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Magic: An Occult Primer
By David Conway The Witches' Almanac Ltd.
Copyright © 2016 David Conway
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-881098-38-6
CHAPTER 1
MAGIC AND NATURAL LAW
The word 'magic' is commonly applied to any effect that has no observable cause. To small children the appearance of a rabbit in the conjuror's hat is a great feat of magic, although wiser folk know the beast was put there before the performance began. One of the distinctions between the magic our book is about and party tricks of this sort is that in the former the causes responsible for certain effects escape even the wisest among us. These causes exist, or course, but they owe nothing to the physical laws of our everyday world. Hence their magical aspect and our consequent difficulty in believing them possible.
The aim of this book is quite straightforward. It is to show that such magic actually works. To that end precise instructions will be given later and any reader so inclined can try a little magic for himself. However, for the benefit of those who consider magic an illusion, we shall set about examining the theory behind it. We shall see whether the supernatural retains its credibility in an age when science claims that only those things exist which can be objectively experienced under given conditions. Unless we establish the validity of magic within this scientific context it deserves to remain the cultural and historical curiosity sceptics believe it to be.
Throughout this chapter we shall try to maintain the empirical approach demanded by science. We shall adopt the view that there is no such thing as the supernatural. Whatever exists must be natural, and will therefore not contradict what we already know about the workings of nature. Even so, we shall ultimately have to deduce certain conclusions from the evidence presented to us. There is nothing unscientific about this. Far from being a body of absolute knowledge, modern science is itself largely speculative and offers its own tentative generalisations from facts it has experimentally obtained.
In his monumental work The Golden Bough, Sir James G. Frazer describes magic as a spurious system of natural law. He means presumably that it is based on imaginary laws which have nothing in common with the natural laws known to science. To some extent the criticism is deserved, for successive magicians have been content to elaborate their system without pausing to consider the value of the premises on which it is based.
Unfortunately, we are handicapped in our desire to take natural law as our starting-point because in spite of recent developments in radio-astronomy and physics, the quantum sort in particular, even scientists remain much in the dark as to the real nature and manner of working of the cosmos. We cannot even say whether our universe had a beginning, since all that a study of galaxies suggests is that it is expanding all the time. This expansion has led some cosmologists to argue that matter is being continuously created throughout space and so is constantly pushing outwards. (How 'something' might have emerged from 'nothing' is a question normally left to philosophers.)
Others suggest that thousands of millions of years ago the universe, then a dense mass, exploded, hurling matter in all directions. According to them the present expansion is simply the prolonged after-effect of that primordial bang. The latter theory is the more widely accepted, but interesting though it is, it again tells us nothing about the genesis of the original dense mass nor the ultimate destiny of its fragments.
What we do know for certain is that in the vast cosmos there exists one particularly bright igneous star which embraces nine major planets within its gravitational field. That bright star is the Sun which together with the planets and several assorted asteroids makes up what we call the solar system. Of these planets our Earth is perhaps the most fortunate, since its surface and atmosphere are, we are told, conducive to the production of stable molecular structures formed from atoms of carbon and charged with electrons. These molecules have the knack of extending themselves into chains, linking with their neighbours to form an organized sequence and finally producing bigger structures called polymers. Among the polymers are those extremely complicated substances known as proteins which by a subtle variation of their constituent amino-acids are able to generate a wide range of complex forms. Most important of these molecular structures are the nucleoproteins. These are the self-replicating raw materials which, as chromosomes, make up the bricks of life that are living cells. Biological evolution begins when these single living cells, their nuclei swimming in cytoplasmic jelly, develop into higher life forms. From the earliest times the immediate ambition of each cell would have been to ensure its own survival and this must have led to competition for the raw materials required for that purpose. In this way a pattern was established which characterises all subsequent organic evolution, for it is the fight for survival that has determined the twin processes of genetic mutation and natural selection.
Summed up very briefly, the doctrine of organic evolution contends that a unified common ancestor is responsible for the diversity of complex organisms existing in the world today. This was dimly perceived by the philosophers of ancient Greece and revived by the scientist-philosophers of the eighteenth century. It was Charles Darwin, however, who first stated the doctrine as we now know it and backed up that statement with a wealth of data from all fields of biology. Since then palaeontology has increased our knowledge of early forms so that we can now regard it as adequately proven that 'life' on earth has always consisted of an orderly progression from relatively simple structures to the wonder that is man himself. Despite the wonder, however, the appearance of man was no mere accident, and Homo sapiens like all else in nature has his appropriate place on the evolutionary tree. Sharing the same branch on that tree are his closest cousins, the apes.
