Magic

It is real and shit. O algo

Over the past year or so, I have developed a small interest in magic. And I don’t mean the very superficial forms of magic which Witches and other posers practice, like “manifesting”. I mean, actual magic. The ability to break the laws of physics or change the outcomes of probabilistic scenarios, or gain information of something you shouldn’t physically be able to, through mental power or through the assistance of some divine force. Theoretically, if you are an idealist, it should be possible. Which is why, even among Christians, there was a popular belief in what today we would call White Magic. This magic, as practiced by the alchemists and the mystics of the renaissance, was contrasted with “Black Magic” which relied on the conjuration of demons. White Magic was viewed as an extension of natural philosophy, because Aristotelian and Platonic Idealism had been incorporated into the natural philosophy of late medieval Christians. If the ideal world precedes the physical world, then it would make sense that one could break the laws of the physical world by drawing things down from the ideal world.

In the 20th century, the rise of quantum physics has returned Idealism to the natural sciences. Many people will insist that using quantum physics to justify Idealism is “quantum quackery”, which first of all is correct. Idealists will always reject empirical evidence as anything more than supplementary, but supplementary evidence is still evidence. Also, it helps stave off certain solipsistic daemons from bothering you. If there was absolutely no physical evidence for Idealism, Idealism would still make more sense than Naturalism. But there is physical evidence for Idealism, and many of the pioneers of Quantum Physics were enthusiastic about Idealism as a philosophical discipline. Most famously, Heisenberg and Schrodinger, who were promoters of Vedanta. However, Heisenberg did not interpret the wave-function collapse as mind-dependent. Or at least, this was not recognized by him as empirically evident. I think Schrodinger would have felt the same way, but by the 1950s was rather confident about Idealism, again possibly for purely philosophical reasons.

John Von Neumann was more straightforward in his interpretation of quantum physics as idealistic. The Von Neumann interpretation of Quantum Physics is a minority opinion, but Von Neumann was also probably one of the smartest people who ever lived and one of the last great polymaths. So as someone who is not a physicist, I have a tendency to place a high degree of trust in him. And, I guess, as a math major I am a little biased. Basically, he suggests that the act of observation is what collapses the wave function, and subsequently one could conclude that the fundamental substance of physical reality is consciousness. More recent studies occasionally pop up lending evidence to Von Neumann’s interpretation.

“The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct "actuality" of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation is impossible, however.” —Werner Heisenberg

I must clarify, what exactly constitutes consciousness or conscious observation is up for debate. There is a distinction between consciousness as in, pure experience, which I would actually equate to being, and conscious thought, which I and many others would equate to thought, self, or essence. For example, the idea of integrated information theory and the Platonic Nous, and the Vedic Atman. Under this view, what I will call “little-c” consciousness is essential, while “big-C” Consciousness is supra-essential. I was discussing with a friend on here recently, how many of the difficulties in bridging the gap between Greek, especially post-Socratic Greco-Roman philosophy, and Dharmic philosophy, is that the Dharmics take an epistemological approach while the Greeks take a more analytic approach. When you start at what you know to exist, you start at something you would call “awareness” or “experience”, but when you start at the simplest attribute shared by all objects, you call it “being”. From an epistemological start, intelligible objects are associated with one’s own thought and the self, the inner space. While the Greeks identify this with a more abstract intellectual principle. There is no actual contradiction between these two approaches, they are saying the same thing. A middle-ground between the materialism of someone like Albert Einstein, and the Consciousness-based approach of Von Neumann, is the “little-c” information approach of J.A. Wheeler, which he described as “it from bit”:

“It from bit. Otherwise put, every it—every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself—derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely—even if in some contexts indirectly—from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits. It from bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom—at a very deep bottom, in most instances—an immaterial source and explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe”

Wheeler’s view, from what I understand, is not in direct conflict with the Copenhagen Interpretation of Heisenberg et al. and is considered derivative of it, but it’s difficult to find information on this stuff when you’re not a Physicist.

Mathematicians, including Von Neumann himself, were generally also much more sympathetic to idealism. Obviously the Rationalists included some of the most prolific mathematicians in history — Descartes and Leibniz. Frege and Godel were Platonists, and not in a petty way like some people like to pretend. Both of them believed that numbers were real objects, just as real as if not more real than objects we derive through sense-perception. Alfred North Whitehead is kind of a problem here, he is not an Idealist but his ontology has a similar justification for supernatural action as the Platonists. Whitehead was also an admirer of Plato and Aristotle even if he himself had a different view. And how can I forget Pythagoras himself? Well, if you choose to believe that he proved his namesake theorem. Which I do! I am a Pythagorean Theorem truther. Also, did you know that Pythagoras was attributed many magical acts? More on that later.

