Amateur Thaumaturgy

I’ve had years of training in hard science; I even survived getting a bachelor’s degree in physics. My drive in studying the field, through years of classes and books and subscribing to Scientific American, was a desire to understand how the universe works.

I’ve run into some interesting phenomena in my time that didn’t fit what I knew of physics. For some years, I looked at psychic phenomena, considering “magic” merely the trappings of using one’s own psychic abilities. Application of Occam’s Razor, though, seems to find that magic— also thaumaturgy, literally “miracle working”— is a better description for the phenomena I’ve experienced. (Isaac Bonewits, in Real Magic, offers some interesting ideas about hypercognition that might explain the extremely subtle things I’ve seen, but I’m dubious of the notion as applied to dealing with things as complex as cars and computers.)

One of the important things I’ve had to wrap my brain around is the notion that there may be forces in the universe that are not practical to examine using the scientific method. (Note that science and the scientific method are abstract ways of examining problems. The scientific knowledge that we have accumulated as a species is impressive, but all it can do is describe what we’ve observed. Science never declares anything physically impossible; a good scientist can only state impossibility relative to a given theory.)

Science is very good at dealing with things you can handle under completely controlled conditions, like physics and chemistry. It still excels when you can provide a great deal of control, as in biology when you test against a number of similar organisms. Developing useful theories becomes more challenging as you lose control, such as in psychology and sociology, because there’s so much that is difficult to account for. And when you enter into realms where it’s hard to measure phenomena, let alone control for them, as in the realms of the paranormal and spiritual, you may need to find another guide. Terence McKenna, in The Archaic Revival, declared himself an explorer, travelling into unknown realms to discover them before the mapping expeditions could follow. I believe that we are still in that exploratory stage of understanding magic.

The best milestone I’ve yet discovered in exploring magic: it’s a good thing to keep your sense of humor intact as you journey into the heart of mysticism. Just remember that if you tell jokes to the gods— like John L. Shepard’s Chocolate Ritual or the Bill the Cat ritual created by Lady Orenda and Lady Nightwind— they’re likely to tell you one in return. Stay alert.

I’m currently in a heavy research phase: my intuition is finding that elements of Taoism and Wicca are what make the most sense to me right now. Taoism.net has useful information. Shinto has some fascinating ideas, but it’s very difficult to get good information in English.

You can keep up on current events relevant to paganism at Wren’s Nest and check on the date’s correspondences at the Witches’ Web of Days. The Fortean Times is a good source of information on the bizarre phenomena in the world.