From:    Paul Hume                              Area: MagickNet
To:      Jade                                   12 Sep 96 10:14:16
Subject: Re: Pollution                          UpdReq 

Jade -
It was not necessary to assume that you were correcting someone. Pan stated
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." You responded that he "left 
off" the "An it harm none."
 That is a correction, no?
 In the discussion of this aspect which has followed, you have argued (as have
I, as anyone in this kind of discussion must) from you world view - that we 
are connected, etc. etc. While we must passionately affirm our beliefs in
magick does not necessarily make them correct.
 On models: Magick has its own internal structure (or structrures, as there is
no rigorous way to test which is more accurate, and thus many models exist,
in the absence of some measure of disprovability). There are similarities
with physics, and psychology, etc. but no one of those models overlaps the
magical one completely. Or so it seems to me.
 Physics describes the action of the material world (I am including energy in
that blanket term). It is obviously of importance to a magician working to
effect change in that world, but does not define the entire action of magick.
 Psychology describes the action of thought, and is of course especially 
crucial
in the magician's understanding of his or her own mind and its working, but
magick operates either outside the mind of the magician or on levels 
inaccessible to what may laughingly be called "normal consciousness," and
so I don't see psychology as defining all the spheres of magical operation.
 Theology describes the interactions of Divinity and Humanity, but tends to
transcend or ignore psychology and physics, etc.
 Magick is both an intersection of many disciplines and a unique field unto 
itself - thus the dangers of (f'rinstance) assuming that there is some 
cockamamie version of Newton's Third Law in action like the Law of Three or
Law of Return, simply because physics has such an axiom (at the mechanical 
level, anyway). 
 The modern/post-modern magicians, starting more or less with Crowley and 
moving into the present generation with writers like Carroll, have tried for
a rigorous hypothesis of magical laws - with a general lack of success, 
however useful and inspiring their attempts have been, because they still lock
onto a scientific paradigm, even though magick violates a central aspect of
scientific method - to wit, the operator is not only NOT irrelevant to the
experiment, but is crucial to it. Boom - disprovability goes out the window.
And in the absence of disprovability, it ain't science (g).
 Regards,
Paul
s

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