I made this post on IIDB in response to a poster who is grieving the absence of "magic" in the Universe. It is the most comprehensive thing I have ever written on my view of magic, and I'm very pleased with the way it came out:
[OP's username], what exactly are you looking for? Is the "magic" whose lack you mourn the fairy-tale stuff, turning pumpkins into gilded coaches and slaying giants with swords found inside ancient oak trees? Is it D&D-style magic where with the right gestures, words, and ingredients, you can throw a fireball and vaporize your enemies? Is it witchcraft--healing with herbs and whistling up the wind? Is it the sensation of magic, of something amazing happening and no one can figure out how?
It looks to me like it's not the "magic" missing from the Universe that's bothering you, but the "magic" missing from your own outlook.
As both a rational skeptic and a Witch, I have had to reconcile what I know of science and natural laws with my subjective certainty that the world is a "magical" place, and this is what I figured out:
In Ye Olden Days, and still today in some places, people believed in all sorts of things, including "magic." But when you examine what was considered magic, you find that it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with gods and spirits. "Magic" has always gone hand-in-hand with mystery, with occurrences that were amazing because they were rare, because only a few people had the knowledge to make them happen. The blacksmith was a magician because he could transform brittle iron into strong and supple steel. The herbalist was a magician because she knew which plants cured diseases. The horse trainer was a magician because he could command beasts with the touch of a hand and a "magic" word. Go back far enough, and the tribe's fire-maker was a magician because she could coax the sacred flame out from the stones where it lived. None of these people had special "powers." What they had was special knowledge--knowledge that most people didn't have.
So what happened? All these amazing things still occur today--people forge metal, cure illnesses with herb-derived drugs, train animals, and make fire. But they aren't "magical" anymore. What happened is that we learned more about how the processes worked. The knowledge spread and became commonplace. The wonder went out of it because it wasn't special anymore. Anyone can strike a match, anyone can train a dog to "Sit!"
What I realized was that "magic" is not a substance. It is not the blood of spirits or the breath of gods. It is not something from outside this world, nor is it "something" from inside this world, really. Magic is an outlook. It is not an objective phenomenon, but a subjective experience. When something amazes you, you experience magic.
And I have found that many things amaze me in ways that they never did when I was an ignorant child who was convinced that I could be a sorceress if I could just figure out the right words to say. Making fire is easy, and I even know what fire is--it's the heat and light released from a rapid oxidation reaction. But isn't it astounding that something as prosaic as that should be beautiful, that a candle flame can mesmerize? The biochemistry of intoxication is fairly well understood, but isn't it amazing that it should exist to be understood in the first place, that certain species of plants should produce chemicals that intoxicate animals? Doesn't it just blow your mind that you and your dog have a common ancestor, and wouldn't it be awesome if you could meet that little Cretaceous critter? The fireballs-from-fingertips and enchanted sword variety of magic might not exist, but isn't it fantastic that a team of cameramen and actors and pyrotechnicians and computer graphics experts can make you believe, for a couple of hours at least, that it does?
Look around you. There's a spider, spinning her web. Glands in her abdomen produce a liquid protein that soldifies on contact with air, crystallizing into fibers that she then spins together into a silk thread. She drops from twig to twig, laying down guy wires in a wheelspoke pattern. Then she alters the way she spins the silk so that it comes out sticky instead of dry, and painstakingly circles the hub, tracing a spiral. Finally, she attaches one last thread to the center of the web, takes hold of the loose end, and hides in the leaves. And she knows how to do this without having to learn it. And you're telling me there's no magic in the world?
Or hey--it just stopped raining, and the sun came out. In the distance, the drops are still falling, and the sunlight bounces off those distant dots of water, refracting in the process. Each drop preferentially reflects one narrow wavelength of the sun's light, and in the aggregate they arrange themselves in perfect order, from the shortest to the longest, and we see a rainbow of colors grading into one another in magnificent harmony. And we find it beautiful, even though this perception does not help us to survive and reproduce in any way that we know of. And you don't think that's magic?
We live in the same world as our ignorant and credulous ancestors. If it was magical then, it is magical now--the change has been in how we perceive, not what we perceive. You can have all the magic you crave if you can teach yourself how--if you can remember how--to be amazed by the mundane and the commonplace. Children believe in magic because everything amazes them. Adults often lose that sense of wonder, but they can re-learn it. The Universe is an astonishing place. In that sense, I do believe that not only does magic exist, but it is, literally, everywhere.
_________________ "Any experience which teaches you something new has not been a complete waste of time."
--Me
|