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Max Weber and the Disenchantment of the World
This month A Satanist Reads the Bible turns to the thematically-appropriate subject matter of magic, which will be the subject of this episode and the subsequent two. Originally I had planned on covering the concepts of ceremony and ritual as well, but the subject of magic proved fruitful enough on its own and so ritual is a subject I’ll have to return to another time. In stepping into this subject matter, I’ll begin with the work of German social theorist Max Weber (1864-1920). I want to mention first of all that this section of the essay was substantially inspired and informed by a recent episode of the excellent podcast Philosophize This! by Stephen West. As always, I’ve dug into the source material on my own and I’ve confirmed for myself everything that West says in his episode, but it was a huge inspiration and I’ll be mirroring his structure a little bit in what follows.
Weber’s work came at a time in which disciplines of philosophy were splitting off into disciplines of science. Physical science itself as a distinct discipline had branched off from philosophy at the beginning of the Enlightenment, and it was common through the 19th century to refer to the physical sciences as natural philosophy. The early 20th century saw the physical sciences joined by what we now call the social sciences, which had been practiced in various forms since antiquity but which took on a life of their own over the course of the 19th century as the result of groundwork laid by numerous thinkers including, most prominently, Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, and Max Weber.
This perspective of Weber as a scientist, one who contributed significantly to the establishment of a new branch of science, is important to keep in mind through what follows, because Weber is noted for his criticisms of modernity and scientific progress and it’s important that we not mistake him for being anti-science. Weber did not believe that science and scientific progress were intrinsically bad, only that they had changed the conditions of human life in significant ways, with both benefits and drawbacks. Modern science, Weber believed, had usurped the value-creating traditions of pre-modern humanity, a role which science has no capacity to actually fill. This ties in to something that the Scottish philosopher David Hume was saying almost two centuries earlier in his Treatise of Human Nature, originally published in 1739. We now refer to this as the is-ought problem, the fact-value distinction, or Hume’s Law:
In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, ‘tis necessary that it shou’d be observ’d and explain’d; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it.
Hume, 1960, pp. 469-470
This is to say, it is impossible to proceed from statements of fact, statements about the way the world is, to statements of normative value, statements about the way the world should be or ought to be. Wordy as this paragraph is, it’s actually just an aside in Hume’s Treatise, but has nevertheless had an enormous impact on the course of philosophy. I would argue that the distinction which David Hume makes here between facts and values is one of the central dilemmas of modernity. Modernity has enormous resources which can be leveraged towards ascertaining facts. On that matter, there is little doubt: given the tools of modernity, we are better at discovering facts than we have been at any point in human history. But, as Hume has pointed out, facts do not entail values, and thus our progress in determining facts has not necessarily led to progress in determining values.
Weber includes modern science in what he calls the “intellectualist rationalization” of the world. This process of rationalization breaks activities down into their component parts so as to refine them and make them more efficient by way of “master[ing] all things by calculation” (Weber, 1958, p. 139). In doing so, we detach these activities from the traditional contexts which gave them value and meaning, resulting in what Weber called the disenchantment of the world.
As an example of this, Weber provides the example of the science of modern medicine. It’s no question that we are able to live much longer and more comfortable lives because of modern medicine, but imagine someone who is coming to the end of a terminal illness which is causing them enormous pain. There’s no cure for the disease, the pain is beyond the ability of medicine to mitigate, and it’s bad enough that this person has no control over their bodily functions. In pre-modern society, this scenario would take place in the context of a total understanding of life and cultural answers to questions—questions of value—about when and why life is worth living and when it isn’t. This person would likely be seen as having reached the natural end of their life, and medicine would be brought into the picture, or not, in the context of those value judgements, perhaps even being used to end this person’s life and thereby end their suffering. Medicine does not and cannot itself answer those questions, and modernity, as part of this process of rationalization, has taken it out of the traditional contexts which did provide answers so as to make it more effective and more efficient. And again, this is not to say that there are not huge benefits to the advanced state of medical science; Weber just wants to make sure we’re looking at the drawbacks as well, because they’re not trivial: rationalization has given us a world drained of meaning.
For of the last stage of this cultural development, it might well be truly said: “Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.”
Weber, 2013, p. 124, quoting Goethe
On the Essential Nature of Magic
Moving on to the subject matter at hand, I’ll start by clarifying what it is exactly that I’m talking about.
I can immediately differentiate between what might be called stage magic or magic tricks, a performative art in which neither performer nor audience truly believe that anything supernatural is taking place, and magic as it is believed to be a real supernatural force, which is what I’ll be discussing here. The term is sometimes spelled magick in order to differentiate this kind of magic from stage magic. Having defined my terms, I’ll use the standard English convention of “magic” and specify stage magic should that be needed for differentiation.
