From: Tagi@cup.portal.com (Tagi Mordred Nagashiva)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: Skeptics Make Better Magicians
Date: Fri,  2 Oct 92 14:46:34 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
  <1992Sep29.202741.21850@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
  <1aahd3INNfnp@stanley.cis.Brown.EDU> <BvI23G.3Et@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>

9210.02 e.v.

What follows is a critique of the 'skeptical' for the skeptical.


Quoted:

"Skeptics make better magicians."  -- Starhawk, _Spiral Dance_, ch. 7!

Lost Boy (LB) writes:
	
The truth of this is quite remarkable. Therefore, I remark:


Response:

IS IT?  First off, as I said before, this depends upon what one MEANS
by the statement.  Let us consult 'Starhawk' (Mariam Simos) directly.


[From her 1979 edition, Harper and Row.]

"...spells can ...influence the external world.  Perhaps the job hunter
'just happens' to walk into the right office at the right time.  The
cancer patient, without knowing that a healing spell is cast, has a
spontaneous remission.  This aspect of magic is more difficult to accept.
The theoretical model that Witches use to explain the workings of magic
is a clear one and coincides in many ways with the 'new' physics.  But
I do not offer it as 'proof' that magic works - nor do I wish to convince
anyone to drop their doubts.  (Skeptics make better magicians.) It is
simply an elaborate - but extremely useful - metaphor."  page 112.

and further...

"No magic spell is going to bring results unless channels are open in
the material world.  A job spell is useless unless you also go out and
look for a job.  A healing spell is no substitute for medical care.

"The visualization we create in a spell should be that of the desired
end - not necessarily the means by which it will come about.  We picture
the accident victim running on the beach - not the bones knitting.  We
keep our focus on our destination, without attempting to chart every
movement we will make on the way.  Spells usually work in unexpected
ways.  In order to assure that the power does not inadvertantly cause
harm, we bind the spell.  We 'set' the form we have created, so that the
energy becomes fixed in the pattern we desire."  pages 113-14.


Next, compare this with Lost Boy's post below.



LB:

I myself started out *very* sceptical about magick and the
"paranormal." You see, I'm a scientist by vocation, and I kept hearing
about ghosts and goblins and UFO's and I assumed that this whole thing
is mass paranoia. Most of the reason why I got into magick was to disprove
most of the stuff that was out there, and indeed I have. 


Response:

What this tells me is that LB started out, like most modern Euro-Americans,
with a worldview biased in favor of strict materialism.  Today's 'science'
is about establishing 'objective facts' - tentative assumptions regarding
the behavior of objects and energy-systems.  What is often overlooked is
that a bias toward strict materialism does not make one 'objective' in
any sense of 'lacking bias'.

An honest, unbiased skeptic approaches the world of the occult with
the attitude that if one does not experience phenomena oneself then one
CAN NOT ASSUME THEM TRUE; NOT that one could presume that it was in all 
senses FALSE.  

Indeed, a possible working assumption might be that the stories
regarding ghosts etc. are in fact symptoms of mass-paranoia, but one would
need to establish that the conditions were ripe for such a psychological
event; that the individuals who reported such things fit the criteria
for this psychological malady, etc.  In short, without a proper education
in psychology this would be a useless starting point.

As a scientist, the more unbiased skeptical approach is to assume
that SOMETHING is happening (possibly psychological) and then attempt
to discover what it is using the means available.  This it seems that
LB did not do.  LB seems to have assumed that nothing MATERIAL was 
'objectively' occurring and set about searching for 'phenomena which
extended beyond the minds' of those who were involved. 

LB may well have disproved that anything 'OBJECTIVE' (within the
limitations of his observation-technology) was happening in relation
to the events he explored, but he cannot have absolutely 'disproved
them'.  The best he can have done is establish that certain things
for which he tested could not be detected using his technology.

Science does not produce truth, it produces data.

 

LB:

90% of the books
one can find in an occult bookstore are garbage, crap, things designed
to make some fiend a lot of money from poor saps who have addictive
personalities. 


Response:

This may prove unsupportable given the evidence of continued
sales of so many different books in the occult field.  In any case it is 
not a useful evaluation.  It tells us that 90% are garbage, yet it does
not tell us how to distinguish the garbage from the gems.  What are the
criteria that LB used in this evaluation?  Does this figure ever change?
Etc., etc.  
 


LB:

Then I picked up _Magick in Theory and Practise_, and found
that this was unlike other  books...instead of  a shake-and-bake system, I
found an intelligent, if highly prejudiced, work on human activity in general.

