Category: Illusion and Magic

(Or, how not to end up in a tinfoil hat.)
by Mordant Carnival
Key64.net

It”™s the aim of this article to look at ways of appraising your magical practice, offering a few approaches and techniques to make sure things are on track as far as effectiveness goes and also to avoid some of the more common pitfalls along the way.

It”™s not always possible to apply the scientific method per se to this kind of work but the techniques and approaches associated with scientific investigation are applicable in many cases and can be very useful. This doesn”™t mean trying to prove that magic works, putting together a study that could find a home in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society laying out evidence that Wednesday”™s sigil working was responsible for your getting laid last night. Since magic is such a nebulous beast, an experiential business with unprovables being kicked around all over the shop and subjectivity agogo, it is frequently a logical impossibility to talk in terms of proof and not necessarily desirable anyway. However, this does not mean that we have to give up all notion of a meaningful assessment of the success or otherwise of a working or a practice, an assessment based on discernment, critical thinking, logic and rationalism. “Proving” that magic works, or that a particular spell worked, is not the point. The point is analysing your results and your overall progress in an intelligent and meaningful way. Continue reading “Sizing up your magical practice”