If we go with the dictionary definition from a Google search, we get “the power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces,” but that “apparently” could put us back in the realm of stage magic, and I think that “influencing the course of events” is unnecessarily specific. The Wikipedia page “Magic (supernatural)” is listed as having multiple issues and the opening definition in particular seems poorly written, so that’s not much help either. It does mention that magic is generally understood as being distinct from religion, which is useful to note. That distinction is one I’ll aim to take up in one of the next two essays.
So what is magic, then? Although I’m discussing something that is ostensibly real, I think the best point of departure is actually a fictional one, that being the world of the Harry Potter books and movies. The reason this makes such a good point of reference is that, one, it’s culturally ubiquitous (and that’s the reason I’m using these particular media instead of those by another author with whom I might not have significant political disagreements), and two, if what is called magic in the world of the books were actually real, I think that we would intuitively agree that such is indeed magic. This is not to say that anything that could be called magic must adhere to its depiction in the Harry Potter universe, but it does give us a starting point for figuring out what kinds of things could be called magic in the first place.
In the world of Harry Potter, magic is, most generally, something that people do. It may be possible to say that magic can also be a property of objects (for example, the Mirror of Erised is a magic mirror) and or even an entity in itself (i.e. magic as the underlying force that allows one to “do magic”), but I’ll leave that aside for the moment and focus on magic as an action. One who is capable of doing magic—in Harry Potter this is an intrinsic ability which some people possess and others do not—does so by “casting a spell,” which is a series of actions, possibly including manipulations of one’s internal mental state, that will produce a particular effect. For example, to accomplish the Fire-Making Spell, one points their wand at the spell’s intended target and says “incendio,” a word which is derived from the Latin incendium (“fire”) but which is clearly not intended as actual Latin. Again, there may be some internal mental state which must accompany those actions. If this spell is properly performed, the thing being pointed at bursts into flame.
Magic in Harry Potter can have a huge variety of effects, from causing objects to levitate, to the near-instantaneous transportation of people and objects, to inflicting intense pain or causing someone’s death. I think we can make our first generalization here and say that there is no effect which could not potentially fall under the domain of magic. Granted, in Harry Potter, there are things that magic cannot do; what I’m saying is that, generally speaking, there’s no effect that would, in itself, cause us to reject it as being the result of magic under a generalized understanding of the term. For example, magic in Harry Potter cannot resurrect the dead, but that’s a rule that J.K. Rowling imposed arbitrarily in order to be able to tell the kind of story she wanted to tell. In other works of fiction where magic is capable of raising the dead, we don’t say to ourselves, “That’s not magic! That’s simply not something that magic can do.” This generalization is inclusive even of the mundane; we would not reject something as magic simply because its effects seem dull or trivial. Indeed, part of the fun of the Harry Potter stories is seeing the ways that the wizarding world uses magic to accomplish otherwise mundane activities like commuting to work.
The question is then, what differentiates between effects accomplished through magical means and the same effects accomplished through non-magical means? Let’s try a thought experiment. Let’s say I’ve invented a device, a kind of specialized flamethrower which works in a very peculiar and particular way. Its form is that of a long, thin tube, much like the wands of the Harry Potter universe. It’s voice activated by my saying the word “incendio,” and has a neural interface which matches my brain waves against certain patterns, ensuring that I have the proper degree of concentration and focus. When activated, the device forcefully ejects an imperceptibly small chemical pellet which bursts into flame when it hits something. Let’s say that I’ve designed this device for the specific purpose of being able to imitate the Fire-Making Spell from the movies and that I’ve done it so well that there is no apparent visual distinction between my use of the device and, for example, Hermione Granger’s use of the Fire-Making Spell to attempt to destroy Salazar Slytherin’s locket. The actions are the same and the effect is the same. By using my device, have I done magic? It is immediately and intuitively obvious that I have not. Granted, an ignorant observer may believe that I am indeed doing magic, but as soon as I explained it to them, they would say, “Ah, I was mistaken. It’s not actually magic.”
What has changed is the causality, the mechanism of action, the connection between cause and effect.