It seemed to tie in a lot with Taoism (my adopted religion/personal philosophy)
and with Joeseph Campbell's works on symbolism. After Crowley, I collected
other similar works, including _Real Magick_ by Issac Bonewitz and _Magick
Without Tears_ by Crowley, and it occured to me that "real" magick could
be a more "scientific" system which has a set of common rules, as opposed to
the shake-and-bake magick which I disproved (to myself; I now realize that
this stuff might actually work for some people to start them along their
path, although such people are a pain in the ass for me to work with).


Response:

What does this tell us about LB?  To me it says that LB has little
formal grounding in the philosophic classics, that he has not studied
many of the works upon which Crowley based so much of his writing (some
asserted that he more or less lifted the materials from Golden Dawn and
others) and that Crowley's presentation and style appealed to him.  

It also tells me that LB has a knack for pattern-recognition and understood
the similarity between Crowley's Magick and Taoist philosophy, which I
classify as Tantric theoretical systems.

This is understandable.  Ten years ago I was in a similar situation.
Arising from a background largely influenced by modern Science and
classical philosophy yet unfamiliar with Hermetic or Gnostic works,
I found in Crowley a wealth of information, a kernal, a koan, which
even now does not reveal its true depth as I begin to explore the
fields from which he drew the ideas expressed in his writings.

It tells me that LB interprets things best when placed in mathematical,
well-ordered systems of logic, the very person for whom it seems
Crowley targetted his works (Science being all the rage) and for whom
others have written (Bonewits arises out of the academic community).

However, the post itself tells me that LB is comfortable with ambiguous
language ('shake-and-bake', and below, 'accomplish whatever I need to') 
and does not apply great amounts of attention to detail (illustrated by
his spelling or typographical errors).


LB:

So I have all these books, which make a lot of sense in that I can
apply these magickal principles to improve my life and allow me to accomplish
whatever I need to by compensating for the barriers to my goal...but I
didn't imagine that I could use these principles for what is considered "the
paranormal." 


Response:

Note that to this point we are given little information about 
what, for LB, 'the paranormal' includes.  At first it seems that it might
include 'ghosts and goblins' and the like.  Here it is suggested that
principles learned from books might be 'used for what is considered 'the
paranormal'.  What could this mean?  I think he makes it more plain below.


LB:

I then witnessed an act of magick which was irrefutably a
"paranormal" act. I won't go into detail about it here (if you want details
then please email me; sorry but I want  to  save bandwidth), but I checked
out the other possibilities as to how this could have happened and none of
them checked out. Thus, because I eliminated the other possibilities, the
only possible remaining explaination was an act of magick had caused it
to happen...specifically, an act of psychokinesis. This, to me, is 
irrefutable evidence that magick has "supernatural" properties. 


Response:

Here, it seems, we are given confirmation that what LB was searching
for was something 'which extended beyond the mind' of those he examined.
Magick, for LB, turns out to be exemplified by telekinesis.  

That LB places such emphasis upon a remark by 'Starhawk' and then veers
so completely from her style of magick (the School of Unexpected
Results) does not bode well for his claim about the 'supernatural'
properties of magick.  Perhaps his reference was strictly literal and
his Crowley/Bonewits sources will support him.  


Indeed, Bonewits has a rather nice paragraph which describes
'Psychokinesis' in the following terms:

"Of the various forms of paraphysics the one with the most labaratory
evidence accumulated in its favor is *Psychokinesis*, or PK.  The word
means 'mind-moving,' and that is precisely what PK is....  From the
earliest experiments forty years ago [evidently referring to J.B. Rhine],
to the most recent, evidence has shown that people *can* move matter
and control what should be the random movement of small objects such
as dice."  _Real Magic_, Bonewits, page 43.

Later we find Bonewits' book supports LB's treatment of magick quite
nicely:

"Once standard magical methods are codified and translated there is
no reason why they can't be used in the *psi* lab to increase scores.
Also, parapsychology started out as very interdisciplinary; we occultists
and magicians could learn quite a bit from *psi* researchers and vice
versa.

"Yesterday's science fiction is today's science is tomorrow's cliche'.
A hundred years from now you'll be able to float an ashtray across
the room to you as easily as you now flick a switch and turn on the
lights....  It may surprise you to know that we *still* haven't any
idea just exactly what electricity *is*, but that hasn't stopped us
from using it for the past hundred years.

"Finally, many of the magical and mystical phenomena that we will
encounter will prove to be easily explainable in terms of *psi*.
These new terms may not be as romantic as the old ones, but only
the frauds and bigots have anything to fear."  page 69 [;>].


