Strange Phenomena of Magick

Many of the books and articles that I have read about magic presuppose that magic functions in a linear fashion. It starts with the preparations, culminates with a ritual performance of some kind, and ends (hopefully) with the desired effect. Magic would seem to be about influencing the natural cause and effect mechanisms that appear to operate in the world. A magically influenced event must therefore be triggered by a magical action. It seems so simple, but actually it’s this definition that is overly simplistic and not the process of magic itself. In fact, anyone who has experienced magic over a long period of time would likely tell you that magical processes are highly complex despite the mechanism employed by the magician.

There doesn’t appear to be a clean and simple representation of magic. It is never an associative process of “do these things and this desired event will occur,” since if magic was that simple it would be used as such by everyone and be a part of everyone’s repertoire of life-based actions. Being successful in life, however that might be defined, often involves many factors that are not tangible to the one who is striving. There is such a thing as “good luck” and “bad luck” when dealing with chance occurrences and probabilities, with which even the most hard headed and practical individual must cope.

As a beginning magician or sorcerer often discovers, magical effects and predicting the results of magical actions is slightly better (or worse) than chance. Perhaps that slight advantage can make all the difference, but the whole cause and effect perspective about magical performance might be too simplistic to deal with the actual reality of how magic works and what it really does. It is also possible that our collective sense and perspective on causality might not be particularly well informed or nuanced to notice that when magic is involved in a given situation, many strange and bizarre things can occur.

In the many years that I have performed magical workings and operations, I have found that the phenomena associated with magic is peculiar, quixotic and even downright strange at times. For many years I have adopted the opinion, or should I say that it has been forced on me by circumstances, that magical effects, operations and workings seem to represent a view of reality that is anything but straightforward, linear, sequential, or predictive in a cause and effect manner. I know that my opinion in this matter is not very popular because it argues that the generalization and modeling of magical practices and effects is misleading and probably far too restrictive.

If one were to classify the kind of magic that I work using the available models then I could be said to be using a highly extended and expanded energy model. I also incorporate the spirit model, or spirit plus, because the foundation of this magic is based on my use of a projected godhead as my higher self intermediary. I also use the information model, since I make complex declarations in my ritual workings as a part of my overall magical exegesis, not to mention the complex sigil systems that I employ to construct magical links. 

The psychology model is also well represented in my work since the rites that I employ are written in such a fashion that they can be used by nearly anyone. I also extensively employ the “As If” magical tool to build my own personal mythology with deep psychological imprints to push the envelope in my own self-definition and expand the world that I live in. Perhaps because I am intensely using all of these models of magic, particularly the energy model (by employing vortices, pyramids, spirals, pylons, and geometric prismatic energy structures), I have found that the phenomena of magic is startlingly peculiar. Allow me to explain what I mean by this declaration.

Over the years I have experienced some very odd phenomena when performing magical operations and focusing magical effects into my life process. While these are particularly subjective experiences they are not limited to what I have experienced. I have performed these kinds of rites with other people on a number of occasions and everyone who participated had similar experiences. So, I have eliminated the possibility that I have just hallucinated these strange occurrences. Here is my list of weird happenings.

• Magical results for a particular working begin to happen before the rite is even performed. I refer to this phenomenon as a causality collapse, and I have experienced other situations where the perception of time has been slowed down or startlingly increased. Time dilation and causality distortion seem to be a part of the typically overlooked attributes of magical phenomenon.

• Magical effects can occur without any ritual being performed, or any intention of a ritual to be performed at a future date. It would seem that just being immersed in magic and its regular practice can cause phenomena to occur unbidden.

• Performing the same ritual over time can produce wildly differing results for the same person or different persons. Sometimes the experiences are analogous, but other times they are completely and radically different. The opposite can also happen, where a single ritual can produce very similar results when performed by different people at different times. It would seem that the effect of a magical operation cannot be cleanly or clearly predicted with any accuracy.

• Sometimes magical effects operate as if they are somehow “sentient” and able to either subtly interact with the operator or even anticipate his or her objective. I don’t know how many times I have either said or heard someone say that when working magic you don’t always get what you want, but more often, you get what you need (or deserve).

