MAGIC CANNOT WORK - go and waste your time on something else!
 
Magic or the occult is the use of non-physical or supernatural or spiritual power to affect the physical. The occult means the hidden. It is about using hidden forces and beings to get what you want be it an event or a revelation. Magic is causing things to happen by non-physical means and by using the alleged hidden abilities of the human mind.

Magic is claiming for yourself and using the supernatural powers religion attributes to God and Gods and Goddesses and spirits. If there are such beings then you can override them if strong enough. Magic is using secret forces above the powers of nature to command things to happen.

Witches and magic workers say that magic is powerful but does not make anybody all-powerful.  They say spells have unexpected results that are probably impossible to control.  This is supposed to show that they do not think of themselves as Gods.  But even Gods work within a frame.  God cannot make a non-existent apple.  What we really have is almighty power being claimed in some areas.  Witches who cast spells so that they can accept and live through whatever life throws at them have virtual omnipotence.

Can magic turn a prince into a frog? Believers say in theory yes.

Here is more of what they teach. We do magic for some good end. Even what is called evil magic is done for a good end - it is just misguided. You do a spell to kill Aunt Jane so you can have her money.  Magic is neither good or bad. It is just magic. But it can be used for good and or not so good results. We need order. We use magic to impose order so turning anybody into a frog is very unlikely and the universe would be chaotic if we were turning people into animals. We can do it but it won't happen for we deep down don't want to be able to alter nature to that extent! To do a spell you don't really want to do is to turn the spell against itself. Thoughts are magnets and beliefs are thoughts. The more you believe you could turn a person into a frog in principle the stronger in general your magic will be.

In other words, they come up with an excuse for why we cannot order a loaf to turn into gold. They tell us we can but we don't really want to! It would follow then that if you cast a spell for doctors to find a cure for your cancer using gene therapy that you don't really want them to for deep down and even if you do not realise it you are afraid of what their success with genes could lead to. You will fear it gives them a bigger chance of playing God.

Notice how their argument says we don't want to be able to alter nature to the extent that we can turn a prince into a frog? But surely we would want to be able to do it to some extent? For example, maybe in Africa we could turn sand into antibiotics for the dying who cannot avail of medical help?  Or perhaps sand could stay sand and be given inexplicable antibiotic capacities? Also, maybe we could give them poison to drink after using magic to prevent it from harming them but making it harm the illness?

We are told that we want magic to work with nature not against it. We may even be told that we are gods in the flesh and long ago we set up the universe. They say we used magic to set up natural law for order is so important. We need that security. If we need it to the degree that we can do nothing magically to save a dying person in Africa then clearly we no longer can use our magic powers at all. Practitioners say that we must not do magic for a money win and then sit watching television doing nothing to help it to happen. Sitting idle supposedly implies that you are so doubtful that you will get the money that you are not going to get up and look for it. Get out and buy tickets. The lesson is that magic works best if you show confidence in it and in yourself by working to make the spell come true by natural as well as supernatural means. But that does not deal with the fact that if magic works it should work whether or not you smooth the way. The supernatural supposedly assists the natural and the natural assists the supernatural. But is that true? No - it is just a way of blaming you for wanting too much when your spells fail. You didn't use the magic sensibly to get a good result. No wonder magic believers have you doing spells for small things that are going to happen anyway!
 
Magic believers try to appeal to the New Physics. They think they see its discoveries and principles as showing that magic is real. But take the Uncertainty Principle - it says uncertainty is built into the very nature or fabric of reality. It would follow then for magic believers that if you do a spell to get a job, you are tuning into the powers of uncertainty and heaven knows what you might unleash. What kind of magic is that? It's no good!
 
Science searches for truth within the probability paradigm. It does not claim absolute certainty about anything. This reflects the fact that everything is changing and everything depends on other things and everything has exceptions. If science sees a miracle, it will not say it's a supernatural event. It cannot. It cannot say its magic. Science has no problem with nature changing its behaviour. It just assumes that no God or supernatural force or magic is behind it. Science cannot be practical or useful unless it assumes that. A statue bleeding might be understood as not being against science. What is against science is saying it's a miracle.
 
You are shot by an arrow. A man comes to pull it out. You will not let him unless you get all the scientific details about what happened. What angle was the arrow shot from and from exactly how far? And who did it? There is no point in asking all this and wasting time. You may end up dead.
 
