Currently reading Pagans & Christians by one Robin Lane Fox, some stuff of interest when he deals with magic.
A popular modern pagan assumption about magic is that it's a way to circumvent or undermine the religious establishment, and, as long as the religious establishment is not pagan, they're quite correct. Nonetheless, that definition allows many rainbow-new-agers to pretend that magic is a bare-bones communing with divinity, as opposed to all the claptrap of religion.
The fact that even with modern wiccans there are recitations, incantations, and spells galore to go through to get to their objetif doesn't make wicca artificial the way religions are, though. I mean, of course not, we're communing with the goddess, here, man.
But that's how it is for everybody; as C. S. Lewis said, the instant a man becomes convinced he should serve a god, it becomes so much more to him than just religion. And that's as it should be. We shouldn't be waffly, and neither should our enemies be.
Magic is part of religion; it is paganism. There are the common rituals of paganism, always the sort that appeases; then there are the more arcane manipulations (also appeasements) of the gods and spirits: magic. The "insider trading" of religion, as Fox puts it. Magic is part of the technology of paganism; it's just the part the IT guys know. The guys in marketing or the boardroom probably don't, but they're certainly willing to hire an expert.
A popular modern pagan assumption about magic is that it's a way to circumvent or undermine the religious establishment, and, as long as the religious establishment is not pagan, they're quite correct. Nonetheless, that definition allows many rainbow-new-agers to pretend that magic is a bare-bones communing with divinity, as opposed to all the claptrap of religion.
The fact that even with modern wiccans there are recitations, incantations, and spells galore to go through to get to their objetif doesn't make wicca artificial the way religions are, though. I mean, of course not, we're communing with the goddess, here, man.
But that's how it is for everybody; as C. S. Lewis said, the instant a man becomes convinced he should serve a god, it becomes so much more to him than just religion. And that's as it should be. We shouldn't be waffly, and neither should our enemies be.
Magic is part of religion; it is paganism. There are the common rituals of paganism, always the sort that appeases; then there are the more arcane manipulations (also appeasements) of the gods and spirits: magic. The "insider trading" of religion, as Fox puts it. Magic is part of the technology of paganism; it's just the part the IT guys know. The guys in marketing or the boardroom probably don't, but they're certainly willing to hire an expert.
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