• Performing magical operations often produce far more effects than are intended by the operator. Sometimes these additional effects are more engaging, interesting and desirable than the original objective. Magical effects can appear to permeate one’s conscious perspective of reality itself and can reveal things in dreams, fantasy, and even in mundane occurrences. The impact of synchronicity has often been downplayed or omitted when talking about the effects of a magical operation, but I have found that it often occurs. Magical operations can have residual effects, and these can be experienced days, months or even years later.

• Magical operations that are performed in a given space (temple) or focused in specific area (shrine or temporary working area) seem to accumulate a kind of residual field that has the capability to produce magical effects without any directive from the operator. (I have found that this is particularly true when working with a vortex in a temple environment. Even after it is sealed, the vortex continues to operate as a latent field because it cannot be banished.)

Perhaps the most interesting question that any magician could ask is whether or not magic as a phenomena can exist distinctly and separately from the magician who is generating it. Does magic begin and stop with the magician who is utilizing it, or is magic a kind of sentient and energized field that somehow resides in consciousness? If spirits can be said to exist distinctly (as psychic objects) and outside of our focused awareness or personalized perspectives then perhaps magic can also be said to be a very subtle and distinct unified field pervading consciousness. Maybe magicians only tap into something that is already there, and cause it to be consciously realized and activated for a specific objective. Perhaps magic is itself an egregore.

My experiences with magic are such that it seems to be a sentient process with which we interact for various reasons. Everyone and anyone can interact with it, but the mechanism might be prayer, pious offerings or personal sacrifice, grief and despair momentarily acquitted by hope, joy and insight instead of magical rituals. Magic might be a lot more common than we think, but far more complex, mysterious and subtle. This is because it has an inherent “beingness” that interacts with people on many different levels, but never functions as a mindless phenomenon prodded into action through the use of tools and occult artifices.

Those who work magic consistently for over a period of years develop an odd kind of magical aura around them that I call the “Process.” While I believe that magic itself is a sentient being that interacts with magicians, I have also observed what seems to be an aspect or attribute of the self functioning as the personal magical field of a magician. Sometime I can sense this emanating from another magician, and sometimes I have even visually perceived it as an entity that is bound to them and operates through them, but also acts like a localized field of magic. What I am attempting to describe is a kind of sentient energy field or egregore that appears to be attached to a magician. It not only produces minor magical phenomena, but it also seems to interact with the magician in order to guide and protect them.

I have declared that the magical Process can guide the magician to his or her ultimate goal (assisted with the Higher Self as personal godhead), but only if he or she will listen and be attentive to what is being communicated. The Process doesn’t talk to the magician because it operates on a very deep and subtle level of his or her being, so the art of listening to one’s Process is neither easy nor direct. Of course, my conjectures here could be readily dismissed as subjective nonsense, but what I trying to communicate is that magical processes are more complex, sentient and interactive than we understand them to be. There seems to be much more going on than what is typically written in books and articles about magic, and that magic is an odd, quixotic and sometimes, even chaotic phenomenon.

I have written other articles about the weird and strange phenomena regarding magical operations and magical effect, and you can find them here, and here. Many magicians find my ideas to be distasteful and troubling because I am proposing that magic is not straightforward nor is it something that will ever be able to be measured or described by science. It is one of the many mysterious elements of the overall phenomena of consciousness itself, and I am doubtful that science will ever successfully define what consciousness is due to the fact that human awareness, from the perspective of science, must be materially determined as a function of neurology. If that were so then spirits (or gods) couldn’t have an objective existence and magical energy would only be the product of a curious neurological phenomenon. We haven’t even gotten into a discussion of the meaningfulness of magical processes from a visual and linguistic perspective, and that would indeed seem to contradict, for now, the edits of science regarding neurology.

For this reason I am completely happy and content to observe magical occurrences from a subjective standpoint and to discuss what I and others have experienced. We will try to make sense of it all and attempt to teach and share methodologies that are less idiosyncratic and more overall objective, neat, orderly and seemingly factual. However, magic itself is actually very difficult (if not impossible) to quantify, measure and predict in a rational and scientific manner. What we long-time practitioners end up doing is sharing our own methodologies and experiences and allow others to help us determine what is real from a subjective perspective and what is our own personal, hubristic fantasy.

Frater Barrabbas

Is Magick Scientific?

