What is Magic? - Magic is the act of willing a miracle through the power of believing.

What is Magic?

Magic is the act of willing a miracle through the power of believing.

When I was little I could levitate. No joke. I could float in air, as long as I was between two walls. I would start out between the two hallway walls and then jump to catch my legs and arms between the walls. Then I would climb until I could touch the ceiling with my little hands and close my eyes. I would hold myself there praying and talking to God saying, “I am ready. I will float today. I believe in You.” Slowly, I could not feel the wall anymore and I would casually start to levitate in the place that I had climbed to. I believed that God had not only given me the ability to be an abnormally flexible child, but the ability to float. Really, I was not committing an act of magic, but instead I was just climbing up the wall, holding myself there until my feet became numb, and praying to a man that I believed in, but I wholeheartedly believed that I was truly floating.

The reason I tell you this story is because magic will not happen unless you have something to believe in. “The question of whether people could actually achieve anything though magic is entirely different from the question of whether they thought they could.” (Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of the Witches)) I had such great faith in God that I believed He had given me a magical power that no one else possessed, therefore producing the miracle of a floating child. As I see it, magic is the act of willing a miracle through the power of believing.

When people believe wholeheartedly that they are able to do something, they are able to accomplish anything they perceive. Joan of Arc was able to accomplish acts of magic with no real scientific reasoning behind their thoughts. Joan of Arc believed that she was talking to God to lead the French to victory. (Warner, Marina) This story is not much different than a young child believing they could levitate. Both Joan and the child believed that they had these unnatural powers that were willed to them by a higher power. Some may interpret the skills of understanding battle or floating as magic and others my interpret them as a miracle, but in both instances the willing belief in a higher being was present and strong.

Whether you believe in magic, miracles, a higher power, or not, "most philosophers regard belief in magic as a quaint superstition that has been replaced by some more rational understanding of cause and effect.” (Auxier) I believe that these philosophers regard this belief of magic because they need to have a reasoning behind every thought. Unlike myself, there are people out there that will need a reason for everything as they do not believe that there are some things that happen that do not need an explanation of why they happened. There are many instances that have no real explanation behind them for happening, yet they are widely known. These stories all have magic, will, miracles, and belief behind them.

An example of one of these stories would be out of the Book of John in the Bible. In this book, Jesus went to a party with his mother, Mary. Mary believed in the power which Jesus possessed and asked him if he would provide food and drink for the people attending as there was no food or drink left. Jesus willed his power, which could be substituted to thinking that his power was magic, to turn water into wine and produce more bread and fish. (Aitken) In this story, Jesus had many believers and used his will and magic to produce a miracle. None of this can be explained by science or by philosophy, yet it was an act that happened.

Magic, miracles, will and believe will keep surrounding us as humans, as will the obsession with explaining instances that do not have a rational answer. According to an article in Philosophy Now, “magic is going on all the time, usually unconsciously.” (Fuller) I believe that this unconscious act has to do with the power of will and magic.

“Page and Crowley… shared a fascination with ‘will’….as magic is an art of bringing the will to bear on what is.” (Auxier) Page and Crowley believed in anything that actually happened, yet they needed an explanation for everything. They believed in cause and effects due to their scientific background. Instead of believing in a higher being, Page and Crowley have similar thoughts to the ones expressed thus far, yet they believed in science as a God. They noticed that these magical actions were happening and, through determination, they found answers in their scientific knowledge much like how I find answers in my religious believes.

We all have that child inside of us that believed that anything could happen simply because it could. Grass could be blue and trains could fly. Nothing was logical, but everything made sense. We were never forced to rationalize how we felt as a child and everything we believed was true to our beliefs. Magic was all around us simply because we believed that miracles will happen.  Magic was, and still is all around us. It is the act of willing a miracle through the power of believing.

Works Cited

Aitken, Robert. The Holy Bible. American Bible Society ed. New York: Arno, 1968. Print.

Auxier, Randall. Magic Pages and Mythic Plants. Print.

Fuller, Mike. "The Logic of Magic." The Logic of Magic. Philosophy Now, 1 Oct. 2015. Web. 23 Oct. 2015.

Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of the Witches). 1486. Print.

Warner, Marina. The Trial of Joan of Arc. Evesham: Arthur James, 1996. Print.