Is Magic Possible?

[kyektulu]

I am in the middle of a debate with a friend at the moment, we are disscussing is magic possible in todays world?
Civilisation has believed in the power of magic for thousands of years and it has always been a big part of culture untill modern times.
There are still witches today. I am not talking of the hag faced fly on a broomstick type but there are people out there who call themselves witches and perform magickal rituals and in the voodoo religion there are still shamens and popularity of these examples are rising in todays hectic culture.
I have been into the occult for many many years and although I do tend to study more than practice. I do perform spells on occasion. Good luck charms, spells for health and wellbeing that type of thing.
I honestly feel that they have helped and I have had positive results.
Or in your opinion is this all in my mind?
My friend seems to think so but I believe otherwise there are many things that are possible if we only open our minds and except that there are things out there that cannot be explained by modern science.

 

[Stalker]

Everything is possible in our world but, IMHO, ecah second strengthen the physical constants that make its use even harder. I already put that hypothesis in the thread I initiated under the title "Degrading matter in terms of Expanding Universe?" http://www.chronicles-network.net/forum/showthread.php?t=6530.
Quite possible that physical constants of our world have been changing since the Big Boom but slower and slower in reversed quadratic progression.
So, in 1st milleinum B.C. it was possible to make magic much-much easier than now, and in the third millenium B.C. even easier than it was in the 1st!
And it can be the explanation why Pyramids and Stonehenge could have been built at that time.
Why not?

 

[Ash]

Despite being a fairly scientific and fairly (I hope) rational person I agree with you that there are things out there that cannot be explained by modern science. That doesn't mean that they won't in the future, but it would be supremely arrogant to think we understand everything at the moment!

In the past the term "supernatural" meant a lot more than it does now. It tended to mean things that couldn't be explained by science. Gravity, for a long time, was a supernatural force, a force that couldn't be explained by science. In essence, magic.

I tend to think that if we look at something and decide it's "magic" it's just a label we're choosing to apply to something we don't fully understand. A scientist might not like to use the word, they might prefer to call it "unexplained phenomenom" or something like that, but in essence it's the same thing.

With that in mind I think magic was a bigger part of society in the past simply because there was so much more in the world we didn't understand.

In your personal example... spells for luck and health and the like. In one way I tend to agree with your friend, yes it's in your mind. But even if it is in your head, the fact that positive though formalised as some kind of ritual can actually have an effect on your life is fairly magical.

If you do something and it makes you feel better something positive is happening here, that may not be entirely explainable. Beyond that what we decide to label it is up to us. And magic as as good a label as any

 

[Ash]

While I'm at it I guess I should jump in and offer up Arthur C Clarke's 3rd Law... it's appearance in this thread is pretty much inevitable!

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

 

[Stalker]

I tend to think that if we look at something and decide it's "magic" it's just a label we're choosing to apply to something we don't fully understand. A scientist might not like to use the word, they might prefer to call it "unexplained phenomenom" or something like that, but in essence it's the same thing.

100% agree. Magic is just one more term for unexplained.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

I find Stalker's theory intriguing - but I'm not sure how seriously to take it! That's one of the reasons I like your posts though, Stalker - I never get the same old recycled common-knowledge opinion!


Strictly, magic is any sort of act performed by invoking supernatural powers - at least that's what the dictionaries tell me - so I suppose the real question here isn't whether or not modern science can explain everything, but whether there is actually a supernatural element to our world whereby spells, charms and so on can actually have an impact. Personally I think it's 99% all in the mind, but I will concede 1% of doubt, which is a big step for a sceptical person!

 

[Stalker]

Kaballa says that each sound, each letter contain magic, Ancient Scandinavians were of the same opinion creating their FUTARK runes.
My point is that that empiric knowledge our ancestors had collected contained something like this (here I am less sceptical than you, JP, so I would give 21% for such a possibility ). So, in real, one ingredient or composition of only few ingredients out of many in the potion or sound or composition of sounds could actually invoke magical forces (let's speak in Subjunctive). All the rest might be excessive. But that was empirical experience, so the recipee was repeated from generation to generation blindly without explanation of the forces applied.
The other question is what is probability for a humankind to accumulate such huge amounts of "esoteric" knowlege for such a short period time if we take the point of view of official anthropology?

 

[warlock]

I think there's a difference between the belief in magic, and the inducing of altered states of consciousness which shamanic, voodoo and witchcraft rituals practice (not always as their stated aim), and the actual changing of physical reality according to the will of a shaman, witch, etc.