Now that we have fully presented the methods of rational and critical thinking, it’s time to give the devil his due and talk about the other side of this argument. While it’s vitally important for the average person to have his or her wits about them in order to function in the modern world, it’s also important to have an open mind and a knack for creativity. These skills might seem to be mutually exclusive, but they are actually the full tool set for the practicing ritual magician. The reason why the ritual magician has to straddle both the rational and irrational worlds of reality is because of the nature of the phenomena of magick itself.

Magick is, in my opinion, a rather irrational phenomenon. It doesn’t appear to adhere very well to  logic, rules, models or other restricting presumptions. These various rules and methodologies can be proposed, but there always seem to be other associated phenomena that would ordinarily falsify those same assertions. In order to force magick into a certain regimen, we have to ignore any conflicting or contrary data, and I believe that by doing so, we ignore some important attributes associated with magick. So it would seem that maintaining an absolute rationalist stance when engaging in magickal practices is likely to be too extreme.

A happy balance is found between sloppily functioning within a Cargo Cult mentality and insisting that everything experienced conforms to one’s rational dictates, and can thereby be empirically proven. This delicate balance between complete credulity and stubborn skepticism is a requirement for anyone who wishes to practice magick without going off the deep end, or for that matter, never getting anywhere. I have brought up this discussion previously and posted it some time ago on this blog, where I proposed that magick doesn’t really have any rules other than what we assume it has. You can find that article here.

To the emphasis on rationality, logic, critical thinking and even practical common sense must be added a few other important elements, such as divergent thinking, creativity, tolerating ambiguity, being open to the miraculous and accepting that magick and science are very different mental operations. Attempting to make magick conform to an exclusive scientific perspective is likely to ultimately deny that magick is even possible. Some may have problems with a definition of magick that is overly reliant on objectivity and empirical causality or one that seems to be steeped in metaphor and relies too much on ambiguous definitions of consciousness. As expected, magickal practitioners seem to inhabit both spectrums, and everywhere in between.

All of this brings us to the primary question, “Is magick scientific?” The answer to this question proposes some fundamental definitions about the nature of the occurrence of magick, and whether it can be empirically defined as a natural phenomenon or proved to exist at all. As a practicing magician, it quickly becomes a situation where my experience has to be accounted for by my ability to reason and understand. Also, my failure to be open to possibilities and the constant need to rationally explain everything has the effect of restricting or dampening magickal phenomena. To be a magickal practitioner, I have had to let my feelings and subjective observations occur without any kind of bias or blockage, and that is quite difficult in this day and age.

Now that we have gotten to this point in our considerations, I may call upon one of the more peculiar authors in the annals of magick for some kind of corroboration. I am, of course, referring to the godfather of chaos magick himself, Ramsey Dukes (a.k.a. Lionel Snell). A while back, my friend Jack Faust had recommended that I check out the writings of Ramsey Dukes, particularly his entitled work “S.S.O.T.B.M.E.” (Sexual Secrets of the Black Magicians Exposed). It would seem that Ramsey Dukes can offer me some support for my own rather unorthodox opinion of the nature of magick, or so it would seem.

Ramsey Dukes is not the kind of author who will stand on any single position for long. He offers his various opinions and perspectives on magick with a bit of tongue in cheek, and at times demolishes his own theories to ensure that they don’t become too powerful. In a word, Ramsey Dukes is something of an intellectual weasel, but a humorous rather than an annoying one. After reading the more recently revised essay on magick, I found in him at least an ally who also believes that magick is quite “wiggly.” 

Of course, the very first thing that can be said about the book “Sexual Secrets of the Black Magician’s Exposed” is that the contents of the book has nothing to do with the title. It’s just another of Ramsey Duke’s inside jokes. All of his book titles are patently ridiculous and have nothing to do with their content. Ramsey also has the strange habit of referring to his other pen names as if they were distinctly other people, such as quoting the work of Lemuel Johnstone (another pen name) in a critical light, as if it were someone that he once knew well. Those who are not acquainted with Lionel Snell and his various pseudonyms would obviously not get any of his subtle humor. I also get the feeling that Mr. Dukes likes to make elaborate gags to amuse himself, which I suppose are even more humorous to him if the reader doesn’t get it. Cleverness for the sake of cleverness can get a bit boring, but overall, Mr. Dukes does make some important points, which I felt would be useful in my discussion about magick.

