From: drake+@cs.cmu.edu (Drake)
Subject: Re: Types of Magic
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 04:15:05 GMT

ba@mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu (B.A. Davis-Howe) writes:

>>Hmm.  I'd still tend to place it as a kind of cross between Mentalism and
>>Natural Magick...of which some forms of Wicca are good examples.  Much of
>>what they do seems to be Deity-oriented at times, so some could go that way
>>as well.
>
>I wasn't referring to the religion Wicca, but to one particular practice 
>within the religion.

Right; I think that the practices of the religion include almost every
kind of magick.

> The circle dance doesn't involve communicating with
>natural entities, so it isn't Naturalism, and it is based on life-force,
>rather than mental energy, so it isn't Mentalism.  

I'm not sure I understand the difference between life-force and mental
energy.  Could you give a few examples?  And what I refer to as Natural
Magick includes a bit more than communicating with natural entities; it
is primarily aimed at working with the five elements of the pentagram in
the "natural" world.

>Of course, that is just
>argument in support of what I've concluded experimentally.  (I am primarily
>Vitalist.)

I certainly appreciate that you've done some practical work with this; there
are far too many people out there who are "armchair magicians" who tend
to speculate on magic more so than they roll up their sleeves and get to
work DOING something with it!

However, I think that in discussions like this, there cannot be one "true
and right way" to differentiate types of magic.  Western Magic had the
elements of earth, air, fire, water and spirit; Eastern Thought swore by
five other elements, of wood, metal, earth, fire and water.  Classical Science
went by the Periodic Table.  Older Physics believed in gas, solid, liquid
and energy.  Modern Physics goes with electrons, protons and neutrons.  Are
any of them "wrong?"  No, I don't think so.  They use different semantic maps
to define what they experience.  I think that's what we're doing...or trying
to do!

>I don't consider religion to be the same as magic.  I do consider some actions
>which are performed within a religious context to be magic, but that is not
>the whole religion.  IMO, religion includes lots of meaningful stuff which is
>not magic, and magic includes lots of useful stuff which is not religion.

What do you mean by magic?

Previously, you called Wicca a religion.  Yet I would consider most (if not
all) of their activities to be magical.  Frankly, I would argue that
everything "meaningful" in religion is magical, in the broader sense of the
term.

>As to what God/desses *are*--I don't know.  My experience, however, is that
>they can express themselves in the metaphors of any of the magical Realms, and
>outside of magic altogether.  

I'm not sure that there IS anything outside of magic. <g>

>previous disagreement with your statement.  However, there is still something
>which I sometimes call operative mysticism (which I previously called 
>clerical magic) which I do not consider to be part of any magical Realm.  I
>don't think that it is properly magic at all--though I used to.

Have you addressed my previous question asking you what you mean by magic?
Can you elucidate a bit on 'operative mysticism?'

-- 
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