Exploring further, let’s start with the Harry Potter universe but modify the premise slightly: there is a physical force called “magic” which arises out of the physical nature and atomic structure of the universe just like gravity and electromagnetism. Magic is, in this universe, just one more force alongside the others, albeit with its own particular properties. “Wizards” and “witches” are the scientists who have been studying this particular force throughout history, and they’ve come up with a general, thorough, and satisfying account (although perhaps not an entirely exhaustive one), backed by numerous mathematical equations, of how and why it works the way it does. There are still open questions, but in general, in this world, we understand magic at least as well as we do electromagnetism. Everything else remains the same—perhaps the classes at Hogwarts would have a different character, and magic would be more likely to be a part of a broader general education in science, but if you’ve got your wand and you wave it the right way and are thinking the right things and say “incendio,” it’s going to start a fire, and a wizard would be able to tell you exactly how and why that works. Is that magic? Let’s call this scenario Harry Potter B for reference, with Harry Potter A designating the world as depicted in the books and films.
Before answering that question, let’s make another tweak: in this world, magic actually works like it does in Harry Potter B, but the wizarding world thinks it works like Harry Potter A. This world, which I’ll call Harry Potter C, is functionally indistinguishable from Harry Potter A, but under the surface, unbeknownst to anyone, magic actually works the way it does in Harry Potter B. In the world of Harry Potter C, wizards and witches could, in principle, study magic the way it’s studied in Harry Potter B. They just haven’t, for whatever reason. Is that magic?
Some interesting things have happened here. This plays a little bit into the distinction made by authors of fiction, largely following the work of fantasy author Brandon Sanderson, between hard magic and soft magic systems. There’s a sliding scale in fiction between soft magic systems, in which magic is wondrous, unlimited, and generally unexplained; and hard magic systems, in which magic is constrained by clear rules that the characters and readers can come to know and understand. As Sanderson explains, both are valid approaches to writing magic in fiction but they have different implications and must be implemented, in terms of the craft of writing, in different ways (Sanderson, 2007). The B and C variants of Harry Potter that I’ve just described take the Harry Potter universe, which falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, and pushes it to the furthest edge of hard magic. At this point, while we may still talk about the magic of that universe in a functional way as being magic, it still seems much less magical. Indeed, if the Harry Potter B scenario described the real world, it would decidedly not be magic, and I can say that because those things which are real in the real world and which are functionally equivalent to this kind of “magic,” such as electromagnetism, are not considered to be magic. What’s really interesting is that, if the Harry Potter C scenario described the real world, we might believe that magic is real, but we would arguably be wrong. This can be demonstrated by imagining (in the real world) transporting someone from some arbitrary time in the distant past to the present and showing them a smart phone. They would believe that they are seeing magic, but they would be wrong. As science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke said in his book Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” (2000). Now, to be clear, we would certainly sympathize with this person’s understanding of the smart phone as being magic. We wouldn’t say to them, “You dumbass, you thought it was magic! What a stupid thing to think.” More likely, we would say, “I can certainly understand why you would think that the smart phone is magic. I would likely think the same thing in your circumstances.”
My conclusions from these thought experiments are as follows: the unreality of magic is one of its defining features—a necessary condition, though not a sufficient one (in that it is not true that all unreal things are magic)—and in such cases where real phenomena are believed to be magical, such belief is only respectable when the underlying mechanics of the phenomenon are not understood. This is to say that those real phenomena which are understood as magic are, at the minimum, not properly understood, and, when properly understood, they are not really magic.
There are three things here that follow from those conclusions which I want to make clear. The first is that I am an antirealist with regards to magic. I don’t think things that could properly be called magic exist, because I think the lack of real existence is part of the definition of what magic is, for reasons that I’ve explained. This is a purely semantic distinction and really very trivial, but important to get out of the way. The second is that I accept that there may be aspects to our reality which we might respectably call magic but which we don’t sufficiently understand yet (and I’ll refer to this as type N pseudomagic, N for “novel,” and I don’t mean to imply by calling it “pseudomagic” that it’s bad or wrong or undesirable in any way; I’m just situating it with regards to the ontology of magic proper). The third is that I accept that there may be aspects to our reality which are functionally identical to magic in every respect except in that they are real and understood (and this will be type K pseudomagic, K for “known;” my original naming scheme had these as types C and B, respectively, to correspond with the respective Harry Potter formulations, but I quickly started losing track of which was which and had to come up with a better system). I think that that third point is the most interesting of the three, because it indicates to me that there is indeed a magical reality to the world. I know that contradicts what I was just saying about the real existence of magic, but what I mean is that, if we were to imagine a world in which magic were real, we might plausibly imagine this one. In such a world, whatever phenomenon that we might call magic would possess the necessary properties contingent upon its realness, including the fact that it might not be called or thought of as magic. But this phenomenon would possess all of the other characteristics by which we might understand something as being magic if it were not actually real.