Ramsey Dukes never really answers the question as to whether science can prove the existence of magick. However, his book implies that the entire question is not particularly relevant. He begins his essay with a model where the social world of humanity is divided into four vectors, and these are Religion, Science, Magic and Art. These four vectors are bordered by the longitudinal and latitudinal vectors of Intuition (for Art and Religion), Thinking (for Religion and Science), Sensation (for Science and Magic) and Feeling (for Magic and Art). So where Science is a combination of Thinking and Sensation, Magic is a combination of Sensation and Feeling, where sensation is defined as a form of observation. These vectors are to be seen more as directional dimensions than spacial domains.

Based on Mr. Duke’s model, it would appear that Magick and Science represent two contrary perspectives of the world. The contrast between the two become quite obvious when we see that the one point which they have in common, observation, is dealt with in completely opposing manners. 

Science relies on logical and rational forms of thought to produce an objective analysis of any phenomena. Truth is paramount to science, and so is the elimination of unpredictability through the necessity of repeatable and verifiable processes. Science is also concerned with establishing causal connections so as to determine the cause and effect of any physical event. To the scientific perspective, magick can only exist in the world of un-truth, and therefore functions in much the same way as the Devil does in some religions. And like religion, science, at times, can be quite dogmatic. Science is the dominant mental perspective that rules the Western world, brainwashing everyone into being rational thinkers even if they are romantic and overly impressionable feeling types, such as myself.

Magick is completely the opposite of science! It relies wholly on feelings and subjective experiences. Truth is considered relative, and can be bent or ignored altogether through the operation of the “as if” power of analogy. In the world of magick, there are no absolute truths. Causal connectivity is assumed to be total, and every possibility exists in some manner, although not necessarily physically.

Perhaps one of the most profound magickal experiences that I have had is the extreme sensation that everything is connected together, and that behind reality is a single Spirit where everything dissolves into union. So magickal theories must fit the experience of the one who experiences them, and because of this, there can be many different, perhaps even opposing, models and perspectives amongst the various practitioners.

Magick is the producer of miracles and the maker of astonishing fortune (Black Swan events), yet due to the power of science, those miracles are infrequent and muted. We have been unwittingly taught not to see or expect miracles, and so they happen but rarely. In fact, our scientifically dominated world has fostered many defense mechanisms against any possibility of either miracles or evidence of the supernatural. According to Mr. Dukes, if you experience a miracle, however minor, it’s important to be secretive about it, because there is an inherent censoring mechanism operating in our society that seeks to eliminate the miraculous. A reported miracle quickly becomes rationalized out of existence, and then its much harder to produce the same magickal results at another time.

As Ramsey Dukes so eloquently puts it: “A miracle is only a total disaster to a rational thinker. If by nature you are a ‘feeler’ rather than a thinker, you can happily survive a few inconsistencies.”

However, the evidential occurrence of a real shocking miracle whose only source could be classified as supernatural would likely cause a worldwide collapse of rational thinking, unless, of course, it was steadfastly and passionately denied. Such a catastrophe must be avoided at all costs, thus we are taught to live in a rational world and to expect the ordinary, rather than the exceptional or the unrestrained remarkable. While some may hope for a day when magick can be completely understood, classified  and codified in a laboratory setting, I for one am hoping for just the opposite - a breach in the world order. Perhaps when the hermetically sealed container of the rational and logical rule of science is cracked, some truly amazing things might be witnessed and experienced. In my opinion, it would be as if a black and white world was suddenly and strikingly invaded with vibrant and living colors, banishing forever the dull word of various shades of grey. 

Ramsey Dukes also discusses his interesting theory (disguised as the theories of Lumuel Johnstone) that the world is actually a cleverly made virtual reality, where the granular elements of the real world are nothing more than bits of information. According to him, the universe has its origin in information, which surreptitiously exists as the very foundation of everything, whether physical or mental. This is obviously, the informational model of magick. Another important point in his book is that in science, theories are imperfect, but the scientist performing experiments is considered perfect, almost as an iconic or archetypal persona. A poorly performed experiment is shrugged off, and only a perfect representation of an experiment becomes the proof or refutation of a given theory, and then only when it is repeated sufficiently by other perfect scientists. No one questions that the scientist performing the experiment may be actually determining the results, at least not until quantum mechanics and Schrodinger’s Cat. Even so, such perspectives have hardly touched disciplines like elementary physical chemistry.

