Between my in-person and online interactions, I find certain themes and implicit questions recur re: the nature of magick. So for this post, what I thought I’d do is address a few of those. They pertain to such topics as how I define magick, the causal/acausal distinction, and different approaches to magick.

Introduction

Here are four questions I’d like to address from the perspective of the worldview of Tenebrous Satanism:

1. How would you define “magick”?
2. Can magick be purely causal?
3. What exactly is the acausal component of magick? (e.g. does it inherently mean working with entities?)
4. In acausal terms, what makes magick “work”? (short answer in this post vs. see link above for longer answer)

I don’t intend the positions I present in this post to be absolutely prescriptive. Yes, as the founder of Tenebrous Satanism, I say what I’m saying here with the intent of establishing some precedents. But I am not saying that all Tenebrous Satanists must agree with me exactly. The intent, rather, is to provide food for thought. If you agree with me, great. If not, I think it would be worthwhile to be able to articulate why in a clearly-argued fashion. I’d hope that doing so may deepen your own self-understanding of what you believe about magick and why.

I) Defining “magick”

I use the same basic definition of magick as Crowley, LaVey, et al: magick is “change in accordance with will.”

Three essential components of this are:

1. The will of the magician. There is some state of affairs they envision altering. In connection, for any magickal working, one ought to be able to define a “before” state and an “after” state. For example, in a banishing, one is burdened by unwanted emotions before one’s working, and unburdened afterward.
2. Energy. Where this energy comes from and related questions of its nature will be addressed below. Regardless of such details though, magick entails some sort of expenditure of force. If one claims to perform magick but feels no different afterward than before, I question that magician’s efficacy.
3. A resultant alteration. I only consider a working “magickal” if some concretely-identifiable change follows from it. Said change must also come about as the central drive of the working, not a mere side-effect of it.

The third point is relevant to how I distinguish meditation from magick. A ritual is successful if it accomplishes its intended change. If it does not accomplish this, I consider it a failure. Meditation, by contrast, is done for its own sake. Sure, many meditations bring about an alteration in one’s state of consciousness if done correctly. But ultimately, you meditate to attain experience in meditating. There is thus a “persistence is its own reward” aspect to meditation that I feel distinguishes it from magick-proper. Vs. if one engages in something that outwardly resembles meditation, but aims centrally at changing some external state of affairs via the application of will thereby, rather than aiming centrally at simply having the experience of meditating, I would say one is in that case practicing magick rather than meditating.

II) Purely “causal” magick?

A twofold question here arises. One, are there practices plausibly classed as “magickal” that utilize purely causal mechanisms? Two, in such cases, should we persist in calling that “magick”, or call it something else instead?

To describe something as “causal” is to identify it as this-worldly, incarnate, knowable through scientific methods, etc. Chained to natural sequences of cause-and-effect, in other words.

Described thus, here are two practices labeled magick by at least some Satanists that may be interpreted as purely causal:

• What LaVey calls “lesser magic”. i.e., the use of aesthetics to manipulate the thoughts and emotions of people the Satanist interacts with.
• What LaVey calls “greater magic” or “psychodrama”. i.e., performing ritual with the sole expectation of it having psychological effects on oneself and/or the audience who observes it.* Satanic Temple -style Satanists such as Shiva Honey also put forward an understanding of ritual along these lines.

(* Note: I’m aware that LaVey himself was not necessarily consistent re: the mechanism by which greater magic “works.” I do get the impression though that many contemporary LaVeyans, if they perform ritual at all, interpret its effects in this way.)

Is it causal?

If one performs these practices and explains their efficacy solely via psychology, aesthetics, etc., they may be termed purely causal. For example, “I feel better afterward,” “the audience related to what was going on and hence was moved by it,” etc.

Vs. you are not in the realm of the causal if you say things like “magick taps into a dark force of nature that scientists just don’t understand yet” or “magick makes certain synchronicities more likely, [complete bullshit about quantum physics and “vibrations” goes here].” If you cannot explain in a clear, scientifically-sound, no-spooky-action-at-a-distance way how it works, yet you insist it is doing something, then you are evoking the acausal.

