The Laws Of Magick, Concepts under review. Options

The Laws of Magick are the basis for most spellwork and sorcery as far as the majority of us are concerned. These concepts are the longstanding observations from, well, probably as long as humans are capable of accurately recounting. I am starting a journal/grimoire to put my own observations in. I am taking the Laws of Magick and reviewing them to see what all needs replaced or removed, or quite possibly, added. I have already started and quite honestly I am not sure how to proceed. Any ideas on magickal testing to prove or disprove any Laws without associating any of the other Laws would be most helpful. If testing these Laws proves impossible without associating any other laws, please at least keep the use of other laws at a minimum. And if it really does prove impossible to keep other Laws unassociated within the testing of the various laws, then i will proceed as if I were facing the world's greatest Rubik's Cube. Trial and error, time and time again... and when I'm done(who knows how many years from now) I will be sure to report my findings to these forums so that everyone may question it, confirm it, ponder at it, or whatever the case may be. Thank you for at least reading, even if you think that I'm wasting my time.

I do rather appreciate your scientific approach, but I think you may have difficulty working in absolutes & strictly defined mechanisms when studying magick.
There are many paradigms or 'models' of magick, which contain notably different rules & interactions. I personally find that diversity is the only rule you can absolutely count on. As soon as you think you have a hard & fast rule, you will find a dozen exceptions.

you might find this article written by Frater U.: D.: to be interesting, it's a discussion of different models (or paradigms) for working magick :
http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos/texts/model.html

Also, I have written an article on the topic of 'how magick works' myself, which covers some different aspects of the topic.
I'll paste it here :

How Magick Works & Relativism
by: Kathryn
(copyrighted material)

In simplest possible terms:
'magic works however magic works, and magic doesn't work however magic doesn't work'

In other words, the idea that there is one single 'true' concept which adequately and forever explains the functionality of magic... is, in my opinion, a flawed approach, and the root cause for the myriad dogmatic approaches to magic which exist in the world.

It works, or it does not work. if it works, then it works by whatever method, means, principal, etc. can reliably make it work. repeatability, and being able to be substantiated, are the measure of validity in an approach... but ultimately, its just an approach, not a "truth". So nothing is 'true', just effective (or "apparently effective")
__

Consider the idea of what I call a "working model":

Imagine if you will, a monkey (lets call him George) in a laboratory cage. Now imagine that a lab technician (lets call him Frank) sets up a device within the cage, which consists of a lever and a chute from which bananas will drop into the cage when the lever is pulled.

In time, George will become aware of the cause & effect relationship of pulling the lever and receiving a banana. But HOW does it work? what brings the reward? How will George explain this newfound sense of causality?

Lets say that George understands the lever to be the phalus of the banana god, Nanner. (now many centuries later, monkeykind will debate at great length whether the lever is truly Nanner's penis by way of transubstantiation, or whether it is merely the symbol of Nanner's universal phallic-ness... but I digress). It is the understanding of George, that if Nanner's phallus is fondled, Nanner will rain down the blessing of curved yellow fruit on the faithful fondler. And so, George's reality is understood to be a small world, with bars at its edges, ruled over by the benevolent god Nanner, who rewards his faithful.

Now then, is George right? Is it actually Nanner who gives him bananas? Or is it just a few gears and a trapdoor? To us, the question seems pretty silly. BUT, George's version of things is an excellent "Working Model". You can say that George's ideology is askew, but when he pulls Nanners yingyang, it rains bananas, immediately. And that's pretty darn powerful magic if you really think about it.

The point of all this, is that the issue of 'truth', is not the same as the issue of 'effectiveness'. And further, beyond this, is the larger realization that effectiveness can lead to delusions of truth!

Because of the potency and reliability of George's 'Nanner Magic', he will probably never come to question the validity of his paradigm. And because Frank loads the banana chute every Tuesday, he too will never question the validity of his own concept of what causes bananas to fall from the chute. George will never stop to think, "is it just some mechanical device?". And Frank will never stop to think "am I really just an agent of Nanner's will?".