Think about how I’m talking to you right now. By means of invisible forces and special devices which are imbued with these forces, I have duplicated my words, my voice, and even my visual appearance if you’re watching the video, and propagated it across the entire planet, to be heard or viewed on demand by whomever wishes. In sense, I have duplicated my own identity. Having listened to something I was just saying, you might say that “Todd is an antirealist with regards to magic.” As we’ve established, this is correct, I am an antirealist with regards to magic, and you do indeed have good reason to attribute this belief to me, but you never actually heard me say it. I might have been sleeping when you heard “me” say that. I might even have been dead. It was a simulacrum—is a simulacrum—but one sufficiently faithful to be able to convey my identity in a real and practical way. If that’s not magic, it is only because it is real and understood, and for no other reason.
Looking at it another way, if the magic of Harry Potter were indeed real, I think that we would try to understand it in a thorough and systematic way, because that’s what we do with everything, and so the world would come to resemble that of Harry Potter B. In such a case, magic might not be called “magic” because of the antirealist implications of the word itself, and we would be living in a world in which there was a powerful, invisible force whose nature is systematically studied and largely understood and which can be controlled and used to create an impressive variety of different effects. But this description already matches the world we actually do live in! We are in fact living in the world of Harry Potter B, and “electromagnetism” is just our word for the magic that is real. Electromagnetism is not magic only by virtue of it being real and understood, so electromagnetism is then a form type K pseudomagic.
Allow me to qualify what I mean by “understanding.” I don’t want to get into the weeds on epistemology here, but I think I can approach “understanding” in a commonsense way and not run into too much trouble. When I say that we understand electromagnetism, I mean that we—by which I mean humans in general—know its underlying causes, can reliably and precisely predict its effects, and know the specific causal relationship between cause and effect. My personal understanding of electromagnetism is very generalized and functional. I know that the phenomenon of electromagnetism is the result of the behavior of electrons, which are an integral part of the structure of matter, and I know that when I flip a particular switch on the wall, electromagnetism will cause the light bulbs connected to that switch to glow because electrons will then be flowing through the bulbs’ filaments. Humanity, collectively, has a much more detailed understanding that relates the behavior of electrons to the phenomenon of electromagnetism in a very precise way, and that allows us to do things and build things that require that precise understanding, such as building computers. So, “understanding” is knowledge of causes, causality, and effects, and real phenomena which we understand are not magic.
The question is then: are there any other real forces in our world which are like electromagnetism in terms of their functional resemblance to magic, whether presently understood or not?
Magic, Skepticism, and the Satanist Reads the Bible Project
In order to be able to answer that question in a general way, I need to do some more groundwork. I’ve established some necessary conditions for something to be considered magic, but I lack a comprehensive definition that would allow for an assessment of what different kinds of things might be considered magic, presuming that they meet those necessary conditions. That’s a much more difficult matter, and would require surveying a wide number of different things, both real and fictional, which are claimed as magic. Such a survey would be beyond the scope of this project, but people have made and continue to make claims regarding magic, and I think that what I’ve established so far at least allows for a preliminary examination of those claims. In a second I’m going to circumscribe that work in more detail, but first a word about how I’m thinking about this topic in general and how that relates to the Satanist Reads the Bible project.
I’ve spent the last two years using this platform to mount a robust defense of religion. I believe that religion is a vital component of human existence, albeit one with a great many significant problems. In light of those problems, I am seeking to deconstruct and reconstruct religion, primarily so that I can make it work for me personally—thus the tagline—but also in hope that my work will allow others to do the same and that we might get religion working better for everyone.
There are plenty of thinkers out there who are taking a more skeptical and even combative angle on religion, and certainly not without good reason. The problems of religion are real and significant and need to be addressed. I happen to think that the problems can be addressed while maintaining the viability of religion in general, but there have certainly been many intelligent people in recent history who disagree and who would prefer to see religion go away entirely. I generally haven’t spent much time within the context of this project taking a skeptical angle on religion because, while that’s an important angle to take, there are plenty of people already doing that, and I see my role more as counterbalancing against that skepticism, which I think is needed as well. But I need to be clear—and perhaps I haven’t been sufficiently clear on this matter up to this point—that there are aspects of religion, spirituality, and other concepts about which I am highly skeptical. I am also willing to join Max Weber and others in skepticism with regards to science and modern Western thought in general. While I see science as primarily being a positive force in the world, I think there are some problems, such as those that Weber indicated, in how we think about it and use it in general. At some point I’ll likely do a series on the philosophy of science in which I’ll address some of those problems directly. In the November series, I’m specifically going to be looking at the problems of religion, and in the next two episodes in this series on magic as well, I’ll be looking at things from a more skeptical angle because that’s the approach that seems most warranted by the research I’ve conducted thus far.
