To write this post I was inspired by Sort of a Psychic‘ review of Practical Psychic-Self Defence by Robert Bruce. In the review, Sort present his negative opinion about the amount of Christianity in Bruce’s work. Allow me to quote fragments of his post.

(…) I was irked by the repeated promotion of Christianity. Prayers to God and Jesus are often recommended, and a whole section goes over how to write the names of God and archangels. Bruce says that negs are frightened away by invoking the names of God, religious verses, etc.. (…) I don’t think an atheist is going to get good results banishing a neg in the name of something he/she does not believe in.

One thing I have to agree with is that atheist isn’t going to get any results when using most rituals and methods described in Bruce’s work simple because an atheist doesn’t believe in anything supernatural, not even a neg, so excuse me, but if one does not believe in negs, one won’t look for methods of dealing with these entities ;). But that’s not the point of this article to explore misunderstanding of the term ‘atheist’, but to explore one particular thing Sort seems not to understand – magic VS religion.

Archangels and God in magic

What most people don’t realise is that rituals described by Bruce are magical rituals. Minor pentagram ritual, calling up names of God and Archangels, this is not Christianity – it’s Hermeticism, or should I say, a mixture of Hellenistic Egyptian beliefs and Hebrew Kabbalah. This is where the source of so called Christian magic can be found. Well, it’s more complex than that and this post isn’t the best place to explain everything ;), but you get the point.

It’s pretty simple, there’s one God, and there are Archangels, servants of god – calling up their names doesn’t  mean you’re calling Christian deities, but that you’re calling the deities that existed before time. Each religion got its own gods and beings we called angels, it is my belief (well, not just mine) that in reality we’re dealing with the same entities no matter what religion we call our own. Being irked by the need to call up other deities than our own is just lack of understanding how the religion really works and how it refers to magic. Let’s point out to simple example…

Holy Water!

Did you knew that holy water is a result of magical ritual? Every single kind of blessing in each and every religion is nothing more and nothing less but magical ritual. Eucharist, baptism, confirmation and other Christian sacraments are magical rituals too!  I can bless the water with simple ritual and it will become something Christian call holy water. It will still be water, but this time – blessed water, charged with psychicic energies (positive aspect).

How magic really works

I already talked about it. Magic is about the power of will, supported by objects of different sort. But in reality, it’s all about will manipulating psychicic energy. Both psykers (psychicic practitioners) and mages, and occult practitioners uses the same energy, only names and philosophy around it is different. Religion works the same way, it’s about manipulating psychicic energies with help of objects and rituals. Ergo, religion is a magical practise, even more – religion is an occult philosophy.

Reality behind religion

Religion is something like overlay for magic, it makes it sound more user-friendly. Let’s admit it, if I would tell someone I’m an occult practitioner using magic, they would perceive me as someone dangerous and evil, even as worshipper of Devil himself. But if I would tell the same person I’m an animistic religion practitioner, the word ‘religion’ is enough to calm the person down and make me look more friendly, only because it’s religion, not magic. But beside the name, religion isn’t that different from occult philosophy.

In both religion and occult we have deities, we have supernatural entities, invisible powers and energies, and rituals and authentic faith, there are only different names for deities, energies and rituals. The same thing refers to God and other disembodied entities – there’s one God and one kind of Angels, one kind of Archangels, one kind of Demons etc., there are only different names – some call God Allah, some Adonai, some Jehovah. For some, the one-and-only God is totally unknown, but they consider different protective spirits as their gods – deities of different sort. Names are different, point of view is different, but the entity is always the same. You pray to the very same God I prey to… The sooner you acknowledge this, the sooner your understanding of magic, psychics and general occult will start to develop.

But, does it have to? Depends :). If you want to, then I see no problem, if you want to stick with single point of view upon occult, then I’m OK with this too! Because I want to explore the occult knowledge further and further, I seek deeper understanding behind different philosophies, rituals, religions and faiths. Somewhere there is the common core to all beliefs and all magical practises. This core is something we’re praying to all over the time. That is why there’s no problem if you’re a Christian, and your friend is Muslim – if you both follow the real word of the God. For example, have you hear something like this:

“Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.” – T’ai Shang Kan Ying P’ien

The above is so called The Golden Rule, spoken by Taoist T’ai Shang. In general, the Golden Rule is the ethical stance that says you should treat others as you would like them to treat you. This Golden Rule is the common core of all religions, the common ethical and philosophical stance. Check out other versions on Wikipedia perceived by different religions on Earth.

Very same thing as to Golden Rule apply to magic – it doesn’t matter what kind of ritual you perform, because at the end, its all about the common core that existed before all time. From this, simple teaching arise – whenever you encounter a ritual with different entities and their names, all you have to do is to understand how the entities described in the ritual refers to entities in your beliefs system, replace them et voila – you can test the ritual :).

In the end

In the end, all practises, rituals, objects and beliefs are all the same – the uses the same psychicic energy and the same will to manipulate the energy. One thing really came up with Sort’s review – an atheist can not use any of magical practices simple because he doesn’t believe in the supernatural. Other than that, every single person that believe there’s something out there can use magic, religion or psychics to create his or her life.

What’s your story? Have you ever consider how religion refers to magic (and vice versa)? Or maybe you don’t agree with me? Share your thoughts in comments!

Don't forget to follow A State of Mind on Twitter and get new posts via RSS or via email.