Of course this is why, on the final day of reckoning, when Nanner begins his reign of terror on earth, Frank will be put up against the wall and peeled with the rest of the nonbelievers.
___

all of which is to say, "One cannot honestly know the absolute 'really real' truth... But one can produce a banana here & there"

I do rather appreciate your scientific approach, but I think you may have difficulty working in absolutes & strictly defined mechanisms when studying magick.
There are many paradigms or 'models' of magick, which contain notably different rules & interactions. I personally find that diversity is the only rule you can absolutely count on. As soon as you think you have a hard & fast rule, you will find a dozen exceptions.

Mmm... it is possible that in a very large cage, over hundreds or thousands of years, monkeykind may produce a few minds who begin to question the validity of the Nanner religion's claims. Not because they question whether or not the cause and effect relationship exists, but for the same reason the claim that God held you on the earth was questioned by 'outside of the box' thinkers.

Now, if we say that it is God itself which secures us against the surface of the earth, that's not really wrong in a grand cosmic sense if we consider God to be the source of gravity - but the difference is that knowing that gravity is at work suggests a blind force or mechanic that can be understood, used, and manipulated with the right application of knowledge and know-how.

I have encountered a lot of different magical traditions - both in private study through books, articles, correspondence, etc., as well as through individuals able to competently discuss a wide variety of paradigms - from many different cultural and social structures. Many of those traditions hold, like most religions, that they are the 'true' paradigm or that they are otherwise unique or special in their application and understanding of 'magic' by various names. Chaos magicians especially love the idea that they can escape 'dogmatism' in magic by shifting paradigms freely. Even direct energy manipulation with practically no traditional structure of paradigm at all (by this I mean classical mythological elements) and if there was a box, that escapes it all together. And yet, regardless of the paradigm or traditional structure in place, that structure is 100% of the time, in my experience so far, always based on fundamental mechanics that are present in various other traditions as well. Not all traditional structures have models to incorporate all of the mechanics - and doing so is, in my opinion, the true, rare synthesis of Magical Art - but no tradition i have encountered so far has had even one completely unique mechanic behind it's model which is not present in any of the other traditions I have encountered; and I'm really only talking about maybe a dozen and a half or so discrete cultural traditions of magic, eastern, western, tribal, ceremonial, aboriginal, and various combinations thereof - I'm not really counting Chaos Magic or Energy Work, being that they are essentially attempts at operating mechanically without a strict model in most cases.

I might be mistaken, but it seems like you could be confusing the idea of magical laws with magical mythology - color evokes a response, vs. Red makes you Angry. One is mechanical but will operate differently under different individual circumstances, whereas the other is a mythology constructed within a particular paradigm to demonstrate or apply that mechanic (random example, I'm not suggesting red equates anger).

I've already stated my opinion on the nature of the laws of magick elsewhere a dozen times here, so instead I am curious: You say there are various models of magic - true - which contain notably different rules and interactions - in terms of traditional elements, this is also true; however, can you explain some of the differences as being based on separate sets of fundamental laws? Are these discrete models - and I'm thinking here western esotericism vs. african tribal magic (in terms of the degree of difference, not specific traditions) - effectively utilizing and experience different mechanics all together, or are they really just adressing those mechanics in different ways?

And, I'm not refuting the claim here that if magic works, then it works; and if it doesn't it doesn't - that's is the least degree of a working model of mechanics that I think a person needs to approach magic realistically, and it's certainly a way to evaluate the validity of a particular practice in your own sphere. However, knowing that there are mechanics at work frees one entirely from the necessity of a paradigm at all, and allows for that synthesis of models. If we don't look at the mechanics by which magic operates outside of our mythological explanations for it, then we can't really ever grasp magic itself at all, only whatever mask of it that works for us.

peace

This post has been edited by Vagrant Dreamer: Dec 22 2009, 06:02 PM