I personally hate, both in Satanism and occultism generally, when people talk in a confused way about this. A secure, intellectually-honest person should be able to admit when what they are doing has no scientific basis. “My experience affirms that it works in some mysterious way” should be enough. Why evoke vague pseudoscientific nonsense to go beyond that? Is it because you are embarrassed to be a modern person who’s experienced something mysterious? To garner intellectual status amongst the people you are talking to? The former smacks of a lack of self-conviction, and the latter of herd conformity. Both are embarrassing to a Satanist!

Key point: if you think of yourself as a secular, philosophical Satanist, but you perform magick and go beyond pure psychology and aesthetics to explain how it “works,” you might want to honestly reassess how “secular” you are. Or put more bluntly, just admit you do believe in something spiritual, i.e., quit the “I made hating religious people my whole personality, so I can never admit I have some needs in common with them” -type behavior.

Is it magick?

“Hardcore” esoteric Satanists may here retort, “that’s not magick, that’s just LARPing!”

I understand that reaction. However, I believe there’s a gray zone where what seems purely psychological or aesthetic shades over into more mysterious forces. I personally have known a number of people who start out performing rituals for purely “it’s good for me psychologically” -type reasons, only to have “striking coincidences” occur that persuade them that something more is going on.

For this reason, I am in favor of still calling the ritual-aesthetic praxis of humanistic forms of Satanism “magick.” Why? Because as an esoteric practitioner, I believe it’s possible for the acausal to manifest amid proceedings conceived of as purely causal. What others dismiss as “LARPing” may thus serve as the gateway drug and training grounds of future magicians. Myself, I prefer to encourage this, instead of being a gatekeepy sourpuss who’s negative about it. Calling it “magick,” even if not all those practicing it will technically engage with 1-3 under I), aids with such encouragement.

No doubt such thinking can seem a bit patronizing to the committed secularist. But to such a person, I reply: if you don’t like my train of thought here, then why not give up the term “magick” and say that you are just performing a ritual / using glamor / etc.? A consistent secularist, I reckon, would put up no struggle against this. Vs. the person emotionally-attached to the word “magick” is probably the same person getting defensive about “dark forces of nature.” To whom I again say, you are allowed to have spirituality without asking science’s permission first. Just be honest, throw away your pseudoscientific crutches, and affirm your experiential truth regardless!

It’s in connection with such issues that I personally find the term “acausal” very useful…

III) What’s “acausal” in magick?

It’s come to my attention that some Order of Nine Angles (ONA/O9A) types hold that “the acausal” refers only to a specific part of the spirit world. If it means that in your practice, you are free to use it that way.

But it seems to me that a more intuitive and useful definition is simply “whatever is not causal,” i.e. otherworldly, discarnate, not knowable through scientific methods, etc. The mysterious Other that countless human beings cross-culturally have believed in and claimed experience of – such is what Nine Keys of Abyssal Darkness means by the term.

I accordingly classify all of the following elements of magick as acausal:

1. The magician’s will, in its not-scientifically-verifiable operations of gathering, shaping and releasing energy.
2. Subtle, not-scientifically-verifiable energies associated with embodied beings that the magician may draw upon / manipulate / etc., e.g. chi, prana, vril, etc.
3. A background field of not-scientifically-verifiable energy that the magician may draw upon / manipulate / etc., e.g. the mana of a particular place.
4. Not-scientifically-verifiable discarnate entities that the magician interacts with, whether one wants to call these spirits, gods, demons, etc.

This is worth unpacking because in some conversations I’ve had, my interlocutor has incorrectly conflated “acausal” with “non-local.” The resultant thought process asserts that 1 & 2 are causal, 4 is acausal, and 3 is debateable. However, such a person is not understanding me correctly and is using terms that I defined in my book in a contrary way to how I use them. In fact, 1-4 are all acausal, because of what I (condescendingly) repeat in each point: they are not scientifically verifiable. i.e., they are what many may people would casually call paranormal, supernatural, etc.

Further implications for magick

What I thus hope to come out of this discussion is greater self-honesty and precision in how magicians talk about what we’re doing.