Though witchcraft today claims to be a benign nature religion the fact is that all magic is evil magic, trying to avoid what really matters. What matters most is not spells, believing in God, a man who rises from the dead, in miracles but believing in your power to change and make yourself happy. Don’t try to change the world but change yourself and nice changes will happen automatically around you. It is not what you have in life that matters or who loves you. What matters is how you feel about your life. What people need is self-esteem training not magic. Magic then arises from laziness and therefore lack of concern for self-esteem. Magic workers say that magic cannot work without self-esteem for you produce magic from your own mind and emotions and if you don’t have good self-esteem you cannot really trust in the spell so it can’t work. So magic contradicts itself by requiring something that it forbids!
 
Magic is trying to manipulate reality. Believers claim that love spells are wrong for they are too manipulative for they are trying to make another person love you. They say that instead you should do a spell to make yourself more lovable to another. But there is no difference in forcing a person to love you and in forcing them to see that you are lovable and therefore attract them. Nobody can love anybody unless they see them as attractive. If love spells are wrong, then who will want to do magic? To do a spell to make yourself more lovable to another is also manipulative for you are degrading yourself by turning yourself into somebody else’s idea of desirability. We all love people with faults. The Witch trying to use magic to catch a man who likes gossip is making him see her as a gossip or using magic to turn herself into a gossip! This is self-manipulation, self-deception. Also to magically make yourself more lovable in the eyes of the other is to manipulate him so that he will see this. For example, the spell might have the side-effect of putting his mother in an accident so that you can help her and he can see that.
 
The self-righteous say that spells that use force are wrong. But that can be said of any spell. For example, a healing spell will try to force a person to have a better attitude for a good attitude is one of the main helps in recovery. A person wants to change their own attitude. They don’t want forces doing it for them.
 
All magic is harmful and the notion of white magic is nonsense and sooner or later the white magician will see that and the temptation to use malicious magic and start calling up demons will get too much. Magic should lead to black magic and Satanism. Magic workers who claim to harm none are just deceivers.
 
We know that some people will die in accidents. Nothing can stop that. Then why not use magic so that evil people or your enemies will be the ones struck down instead of the innocents that these things happen to? You would be shuffling the pack so that the deserving people have the accidents. It is probably because magic leads to attempted murder and evil that the Bible God says that we should not suffer a sorceress to live (Exodus 22:18). The context doesn’t allow us to get liberal. God is blunt. He says the life of a sorceress should not be tolerated. He could have demanded some other treatment for them but he demanded execution indicating that this was compatible with love your neighbour as yourself for the sorceress is dangerous no matter how altruistic she seems to be or acts. God evidently believes that there is something in this magic – why else be so harsh against it - but we know better! The view that God opposed it for he wanted to keep his people free from pagan influence doesn’t explain the harshness.
 
Magic workers still get cancer and have accidents and die so magic is wasting time. Magic is always evil because it implies that it is better to do nothing active for other people but spend all your time casting spells to help them. This like becoming a contemplative nun dedicating yourself to a life of prayer for others is really putting faith before people. Religion is schizophrenic, it pretends to want to help people and then chooses, in its smugness, a futile way of doing so. Magic workers will respond that magic doesn’t happen just if you sit back you have to help it to work by doing something. But though you may help it to work it is only a small part. If you help your sick father by looking after him it is mostly how circumstances you can’t control work out that do any good. The doctor will help, the nurse will help, his medicine has to agree with him, the heating has to work, your own health has to be okay there is so much. Magic then needs to be very powerful to look after all those things so why shouldn’t it work if you do nothing?
 
What I could never understand was how people who could allegedly bend spoons by mind power can’t change their DNA so that they remain youthful until death or manage to change their DNA so that they never die or get cancer. They say magic cannot give you a new set of teeth if your adult teeth all fall out. But why not? Some people do grow teeth a third time. When magic changes what is going to happen it should be able to change nature for changing this is still changing nature.

Believers when confronted with scientific evidence say that astrology doesn’t work or that magic cannot do any good say that there are other ways of knowing not just the scientific way for sometimes you just know something for no reason. If they have the right then to erect dogmas and dangerous practices on this foundation then what would they say to a person who believes they just know that the world will end next year, or that Jack the Ripper did right or that God wants women impregnated at all costs? They set up a double standard.

 “Magic is picturing what you want to happen in your mind and then working up a tremendous desire for it to happen to make it happen.”

Many suppose that drugs and alcohol will have to be employed to intensify the feelings for it is very hard to desire anything as much as the potent spell requires. But drugs and alcohol trick the will and cloud the mind. Using them means you are refusing to take the happiness that comes from accepting yourself as you are. You are taking the harder route. The real will is still there and it does not want this so the spell cannot work. Deep down you want to be your own person. There is always a part of you that does not desire something you want which creates problems too. This is a catch-22 situation.

Magic is a pile of problems and leads to even more problems.  It would not be a problem if it were left where it belongs, in the superstitious past.