the ethical argument in favour of
belief in magic
Witches like Starhawk think that when you cast a spell you have to
become the energy you create which is why malicious magic will
backfire. You are inviting harmful forces in and making neutral/good
forces harmful. You have to identify as if you are the other person
in order to implement the spell. For example, the energy to work
right needs you to put yourself in the place of the other so you
know what to do better. So the idea is that the spell does more on
you than it does on the other person. In magical theory, all
things are ultimately one so you are ultimately that person beside
you who you harm. So magic and avoiding harm seem to be
linked.
Some who want us to believe in magic say we cannot have
real belief in ethics or take ethics seriously unless we wed magic to ethics.
Is it true that we cannot have real belief in ethics unless we
believe in magic?
There are two theories of ethics.
There are people who say some things are always wrong regardless of
the consequences and others who say that it depends on the consequences. Some
will say that having sex outside marriage is always sinful even if you need to
do it to save the world. Those who measure the rightness of an act by its
consequences will say it is not sinful then.
The consequences doctrine is the correct one. Even if stealing is
wrong it is not that wrong if it is done for good enough reasons or to bring
about enough good results. It is the intention that must be considered.
You can do something intending good results and it can end in
disaster. You cannot control everything that will happen as a result of your
actions. We are often terrible at telling what is for the best.
This leads some to surmise, "To have an ethic, we must project magic
into our good works so that they will ultimately be for the best and so that we
can be sure that we have done the right thing even if appearances say otherwise.
That solves the problem of how focusing on consequences could be right when we
can be bad at judging how an action will turn out."
But this only encourages recklessness. If magic looks after the
results or if God does (God by definition tolerates the intolerable meaning evil
for a good reason that justifies putting up with it) then why put too much
thought into anything. Just intend the best and go for it and let it sort itself
out. This is lethal unless magic or God really do take control.
It is not true that we can abide by laws because we believe in
magic.
We are told that, Psychic power does not guarantee an unusually
charmed life or a long life or even salvation from death. It works with natural
law and does not take over it. But the blessings invoked if possible will always
take place. That is to say, though your life on earth might not have been
unusually great, your entire existence and all your lives (over several
incarnations) will tell a different story. Overall it will have been a delight!
Doing magic to get great blessings and not following this up with efforts to get
these blessings means you are more interested in fantasising than getting the
blessings. And you cannot blame the magic if you get nothing because you didn't
really intend it to bring you the blessings.
If people swallow that they will never know if magic works or is a
waste of time. You could substitute anything for psychic power - maybe kaballah
water or snake oil. And if it is true that people can do magic and still have a
horrible life then clearly magic is rubbish and it is not right to manipulate
people to go into denial about this.
They say, If you want the blessings you invoke through love, you
still have to work for them. The blessings give you the strength to go for what
you want.
Self-confidence would be enough. Using magic would mean that if you
feel confident that this confidence is not your work but is magic.
Self-confidence would be better. Doing magic as a substitute for it is laziness.
What about bad magic?
If you fear it, believers in magic will tell you, As long as we love
ourselves properly and love each other strongly it will have no power over us.
Bad magic is not really bad. It is just good magic in the wrong place and the
wrong time. Evil is just the wrong good not the opposite of good. We must
correct the harmful magic that people do.
This is a trick and seeks to blame your misfortune on how you
respond to being the target of harmful magic. So if you get cancer it is your
fault. It is cruel. Those who are not upset by this philosophy are enablers of
it though they may not take it seriously enough for it to get to them.
Suppose magical theory is true. Then affirmations are statements you
can use to program the universe to bless you. All kinds of affirmations do
magic. In Church, Christians affirm that God alone must have the glory. This is
harmful magic. Nobody has the right to turn away from beings they see and touch
and love to favour a being who is just a guess. Do not favour a being whose
existence you cannot know for sure over yourself or the other people you know.
If we go to Church to counteract the negative forces of religion by our power,
we are in effect making ourselves see negativity. We are embracing negativity
and trying to damage ourselves. We don't need to do that. We can use our powers
better by staying away from the Church. We can help better then.
Magic believers preach, you can use your magic power to work with
the magic power of a sick person to effect a healing. No method of healing is to
be treated as a substitute for going to the doctor. It is vital that the healer
and the person seeking healing get to know each other first and that they feel
comfortable with one another.
Again if magic can assist medical science, then it can and should
work without medical help. The advice to go to the doctor is just magic
believers encouraging people to go to the doctor and give the credit or some of
it to medical science for any improvement in health.
If you have to go to the doctor, that contradicts the teaching that
magic heals. To be consistent, believers should say, "Going to the doctor is up
to you for it is only an option. It is not important." If magic helps medical
science to function better then it is more powerful than medical science. The
magic should get the credit not the medicine.
The healing if any is just placebo and caused by the person
developing a happier frame of mind. The healer must diagnose harmful beliefs -
God, religion, bigotry and the fear of Hell etc - and suggest a method for
dealing with them. They need to be transformed into faith in the divinity and
self-determination of the self. Otherwise healing will be short-term or not
happen. The successful healing of a person who has dangerous beliefs might
happen because negative feelings are setting her or him up for a fall. The
higher the level you fall from the worse the fall will be. Attempting to be
healed without discarding the negative power of harmful belief can be dangerous.
It is trying to embrace the healing power of the placebo effect and emptying it
of its efficacy. It's limbo.
It is said that if people use magic to win lovers they will be
dissatisfied and surmise that the lovers do not love them for them but because a
spell is making them love. But it would be answered that we are talking about
real love here. If you do a spell for real love that is what you will get. It is
the spell's job to help the person see and feel that you are wonderful and
lovable and that way it helps another to love you. A love spell that was an
attempt to force another to love you would not be a love spell at all! Love
spells work towards having you loved because of you. If you would say the person
who loves you loves you because of a spell and not you that is putting yourself
down. It is a negative affirmation. If you can say that, you can also say that
they love you because of your beauty or intelligence or career and not you.
Read that carefully. It admits that real love happens because it
should and not because of magic and then tells you to do magic to make it
happen! Love spells are black magic! They are nonsense and hypocrisy. And if
love spells are rubbish then who is going to bother with magic? Love is what
motivates the huge majority of magic devotees to even bother with it.
Suppose you do protection spells. If somebody does a lot of magical
work to keep safe and then gets drunk and ends up in A & E magic believers will
come up with the following callous and disgusting excuse, "The spells worked.
But he was reckless and in being reckless he was undoing the spells. He was
fighting the protection spell with a reverse spell." Nobody has the right to
insinuate such a thing unless they have proof that the protection spells were
efficacious.
Magic, despite its lack of ethics in principle, is a more ethical
way of helping people than prayer. It is sort of trying to do something for them
– it is attempting to send power out to enfold them in love and hold them and
protect them. Prayer is doing nothing for God cannot be advised what to do or be
influenced by us like he was imperfect.