We can assume from this that LB is a Bonewits-type magician.  His
terms closely parallel Bonewits in form ('psychokinesis', 
'paranormal/supernatural', etc.), and there is in LB a sloppiness
for which one might also fault Bonewits in his tome (ambiguity of
term-usage, unwieldy mixture of fields, lack of concise definition,
etc.).

Isaac Bonewits is hardly the last word on magick.  There are many in
the occult community who play down Bonewits' book as a 'less mediocre'
element of the '90% trash'.  LB's claims about magick also invoke a more
highly respected (if more controversial) figure in the field in order
to lend his testimony credibility - Aleister Crowley.

Now for all LB may enjoy the writing of 'the Beast' it seems that he
does NOT share this writer's perspective on Magick.  I say this because
in the two tomes which LB mentions (and a few others which I dug out
to find references) there is not one significant mention of either
telekinesis (psychokinesis) or the 'paranormal/supernatural' which
supports an association of the former with magick or classifies magick
under the category of the latter.  If anything there is quite a lot of 
material which directly contradicts these assumptions.  

Here are two examples:


"Telekinesis is of the same order of nature as the Hertz rays or the
radium emanations."  _The Confessions of Aleister Crowley_, pgs. 600-1.


"'It is not as if we were working in an old field where all the terms
were defined, and the main laws ascertained.  In Magick, even more than
in any other science, the student must keep his practice level with his
theory.'

"'Don't you ever do magick under test conditions?'

"'Unfortunately... creative magick, which is the thaumaturgic side of
the business, depends on a peculiar excitation which objects to 'test
conditions' very strongly.  You might as well ask Cyril to prove his
poetic gift, or even his manhood, before a set of fools.  He will produce
poems, and infants, and events, as the case my be; but you have more
or less to take his word for it that he did the acts responsible
primarily for them.  Another difficulty about true magick is that it
is so perfectly a natural process that its phenomena never excite
surprise except by their timeliness - so that one has to record hundreds
of experiments to set up a case which will even begin to exclude
coincidence.  For instance, I want a certain book.  I use my book-
producing talisman.  The following day, a bookseller offers me the
volume.  One experiment proves nothing.  My ability to do it every time
is the proof.  And I can't even do that under 'test conditions'; for
it is necessary that I should really want the book, in my subconsciousness,
whose will works the miracle.  It is useless for me to think, or pretend,
that I want it.  Any man may fluke a ten-shot at billiards, but you call
him a player when he can average a break of thirty or so every time he
goes to the table."  _Moonchild_, by Aleister Crowley, page 115.


It would seem that LB's skepticism extends only to the expertise of
a magician like Bonewits.  While this is no crime, the fact that the
quote was taken from a book which seems to fit more within the Crowley-
style of magick (that which some have termed 'probability-influence')
and that Bonewits seems so convinced of 'paranormal' phenomena does not
lead me to assume that LB is at all unbiased.  His reference to Crowley
and his mention of "an act of magick" which constitutes for him
"irrefutable evidence" have some of the characteristic marks of one
who wishes to convince others, rather than to present a scientific,
skeptical analysis.

His next (and final) paragraph not only confirms this in my mind, it
more or less makes any claim which he may make (via email or posted)
regarding this 'paranormal event' negligible due to the unreliability
of the source.


LB:

Anyway, like the previous post says: skeptics are the best 
magicians. The reason why is because they have somehow eliminated all doubt,
or posibility of doubt, because they have irrefuable evidence that MAGICK
WORKS.


Response:

Now one might argue that I have been too hard on LB.  Yet here we have
the sort of ill-conceived logic and lack of credibility which the truly
skeptical among us find repugnant due to its ineptitude.  I 
critique this so harshly because it comes under the rubric of skepticism
and makes such wild claims as to be laughable.  If the points I have
made above leave any doubt as to this, I end this review with a quote
from the Master Therion himself, a source which LB claims to admire.


Thyagi (the ruthless skeptic)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
"'The Order to which I belong,' pursued Simon Iff,
'does not believe anything; it knows, or it doubts,
as the case may be; and it seeks ever to increase
human knowledge by the method of science, that is
to say, by observation and experiment.  Therefore
you must not expect me to satisfy your real craving
by answering your questions as to the existence of
the Soul; but I will tell you what I know, and can
prove; further, what hypotheses seem worthy of
consideration; lastly, what experiments ought to be
tried.'"  _Moonchild_, Aleister Crowley, page 24.