This is a misleading answer, on par with saying that faith healing works because of the placebo effect. The fact is that no reliable, well-constructed studies have ever drawn a correlation between magic/magick/prayer/whathaveyou and any effects.
It is not misleading. I explicitly stated that it “works” by offering comfort. Do you dispute that belief systems offer comfort?
Prayer cannot cure maladies, or bring riches or help someone win a football game. Magic cannot cause someone to fall in love, or their hair to fall out or enable the spell caster to fly. The fact that someone might derive warm fuzzies from prayer or worship is a nice function of the placebo effect, but hardly answers the OP. Any devote Christian, for instance, likely believes in the power of prayer to do things beyond offering comfort.
You seem to be saying that anything that gives you warm fuzzies “works,” which is wrong.
There are thousands of versions of Christianity, so it’s difficult for anyone to represent it in all but the broadest sense. I think it’s probably the same for Wicca, since it’s very self-centered (not in the derogatory sense) and, as far as I know, doesn’t really have much of an orthodoxy.
On the contrary. In fact…
snigger
…there ain’t nobody here but us wickens.
Sorry.
SenteitnMaet
Philosophical Wiccan chiming in here…
Not all Wiccans believe in the same things. In fact, the religion is about as unified as a sack of cats. Beliefs range from the full-bore crystal-wearing spells-for-everything coven approach to my own solitary agnostic views.
Based on my own beliefs, developed after careful thought and study of available evidence, magick (I know the “k” looks pretentious, but it’s used to distinguish the subject at hand from the prestidigitation Brad mentioned) does not work, at least in the sense of producing any detectable effect on the objective world. Neither does prayer.
I don’t believe that means they’re entirely useless. As has been mentioned, they can have a calming and comforting effect for some people. Additionally, when approached properly, they require people to think about a problem. At least in magick, one is supposed to carefully define the problem and specify the desired outcome. Defining the problem is the first step to solving it without supernatural intervention. As long as you don’t just say your prayer/cast your spell, then sit on your butt and wait for a solution to fall into your lap, the process can be helpful. Personally, I generally just think about the problem, then go act on it; it seems a more efficient approach.
Curses! Foiled again by curses!
I don’t think that anyone suggested that. I think the statement was intended to indicate that prayer can bring a emotional feeling of well being which it certainly can. I don’t think it was implied that it made any impact on the physical world. Just my 2 cents.
As a philosophical Taoist, (which, by the way, is a religion about as unified as Wicca) I’ve been exposed to a lot of hocus-pocus meant to invoke various higher forces, deities, and ecstacies, and IMHO, they seem more rooted in half-understanding than in supernatural forces. For example, some of the religious Taoist diets happens to be pretty damn healthy and nutritionally packed, but their ancient practitioners attributed their efficacy to the accumulation of chi, the presence of particular “worms” in the body that must be starved out, appeasing various inner deities, and a whole bunch of other superstition-influenced psuedo-scientific beliefs. It’s not that a lot of these practices don’t do what they claim… it’s just the practitioners often have no clue what’s really going on, and attribute it to something supernatural.
That being said, however, I think people grossly under-estimate the power of suggestion and the effectiveness of some of the inwardly focussed magics. I’ve practiced various forms of meditation for years with slow but steady progress, and not too long ago a Wiccan friend of mine found out about my interest in meditation and led me through an ecstatic Wiccan ritual. He had me memorize all sorts of deities’ names and significant gestures, but did a crappy job of explaining the symbolic meaning of various acts and props, and so while I could go through the motions easily enough, I felt lost and and pretty doubtful the ritual would do anything for me. Somehow, though, when the ritual aspect of the meditation was finished, I instantly dropped off into a deeper meditative trance than I had ever experienced before, which of course freaked me out and made me lose my concentration, leaving me dazed on the floor of my friend’s room trying to recover while he was (supposedly) off probing the farthest reaches of the universe.
My guess is that after centuries of trial and error, some “magicians” were able to engineer rituals capable of playing on some of the deepest hard-wired systems of the brain and implanting strong suggestions in the subconscious. I’ve found establishing a non-dogmatic ritual has had a really positive effect on my meditation… It wouldn’t surprise me at all if some neurologist discovered years from now that by reciting a string of apparent nonsense at the perfect speed and in a particular tone, he could cause people to involuntarily raise their arm just by a freak of the brain’s structure. Is that so much different from a lot of magics practiced today?
i’ll get back to you on this one after my eyes get healed. (i have 20/100 vision in one eye and 20/400 in the other.)
as for wicca, my dad dated a witch once who could levitate. and he’s a Christian; soi don’t think he’d be making things up to make wicca look good or effective.
I don’t actually believe in witchcraft’s effectiveness- which is odd because I’ve seen some of it personally.
I was at a gathering on an overcast night where we all concentrated and focused to form a cone of healing energy above the circle to send out into the world for whoever needed it. We all chanted and sang and focused for about ten minutes, then I felt the focus break all the sudden (my eyes were closed) and it was like I’d been pulling on a rope that someone had let go, and I fell down on my back. As my eyes flew open, I saw most of the rest of the people there reacting in the same way- i.e. windmilling arnms to get their balance. When I landed on the ground, I looked up at the sky. In the otherwise thick overcast, there was a circular hole in the clouds that appeared to be the same size as out circle on the ground. We could clearly see all the stars, which was especially odd as it had been a most humid day and evening and we were right next to about 3000 campfires. As we got up, it slowly closed over again.