I see no shame in “I did a wealth ritual, it made me more confident and so I got a job” or “I did a destruction ritual, the catharsis made me feel better”. Those are valid causal results that no one has any business greeting dismissively.

On the other hand though, I am not aware of any scientifically-valid mechanism by which doing a ritual for money “causes” you to get a cheque in the mail, or doing a ritual for destruction “causes” your enemy to get in an accident. Therefore, as soon as you posit such results, you are making acausal claims: literally, there was no known this-worldly cause for that result! You thus believe in the acausal as per the sense I’m using it in here.

Yes, I have my own particular theories about how magickal energies operate, entities interacting with magicians, etc. But it is a serious misunderstanding to imagine that you must sign up for every last one of Othaos’ crazy metaphysical beliefs before you can call your spiritual doings “acausal,” or to disown the word because “I just want to do magick with my own energies instead of joining some weird Nythra cult.”

Refusing the term because it’s a Niner term is fair enough. But refusing it for a reason like “my magick uses nature instead of entities” seems obtuse. Can you explain the exact earthly mechanism by which your workings produce a verifiable result? I promise you that you cannot. No explicable cause = acausal. You know, like religious people believe in. No, you aren’t going to die because you have something in common with them.

IV) Acausal workings of magick

When it comes to magick, a disciplined will using impactful means to manipulate sufficient energy will secure the desired result. But all of these parameters can vary widely whilst still arriving at a successful working. Sustained effort over time and concentrated release can both count as “disciplined.” Ancient symbolism and personally-meaningful narratives can both be “impactful means.” “Energy” can be one’s own, another living being’s, a discarnate entity’s, or the ambience lingering at a specific location.

Two conclusions I draw from this are:

• By all means delve into ancestral traditions if immersive reconstructionism is inspiring to you. But there is no inherent superiority to “what the Egyptians / Greeks / Norse / etc. did” magickal-practice wise. Everything was “made up” by someone at some point. So why not do as they did in your own time & culture?
• I sympathize with dismissiveness toward “put X herb under your pillow and it will have Y effect” -type magick. In the absence of diligently-applied will, it is basically just superstition. However, I think there is all kinds of pagan magick dismissed as “arts-and-crafty” that can be magickally-efficacious if the principles of will and energy I mentioned above are applied. Dismissing this whole milieu as “girls doing unserious things” suggests a narrow-mindedness and lazy sexism unbecoming of a magician.

As a Chaos Magician, I’m able to perceive fundamentals of magickal principle in a variety of practices. I accordingly think it’s vastly more useful to a magician’s personal evolution to experiment broadly than draw arbitrary lines re: one approach to magick is valid and another isn’t. On the causal front, there are many ways to make magick psychologically and aesthetically efficacious. And on the acausal front, there are many ways to achieve results via the application of will to energy.

Concluding thoughts

Yes, as an esoteric practitioner, I see magick as an acausal art. However, I believe all people possess some degree of esoteric potential. I also believe part of my purpose lies in assisting those who wish to cultivate this. Toward that end, I think it’s good to encourage more people to experiment with magick. If all they achieve is an improved measure of psychological well-being and a sense of wonder, that is still worth something.

Naturally, my ideal does entail getting people to go beyond this. And it seems to me that such going-beyond is too-often derailed by the budding magician’s unwillingness to be honest with themselves about their experiences. It’s here unhelpful to rationalize the synchronicities magick produces via undiscovered-principle-this, string-theory-that. A Satanist is not a herd animal; therefore, a Satanist shouldn’t require social approval bought with pseudoscientific coinage as a precondition of engaging in practices that one experiences as self-empowering. There’s hence no reason to blush at the label “acausal”. Yes, I use that word to evoke spiritual realities, but in this context it is more just saying “I’ve experienced mysteries, and I have no need to dumb them down into your secular categories to win your approval of them.”

A further pitfall to avoid is the association of particular magickal approaches with particular social groups, getting caught in status-game jockeying of group vs. group instead of attending to the actual business of doing magick. I consider it wisest here to ignore personalities and ideologies, and attend instead to principles and techniques. Who cares how ancient it is, who else is doing it and their credentials, etc.? Ask instead: does it work and what can I learn from it?

Thoughts? Let me know in the comments.