In magick, the theory (or rather formula) is considered perfect, and the operator, imperfect. If the magick fails to produce the results, it doesn’t in anyway indicate that the theory is incorrect. Rather, it is an indication that the fault lies exclusively with the magician performing the rite. This is because, according to Mr. Dukes, magickal theories are simple, abstract and universal. They need to be this way, because it is the tendency for elaborate theories about magick to accumulate evidence, no matter how absurd, until they become the veritable key to the universe itself, and only then, collapse because of their own weight.

This is why Ramsey Dukes is against stating any objective theory about magick and giving it too much weight. He would rather articulate a more general and traditional formula (such as the Four Elements), and work that to the benefit of all magick. I have found his caution interesting and intriguing, since it dovetails with some of my own experiences about using and making magickal models. However, in regards to the imperfect individual magickal operator, the whole of a magickal regimen is to incrementally improve and advance him or her, ultimately culminating in total and complete enlightenment. That, by itself, is the fuel that makes the practice magick so compelling and irresistible.

One very interesting point is that my whole approach to producing new magickal lore is one where I incorporate divergent and convergent thinking processes. In order to determine the ritual structure, discover the relevant occult elements and derive the overall theme of the ritual working, I will draw pictures, schematics, produce various lists, and pretty much fill up a few pages of paper with notes, pictures and other scribbling. I then take some of these notes and do some background research on them, and finally, pull all of the pieces back together again into a completed work. 

While I am in the divergent phase, any conceivable connection or idea is explored, no matter how tenuous or odd. My background research then adds a deeper layer to this mixture of discursive ideas. It only manages to cause a greater confusing mixture of ideas, but it can foster new and unusual linkages. Then afterwards, when this stream of consciousness has seen its end, I will select and carefully assemble the appropriate pieces into the skeleton ritual structure, thus filling it out. This is where I use convergent thought to bring the pieces into union. The end result usually has many levels and typically produces a very unique approach to any given methodology. I used this same technique when I devised a new version of the talismanic Portae Lucis, and the end results seems to be quite compelling.

As you can see, I use a very creative approach in developing and building up my ritual lore. Yet the methodology I use is very much a part of the magickal process, according to Ramsey Dukes. It is a dynamic and creative procedure, and the technique of creating new lore is a magickal ritual in and of itself. Nothing is sacred and nothing is dogmatically adhered to. Everything is subject to questioning and even revision. All materials are available for the use of the magician to perform magick. I guess you could say that this would make me into a kind of chaos magician.

“Nothing is true!

Everything is permitted.”

This brings me finally to my opinion that magick is unpredictable, unbounded, and incapable of adhering to any model. Magick is wild, wooly, crazy, untamed, fringe, weird, strange and deliriously ecstatic. Magick is decidedly wiggly, so wiggly that it will placidly seem to behave itself, all the while enjoying a vicious joke on the magician who is spinning theories or playing too seriously with models. A some point there will be a spike of completely unexpected data, an experience that doesn’t fit any model whatsoever, and perhaps behind it all, there is the laughter of the insane beingness of magick, who has played yet another trick on a presumptions human operator. 

That being of magick is like the great shaggy twisted eared Puka, who is vilely deceptive and unconstrained, even to those who are its supposed allies. I call it Uncle Wiggly, and I am sure that some are sick to death at the crazy things that I have penned about this being. Others delight in it, since what is wild and undefined is likely capable of producing any kind of miracle or supernatural occurrence. So I part with this final quotation from my previous article, stating the Uncle Wiggly Law of Magick.

The Uncle Wiggly Law of Magick

“Whatever laws, models or theories that you propose about magick, there will always be something that will occur while working magick at some point to not only falsify that law, but will show itself to have a very nasty sense of humor, the least of which will be irony or satire, the worst of which may even take your life. Never assume that you have all of the answers or have all of the contingencies of magick covered, because shit happens!”

