Magick

Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur

Petronius

What is magick? And why do we spell it with a ‘k’? Magick is the understanding of and interaction with the world through story. This is as contrasted to science. Science is the understanding of and interaction with the world through fact. The human mind thinks in stories, and for that reason magick is useful. The human mind has many blindspots due to evolving to think in stories. Science can see these blindspots. This makes science useful.

So what is magick? Magic is hacking reality. Making fire is the first Magic. Stealing the gift that the gods bestow. Making it for yourself before you had to wait for the grace of the Gods and the capricious lightning. Magick is not the chemical reaction that is combustion. Magick is the story that allowed humans to learn and master that chemical reaction and transmit that mastery down through generations. Magick is seeing the world through a lens that makes the enormity of the universe into a manageable thing. Magick is telling a story that transmits an entire culture to the next generation, folded up into a narrative fractal. Magick is using narrative to change the world.

deic·tic
/ˈdīktik/
LINGUISTICS adjective
relating to or denoting a word or expression whose meaning is dependent on the context in which it is used.
noun
a deictic word or expression.

Our definition of magick, and our practice of magick draws from a number of sources. Savvy readers will recognize influence of Austin Osman Spare, Kenneth Grant, Peter Carroll, Robert Anton Wilson, Ray Sherwin, William S. Burroughs, Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, and the unavoidable imprint of Aleister Crowley. In addition to these influences, readers may also notice the influence of authors Warren Ellis, Salman Rushdie, Daniel Quinn, Thomas King, and Ursula Vernon.

So what is all of this? All of this is a toolkit. All of this is a way of interacting with the world that exists in your head, and bending your cognitive biases and mental blind spots to your own advantage.

Stories

The human mind evolved in a way that makes it uniquely suited to think in stories. And magic is linked to story. Magic is indeed the art of understanding and interacting with the world through story. To understand story is to understand magic.

The shamMAN Manifesto

Craft Brew Magick

Magic is yin to science’s yang. And every practitioner of magic uses the art in their own way. Craft Brew Magick is the practice created by Professor Harbinger, and offered to his free thinking cultists as a template which they can use to craft their own practice.

Recommended Reading

  • Advanced Magic for Beginners, by Alan Chapman
  • Condensed Chaos, by Phil Hine
  • Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, by David Abram
  • People and the Sky: Our Ancestors And The Cosmos, by Anthony Aveni