What is magic? Is it real or not?

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Magic is when you break the normal laws of causality to produce an event controlled by you, but not actually caused by anything you directly did. This can occur lots of different ways. Isaac Asimov wrote that “technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.”

What most people want to know is actually rather tricky to rigorously define. The domain of causality is immense, and any break in the rules is ‘magic’. I have written about magic a few times, including an experience I’ve had performing telekinesis. More color is added here. Here’s another one of my experience with Intention - Manifestation. Here’s one on black magic. Here’s one on why magic isn’t a bigger part of my life. And finally one on the rules of magic. That stuff absolutely is real, it happens, people do learn how to do it.

The problem with magic is that it’s never practical, this is why you don’t see it all over the place, why there aren’t schools that teach it. At the end of the day, technology is more powerful than magic. Working within the bounds of physical causation is more interesting and fun than operating outside of them.

Intention - Manifestation (I-M) is the most interesting form of magic you can learn how to do. It’s where you literally affect reality with your thoughts. But it requires giving up the idea that things are going to happen exactly as you want them. But giving up the idea makes you more powerful. More powerful means you need magic less. The second-to-last link in the above paragraph really captures the essence of why magic is always going to play second fiddle.

So you might be asking right now, if magic is real, why can’t I do it? It’s a valid question. The answer is twofold: first, magic can only work if you believe it can work. You can build the belief but it’s akin to a skill. There’s a lot of little angles to it that you need to pick up. For example the will of other people has to be taken into account. You can override another person’s will and force something to happen but that adds a whole ‘nother layer of complexity. This is why I-M tends to start you off with something simple and easy like finding pennies on the ground.

Second, magic is a greater-than-human agency deciding to intercede on the world on your behalf because you wanted it to happen. You have to treat it respectfully because if the greater-than-human agency decides it doesn’t want to do your bidding, it simply won’t.

This is why nobody’s won James Randi’s million dollar prize. What’s funny about that particular thing from a magic standpoint is that you can look at the million dollar prize as a magical effort on the part of Randi himself to manifest an outcome. All I have to do is look at the dizzying number of restrictions to see that no extra-human agency is going to want to cooperate with it. He wants a kind of repeatability that would make the feat an act of science, not an act of magic.

Science is powerful, specific, repeatable. You can build industries on it. Magic is ephemeral, non-specific, and designed to point to where you’re deficient in your own personal agency. The practice of magic is practically designed to be frustrating and make you wonder why you don’t just do it the normal way. For example if you do a bunch of magic spells to get a girlfriend, you’re going to look back on it later and wonder why in the world you didn’t just ask her out the normal way, would have been way less difficult.

And that leads me into the final verdict. Ultimately, the universe is constantly bringing the things we need in order to learn and grow to us, automatically and without any need to direct it. Paying more attention to the things it’s already bringing us will make those things more powerful and interesting. Instead deciding that you want different things to learn and grow with will ultimately make you less powerful.

However, any movement is better than no movement. If you’re feeling stuck, a little bit of magic can clear a lot of stuff out and expand your mind so that it can consider more possibilities than before. It’s a spiral, you move in a big circle, and end up right back where you started, only a little bit more powerful, a little more agency.