That’s just a result of energy. As for actual targeted stuff, I once tore my big toe while at a camping event. Basically tripped and ripped a good chunk of it off while detatching the skin farther back so it was hanging on by skin only. It bled a good deal, but some of the dirt was too far back under teh skin to clean properly. what I could see was all scratched up and raw. I figured I’d be going home the next day and I’d have a doctor look at it then. When I woke the next morning, it was greyish green and I was greatly concerned. Could have just been dirt, but still- Not a Good Sign. I asked my friend, a Wiccan priest, if he could help me heal it. He gave me a copper penny to hold (to focus energy, because copper is a good conductor) and put his hands around my foot for a minute. I could see all his fingers, so I know he didn’t touch me, but it felt like something was moving just under my skin- not painful, just odd. It also felt warm. When he took his hands away, it didn’t hurt nearly so badly. I went and had a nap, and when I woke, I noticed there was no pain in my toe at all. The skin had turned white and the grey and green were gone. I lifted the skin- and there was new skin underneath with no sign of a scab. I cut the dead skin off and went on my way. The new skin was slightly pinker than regular skin, as skin over wounds tends to be, and it was also slightly sensitive, but there were no signs of the uneven, irregular scraping I had seen before.
Anecdotal? Yes. Repeatable? Dunno. My friend says he heals people all the time. Does it make me “a believer”? Strangely, no. I mean, it’s silly, right? Except it happened to me.
HennaDancer
I’ve read up on Paganism/Witchcraft and the like for the past 10 years. It’s fun to immerse yourself in possiblities, like talking to dragons, controlling the weather, or conjuring up spells. I haven’t seen any of this first-hand. However, I know practicing witches who swear by their faith. To me, “magic” is natural and happens everyday. But as for flying on broomsticks or making someone fall in love with you with a flick of a wand, it’s wishful thinking. Our minds are only as powerful as we make them. The concept of ritual can ease the mind and create the appropriate conditions to make something happen. For instance, the influence of outside sources, like good-luck charms or mantras, can empower the self enough to release the abitlity it already had. We can manipulate our environment to make it work for us and that can be considered “magical.” I suppose it’s all how you look at it.
There’s no magic to “levitation”. It’s a trivial parlor trick.
So would you consider it misleading to say that leaches “work”?
Okay, just to clear things up I can be quite easily defined as a christian… but not catholic, lutheran, etc. I just follow the bible not not a religion with a human author.
That said I can say I find it quite possible that magic did at one time exist… or atleast the bible clearly points to one person who was able to: “But there was a certain man, called Simon, which beforetime in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one:
10 To whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God.
11 And to him they had regard, because that of long time he had bewitched them with sorceries.”
Now as to whether this died out or not is up to debate, and exactly how this worked. I am inclined to think that humming and the like do very little and that 90% of stories of magic are baloney and could be explained, if not now later. Another thing that points to the modern fallacy of magic is the fact its not unified; there is no defined way to work it. I am not the least bit interested in the comfort factor… meditation does work for that.
I like science. Science is the answer to rubes and I’m pretty sure rubes are the problem. Lets not talk focused “energy” because that would be impossible to even believe, but groups of people are harder to fool. How did those clouds get that hole in them (Henna’s story)? Who was leading this? Were any of you actual wiccans? The problem being your eyes were closed… so I would find it possible that you could have been fooled if it weren’t for those clouds because they are an external sign. Now I would presume that you were summoning this energy. Here we run into a problem. Healing energy? Energy is not sentient. By my thought any energy associated with magic must be one type and must be universal. Thus how does one know they have healing energy instead of some other type? No, just too silly to think that. Depending on the nature of the energy it is theoretically possible to focus, but not change. This energy must also be indestructible… but wait, where did it come from and where did it go? To the sick? Not likely, its not sentient. We must now determine that the energy is either evenly dispersed globally or dispersed to some holder. Again the energy must have some reason to stay otherwise it would simply dissipate. Why did the clouds get that hole? Depending on altitude I’d say your aim was a wee bit off… like straight up off. One would think the energy would form something of a disk and then dissipate evenly. It must also be limited by time/distance… along with the issue of an invisible and presumably spiritual force exerting that effect on clouds… this is getting pretty far out there. Unexplained, yes. Real, highly unlikely.
I would have to say my findings are that magick, mystical energy of some sort, sourcery does not exist on earth but if it does the knowledge of it has passed beyond our reach. One might also conclude that simon was only fooling rubes as people having been doing since.
No, Ellis Dee said, in response to the OP, that prayer and magic worked. I pointed out that the subsequently stated justification for the sentence was incorrect; the fact that you get a nice warm fuzzy feeling from prayer does not mean that it works in the sense that OP asked. Whether or not those feelings justifies prayer or magic is an entirely different matter (and I suspect that Ellis Dee actually meant the latter).
If you mean ‘leeches,’ what has that got to do with the price of eggs?!? Leeches inject an anti-coagulant when they bite, which has medically desirable effects. I’m completely at a loss for how your question is remotely relevant.
Cerowyn, I guess we’re just going to disagree on this one because I thought Ellis Dee made it pretty clear here that the claim is that prayer offers emotional comfort and nothing more (I believe the quotation marks around the word works indicate an alternate definition).
But you’re entitled to your opinion so I have no problem if we just don’t see eye to eye on this one.
That reminds me of some of the stuff Hildegard of Bingen purportedly wrote, wherein she attributed many diseases, including dental caries, to “unseen worms” - a kind of proto-germ theory, IMO, and (unlike demons and deities) more insightful than superstitious.
That doesn’t sound too farfetched to me at all. One study in the British Medical Journal has already found that both Tibetan chanting and Ave Maria recitation slow the breath to synchronise it with the cardiac rate, which combats stress and is beneficial for heart health. I don’t see why there couldn’t be other, similar stuff hidden in that wiring. And when I say “similar,” I mean naturally explicable, not stuff that can supposedly make you fly.
This is moving into GD territory.
I’ll move it.
-xash
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