Principles of Magic

Magic is based around a number of principles that, taken together or separately, can all be seen as ways to channel power from inside to affect the world outside in a specified manner. All have been defined in different ways to accomplish related, but similar, goals by a variety of different magickal organizations such as the following:

• Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, including practitioners like William Butler Yeats, Algernon Blackwood, and Arthur Machen

• the Theosophical Society,

• specifically magical variants of Freemasonry,

• Gardnerian Wicca, and

• Neopaganism and related Earth religions.

Aleister Crowley, one of the most important members of the Golden Dawn, defined magick (his preferred spelling) as “the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with the will.” He included in this definition not only ritual magic, but also any event that is brought about by a person’s will; simply scratching an itch may be considered magick. The key to what is magic, he believed, was that true magic brings about what is the real purpose of the practitioner’s existence. Discovering your true purpose is necessary before being able to use true magick.

Needless to say, most modern practitioners do not adhere to Crowley’s beliefs strictly, though most respect him deeply as one of the earliest modern mages. Wiccans and Neopagans, the most common practitioners of magic today, define magic more commonly as something brought about through will and belief in a way that could not be accomplished through mundane means.

The means through which magic may work are believed by most to be one or a combination of the following:

• Natural forces in addition to the four fundamental natural forces (gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear force and weak nuclear force) that cannot be detected through current scientific means

• The intervention of independent intelligent and conscious spirits, like angels

• Mystical power that exists in everything

• A connecting, binding cosmic power (something like the Force)

• Symbolic manipulation (this is often called sympathetic magic)

• Sir James George Frazer’s sympathetic magic, using the law of similarity and the law of contagion or contact. For instance, making a voodoo doll with hair from the victim would be contagion.

• Concentration or meditation, restricting the mind to will something to happen; then, if it’s meant to be, it comes about.

• Power of the subconscious mind

• Application of one’s own unity with the Universe

These concepts are frequently mixed and blended to create unique new ideas. However, almost all of them hold one, two, or all of the following items to be the key to the casting of magic: