First do the hard part and prove to me that magic works. Then I’ll do the easy part and explan how.
Scientifically it doesn’t, but pretending it does theres about 1000 ways you can go about it, it depends who you ask and such. Note I’m not checking for constistancy, so unless noted otherwise spirit and diety will probably be used interchangably.
There’s invoking dieties, this falls in the form of telling something to do it for you GOD DAMN YOU! would technically fall under this category.
There’s bargining with spirits. Here’s your “sell your soul tot he devil” stuff.
There’s asking for help from spirits, prayer basically.
Then we get into some funky stuff:
Personal energy - this is using internal energy (governed by a multitude of things depending on what you’re looking at, this is going to be your spirit energy in Yu yu Hakusho, your energy in DBZ, your Mana in any RPG ever), you shape this stuff using words, sometimes even actions or objects you focus upon to channel it.
Spirit chanelling - this si different than diety, you take spirits or somesuch and channelt ehm through your body and shape them and make sure you use a circle so they can;'t hurt you and quite frankly this one is basically the external energy version of the one I just listed above, plus a circle so you don’t get yourself corrupted or killed by the spirits or… something.
This si by no means a comprehensive list, I’ve studied this a bit (I had nothing better to do for say… all of Middle and High School), and quite frankly these are barely scratching “popular methods” much less the freaky esoteric stuff. Granted a lot of things fall under varients of these categories (say, opening and closing Chakras could be a variant of personal energy).
And on top of all of this you get to add fun “middle-ground” toppings like a lot of old alchemic texts, or even pieces of famous ones could be considered magical (as well as philisophic) like Ripley’s Twelve Gates for instance (though I may be remembering that one wrong I think that one could ahve some magical itnerpretations in there).
This is what GQ is now? OK. Where does the Easter Bunny get its eggs? How does Santa get to every house in one night? How does the tooth fairy calculate the monetary value of a tooth? Why does spinach make popye strong?
I see nothing in your post that indicates how magic works. You list a number of beliefs, but those are not at all the same thing. Saying that invoking names is an example of magic is exactly what the OP was asking “how” about.
The answer to “how” is “it’s magic.” These beliefs are entirely circular. That’s why they lie outside of science or reason or logical thought.
Hmm, it seems I forgot to answer the actual question.
Well the first three are easy, because whatever you’re bargaining with agrees with it, except maybe the “forcing a diety” thing, this could be that the diety is bound by a sense of duty to follow orders, hired part time by the by the inter-heavenal “miracle comitee” or anything really.
The last two are basically about the same concept as being strong enough to push something. Granted we can reduce that stuff down to numbers and break down (generally) a vague representation of how it works. This would be (presuably) special types of energy (and maybe mass if you’re say, a geomancer or something) being put together and launched or applied in some fashoin. Granted there’s no good example of this stuff actually WORKING and there’s no real numbers on it (short of those electro-magnetic field spikes(I think taht’s what it is) they refer to on “A Haunting” on the Discovery Channel every so often, but whatever), so we’re sort of stuck at “because it can.” Which is probably why it doesn’t work :p.
Regarding the original question, it is beyond debate that at one time a substantial number of people (in the West at least) believed magic was possible; things like the Salem witch trials can’t IMO be adequately explained unless you assume there was some general belief in the efficacy of magic. The question shouldn’t be “How does magic work”, since magic is clearly a fiction. The question that should be asked, I think, is “How did people think magic worked?”
I don’t think that question has much meaning in the present scientific age–the first reaction to anyone who claims magical powers today will rightly be “prove it”, not “how does that work”–but in a culture like ancient Greece, Rome, or Medieval Europe, it is most certainly relevant.
I’m very disappointed in the mods right now. Do they really think this crap belongs in GQ?
It doesn’t work at all. This is the SDMB, where we fight ignorance. :rolleyes:
Concur. This belongs in Cafe Society. There is obviously no GQ answer to this. There isn’t really even a single imaginative answer. This belongs with the Dumbledore is gay thread.
That word, I think it does not mean what you mean… well, you know the drill.
It’s not really much worse than “what’s the best way to kill a vampire” which Cecil found worthy enough (probably in a “I’m bored and this seems fun” sort of way granted) wrote a column on. I doubt he’s asking “if I wanted to try it right now what would I need to know.” He’s asking “in theory land where things like this actually work how would it occur given all belief systems and practices were the same (except, you know, operational).” Just like when you’re given a basic physics problem and you ignore all those complications because they’re not needed to understand the basic reasoning. Everyone knows this is going to happen differently when all of Earth’s factors come into play, you’re just asking “How would this pan out in Physics Land™ where all the numbers are the same as in reality but these conditions are entirely possible with no chance whatsoever of anything going wrong.”
As for magic words, I thought it would be neat if words could have the objective reality of something inside the word, so that the word table would be table so to speak. Perhaps that’s what magical incantations would be if magic was real. (Well, as a Christian I do believe in a type of magic, but it either comes from God or Satan and I dont think incantations are much of a factor).
The problem though is that there is no single answer to that question. There are as many answers as there are nutjobs who believe in magic. They all have a different belief in what it does and how it works. I am reading a book right now that has dragons and guys weilding swords and wizards casting spells. And last week I was reading another one. The magic in that one didn’t work anything like the one I am reading now. I like to read goofy stuff like that and they all have different versions of how magic works. It’s all made up. Granted a question about magic could be crafted such that it is appropriate in GQ. Unfortunately Inigo didn’t write it.
Will discussing untrue beliefs rationally somehow encourage the abandonment of all rational thought?
First of all, these beliefs are perfectly logical. It is, as you note, circular logic. Some of this is because traditional societies are limited in their ability (and desire) to collect impartial observations, and some because they are based on incorrect pre-existing notions. “Logical” is not the same as “true.” Likewise, given the cultural context in which they exist, the beliefs are rational. Take them out of their cultural context and apply up-to-date scientific knowledge, and they become irrational.
The beliefs in fact explain how the magic “works,” or rather how it is understood to work. I’m prepared to explain further and back up with citations from academic books and journals if you need; my post was meant to point out some of the ways that the question could be narrowed rather than solve it for All Time. I suspect, though, that your problem is that I take these magical beliefs seriously, rather than dismissing them. How are you going to fight ignorance if you refuse to engage with or understand it? “Magic” is in fact a well-studied phenomenon.
*** Leviosana idiotica mooosinia LEKATT***
Just like that…spell of summon Lekatt
I thought it was:
Goofio Neario Deathio Experiencio LEKATT
Watch it…you almost killed him again…
You guys better be careful. You’ll make him appear and then you’ll have nobody to blame but yourselves.
That was kinda the point
I’m surprised that so many people here think that this question does not belong here in GQ, especially if it is rephrased as Dr. Drake did: *How are magic words understood to work by those who use them?
*
The field of religious studies have produced many different answers to this question ranging from “pre-logic” thought in the minds of the “primitives” to metaphoric blending within the cognitive category framework.
One semi-consensual way of addressing the question of how magic and rituals work is that the ritual establishes a transcendent room, a liminal space, within which the special form of rhetoric that is the magical/ritual utterances attain efficacity. The magical words thought to affect reality often do so by referring to or re-actualizing a mytical past considered to be true within the given culture.
An example could be the christian ritual that transforms bread and wine into the flesh and blood of Christ with the words Hoc est corpus Christi, referring to the last supper. The trancendent room established during the ritual of the church service allows the priest to perform this “magical” transformatory act simply by uttering that this is what he is doing. This formula was corrupted later on into hocus pocus probably in mock rituals performed by travelling magicians. Within the ritual of stage magic, these words no longer referred to the myth of Christ but to the myth of the transformation of wine and bread to blood and flesh that takes place in the church, assuming the efficacity of that ritual in stead of the efficacity that resides in the divinity of Christ. Nowadays this formula hardly means anything, but then again - not many people believe that it is actual magic that takes place on stage.