Defining Magick
There are certain words we use that are so vauge as to be all but meaningless. This is particularly true when it comes to religion/spirituality/the occult. It creates a certain trap for our thinking. We hear about "black magic" or "white magic" and really every other color too. The danger is that it creates a backwards sort of thinking where we start from the words and then try to put together their meaning.
Let's try to break this down by first showing how words are normally used in science to explain things. Take this diagram that is relevant to my current biology class:
Here we are introduced to new words. In my text, the Pistil is called the Carpel but this makes little difference. The point at first is these are names clearly applied to objects you can point to. By naming them, you also build an abstraction. The stamen is the portion of the flower that carries pollen. The carpel/pistil receives the pollen at the stigma. We are told that the majority of flowers have all these parts and we can then go observe from tulips to sunflowers to marigolds. The word has helped us build an abstraction which we can now apply.
Now compare this process with a word like "soul". Often a religious inquiry will begin with something of this sourt: "What is the soul?". If we begin our inquiry without knowing what it is we are even describing, but prejudging that it does exist, then we are liable to fall into all manner of errors. If we point to a portion of a plant, or any object in the world, we may ask: "Why is it here?" "What does this do?" "How might it change?" and other practical questions, but never should there be any doubt what it is we are talking about.
A classic question approached by science was "What is life?" It seemed obvious that there was a fundamental difference between inanimate objects and life. As science marched on, however, this question shrank away until today it seems almost a silly question to have asked. You see, bacteria (prokaryotes) are the smallest organisms we currently consider alive. However, everything that occurs within a bacterium is understood to be a chemical reaction. A virus is not considered alive, since it needs to infect a bacteria to replicate, but this is not a deep distinction. Essentially life is a complex matrix of self-sustaining chemical reactions. There is no extra ingredient, no "life force" necessary.
To drive this point home, consider a simulation of a cell on a computer, consider the game Life. We find a self sustaining and replicating object, do we call it alive? My answer is, who cares? What is interesting is how it is self-sustaining and self-replicating. Adding a term like "life" to it does not help us understand what it is or what it does.
Likewise with a word like the "soul". When we try to pin down what is meant by the soul, we may associate the soul with notions like consciousness, free will, thought, memory, intuition. It seems obvious to me that these are all ideas unto themselves. Take free will as our example. I do not see any reason to assume that there is "soul" that makes free will possible. In fact, it is not obvious that free will actually exists either. But regardless we may pen in a definiton of free will as something like the ability to cause change in a non-deterministic manner. This is then an idea worth exploring.
My point, I will leave it here for the time, is that magick seems to be this sort of word. We lack a clear definition of what magick is. As we attempt to define it we heap up more and more words, each needing their own definitions, constantly without our fundamental example. We should walk away from this dizzying lexicon and return to what we really know, direct experience. Let us stick to words that have clear meanings.
Let's try to break this down by first showing how words are normally used in science to explain things. Take this diagram that is relevant to my current biology class:
Here we are introduced to new words. In my text, the Pistil is called the Carpel but this makes little difference. The point at first is these are names clearly applied to objects you can point to. By naming them, you also build an abstraction. The stamen is the portion of the flower that carries pollen. The carpel/pistil receives the pollen at the stigma. We are told that the majority of flowers have all these parts and we can then go observe from tulips to sunflowers to marigolds. The word has helped us build an abstraction which we can now apply.
Now compare this process with a word like "soul". Often a religious inquiry will begin with something of this sourt: "What is the soul?". If we begin our inquiry without knowing what it is we are even describing, but prejudging that it does exist, then we are liable to fall into all manner of errors. If we point to a portion of a plant, or any object in the world, we may ask: "Why is it here?" "What does this do?" "How might it change?" and other practical questions, but never should there be any doubt what it is we are talking about.
A classic question approached by science was "What is life?" It seemed obvious that there was a fundamental difference between inanimate objects and life. As science marched on, however, this question shrank away until today it seems almost a silly question to have asked. You see, bacteria (prokaryotes) are the smallest organisms we currently consider alive. However, everything that occurs within a bacterium is understood to be a chemical reaction. A virus is not considered alive, since it needs to infect a bacteria to replicate, but this is not a deep distinction. Essentially life is a complex matrix of self-sustaining chemical reactions. There is no extra ingredient, no "life force" necessary.
To drive this point home, consider a simulation of a cell on a computer, consider the game Life. We find a self sustaining and replicating object, do we call it alive? My answer is, who cares? What is interesting is how it is self-sustaining and self-replicating. Adding a term like "life" to it does not help us understand what it is or what it does.
Likewise with a word like the "soul". When we try to pin down what is meant by the soul, we may associate the soul with notions like consciousness, free will, thought, memory, intuition. It seems obvious to me that these are all ideas unto themselves. Take free will as our example. I do not see any reason to assume that there is "soul" that makes free will possible. In fact, it is not obvious that free will actually exists either. But regardless we may pen in a definiton of free will as something like the ability to cause change in a non-deterministic manner. This is then an idea worth exploring.
My point, I will leave it here for the time, is that magick seems to be this sort of word. We lack a clear definition of what magick is. As we attempt to define it we heap up more and more words, each needing their own definitions, constantly without our fundamental example. We should walk away from this dizzying lexicon and return to what we really know, direct experience. Let us stick to words that have clear meanings.