So, What is Magick?

"Macrocosm and microcosm" Johann Daniel Mylius

Big question, but I think we can make a good start at a concise answer, though a complete answer will remain elusive.

Part of it is a lot like the Theory of Gravity. At the very root of it, the Theory of Gravity is based on a calculation of stuff that happens rather than an explanation of why. If we knew exactly why gravity acted the way it did, we would be able to unify it with the other fundamental forces of the universe in a much grander Theory of Everything. For now, we just explain what it does. It's a useful theory, it's a grand theory, and it's a fundamentally sound theory, but it's not necessarily complete.

Magick, in part, seeks big theories like this. Evolution is another wonderful theory which I would consider Magickal. This is because of the way it can be used in daily life as a rule of thumb. When people look at a raccoon, they might wonder at the fact it washes its food. If you actually understand evolution, you don't wonder about why, you know why! This behaviour gave the modern raccoon's predecessors an advantage over its competitors. All that's left is to find out what the advantages were, and how they helped the raccoon's ancestor derive more energy from its environment. We simply seek to describe how stuff works, and use that set of theories as rules of thumb for life.

Magick was where science came from, after all. So far as I'm concerned, Magick is like science... mit benefits. Isaac Newton didn't come up with Gravity because he was a scientist. No, he wasn't anything of the sort. Newton was an Alchemist and a Deist. His Theory of Gravity was formulated to win an argument - an argument in which he was taking the side of God. You see, he postulated that, because of gravity, if the planets had not been first set in motion, they would have fallen into the sun. His reasoning being that the Primus Mobile - the prime mover - had to have set them in motion at the beginning of the universe. Ipso facto, there has to be a God.

I didn't say it was a good argument, but his premises were incredible. We still use them today and conveniently forget that they were used in an argument about God.

You may find, for the sole reason that we try to sum up the universe using Grand Theories and rules of thumb, that Magick is filled with symbols. The Tarot. The Yi Jing. The Runes. The Astrological Signs. The Periodic Table of the Elements. Many of these sets of symbols are employed in divination or fortune-telling. It's in divination where these Grand Theories get to play. If each symbol represents a principle, then divination is like a game of combining principles and allowing them to create something emergent. It's like a training ground for lateral thinking and imagination. After all I've learned and been through in my life, it's still probably one of the most useful brain exercises I've ever done.

So what is Magick? It's like science mit benefits. We get to philosophise about the universe, put these philosophies in neat symbols, bash them together, and see what comes out. Like a metaphysical supercollider. Sometimes we like to make completely arbitrary symbols, put random stuff in them, and see what comes out. It's creative, it's disruptive, and it's never the same result twice. Kind of like the reproduction of experimental results in most science, come to think of it... only with our Art, such creativity is a good thing!