I’m not going to spend a great deal of time explaining the argument against materialism from quantum physics, because I’m not a physicist. If you want to get the pasta on this, I recommend the second chapter of The Quantum Hermetica, a 95-page essay with over 100 citations discussing how discoveries in Quantum physics correspond with and vindicate Platonic/Hermetic philosophy. The full book is available for free on Internet Archive. Chapter II alone has 45 citations. I don’t endorse everything said in this book, but from what I’ve heard most of the issues come from the misrepresentation of Hermeticism and ancient societies, rather than any issues with scientific research.

Although there is a long history of people recording magical acts, believing in magic, and recording magical people, in modernity there are no reputable magicians. Even real magical abilities today could easily be ignored, because technology has made it much easier to fake magic. Studies on magic have generally failed to demonstrate magical ability with the exception of a few practices, which I’ll get into in a minute, but this shouldn’t be surprising. Even in the ancient world, magic was considered an extremely rare ability, rare enough that even if we had access to these societies in modern day we would probably never be able to study them. Today, the amount of magicians is even lower, because the sort of intelligent, honest people who you would want attempting to discover magic, are instead pursuing other things, while quacks and unintelligent people are more likely to gravitate towards marginal beliefs like magic. While many studies have demonstrated that things like astrology, as they are understood today, are quackery, there is the obvious caveat that people who become astrologers today usually are not very intelligent nor do they take such a study seriously. Astrology, like Alchemy, was considered not entirely separate from the natural sciences and was practiced by the intelligentsia of the pre-modern world. Even Isaac Newton, who I would believe is even smarter than the aforementioned genius Von Neumann, was a believer in Alchemy and Astrology.

Pre-modern societies were not blind to the possibility that a magician could be a charlatan. They were not blind to the possibility that a natural manipulation of the natural world could be passed off as a supernatural one. The very term we use today for magic comes from the Greek term Magoi, which was used to refer to charlatans. It originally comes from the Persian Magi, the Zoroastrian priestly class, but many Greeks actually did eventually come to associate the real Magi with magical abilities. I would argue that the most common forms of magic in the ancient world were oracular, where people would allow their bodies to be possessed, or would escape their bodies to interact with the spirit world in a divinatory practice. I would also be wise to mention the surprisingly common experience of people having recollections from past lives in this. Sometimes, people even recollect information about past lives which are shockingly specific and true to reality. Ian Stevenson is probably the most famous and well-respected source for cases of children recalling accurate past lives, but there are others as well. His research, even among critics, is widely considered legitimate and thorough, the main criticism is that there isn’t an identifiable and parsimonious material cause for reincarnation and that the phenomenon is not really something statistically observable due to small sample sizes. But, if you have already philosophically accepted Idealism, you don’t really need to find a material explanation for it. I don’t believe that it is normal for people to recall past lives, and I’m not even sure if it can be chocked up to reincarnation, because in my view reincarnation is characterized by a state of amnesia after death. Memory of experience is a faculty of the body, so only through supernatural means can one access memories from a past life. And it isn’t like these children are magic. Nonetheless, very interesting evidence.

On the topic of oracles, shamans, augurs, and seers, I find it quite difficult to believe that these people were all either schizos or charlatans. Many of them were highly respected in their societies even among the intelligentsia, while modern people suffering from delusions are typically unpleasant to be around. Interestingly, it seems that even believers in seers recognized that certain people were not actually experiencing divination, but were being tricked by some sort of petty ghost:

Again, more evidence that people in the past were not idiots. They were naturally skeptical of the supernatural just as we are today, and yet figures like the Oracle of Delphi maintained high status throughout history. Many people insist that the Pythian Oracle was simply doing the same thing modern psychics do, throwing out vague rhetoric and letting people construct whatever truth they want to see from it in order to have plausible deniability, but there are many recorded instances where the Pythian Oracle is correct about things that were rather fortuitous. Most people attributed magical acts in history don’t seem to have been sorcerers or conjurers of cheap tricks. Philosophers and sages are the ones typically being ascribed magical abilities. Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Epimenides, Apollonius of Tyana, and quite famously Julian the Theurgist, who was given credit for the miraculous rains that saved the Roman army from certain doom. The Egyptians were also associated with Magic by Greek times, and even in the Bible the Greek priests are described as having astonishing magical abilities which compete with Moses for some time, until Moses outdoes them. The Egyptians have various recorded spells, but most of them have to do with protecting someone’s soul in the afterlife. In Christian times, the spiritual elite of Pagan societies were believed to linger on and become a source of danger due to their magical abilities. Examples of this include the Celtic Druids and the Slavic Volkhv, but there is certainly no shortage of “magic men” in medieval and post-medieval Europe. One of my favorites is the Count of Saint Germain, do some research on him if you dare. Unfortunately he was bastardized in the uber-woke, terrible Netflix Castlevania series. He was likely one of the last Europeans to achieve what the Buddhists would call Enlightenment. If he had really fought Dracula, or a Belmont, or anyone, it would have ended very similarly to how it ended for every demon, god, and warrior who attempted to defeat the Buddha. I am unfortunately not terribly well-versed in eastern magical traditions, but Mahayana sources heavily emphasized the magical abilities of the Buddha himself along with those who ascended to Buddha-hood. Those who are in an advanced state in the path towards enlightenment begin to exhibit magical abilities known as Iddhi or Siddhi. Again, Astral Projection shows up as one of these powers, which is especially emphasized in the Shamanic cultures of Tibet and Mongolia which influenced early Buddhism.

