Natural Magick (1584)

You may enjoy Uncleftish Beholding[1] by Poul Anderson. It's a short essay describing atomic physics explained with pure Anglish words instead of Greek or Latin loan words.

> At first it was thought that the uncleft was a hard thing that could be split no further; hence the name. Now we know it is made up of lesser motes.

> Some of the higher samesteads are splitly. That is, when a neitherbit strikes the kernel of one, as for a showdeal ymirstuff-235, it bursts into lesser kernels and free neitherbits; the latter can then split more ymirstuff-235. When this happens, weight shifts into work. It is not much of the whole, but nevertheless it is awesome.

> For although light oftenest behaves as a wave, it can be looked on as a mote, the lightbit.

[1]: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/complexity/people/studen...

There's a clever software engineering resume out there in the same style (and also in the style of Leonard da Vinci's resume): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1086527

Wow, I'm genuinely curious what the inspiration for such writing was. Are there hidden metaphors or analogies like other mythical beasts?

Some things don't change. The only big separation historically is what was allowed to be written on paper, scolls, and tablets when doing so was rare and expensive. But we still get some perspective on the human mind in the popular mystical characters and stories people invented.

I ended up reading the lodestone section and realizing that it was a description of magnets.

The thing is, we don't know what they were describing. There's a lot of strange things old records describe that do turn out to be true; I don't think it's wise for us to be so dismissive.

On the flipside, is there anything in there that's actually true and isn't part of the modern common knowledge compendium?

Can't wait for computers to start actually understand text because reading 10 volumes where both the language and the way to think about things is - let's say - different is bloody hard.

I think reading things which were believed in the past, and how they were justified, what 'proof' was held up, etc, is tremendously helpful. We can imagine re-walking their path and understand how they came to believe what they believed, and be confident that those techniques are not reliable. If you see those exact same justification or reasoning being used in modern times, you can know to be suspicious. You always have to account for the fact that a correct conclusion can be happened upon with an entirely wrong reasoning, but in most cases you will also have a head start on know how to disprove the conclusion if it's in doubt. It's surprising how often conclusions are abandoned, but the style of argument that supported them manages to stick around. You would think that if someone says 'clearly X is true because only an evil Creator would make it otherwise, and the Creator is not evil' but X is then thought to be false, that you couldn't justify anything else with the same argument, but its very common that they would just throw out X when it became impossible to ignore its truth, but preserve a whole host of ideas based on the same reasoning.

It helps with the worldview, but it doesn't give us context as to how it's contemporaries interpreted it - was this a popular book that was accepted and acknowledged, or was it a fringe effort that remains?

"So then Magick is taken amongst all men for wisdom, and the perfect knowledge of natural things: and those are called Magicians, whom the Latin's call Wisemen, the Greeks call Philosophers ... The Egyptians call them priests; and the Cabalists call them prophets. And so in diverse countries Magick has diverse names." (From chapter I)

So it seems in this book it is basically knowledge about the world, with no particular distinction been "natural" and "supernatural".

Or psychotherapy. For some reason, a LOT of people that I've known to eventually to go become therapists, first have dabbled in tarot, runes and other magical divination. And since their intention was honest intent to help people and they were intelligent enough, progression to moden therapy seemed very appropriate.

I'd define it as the nonphysical controlling the physical. Math is one obvious example of such magic.

Hence why Bacon, who originated modern science by rejecting teleology and promoting math, was an occultist.

"The Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will" - famous early 20th-century magician Aleister Crowley

Starting with the premise that our mind doesn't actually perceive reality directly, but rather creates an internal representation based on external sensory inputs, I would say that the definition of magic is "the intentional manipulation of another person's internal representation of reality." Which should cover a lot of what most people consider to be magic tricks.

Magic, science, religion and philosophy are three dimensions of this issue. Magic and science are the practical dimensions, while religion and philosophy are the theoretical dimensions.

There is overlap, so religion has it's practical side, but here I realy mean theology.

In the early eras magic and science were essentially indistinguishable, because people had limited intellectual tools to determine what really worked and what didn't. As those tools became more codified and more reliable, science started to distinguish itself. So for example modern chemistry extricated itself from alchemy.

Nowadays we look at these questions in hindsight using the lens of modern rationalism and scientific methods, so we can distinguish between activities that were effective and reliable from those based on fanciful ideas and 'magical' thinking.

A lot of historical magic was based on a religious view of the world. So there were spells for summoning demons that could help you find treasure, or protect you from evil influences, or make someone fall in love with you. These evolved from religious practices, but then again what is a marriage ceremony or blessing if not a magical spell? They are attempts to invoke esoteric powers to make a change in the world.

Other forms of magic evolved from natural philosophy. This includes a lot of early medicine that tried to manipulate the balance of the humours in the body, or magic that invoked elemental powers or principles. The modern equivalent is crystal healing and such.

So one way to look at it is that magic is stuff based on theological or folkloric ideas, or (to not put too fine a point on it) false philosophy. That's a very modern way to slice things though. Modern occultists have also invented new and interesting ways to redefine magic, Crowley for example. And yes, I'd put him in the modern category.

My personal definition of magic is an effect that cannot be repeated- say, something like cold fusion. Perhaps you performed a magickal act once and it had an effect - but the same effect will never repeat itself no matter how often you repeat the exact same magickal act. But, maybe you can find another Act that will have the same Effect.

... or in nay case that was a definition of magic that I was planning on basing an entire (homebrew) RPG supplement on :)

My definition of science, on the other hand is absolutely "magic that works". Modern science is achieving everything that ancient cultures tried to do with magic. Except, we found the way to understand how the world works and how to do all those things for real- the scientific method. Which doesn't always work of course- but if anything does, that's science.

One definition of magic I've heard is the "application of hidden or unknown forces".

So, this gives compassion to prescientific pursuits and acknowledgement of psychological forces, which we still don't understand, that govern a wide range of contemporary rituals and designs.

Because there are many things that operate through what is probably best called magic. For instance, and this is a dumb example, architectural ornamentation. It has a huge effect on the "vibe" of a building or street -- but is essentially unexplainable. Sure, we can tell ourselves stories about why the ornamentation works... But come on, it's the part of design that is just magical.

Magic is simply religion by another name. The belief that the natural world is governed by a supernatural world and that the latter can affect the former through divine intercession (theurgy) or human will and ritual (thaumaturgy) is, essentially, basic religious belief. What tends to happen with the semantics is "our" practice is considered "proper religion", and "theirs" is "pagan sorcery."

The best definition I've seen was in an interview with writer Ted Chiang. Paraphrasing from memory: magic is physics with the addition of "person" as a fundamental concept. It empirically doesn't exist, but it's not impossible by definition.