I love this little section from Genevieve Davis’ Becoming Magic: A Course in Manifesting an Exceptional Life (Book 1)
“Is magic unscientific? I don’t care two hoots one way or the other. I have no desire to make what I do fit with a scientific world view. I don’t give a flying fig whether it does or doesn’t fit in with quantum physics or Newton’s Laws.”
We all grew up learning the scientific method and so we know the general ideas involved with it. In order for something to be a scientific law, it has to be predictable and verifiable and universal. In other words, if we’re talking about the Law of Gravity, then we have to be able to predict that when an apple – any apple – falls off of a tree it’s going to come straight down and hit the ground. Over and over and over again. And everyone has to be able to see that that’s the way that apples fall and they have to fall the same way in Tierra del Fuego as they fall in Texas.
If some apples fall halfway to the ground, turn sideways, and zip off into the horizon, then we’re fucked as far as gravity being a universal law. Then we have to go back and re-examine our theories, do thorough, scientific studies on apple-ness, and try again. That’s called, “revising your hypothesis.”
Now, for some reason, many people who are involved in metaphysics and spirituality have ALWAYS craved the approval of scientists. I don’t really know why, because most of the scientific folks I’ve met have been pretty boring, one dimensional people with whom I would not care to share a beer or a joint. Perhaps it’s because scientists are always hopping up and down and screaming, “You can’t PROVE that there are ghosts (or angels or fairies or spirit guides or the astral plane, etc., etc., etc.)” Perhaps some people who are involved with spirituality have developed a sort of a Stockholm Syndrome where they really, really want their abusers to love them.
Or maybe they just really, really want for magic to be predictable and verifiable and universal. Which it isn’t.
There’s that word, “magic,” again. Let’s talk about it a little bit, in terms of the famous, “Law of Attraction.”
The Law of Attraction IS, essentially, magic. If you can make something appear out of thin air with the power of your mind, that’s magic.
The Law of Attraction is NOT a law, and that’s where a lot of us get screwed up and where a lot of us give up.
The point is that it’s a Not-A-Law that works most of the time, which is why we shouldn’t stop using it and exploring it.
When we first learn about the Law of Attraction, this is how it usually works. We encounter someone who says something like, “If you only think of good things, then only good things will come into your life.” And so we try it and it works pretty well and we’re feeling pretty damned jazzed about it. “Hey, you know, only good things come into MY life!”
Then life turns into a shit sandwich and we go back to the person who told us that we should only think good things and ask them why all of this crap just floated into our lives. They start suggesting flaws in our approach to only thinking good things, such as:
-Did you write down exactly 25 affirmations in the morning and 22 and ½ before you went to bed?
- Did you use a vision board?
- Maybe you were thinking 7 good things and 285 bad things and your bad thoughts overwhelmed your good thoughts.
- Do you put a lot of emotions into your visualizations?
- Did you try dancing on one foot when you were visualizing and holding an amethyst in one hand and a tourmaline in the other?
Again, that’s called, “revising your hypothesis.” If only good things are supposed to come into our lives when we think good thoughts and bad things start happening, then it must somehow be our fault. We must be doing something wrong, because the Law of Attraction is a LAW, by god. And that means it always works and it’s predictable and it’s verifiable.
Eventually a fair number of people become dejected over the fact that the Law of Attraction doesn’t always work and they just quit trying. Which is a drag.
It’s not a Law. And that’s okay. It’s magic. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but a lot of the time it does. Just like magic.
Let’s take a look at the Magician cards from a couple of different decks.
The first is the Magician from the Waite Deck, which was designed about the turn of the 19th/20th century, the dawn of the Scientific Age.
He’s dressed in perfect, dramatic ceremonial robes, he’s holding a wand aloft to gather in Universal Energies and he’s directing those energies into manifestation on the material plane, as represented by the four objects on the table. He’s magnificent, he’s powerful, he’s in control. His magic is verifiable and predictable because he KNOWS HIS SHIT. His magic works every single time.
Now let’s take a look at the Magician from the ancient Marseilles deck.
He’s kind of goofy looking, his clothes look like they were sewn together from rags, and look at all of that weird stuff he’s got spread all over the table! The expression on his face isn’t so much one of being in command and control as of, “Um . . . did I forget something? Was there an Eye of Newt in this spell? I just can’t remember . . .”
The Magician from the Waite deck really exemplifies the type of magic that many purveyors of the Law of Attraction would like us to believe. The Universe is an orderly, positive place and if we behave in an orderly positive manner, then only orderly, positive things will happen to us.
If I’m doing a magic spell, then I MUST draw a circle that is EXACTLY nine feet across and place four white candles in each of the cardinal directions. I have to have a knife and a chalice on my altar and a specific kind of incense burning and the spell has to happen at a specific time of the month or IT JUST WON’T WORK. If I do all of those things just exactly right, though, then my magic will be predictable and verifiable. You know, like a Law.
The old Magician from the Marseilles deck is much more like what magic is really about. He’s slinging together odds and ends and making it up as he goes along. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t but he’s NOT going to walk away from his table because most of the time it DOES work and he’s having a hell of a lot of fun.
The old Magician recognizes the Sacred Dictum passed down to us from the Ancients: sometimes weird shit happens. Magic, like life and emotions and love, is NOT always predictable. That’s why all of the old cultures had trickster gods like Loki and Coyote and Raven, because sometimes life just jumps up in our faces, yells, “BOO!” and then laughs it’s ass off at us.
Here’s another interesting passage from Genevieve Davis, this one from her book Doing Magic: A Course in Manifesting an Exceptional Life Book 2
“There is a reason that women are particularly good at magic . . . the slightly chaotic nature of women, often negatively deemed ‘irrational,’ is actually a desired trait when doing Magic. Embrace irrationality, embrace chaos, allow things to just turn out in whatever higgledy-piggledy pattern they please and you will find this SO much easier.”
The Law of Attraction ISN’T a Law. It’s a general principle that if we act and think in a mostly positive manner then mostly positive things will mostly come into our lives. Most of the time.
And that’s not only good enough, that’s GREAT!
We don’t need no stinking laws!
Just the Tarot 