Thoughts on Magical Models and Ethics

For today I have a couple of thoughts on two blog articles that I recently came across.

On Strategic Sorcery, Jason Miller has an article up discussing several different models of magick. The three main models that practitioners generally adopt are (1) magick is accomplished via energy work, (2) magick is accomplished via some sort of mental psychic power, and (3) magick is accomplished by spirits external to the magician. Several books have been published in the last few years extolling the virtues of the classical grimoires, and a number of practitioners following the various grimoire systems have started putting forth (3) as a dogmatic position that implies (1) and (2) are not only incorrect, but irrelevant. However, Jason points out that the spirits summoned by the grimoire-only folks often do teach them techniques that are curiously similar to what the rest of us might call energy work, and furthermore that there are plenty of magical techniques in the old grimoires that rely upon sympathetic magick and similar methods rather than calling upon spirits.

Like Jason, I see the dogmatism of the spirit-only approach as pretty silly. In my experience all three models have a role in magick. Individual magicians can cast spells without summoning spirits, and when they do those spells are generally a combination of (1) and (2) - energy work provides the force and mental concentration provides the direction, much like a vector quantity in physics. Spirits external to the magician also can play a role when they are summoned as part of a ritual, and they are more than just internal mental constructs. If this were not the case, you could summon up fictional entities like creatures from the Lovecraftian mythos and still get decent practical results. In the Pseudonomicon, the book that got a lot chaos magicians working with Lovecraft's entities, Phil Hine essentially admits that this is not the case, describing the Great Old Ones as "devoid of sorcerous potential." He goes on to explain that he believes this to be because the Great Old Ones are "unconcerned with humanity" but to me the simpler explanation is that they are fictional. They simply do not exist in macrocosmic reality, and as a result have no power to act within it. On the other hand, most if not all of the traditional spirits do and therefore rituals involving them are objectively effective.

Jason goes on to say that practitioners should not be adopting magical models that limit their practices, and while I agree to a point I also think that when combined with empirical observations magical models can be helpful precisely because they help to define the limits of what we as magicians can or cannot do. The key is that pesky "empirical observation" component. A model that is adopted simply because it seems logical is not of much use, and as in any other science to treat a model as dogma gets in the way of developing an accurate understanding of reality. If we ever find ourselves dismissing evidence because it doesn't fit our model that's a pretty good sign that the model needs to be revised to fit the new data, and if we are to be effective magical practitioners we always need to be on the lookout for this tendency in our own work. As Thomas Kuhn outlines in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions this tendency is present in the physical sciences as well, even though in physics empirical observations are much more clear-cut than they are in magick. It is thus unsurprising that in our own field it can be an even bigger problem.

On The Experiments of Magicians, Taylor Ellwood has an article up discussing magical ethics and the lack of discussion on the subject in much of the published literature. The Wiccan "Threefold Law" is the most common ethical proscription that gets written about, but in fact as any good ceremonialist should realize the Threefold Law is a technical feature of the Wiccan magical system rather than an ethical one. When you invoke magical energy before casting it at your target it is just about inevitable that some of it will "stick" and you will experience some portion of whatever you intended for your target. If you evoke the energy into a containment structure instead this phenomenon is completely neutralized and the target will receive all of the energy of the spell. It should be clear that fixing this technical glitch in no way changes the ethical characteristics of a given spell.

One of the reasons that I think there is so little discussion of ethics among ceremonial magicians is quite simple - the ethical considerations are obvious. Magick is a technology like any other, not some special class of phenomena that requires its own set of rules. Magical ethics are therefore exactly the same as regular ethics. If accomplishing something by non-magical means is unethical, the same should be true of accomplishing it by magical means. Full stop. Magick is therefore ethical if it is used in a conventionally ethical manner, just like physics or biology or economics. The philosophical question of which criteria we should use to judge the best system of ethics remains, but this is not a question that is unique to magick. Personally I follow a Thelemic and fairly utilitarian ethic in my own magical work, just like I do with everything else.

UPDATE: Yesterday Rufus Opus presented his own "Spirit Model" of magick in response to this article and Jason's. Interesting stuff. Jason has also posted a second article on this subject clarifying his position on the use of magical models.