A good body of research involving noncerebral cognition comes from near death experiences. There are many legitimate reports of blind people gaining the ability of sight in near-death experiences, or comatose people recalling specific memories of things going on in the outside world from when they were in a coma and their brains were not receptive. Again, both of these are cited in the aforementioned Quantum Hermetica, chapter 4. Also, there are some partially declassified CIA documents dealing with remote viewing experimentation. I would recommend reading these, with a healthy dose of skepticism. But the main reason the CIA shut down Project Stargate was not because the experiments on remote viewing were a total failure, it’s just that they were not considered useful for any sort of espionage. Another more interesting project is the research that was done by the Princeton-based Global Consciousness Project, which has found that quantum-based random number generators experience statistically extremely unlikely structural patterns during various events of global significance, where many people would enter certain synchronized emotional states. Smaller-scale analyses of observer effects on random events reveal mixed results. I think research on magical effects in the physical world is largely unable to be subjected to the scientific method, because only a very small amount of people in human history have been considered capable of reality-bending magic. And there is no reason to think that such people exist today, or have any interest in demonstrating their magical abilities to the public, just because they existed at a time where people naturally started off with a much more mythopoetic worldview. Especially because these fields today are associated with con artists and schizophrenics, who (if they are even capable of any psychic experience in the first place) would be the exact sort of people Iamblichus would consider susceptible to possession by lesser spirits. I would even extend this argument to modern divination practices — is divination really not working, or is it just that divine forces do not send signs to the retards today who believe in them? Well, not in the developed world. I don’t know if I would trust a Siberian Shaman with my life, but I would trust him a thousand times more than I would trust the much more pseudoscientific and cultish Western religion of Psychiatry… We love Shamans here, ok? But anyways… If anything can demonstrate psychokenetic effects, it is probably these extremely subtle quantum effects. Also, like I said earlier, there is much greater cause for investigation when it comes to the study of reincarnation or out-of-body near death experiences. Much of the reason these are discredited is because they don’t provide a naturalistic cause, but we’re not looking for a naturalistic cause.

Certain psychic abilities, like telepathy, arguably don’t break the laws of physics because subjective thoughts don’t exist in the physical world and don’t have to abide by certain physical properties. Seers in Germanic mythology are described as sort of hijacking the thoughts of animals in order to see what is going on in some other part of the world.

Other Subdivisions of Magic

Everything I have talked about so far is under the category of Thaumaturgy, or magic which has external attributes. What the Neoplatonists and Hermeticists were much more interested in was actually what was called Theurgy. Particularly among the later Neoplatonists such as Iamblichus, Sallust, and Proclus, Theurgy was defended as the primary path to ascension. Obviously, all of these men were astute philosophers, so they heavily valued contemplation as well. However, because there is a supra-rational and indescribable element to reality, theurgy serves to unify human beings with the divine by what I can only describe as “union through action” or even “union through emulation”. For instance, the act of sacrifice largely culminates in “sharing a meal with a god”. The ideal element of the meal is devoted to some deity or spirit, while the physical element of the meal is consumed. In Shintoism, there is also a concept of intimacy (not a romantic kind, get your head out of the gutter..) with the divine through symbolic meal-sharing. The unusual states of mind achieved by oracles, shamans, and initiates in mystery cults like the Dionysian and Eleusinian mysteries were also considered a form of Theurgy.

Also, I would divide magical powers another way. There is animistic magic, and there is intellectual magic. A good comparison to this would be the distinction between Ki and Magic in Dragon Ball Z, which reflects the Chinese Confucian distinction between Qi and Li which I talk about in my giant post on comparative mythology and perennial tradition. Fighters are generally limited to the use of ki, which in Chinese traditional medicine is the animating force of the body. It is seen as an “internal wind” and so when fighters launch Ki they are launching this animating force outwards, but it is pure kinetic energy. This is very different from the magic used by people like Shin and Babidi, which comes from their more enlightened intellectual states rather than from high stamina and martial discipline. This corresponds to the Platonic ideas of the Thymos and the Logos. The Thymos is one’s spirit, their willpower, and this is the source of that “inner wind” while the Logos is closely related to our recognition of the forms and our ability for contemplation.

P.S. Next post is on the Olympics