But do they work?
How do you know what sense the OP meant?
Most all of the serious Pagans I know accept magick as an attempt to make an inner change that will effect the outer world.
They do a spell to help them find a job. But the spell is not to enchant their prospective employer it is to help them understand what they can do to make a good impression. To help them see opportunitities they may be missing. To take the risk and chat up friends to see if they know of any openings.
So yes witchcraft works. I is a real way for those who practice it to make changes in themselves that will possitively impact their lives. Not “warm fuzzies” but a practical psychological device.
It’s not very “practical” if you have to buy expensive candles and say extensive planned out speeches dressed in particular clothing whilst rubbing some exotic, and expensive oil into your hair.
Practical is reading a damned book on how to act in an interview.
(bolding mine)
Pretty big if. Unless you have a cite that witchcraft of this sort requires those components then all you have contributed to the discussion is a healthy dose of bigotry.
That is out of context and contrary to the intent of my post, which I thought I had made plain.
That is unfair. I was trying to give whatever insight I have toward the topic at hand. If somebody asked “how far do you have to go to get to the edge of the earth” and I responded “the earth is a sphere that has no edges”, would you point out that I had not given a distance, and therefore had not answered the OP?
I certainly had meant the latter, and thought I had clearly made the distinction. I apologize for any confusion. I wonder, however, if there is an anti-wiccan ulterior motive in your dissection of my statements. The comparison to faith-healing struck me as particular inflammatory – faith-healing is not based on the placebo effect; it is based on the three card monte effect. (Get the money from the suckers.)
I don’t have a cite handy, and no, it isn’t something I made up from bigotry, but from a book on magick I read back when I was interested in that sort of thing. Not to mention my best friend is a practicing Druid that attends a camp in my area named Gaea (sp?) and relates to me all his rituals for spell casting. Which involved a whole hell of a lot of the things I mention. In fact sometimes the special clothes you need to wear are nothing more than your birthday suit.
There are very few spells that don’t require something as a focal point as a component. But 95% of the spells out there require exotic and often expensive components for the spell casting to be effective. What do you think they do, just wiggle their nose and it pops into existance? 
People that spout the old adage that magic rituals and such are a psychological device or motivator or some such are just fooling themselves. Or it helps them win a clever argument. No druid or wiccan I know or have ever met has ever said “I don’t believe that magic really exists, but I do it to focus my mind.” Please, they do it because they think it will get them money or will help the equinox maintain it’s balance. The argument doesn’t hold water, if you need candles and magic sounding words and runes or have to do rituals on certain days to get your mind centered so that you can go out into the big bad world, or have the confidence to ask a girl out, or be in the right mindset for an interview, let me tell you buddy, go talk to a psychiatrist and get some pills, because you have some mental problems. Normal people can do these things without all that mumbo jumbo.
I typed out a whole long response and then realized that you can’t logically delineate faith. It’s just faith. It makes sense to the believer.
But I will comment that one can be a Wiccan without ever “casting a spell.” And Wiccans do not customarily believe that objects like candles and herbs have power in and of themselves, only that the Spirit is in everything and certain aspects of it are manifest more strongly in certain objects. However, many people eschew props, and your best friend is not an example of the rule because there is no rule.
Epimetheus, the reason that you will never hear a Wiccan or Druid say, “I don’t believe that magic really exists, but I do it to focus my mind,” is that to us, the focus IS a function of the magic, in the sense that it is divinely inspired. A spell is a fancy prayer - it is an oft-repeated statement in Wiccan books that all things come from the Spirit. Most Wiccans do not believe that they can spontaneously generate focus, but that they can receive it as a gift from the God/dess.
I have a theory which has been bouncing around in my head for a while, and I guess this is as good a place as any to test it out:
<theory>
I believe that “magic” is nothing more or less that a very unusual form of applied physics. We know the saying "a butterfly flapping its wings in South America can affect the weather in Central Park’’ (the so-called “butterfly effect”). Instead of a butterfly causing a change in weather patterns, imagine a neuron in the brain firing and causing a change in the electromagnetic field surrounding it. High school physics talls us that the theoritical range of any E-M field is infinite, so we can come to the logical comclusion that everything that happens anywhere affects everything else in the universe. More specifically, we can draw two conclusions: first, that external events can alter the E-M field inside a person’s brain; and second, that the electric impulses created in a person’s brain can alter the E-M field outside the person’s body (think CAT scan).
