MOOist Magick for Idiots



"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic."
-Clarke's Second Law
"Any insufficiently advanced Magick is indistinguishable from Technology."
-Floyd's Corrolary to Clarke's Second Law
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a stacked deck."
-Floyd's Corrolary to Floyd's Corrolary

There appears to be some kind of contention over just what it is that constitutes Magic, or Magick, or Magik, or Kmgaci, or whichever permutation of those letters you prefer. For a quick and dirty explanation of Magick, turn to Aleister Crowley, he who Really Ought To Know Better, and his Magick In Theory And Practice: "Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will"... Which isn't very useful without knowing what the Will is. In the spirit of Crowley himself, and his boundless skepticBLATT, we look it up in the dictionary, as he says, "to discover when words are being used to hide information, or lack thereof"... Roget's Thesaurus gives, as two possible synonyms, "spontaneity" and "predetermination". The dictionary defines these as antonyms of each other, and so the word "Will" means nothing in particular.
For the sake of clarity, we'll remove it from the definition, since it's clearly being used to obfuscate the real meaning. Crowley was far too clever a person to have made such a mistake by accident, as he insisted constantly that his "students" should be critical of everything. So we can only assume that he meant:
"Magick is the Science or Art of causing Change to occur."
But, since every action is a change from one state to another (else it wouldn't be an action at all, but rather an inactive non- action) then everything that happens causes Change to occur:
"Magick is the Science or art of making stuff happen."
But that suggests conscious intention to make the stuff in question happen, and skeptical scientific enquiry tells us that consciousness is a result of particular self-modifying patterns of atoms feeding off an energy gradient. Since all patterns are self- modifying, by the nature of physical laws, and Change can only happen around an energy gradient, we can redefine Magick as:
"Magick is stuff happening."
But then, Time is an illusion, so nothing can ever HAPPEN, so we really should say: "Magick is stuff."
This is obviously what Crowley must have meant, since he was far too intelligent to have made a meaningless statement by sheer accident. Of course.
Thus, every action you ever take, or fail to take, is Magick.
Congratulations. You pass the course.