AS A DIFFERENT CULTURE
I mentioned previously that in recent centuries human society has been heavily influenced by religious and scientific thinking. In fact, it has been dominated by science and religion to the extent that art has been largely subjugated and magic almost driven out.
To illustrate what I mean, consider the way that society accepts religious censure of art—whether it is christians denouncing modern art as pornographic, or moslems attacking literature or cartoons depicting Mohammed. Imagine what would be the response if the situation were reversed and artists demanded that catholic shrines be purged of their “bad taste” kitsch imagery or that the bible needed to be rewritten to iron out the narrative discrepancies between the gospels. The first situation is so familiar as to be taken for granted, but the second sounds outrageous, because art simply doesn't have the authority accorded to religion in our society. On a bigger scale, remember how religious extremism—and the term includes modern “religions” such as Nazism and Communism—assumes the right to lay down rules about what sort of art is acceptable or not.
So much for art—magic has fared far worse. According to religious culture, magic and psychic powers are positively evil or at least ungodly. Although acceptable to more liberal faiths, even practices such as yoga, alternative healing and astrology come under fire from many religious organisations. And in terms of scientific culture magic doesn't even exist except as fraud or self-deception—to claim to be a magician either means you are mad, deluded or a charlatan. Fortunately we live in relative tolerance, otherwise the authorities would have put me either in gaol or a mental asylum for writing this little book.
My “art” example focused on religious domination, but what about science? Surely science has not tried to suppress or dominate art in the same way?
No, not in the same way, but there has been a more subtle tendency for science to belittle art by implying that it is not necessary. The invention of photography could partly be blamed for the crisis in nineteenth and twentieth century painting that lead to the many modern movements and -isms as artists sought to rediscover their purpose.
The most extreme manifestation of this I remember in the 1950s when there were even some scientists suggesting that subjects such as art appreciation and literature could soon be dropped from the university curriculum, because they would become redundant once the parameters of artistic merit had been properly analysed and programmed into a computer. Already in the 1960s “Tin Pan Alley” in London was using computers to generate tunes for potential pop songs, and some thought that was the end for composers.
But what happened instead? A scientist and writer, C.P. Snow, published a speech in which he analysed art and science as “two cultures”, suggesting that they represented two different ways of addressing the world, ways that were better seen as running in parallel than in conflict. So science, for all its certainty and wisdom, would never replace art, because art fulfilled a totally different, yet equally real, human need. In this way the potential battle between art and science was defused, and since the 1960s scientists have felt comfortable about enjoying artistic hobbies without feeling obliged to rationalise or explain them in scientific terms.
The funny thing is that religion did not feature in the debate about two cultures. It was only really towards the end of the century—and religious expectations for the millennium—that a conflict began to emerge again, this time between scientific and religious thinking. Although it was not resolved in so many words, it is clear that most thoughtful people came to a similar conclusion: that science and religion were not really at odds, but were two different and parallel cultures serving contrasting and yet real human needs. So that now gave us three cultures: art, science and religion.
What I have been suggesting for many years is that the picture needs to be completed with a fourth culture—magic. Magic also meets real human needs, it is as natural to humanity as religion, art or science, and is best recognised as a culture in its own right. I argued that a lot of things are done by human beings that seem very silly because the denial of magic means that they can only be done in the name of science, art or religion, in whose terms they make no sense—but if they were recognised as magic, they would make perfect sense.
Imagine that some respected sociological research institute came up with a very strong correlation between people who read this book and subsequent marital breakdown. There would be a public outcry for this book to be banned as a danger to society. Even the sociologists would be split between those calling for a ban in face of such incontrovertible scientific evidence, and those insisting that it was unscientific to conclude that this book caused marital breakdown (because maybe people moving towards marital breakdown are those who become more interested in clairvoyance). Both argue that they are being scientific, but in fact those arguing for the ban are not being scientific, they are being magical.
Whereas science argues from causes—so my book must be proven to actually cause marital breakdown—magic works from correlations. So if this book and marital breakdown “go together” you could ban this book to reduce marital breakdown—that's called “sympathetic magic”. It isn't scientific but it does represent a real human need. If it did not, there would never have been the public outcry for the ban. If this difference between science and magic were recognised, the schism in the scientific community could be resolved by the simple recognition that such threats to society often demand an immediate magical solution, backed by a longer term scientific solution once the real cause had been identified.
PREJUDICES AGAINST MAGIC
You are setting out, with this book, to develop your psychic powers. The psychic powers in question—clairvoyance, tarot reading, seeing fairies, etc.—are all part of the culture I call magic. But, as I suggested earlier, we live in a society dominated by religious and scientific thinking, one in which magic doesn't exist or, if it does, is something very evil.
So you are setting out to experience something that at some level of your being you believe does not exist and cannot be experienced.
You may protest at this and insist “but I do believe in magic”, yet I suggest that you don't really, because not even the most experienced magicians really believe in magic. If you don't believe me, then go to some magical get-together and listen to magicians chatting. You'll constantly hear things like “I did this money spell and—it's incredible—the very next day I got a rise at work!” The word “incredible” means unbelievable, and it really does in this context because magicians never cease to be amazed that magic works. You wouldn't hear a scientist say “I mixed hydrogen and oxygen and lit it and—it's incredible—it went bang and turned into water” because scientists really believe in science.
That is one of the paradoxes of magic, what makes it so alluring. If something that you really believe in works, it's boring, but if something you don't really believe in works, it's amazing. Nobody really believes in magic, and so we have given it enormous potential to surprise and thrill us.
Follow this course faithfully and I'll blow your mind.
But we do begin with a problem: I am trying to help you to experience something when at some level you believe it is wrong to experience it—either because it doesn't exist, or even because it is evil. To achieve this, the first lesson will focus not so much on reason, or intuition, or feeling, but on the senses.
REASON AND SENSE
At its best, scientific culture is both reasonable and sensible. But, like any culture, when it has been in power for too long it becomes a line of least resistance for lazy people. In the case of scientific culture, it becomes an excuse to opt for reason and become less sensible, or more detached from reality. To be told that science is not sensible is hard for some who confuse reason and sense, so I'll need to give several examples.
If someone
