The Caretaker

Untitled Magic Book v0.2

Added 2021-10-26 17:43:51 +0000 UTC

OUTLINE

WHAT IS MAGIC AND WHY SHOULD YOU CARE

“Magic is an impossible thing to define. It is something felt, something done, and a quality something can have. It is the difference between the house and the home. It is the held hand. It is what we fear about the dark.”

In my time as an occultist, the question I am asked more than anything is “I want to learn, where do I start?” and I have been frustrated for lack of an acceptable answer. The Occult is a broad and diverse field. There are texts on alchemy, on witchcraft, on spiritualism, and ritual magic, but nothing that quite covers everything an interested mind could be looking for.

If you are interested in magic, welcome. My goal for this text is to give the burgeoning practitioner all of the tools they need to build a practice that feels like their own. ”

A SHORT HISTORY OF MAGIC

Prehistoric magic

Magic and anthropology

Magic in the ancient world

Mesopotamia and Egypt (Book of the dead)
The greco-roman world

Magic in the Middle ages

Simon Magus
Isidore of Seville
Magic and early pogroms
Paracelsus, Giordano Bruno, etc
Hermetica
Agrippa

Magic in the renaissance

Ceremonial Magic
Alchemy
Neodruidism

Magic in the modern world

Blavatsky
Crowley
Gardner
The New Age

SECTION TWO: THE THEORY OF MAGIC

Magic comes in three overarching forms. These archetypes are defined on the overall goals of the practitioner; Transcendent magic, Transactional Magic, and Transformative magic.

Transcendent magic is used when interacting with forces that are beyond human control. The universe is bigger than us. The wheel of fortune is turned by the tide of fate and we humans are here to bear the consequences. Storms level our homes, mysterious relatives die and leave us fortunes, electronics catch spontaneous fire, every moment of every day we are subject to forces that we understand, but are beyond our ability to effect.

An astrologer checks the signs for the betrothed, determining the most auspicious day for marriage. A monk sits in silence, pondering the nature of god. A young woman chooses a green dress for her date, dates always seem to go better when she wears green.

We read the stars, we cast runes, we draw cards, all in an attempt to gain insight into the machinations of the world, to touch something untouchable. For are we not made of the same matter as storms and gold and fire? Are we not pulled by the same gravity? Are we not warmed by the same sun and cooled by the same night? For all its marvellous and ineffable complexity, we are not distinct from the world in any way that matters.

Transactional magic is used for forming, maintaining, and breaking contracts with the universe in its myriad forms. Payment made, bargain kept. A priest offers prayer to god in hopes that a sinner will be pardoned. A shaman bangs a drum as the people dance, offering the sound and frivolity to the spirits in hopes that they will bring rain. Students rub the head of a bronze dog statue for good luck on their finals.

There is often an element of personification to transactional magic, to make a bargain with something implies an intelligence with which a bargain can be made. However, this Other is not necessary for transactional magic. A campfire warms us at the cost of burning through its wooden fuel. The actual mechanitions of the bargain are often irrelevant.

The universe is an easy thing to personify. If there is beauty to be found in the human experience, it is found in our ability to see ourselves in the world. The sky may storm and rage and we ask it what is wrong. Is it upset? Is there anything we can do to help? Perhaps if we cooked some meat and wine over a fire, the smoke would drift up to the sky and it would stop raining.

Transformational magic Is used to turn one thing to another, and to imbue things with special properties. A priest stands over a basin of water, making it holy. A viking warrior kills a bear and brings its bones to the smith, who will burn them in the kiln to turn iron to steel. A mother stares over the counter to her children as she stirs a pot with love.

The wonders of the physical world are endless. Today we understand every chemical reaction that facilitates the fermentation of grape juice into wine, every step has been recorded, catalogued, and fine-tuned with the sharpest tools available to science. None of this has made the transformation any less magical.

Understand that hard distinctions are antithetical to a proper understanding of magic. These three archetypes are not hard categories. They are a triple intersection that mix and blend and overlap. Consider a place where a mountain range, a forest, and a grassland meet. There are no hard borders between the biomes, forest fades into grassland, the woods climb the slopes of the mountain, as do the grasses and flowers.

MAGIC AND RELIGION

Magic and religion do not have a fixed relationship. Every culture has a unique balance of the two. Godsen lays out five major relationships: Magic as dominant force, magic with an emphasis on lineage, magic and religion as equals, religion dominant and magic ambiguous, and a dominance of science religion and magic in that order.

Where does current western society fall? It is difficult to say. Attempting to define the interplay between science, religion, and magic in the modern world would be a tall order for any anthropologist, and I am not an anthropologist, I am an occultist.

That said, there are practitioners of magic from every religious background on earth. Each religious doctrine and culture will create a different relationship with magic, and ultimately it falls to the practitioner to determine what they want that relationship to be. A practitioner can be Christian, Musilm, Atheist, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, or anything else under the sun. There is no gate.

In fact, dear reader, if your religious beliefs are an important part of your life, I would encourage you to look at your religious history. Every religion on earth has its esoterica.

THE SEVEN LAWS OF MAGIC

Magic is a narrative force. Where religion has doctrine, magic has rules. I have attempted to define the rules here.

The Law of Contagion - The part of the thing is the whole of the thing. Once together, always together. Magic performed on a strand of hair will affect the entire body. Magic performed on a shard of a building will affect the entire building. Not all connections are made equal, magic performed on a cup with your lipstick on it will have less of an effect than magic performed on a phial of your blood. Magic using this law is known as Thaumaturgy.

The Law of Sympathy: The image is the thing. Like attracts like. A drawing or representation of something can gain its properties. A photo or drawing of you will have a similar thaumaturgical connection to you. Combining sympathy and contagion is the basis for poppet magic.

The Law of Correspondence: As Above, So Below. The gods are like us and we are like them. When viewed closely, atoms resemble solar systems. The big effects the small. The idea that there is a sort of harmony between similar patterns no matter their size. This is the basis behind astrological magic.

The Law of Resistance: Some things are more magically conductive than other things. Everything exists on a spectrum of “magical“ to “mundane“ and the less magic something is, the harder it is to effect with magic. The same extends to people who, for whatever the reason, simply have a harder time interacting with magic.

The Law of Balance: Magic seeks equilibrium, and therefore, every magical action has a cost. No magical act takes place without some sort of power behind it. Energy will not move unless something is moving it, be it a practitioner or the natural energy of the moon. A body in motion will stay in motion, a body at rest will stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force.

The Law of Reciprocity: If you don’t know where its pointed, its pointed at you. If it doesn’t have enough energy, it will get energy from you. The process of getting hit with your own improperly constructed spell is known as Recoil. Safe practice often involves setting up wards to act as a barrier between you and any mistakes.

The Law of Reversal: That which is done by magic can be undone by magic. For every spell there is a counterspell, for every ritual a counterritual. Every ward can be hexed, every curse can be dispelled. This does not mean countermeasure will be easy or efficient.