The physical resemblances between apes and man are too obvious to be stated. It is reported that when the first orang-outang was exhibited in Paris in the eighteenth century, the archbishop of that city waited outside its cage to baptize the creature as soon as it emitted a sound resembling human speech. Since then zoologists and anatomists have confirmed the fundamental similarity between man and ape, archbishop and orang-outang. Psychologists have even drawn on their observations of ape behavior in order to explain human conduct. Small wonder then that for purposes of classification man and ape have been lumped together in the order known as Primates, and evidence of our common ancestor is sought among the fossilized remains of monkeys. So far the search for the first Homo sapiens or even the so-called 'missing link' between him and his simian forebears has been unrewarding and we cannot say for certain where or when man emerged from some advanced type of anthropoid. In terms of geological time the transformation may well have been an abrupt one. Certainly by the end of the Pleistocene era, varieties of Homo sapiens had achieved a fairly wide geographical distribution.
What we do know is that somewhere in this period the evolutionary process reached a point at which the potential hominid embodied all the characteristics required to accomplish the transition from animal to man. Among these characteristics were an upright posture, vocal cords which already allowed him to communicate in a rudimentary way with his fellows, and hands with which he could manipulate objects. But above all man's brain provided the impetus for what would finally set him apart from other animals. It has been attributed variously to divine inspiration, spontaneous intuition and a cervical irrigation of nucleic acid, but whatever the reason, man suddenly became aware of his individuality and of his independence from the world around him. This stupendous realization turned what had formerly been a brute consciousness based on instinct to the self-consciousness that is born of an idea. Man had stepped outside himself into the realm of conceptual as opposed to merely perceptive experience. Language enabled him to give verbal expression to that experience and gradually he started to fashion and use ideas in the same way that his supple fingers already fashioned tools. He was still an animal, but an animal that reasoned. He was still a creature of the Earth, but now he inhabited what Teilhard de Chardin termed its 'noosphere' (from the Greek [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], meaning mind). From then on man was endowed with the unique gift of being able to control his own development.
This rapid and all-too-superficial review of evolution makes it abundantly clear that the human mind is indissolubly linked with the physiological process of evolution. We must at once discount the idea that at a certain point in prehistory God breathed into man a soul which gave him his humanity and a special place in the natural (and 'supernatural') scheme of things. Evolution is dramatic enough without having recourse to a deus ex machina. By insisting on the link between physical and mental development we are from the outset avoiding also any suggestion of dualism, according to which man may be viewed in terms of a mind and a body, the ghost inside the machine. Such a view is questionable, if only because of what we know of the causal links between body and mind. From our own experience most of us are well aware of how excessive alcohol in the bloodstream can affect our thinking processes. Similarly the use of hallucinogenic drugs may bring about alarming and beautiful mental reactions.
Now if, as we have said, mind is organic inasmuch as it is completely identifiable with and attributable to bodily processes, it follows that it must coexist in some way or other with all living forms of physical life. Not only must it coexist with them, but it must also develop with them throughout their evolutionary course. Although man began to think conceptually only when his brain, the necessary physiological apparatus, had developed to a point of refinement capable of it, there is no reason to suppose that his immediate ancestors were completely incapable of thought. Who would deny, for example, that a chimpanzee possesses a mind of its own? Indeed, assuming, as we must, that mind and matter are inextricably linked, then the mere fact that the chimpanzee has a body is sufficient proof that it also has a mind.
Philosophical proofs are unnecessary, however, since Nature herself shows quite plainly that all living things can think. We have already mentioned the instinctive consciousness that man has always shared with the lower animals. Even now, much of his thinking differs only in degree and not in kind from their own. But this type of thought must not be confused with the conceptual variety which, thanks to the peculiar complexities of his cervical cortex, is man's special privilege. We are here discussing those thoughts which arise from the stimulation of one or more of our senses, and which represent our reactions to the outside world. This is the type of thinking that is said to stem from an organism's awareness of its environment and the effect that environment will have on its well-being.
For example, if I see a large obstacle in my path when I am walking down the road I shall try to avoid it, if it is going to impede my progress. A dog will do the same in a similar situation, as will a worm. Can we infer from this that the worm has a mind? I think we must; if we grant that the higher vertebrates have minds, there is no reason why, in view of evolution, some degree of mentation should take place within lesser creatures. Indeed, scientists have shown that flatworms are capable of memory and that even single celled protozoa will react to things around them in the manner they deem best for themselves. If it comes to that, even plants, consciously or unconsciously, will turn towards the sun so as to benefit from its light.