Quantum physics and the observer effect is often brought in as an escape route to make magic possible, to me this is similar to the "Intelligent Designer" position of Christian fundamentals of using the Big Bang - the belief in God/magic/whatever precedes the physical proof they offer as evidence. For quantum physics to be an explanation of magic, you'd have to say how a person can impose their will on randomness in the subatomic world, and how whatever was imprinted down there is then translated up to the visible, material world (something orthodox science can't do for quite normal phenomena). I suppose in theory this does leave open the possibility of magic, but I would say it is very very unlikely, and unless you know how it is suppoesd to work, will probably never amount to much

 

[FelineEyes]

Due to certain boundries of my religion, say what will you about it, I tend to shy away from anything that smells of magic.
So, yes, I believe there is magic, or some other force akin to magic, in existance.
However, I don't believe its as prominent as everyone would like to believe. I believe that magic, under most normal circumtances, is a matter of the mind believeing in something so greatly that it triumps over the known physical world.
And that, I believe, is a kind of magic in itself.

 

[Jaxom_Ruatha]

Has anyone seen "What the Bleep do we know?" After watching that I have to say I think it is all in the head, if doing rituals or chanting helps us become confident about something great! But as long as you believe in something enough it can happen, like if you believe you are healthy or tired etc. you will be.

 

[don sky]

IMHO, I dont think magic exists! The human Being is full of untapped potential and we downplay ourselves, thereby underestimating the power of the human spirit! The concept of magic is just pure fantasy and all scientifically unexplainable "GOOD" things should be attributed to the creator! But then that's just MHO!

 

[Stalker]

Well, I would emphasise that by magic I mean using the laws of nature in non-technogenic way. May it be so that a magician or a shaman while doing all magic procedures invokes natural powers by saying a spell or whatever that he obtained from his teacher without even knowing its sence. That is similar to using computer without knowing all the processes going on within it while processing data. Such magic may exist?

We are all rational men living in techo-era, so, maybe admitting existance of magic may seem admitting silliness of our own selves?
A philosophic thasis says: "The more we know, the less we know". That is explained in quite an easy way. Imagine a circle. All space within the circle is our knowledge, all space outside it is unknown. When we expand our knowlege, the circle grows but the circuit grows as well. So, expanding our knowledge, we multiply questions as well.
Being the agnosticist myself, I may presume existence of everything in the Univerce because I simply believe that space occupied by unknown simply has no limits.

 

[nixie]

I would like to believe in magic.The rational part of me says its not possible,but then there is that little voice who tells me anything's possible.There is enough mystery in the world that can't be explained away by science,do maybe magic is feasible.

 

[cyborg_cinema]

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."—Arthur C. Clarke

 

[Rosemary]

'You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe in you can achieve.'

 

[polymorphikos]

I never come-up with satisfactory answers to these kinds of questions, because whilst I very much stick to science and empirical evidence, the line between the supernatural and the merely-odd is very blurred. Which is to say that any insane, crazy thing you can think of might (due to something we do not as yet understand) be a theoretical possibility, and everything from ghosts to gods quantifiable. Nothing new there, but still.

However, irregardless of whether magic is possible or not, almost everything I have encountered about human magic (in the sense provided by JP) that was not in a book with poor references and a sensationalist title indicates that, if there is magic in the world, people have no idea how to access it.

 

[cyborg_cinema]

Plenty of modern technology may have been considered "magic" 1000 years ago.

 

[dreamwalker]

^^No

 

[kyektulu]

In a way I am a bit suprised by peoples scepticism, but I do understand.
In many ways I am alot more sceptical now I am older, but there is still a fanciful part of me which wants to believe that magic exists, maybe just for my own comfort...
It would be so nice to be intertwined with nature in such a way, but I am a dreamer...

 

[SkepJ]

I'll have to give magic a big no. Magic being defined as symbolically effecting events. ie. rain dances, voo doo dolls ect. Even if I believe I can fly with all my heart, if I jump off a cliff I'll die on the rocks below. It may be a killjoy somewhat, but nothing can break physical law. If it's physical law it's not magic, it's just weird. QM is weird. To call something supernatural just because we don't yet know how/why it works, acts that way ect. Is just as silly as saying Zeus is the source of lightning when you don't know about atoms and electrons. I'd rather say I don't know.