Frater Barrabbas

Laws of Magick?

The Question About What is Real or Is Magick Wiggly?

[Frank the Rabbit - from Donnie Darko]

“Pooka. From old Celtic mythology. A fairy spirit in animal form. Always very large. The pooka appears here and there, now and then, to this one and that one. A benign but mischievous creature. Very fond of rumpots, crackpots...and ‘How are you, Mr. Wilson?’”
Mr. Wilson, reading the definition of “Pooka” from the dictionary, in the movie “Harvy.”
[This is actually a very effective definition of how magick works.]

“Often times, everything that we think is consistent or subject to laws and rational perception, only conforms to that perception out of a deep seated vicious sense of humor, whose irony shows us from time to time how our laws and perceptions are deceptively thin and full of holes. This is especially true when attempting to define laws about magick, mysticism and the paranormal.” Frater Barabbas - discussing the characteristics of Uncle Wiggly to friends.


Recently, I have found on the web that many practitioners of magick appear to have fully embraced the three laws of magick, which were popularized rather ignominiously by James Frazier in the late 19th century. Although the source of these laws originally came from Neoplatonic writings, Frazier believed that magick was a superstition practiced by primitive people whose poor grasp of causality caused them to believe in the efficacy of magick instead of science. Frazier believed that science was the correct and modern apprehension of causality, stating his opinion that magick couldn’t possibly work. Since that time, many of Frazier’s theories have been shown to be inaccurate, and that his use of evidence to support these theories was highly flawed and misrepresented by a kind of subjective ad hoc methodology. In short, Frazier ironically violated the very premises of science that he sought to glorify in contrast to so-called primitive modes of thinking and acting.

However, subsequent anthropologists, psychologists and philosophers have used many of Frazier’s initial theories to judge all magickal activity, whether done by supposed primitive peoples or by sophisticated modern western practitioners, as an unscientific causal reasoning that proposes ideas such as the mind has power over physical reality and that correlation is mistaken for causation. (You can find a good article on this subject here.) These kind of irrational thought processes are called by scientists “associative thinking” or “magical thinking.” It’s a thought process where symbols have an inherent power, and the use of metaphor, metonym and synchronicity is used to give correlation, personal meaning and significance to events that are coincident and produced by random chance. It would seem, then, that a practice of magick would entail a defective and even delusional perspective of causality and the belief in how physical phenomena occurs.

Since I am a modern practitioner of ritual magick living in the western world and not some supposedly primitive tribal witch doctor, then I would be doubly condemned without excuse, as being either overly romantic with my subjective notions or just plain deluded with psychotic tendencies. I, therefore, have to explain my practices in a simple and rational manner or admit that I am quite absurdly irrational and living a lie, as I pretend to have some kind of power or impact on the world with my supposed magickal abilities. Or do I?

So it might seem that I have two choices. I can embrace the supposed laws about magick that Frazier and Neoplatonism proposed or I can come up with a completely different approach and explanation for what I do. Unfortunately, a number of magickal practitioners have opted to embrace these laws and find a way of rationalizing them without examining any corroborating perspectives from science or thinking about any other alternatives, which I find quite troubling. Doing so only makes occultism in general, and magick in the specific case, look like something that the scientific community can point to as being an unforgivable modern obsession with gross superstition. In other words, embracing these laws without giving them any kind of nuance makes us look like idiots to the rational and empirical world of science, not to mention the general public. (Since these notions could likely be shown to be false in a laboratory.) I also have a problem with having anything to do with James Frazier, and I find it odd that Aleister Crowley lionized his work, even though Frazier would have thought Crowley was a lunatic.

Much has changed in the scientific world since the turn of the 20th century when Frazier’s theories were considered laudable. The advent of quantum mechanics, string theory and chaos theory have profoundly changed the way that scientists perceive the physical world. What was considered impossible in Frazier’s era could now be perceived as not only possible, but even highly plausible. The fact that magick does appear to work, although not all of the time and certainly not to the consistency where it could be shown to be an empirical fact proven in a laboratory environment, needs to be explained. This fact alone would show that whether we are talking about a supposed primitive witch doctor (whose beliefs and praxis are hardly either simple or primitive), an urban witch practicing in the U.S., or a Golden Dawn ceremonial magician practicing in some European town, the methods and techniques that they are employing do produce physical and psychological results. Such practitioners are neither deluded nor suffering from a distorted sense of causality. So there must be a reason why the empirical model of physical reality fails to explain why magick and mysticism are operationally valid.
 
Frazier proposed three objective laws used by those who practiced what he called “sympathetic magic and contagion” - these are the laws operating in a mental process that is called “association.”  He then spent quite a number of pages examining these three laws in great detail, to show how they were steeped in erroneous and superstitious beliefs and practices. These three laws were called the Law of Similarity, the Law of Contagion and the Law of Opposites. I shall briefly state these laws, distilling what Frazier put down more than a century ago.

Law of Similarity - or like causes like. The basic premise of this law is that appearances equal reality. This means that a magician may, by manipulating a symbol or simulacrum, through the power of sympathy, also manipulate the very thing it represents. This is the basis of sympathetic magic. For instance, it was once considered bad luck (or good, depending on the situation) to whistle while on the deck of a sailing ship at sea, since a person whistling was analogous to a fierce wind whistling through the sails. The belief was that whistling would cause a gale wind to unexpectedly blow, causing harm to the ship and crew. Similarly, a shaman could pour water on a sacred stone to make it rain, or imitate the sounds and qualities of a storm to make one actually occur. In a more modern usage, a magician can manipulate a symbol of something or someone and cause analogous effects or changes to the target.

Law of Contagion - once in contact, always in contact. The basic premise of this law is that there is some mysterious essence that is associated with a person or thing, that if that person or thing has contact with an inanimate object, that object possesses the quality of that thing or person, even when separated by great distances. Contagion is what is operating when one uses personal attributes, such as hair, nail parings, blood, etc., to build what I call a gross link to affect that person in some manner - the ubiquitous fithfath or voodoo doll.

Law of Opposites - causes are the opposites of their effects. This is analogous to the Law of Similarity, except it has the opposite effect. This means that if you want something to happen, do the opposite. This practice typically occurs more rarely, except when dealing with children and juveniles, then it is called reverse psychology.

Curiously, the most obvious of these laws found in a modern society is the law of contagion, which appears to have been bolstered by the scientific revelation that microbes are the cause of diseases. However, contagion can also manifest in an irrational manner, when individuals refuse to wear a shirt that has been worn (and subsequently washed) by a serial killer. Yet even before science had confirmed microbes as the cause of disease, the supposed irrational fear of clothes and belongings that had belonged to individuals who died of an epidemic was very much in evidence, even when medical doctors erroneously assured people that there was nothing to fear. So it would appear that part of this aversion was based on intuitive survival instincts, which turned out much later to have a scientific basis. Yet in many situations, science does not have any explanation as to why such behavior persists, even in a post-modern culture.

Strangely, the most basic concepts taught in any form of operational magick are the use of symbols, metaphors, metonym (to represent real objects), and the associative structure or mechanism of the contagious (magickal) link. The link presupposes that all material things are in some manner joined into a union, so there is a cosmic web of infinite relatedness. From the perspective of the ritual magician, all things are connected, and under certain states of consciousness, the symbol of something is that something. So you can see some basic laws of magick operating in these practices and phenomena, and they could be the laws of similarity and contagion. However, in all of these basic concepts of magick, a fundamentally altered (exalted) state of consciousness makes it true. This is a critically important fact in the belief system and practice of magick, and we will examine why that is so later in this article. Suffice it to say that in order to test these hypotheses, one must be able to adopt a higher than normal state of consciousness.

If we consult the latest theories that are currently considered in vogue by physicists, both the laws of contagion and similarity seem to have some basis in the areas of quantum mechanics and quantum biology. Quantum mechanics is the study of the behavior of particles at the sub-atomic level. It has been shown that particles actually exist in an indeterminate state until they are measured, representing that all possible variations are present until the act of measuring forces one possibility to manifest. This theory, which is well represented by the mathematical equations for Wave-function produced by Erwin Schroedinger, would seem to indicate that reality consists of fields of probability until an observer makes a determination, and then only one specific possibility arises, which would seem to say that the observer determines reality. This perspective produced the famous theoretical analogy of Schroedinger’s Cat, which we won’t get into here, but other oddities were also discovered as scientists continued to fathom the mysteries of quantum mechanics.