The inescapable conclusion from all this is that nature must be psychologically directed towards the satisfaction of its needs; the bee stores honey in a hexagonal cell, a form which mathematicians have shown to be the most economical for this purpose; the ant establishes for itself a well-ordered society; the homing pigeon crosses hundreds of miles of unknown sky to regain its loft. Clearly, proof that nature has a mind is as much the result of observation as it is of logical deduction from the very existence of matter.
That there is something which may be called 'mental' coexistent with life is a fundamental belief of magic, and a belief shared by many scientists. However, while the scientists are prepared to accept it as a working hypothesis which experience appears to confirm, the magician ventures to speculate on the nature of this universal mind. In doing so he is bound to incur the displeasure of those who insist that only a rigorously scientific approach confined to empirical observation can possess any validity. It is true that once he abandons such restraints the magician is bound to be led to conclusions that are as yet scientifically unproven. However, these conclusions, provided they satisfy the essential conditions of observation and experience, do not deserve to be rejected out of hand. Reason and induction are perfectly respectable aids to knowledge. These led Democritus in the fifth century B.C. to describe the atom, although only in the second half of the nineteenth century did technology produce the instruments needed to show he was right. It is an all-too-common presupposition of allegedly non-presupposing scientists that nothing can exist until it has been detected by them or the apparatus they have invented.
We have said that the magician speculates on the nature of the universal mind. For to him this mind is universal, although it is experimentally observable only in the behaviour of living organisms. But the distinction between living matter and dead matter is at best a unclear. After all, the origin of life itself is now accredited to an adventitious combination of 'dead' chemicals. In any case all matter, by its very existence in the universe, has 'life.' To say that a stone 'lives' is not as ridiculous as it may appear. This is especially true if one recalls that within the stone's molecular structure there are sub-atomic particles whizzing around in a manner that seems far from dead. In any case, we have already noted that if evolutionary theory were carried to its logical conclusion, then mind or life would have to be regarded as implicit in all things, essential aspects of that same reality of which matter is the external appearance.
The assumption that life is natural to matter means that nature is both self-generating and self-perpetuating. In addition, because some form of mentation is present in matter, it must follow that these are to some extent conscious processes. Every plant and animal must share 'spiritually' in the life process of the world's 'soul' just as it participates materially in the organization of the world's 'body'. This interpretation is by no means new; it is that of the early Greek philosophers, in particular the Stoics, and reappeared during the Renaissance. It may also be latent in Descartes, whose dualist assertion 'I think, therefore I am' can lead lead quite happily to the Hobbesian paraphrase 'I think therefore matter can think' and, later, to Bergson's theory of the élan vital. Nor has any of this been contradicted by modern science. On the contrary, the discovery of ribo-nucleic acid (RNA) and subsequent views on the molecular origin of thought serve only to confirm it.
When we observe the life force that permeates the universe we see that it manifests itself in process and movement. Because this movement is deducible to rational laws of motion we may safely conclude that the universe, or rather its all-pervading vitalism, is itself both orderly and rational. And yet the world has its share of disorder and destruction — at times it may even seem that chaos rather than unity or harmony characterizes the universe. However, even if we admit that the actual creation of the universe, if it ever was created, is nothing more than a vast cosmic accident, the fact remains that it is subject to certain laws which arise from the very nature of matter. The disorder and destruction, the freaks and curiosities, can all be explained by material causes — that is, by natural law working out its irrevocable process when physical conditions chance to be uncommon. Far from proving the absence of law in the universe, the apparent exceptions serve only to emphasize its efficacy. Nature never contradicts herself. Were she to do so, there would be no causality.
So far we have posited that a certain life force is present everywhere. It follows then that the world we know may be only a small part of the external manifestation of that force. There is a strong likelihood of it having manifested itself elsewhere in the cosmos, though it is too soon to be certain. It is also possible that though at present identifiable only when bound up with matter, life may in certain circumstances exist independently of it or, to remain true to materialism, in material forms not directly recognizable by our senses. There is no need to stress again the inadequacy of those organs: viewed through the microscope a drop of water is seen to contain myriad living forms, all invisible to the naked eye; there are myriad other forms invisible to the microscope.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Magic: An Occult Primer by David Conway. Copyright © 2016 David Conway. Excerpted by permission of The Witches' Almanac Ltd..
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