justinbthemagician:

ogygia:

Unpopular opinion: if we can accept that the spell only works properly if one says ‘wingardium leviosa’ rather than ‘wingardium leviosa’, we can certainly – in our own real, non-fictional lives – consider more seriously the value of thinking about why and how we do our magic, whatever tradition or practice we may be a part of. There’s a reason why we frequently talk about theory and practice, and it continues to surprise and befuddle me that witches and occultists (on Tumblr or otherwise) don’t ask themselves deeper questions about what they actually believe – not just about magic, but about the world in general. 

The key to a strong magical praxis is a basis in a carefully thought out and well-lived-out cosmology – it doesn’t have to be scientific, or even so to speak ‘rational’, but you do need to have a coherent, cohesive idea of how you think your magic works, and the worldview that makes it possible.

👏

I would go further and say it does need a rational/scientific aspect. Not materialist, or completely left brained but it does need a working hypothesis, theories, experiments based on those hypothesise and backed up by previous work shown to be successful in the past. It should be presented to other practitioners so they can test it and see the results.

Magick can and should take the principals of science and use them to make better magick.

Even art, with as much creativity, style and imagination within it has strong principals that make art a disciplined, practical study. You study the Masters, color theory, perspective, light, grayscale, etc. One can just make art but when one adds even some of these aspects one can see one’s art improve dramatically. That is what magick should move towards. It is also known that once one gets all of these principals down and can show competency in these rules that one’s real “style” arises. Then one can bend or break some rules.

Let’s all do our part to help magick enter the future.