with conventional physics - information can be destroyed, can be produced and reproduced effortlessly, behaves in a totally different way than physical energy; pity it never caught on.

 

[silencewaits]

I believe models that rely on conventional physics are bunk. I would also say that solipsistic models are bunk; we are the ones dependent on that which is phenomenal and supra-phenomenal, not the other way around.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

I believe models that rely on conventional physics are bunk. I would also say that solipsistic models are bunk; we are the ones dependent on that which is phenomenal and supra-phenomenal, not the other way around.

I've worked for thirty plus years on a model based completely in modern physics that is not bunk - although it's more of an enabling cosmology. It's not a method of doing magic, it's an explanation of why magic works (and also why it doesn't always). I don't believe in the supernatural - only in the many natural things that we don't yet know how to explain. Calling something 'supernatural', IMO, just throws into sharp relief how little we understand that thing.
I won't go into the details of the physics here (I wrote an entire book for that) but probably the key insight is that in magic, exactly as in normal life, you do not change the world, you experience the version of the world where the change is present. Basically you need to turn your perception of the world inside out, which is not easy.

Magic is an edge condition of normal human consciousness; it uses the same mechanisms but in an unexpected way. When you learn to ride a bike, you have to think about it. When you've learned to ride a bike, you hardly have to think about it at all. Magic requires that your intent gets learned in a similar way.