So suppose I am playing poker, and I’m looking at four aces in my hand. Different thouhgts go through my head. “Four Aces!” is one of them. A general feeling of exhiliration is another. Those thouhgts alter the E-M field around my body, and around the body of the person across the table from me, and inside his head. Now suppose that my opponent can somehow sense these changes, and has learned to decode them. He can “read” my thoughts. Maybe he can just “see” a general sense of happiness, maybe he can actually tell that this particular E-M disturbance must have been cause my neurons firing in response to the thought “Four Aces!”.
Now suppose this person has learned not only to “see” changes in the E-M field, but also to create them. By causing neurons to fire in the appropriate fashion, he can “shape” the E-M field around his body in whatever way he chooses. And if he can do that, perhaps he can create feedback loops in order to concentrate energy in certain places for a desired effect. Scientists can manipulate E-M fields to cancel the effect of gravity, or to create “solid” walls our of pure energy. Perhaps some people can think the same things into existence. The specific phrases, gestures and postures, and the precise placement and use of objects in casting a spell all become necessary in order to produce the desired change in the E-M field.
Some people are born with a natural gift for music. But without proper education, they will never become musicians. Their gift needs nurturing, their abilities need to be exercsed. The same would be true of a natural ability for “magic”. Some are born with it, fewer recognize it, even fewer have any control over it, and only a minute percentage can call upon it at will. The rest might get “feelings” about other people, or experience deja-vu, or hear voices. Most would eventually learn to ignore it, for fear of being different.
</theory>
I know that there is no hard evidence that anyone has ever actually performed “magic”, but I think that there is so much anecdotal evidence throughout history that there must be some kind of truth behind at least some of it. At one time, magic seems to have been an accepted part of life in many cultures. But somewhere after the advent of Christianity, magic became equated with evil. Anyone who could perform magic would have had to go underground for their own safety. Magical instruction would have become much more difficult, and the numbers of people able to perform magic would have decreased with each generation. Eventually, “magic” bacame a myth.
So, to answer the original question, I believe that magic does work, but I doubt very much that most of us will ever meet anyone who can make it work. First, because they are few and far between, and second, because several hundred years of burnings, drownings, and other not-so-nice treatments have made them a bit reluctant to seek the limelight.
For the record, I am not a Wiccan. I am a Christian, thought I do not currently align myself to any specific sect. I follow what I believe to be the teachings of Christ, which I do not find in any of the Christian “religions”. I have studied Wicca somewhat in my search for knowledge, but do not claim in any way to be an expert. I do not know if my beliefs are widespread, but I cannot imagine that they are unique.
I feel that this post is now veering off onto a different topic than when it began, so I will stop now.
The expensive props are not necessary. As a former Wiccan, I can definitely say that someone who knows what they’re doing can perform magick naked in the middle of the desert with no possessions at all. It’s all mental and emotional. The props are nothing but window dressing to put the brain into the proper state for change.
No honest-to-goddess Wiccan who’s into it for reasons other than “The Craft looked cool!” thinks of magick as some Dungeons and Dragons snap-your-fingers-and-a-fireball-will-blast-your-enemy thing.
It is logically impossible to prove that something doesn’t work.
Does it work? All the people I’ve met are not the kind of people I’d like to show me.
I believe you can prove that something doesn’t work, I think you might be referring to the impossibility of proving something doesn’t exist. I could be wrong though.
For example: You could prove (relatively I suppose) that drinking buffalo pee will not make you fly.
But you could not disprove the IPU.
Some modern magicians I’ve read consider magick to not strictly be a matter of controlling dark, supernatrual powers but rather creating a mindset. Psychotherapy through ritual.