Another discovery was about something called “quantum entanglement”, where when two particles interact with other in such a manner that the spin of one is the opposite of the other, that they will produce exactly the same probable outcome simultaneously when just one of them is measured. One could also factor in that the expectations of scientists as well as what they choose to measure (or not) may also powerfully influence the outcome of an experiment.

Quantum biology is currently engaged in a controversy about something called the “non-trivial” role of quantum mechanics involved in biological systems, which would explain such phenomena as bird navigation (sensing magnetic fields), the circadian rhythm and other behavior related factors. Certainly, with these new discoveries in science over the last century, it would seem that attempting to explain how and why magick works would not be so outlandish. Quantum biology has successfully explained such phenomena as photosynthesis, the conversion of chemical energy into physical motion and brownian motors in cellular structures.

Yet science is still working out all of the details of these various theories, building up a large body of laboratory proof that would seem to verify them. How quantum mechanics would affect probabilities on a large scale has yet to be completely explained, although there is no shortage of theories and controversy. Science, despite these unusual discoveries and seemingly illogical theories, requires the verification by measurement and repeatability. If there is nothing to really measure and the results are highly variable, as they are with magickal phenomena, then science is reluctant to engage in any kind of theoretical speculation, since it would be impossible to falsify.

All of these laws, whether philosophical or scientific, seem to successfully explain a single aspect of magick and its associated phenomena, but fail to explain all of the other phenomena. In fact, I have found that many laws, models and theories of magick come up short. They seem to explain some things, but can’t be applied to explain other things. Perhaps it may be that psychology, philosophy and science have not achieved the level of advancement required to make sense out of this complex and variable phenomenon. Or, it might be that any theory or explanation, no matter how advanced, will never be able to explain something that is intrinsic to human nature. It would like attempting to understand and predict the qualities of love in human nature by examining brain chemistry alone.

In short, I am of the opinion that the reason that these disciplines are unable to effectively explain the nature of magick is because magick is actually a sentient field, not a thing, but a being itself. There is another law that has been popularly disseminated around various intellectual circles, and that is the Law of Intelligence, which is defined as any energy pattern of sufficient complexity will act sentient if it is treated as an entity. What I am proposing here is that magick is not a physical phenomenon that can be measured or consistently tested in a laboratory, although it can produce such phenomena, and the changes it renders can be noted anecdotally. It would seem that magick is a kind of being, but what kind of being it would be is the real question. This leads me to my definition of Uncle Wiggly and the belief that chaos does indeed have a face, although it can be a frightening one, large, furry, with twisted rabbit ears, bug eyes and large rodent teeth - perhaps a lot like the fairytale Pooka.

When I work magick, if the results are highly unexpected, even uncanny, perhaps strange and a bit scary, then I have successfully produced a magickal effect. If what happens is completely expected and totally within the script of the ritual, then I have probably not connected to the level of realizing true magick. Also, if I have managed to enter deeply into an alternative state of consciousness, then the effects of the ritual will be more pronounced, as if magick resided like some disembodied entity at the upper end of the spectrum of consciousness. Some have proposed that merely having the barest of outlines for a magickal ritual allows for the greatest inclusion of the unexpected. I have found that elaborate or simple rituals can work equally well, producing results that are startling and even astonishing. Not every ritual that I perform works and never are the same results produced each time. Often magick seems to have a mind and will of its own, and sometimes it manifests in a decidedly ironic and satyrical manner, whether the individuals involved get the joke or not. There are a lot subtleties to how magick operates, in fact, subtleties within subtleties. The more deeper in you get, the more sentient and strange it seems to become. (Much thanks to Frater Julian the Apostate for clarifying these thoughts.)

These realizations have led me to propose what I and some friends have called the Uncle Wiggly Law of Magick, whose basic premise would be stated as such:

“Whatever laws, models or theories that you propose about magick, there will always be something that will occur while working magick at some point to not only falsify that law, but will show itself to have a very nasty sense of humor, the least of which will be irony or satire, the worst of which may even take your life. Never assume that you have all of the answers or have all of the contingencies of magick covered, because shit happens!”

Blessed Be the Wiggly Way -

Frater Barrabbas