I was recently asked if Magic and Science are compatible, which shocked me because I always assumed everyone felt they were. Chemistry and medicine were born from Alchemy, Astronomy from Astrology and Maths from Mysticism.
The very practice of magic is often taught as a commitment to experimentation rather than an acceptance of doctrine and dogma. When we approach practice in magic we often temporarily take on the odd doctrine in the same way that a person might temporarily suspend disbelief when watching a fantasy movie. But that is simply because in the practice of magic belief is a tool or a parameter in the experimentation.
Open up the Greater Key of Solomon, a grimoire with French and Latin versions dating from 15th century and you will see the word experimenta used synonymously with “magical operation” frequently as a chapter heading throughout its spells. So much that perhaps the very word for magical operation was a forerunning for the modern experiment, a practice where you vary a few minutia of details in the hope of finding that eureka moment.
This became even more clear in the 20th century. Although he is much maligned by his peers, Aleister Crowley termed his own spiritual teachings as Scientific Illuminism and he penned the tag line “we put no reliance, in virgin or pigeon, our method is science, our aim is religion.” As he encouraged his followers to treat every magical operation as an experiment birthing records which have got even more scientific as the traditions have grown. This is very clear in his gnostic mass ritual which attempts to deify the earth and sun whose interaction created the very circumstance to make life possible, millions of years ago.
So clearly magic has been heavily influenced by attempts to make it an approach to religion but with the method of science. By religion, it can be understood that it is an apporach to the divine, to god, and to the things which are metadivine, the “beyond-god”, such as the fates and enlightenment. But our approach to these is not through teaching and repeating, but through experimentation and the increase of knowledge.
Further the attitude to each is difdferent because science and magic form very different purposes in our lives. Science provides us with immediate and consistent results and magic gives us the potential to go beyond. When a person is sick they do, and should, rely on medicine, a product of science. Something which has been guaranteed by years of experimentation to work quickly and efficiently to get that person as close to better in as short a period of time as it can and those results are guaranteed to help us in an immediate way. However once we are mostly better, the use of magic could be used to promote general wellbeing, better psychological sturdiness and allow for the potential dialog between the magician and the karmic forces that made them sick in the first place, to understand the nature of sickness, its deeper meaning, understand why it arose and perhaps manipulate the forces to prevent the sickness returning in the future. This magical process could take months and does not guarantee an immediate return of capacity to work, to take care of others or oneself, but eventually can lead to better wellness, awareness and connectedness which the scientific method lacks.
Magic and Science are intertwined and each births the other at various points in history. Magic is the approach to religion or spirituality through the practice of science. Each forms a different purpose in life some for what is immediate and guaranteed or even likely, while the other can be aspirational take on emotional tones.
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