If there’s a way of approaching magic that can viably contribute to healthy personal religion—and I am completely open to that possibility—I want to find it, understand it, and explicate it for my audience. In order to do that, it is necessary for me to be both honest and rigorous towards approaches that are non-viable in that regard, because there are ideas out there—lots of them—that I’m reasonably certain are complete bunk. The flat earth hypothesis, for example, which posits that the world is more-or-less disk-shaped, is bunk. To clarify, it’s not really the hypothesis itself that’s bunk: the hypothesis is merely wrong, but I can construct wrong hypotheses which are not bunk. Rather, it’s the discourse surrounding the hypothesis, which consistently takes place absent basic critical thinking. Critical thinking is not a foolproof procedure for finding truth—no such procedure exists—but it does at least cut through the bunk and gets us going in the right direction. Ultimately, bunk ideas run contrary to my goal of healthy and viable personal religion, and so when I find it, I’m going to repudiate it with every faculty available to me.
Just by way of demonstrating my thinking on these sorts of subjects and how I’m going to be approaching the subject of magic in the next couple episodes, let’s take astrology as an example of something that is at least magic-adjacent and which I’d consider to be bunk. Astrology is collection of methods and schema for ascertaining terrestrial knowledge, including knowledge of human behavior and about the future, from the patterns, positions, and movements of celestial objects. For example, the website astrology.com, which is the first search result I get for the term “astrology,” features an article which describes the personality traits of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruther Bader Ginsburg as having been caused by the positions of celestial objects at the time of her birth: “Because of Ruth’s moon in Scorpio, she was immensely passionate about her beliefs and saw emotions as ‘all or nothing’” (Thomas, 2020). That’s a remarkable claim. I don’t understand how there could possibly be a causal relationship between those two things. No one I’ve ever spoken to on the subject has ever been able to suggest a mechanism by which the two spheres of activity are related. Nothing of the sort is provided on the aforementioned website; I can’t even imagine one that is the least bit plausible. That’s not to say that no such mechanism exists or could be possible, but the discourse surrounding astrology that I’ve encountered lacks evidence of critical thinking, and I think that that’s basically what I mean by bunk. That said, I certainly appreciate the symbolism of astrology, and I can see ways for it to play a role in people’s spiritual lives in a non-realist way, perhaps similar to how my partner uses tarot cards. Tarot cards are also often taken as being a method of ascertaining knowledge, including knowledge about the future, but my partner describes them as being a “dialogue with their subconscious,” using the rich imagery to draw out ideas about their own life. That seems entirely sensible. I’m not sure how that would work specifically in regards to astrology, but I accept that such a viable approach may exist and I’ll refer to such approaches as type P pseudomagic (for “psychological”). I also want to be clear that I’m not going in to this assuming that contemporary magic practices are necessarily bunk. I’ve already explicitly provided several plausible ways that they might not be. Like I said, it’s about critical thinking.
In the next episode I’m going to go into some history regarding beliefs in magic and then in the episode following that I’ll start delving into what I would call contemporary magic practices such as ceremonial magic and chaos magic, by way of answering the question I asked a bit ago about where there any other real forces like electromagnetism which might be considered magic if we bracketed their realness, putting their realness aside so that we might consider their other properties.
I hope you’ve found this piece interesting and informative. If you’ve enjoyed it, I encourage you to look at some of my other essays, and if you find my approach to philosophy and religion at all valuable, I hope that you’ll stop in at my Patreon page, which features bonus content for patrons, and that you’ll stop back by to check on my new content.
Works Cited or Referenced
Clarke, A. C. (2000). Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible. Orion Pub Co.
Hume, D. (1960). A Treatise of Human Nature. Oxford University Press.
Magic (supernatural). (2020). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Magic_(supernatural)&oldid=979712628
Sanderson, B. (2007, February 20). Sanderson’s First Law. Brandon Sanderson. https://www.brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/
Thomas, K. (2020, September 21). The Legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, As Seen Through Astrology. https://www.astrology.com/article/ruth-bader-ginsburg-astrology-natal-chart-legacy/
Weber, M. (1958). From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (H. H. Gerth & C. W. Mills, Eds.). Oxford University Press.
West, S. (n.d.). Episode 144 … Max Weber—Iron Cage. Philosophize This! Retrieved September 21, 2020, from https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/episode-144-max-weber-iron-cage