Magic - art, science, or..?

[Haqim]

"Magic is the art and science of causing change to occur in conformity with will." - everybody knows this famous quote.

But what is Your opinion?
Is magic art?
Is magic science?
Or both of them, as the quote says?

Maybe there's a third option - magic is neither an art, nor a science.
It's called "magic" for a reason.
It's the other side of the coin, the "dark territory", the "unseen" part of reality and of human existence.

I think the chaos magical approach is fascinating: the manifested Universe is the Order (and the realm of science and all of its laws), while there is the magical Chaos, the root of Order.
(And there is the aether, the connection between them, of course.)

So is magic science, art, or something else?

P.S.: Please don't fight!

[Matrozs]

Science needs to be studied;
Art needs to be practiced and admired;

All sciences are inovations of mathematics;*
All arts are projection of ones soul;

Magick is both and neither;


* debatable

P.S: This ended quite poetical;

[RoseRed]

I think the science is in understanding the underlying principles behind magic. The art is in the skillful wielding of it.

[Eremita]

I think magic is an art, because two people doing precisely the same thing may experience different results. One may not experience any results at all. This is why there are so many different magical systems, and not every system works for every practitioner.

On the other hand, if certain processes can be said to reliably produce certain publicly observable results, there may be scientific processes at work, but this doesn't seem to be the case to any significant degree - which is the reason that the occult is not accepted in the world of science.

I don't think even Crowley considered magic a science, notwithstanding that quote - he simply wanted to attempt to practice magic from a scientific point of view, which is admirable and, in my opinion, the logical future of occultism. He wanted to find and examine what works. "The method of Science, the aim of Religion", as the OTO say. Before Crowley came along, magic was commonly referred to simply as The Art.

[Haelos]

Magick, like Music, is both an art and science.
You can make music that sounds good, or sounds bad, but either way it has an effect. It's all a matter of your skill in using it.

There are technical formulas for making sure music will always sound good, and the same is true with making magick work.

What makes it an art is that those formulas are completely unneeded to create something beautiful. Just as often, those formulas are completely thrown out the window for the sake of innovation, and the result can be just as amazing.

[Haqim]

Thank you, gentlemen, for all these interesting answers!

[frackture]

Magick, like Music, is both an art and science.
You can make music that sounds good, or sounds bad, but either way it has an effect. It's all a matter of your skill in using it.

There are technical formulas for making sure music will always sound good, and the same is true with making magick work.

What makes it an art is that those formulas are completely unneeded to create something beautiful. Just as often, those formulas are completely thrown out the window for the sake of innovation, and the result can be just as amazing.

I agree completely with you.
I just want to add a little thing, it might be controversial but anyways...

I think that music is Science always, and art sometimes :p

Music is Science because it has set rules, and its Art because it needs a creative approach (a singularity of the composer) to create them. I know that if I play in sequence an E minor, an F major and a G major that will sound good. But that alone isn't art. To be Art I have to give to the music something that represents my voice as a human, (with honesty I might add). So following the rules blindly does not lead to a creation.

I think magic in the same way.

[Desecrated]

Make an observation - Piano has keys that sound when you push them.
Ask a question (state a tes) - Does sound come when you push the key?
Hypothesis - Pushing the keys leads to sound.
Experiment - Push the key
Show your data - Sound came out
Hypothesis confirmed.

show your work to other scientist.
They repeat it.
Same result.
Hypothesis is now an accepted theory.

[Hadit]

Magic is willful change, simple as that.

[Haelos]

Thank you Desecrated for highlighting second grade Science Class for us.
A hypothesis *is* a theory. Your statement is redundant.

And Hadit makes a very good point.
Magick is very easy to define.

[Desecrated]

Thank you Desecrated for highlighting second grade Science Class for us.
A hypothesis *is* a theory. Your statement is redundant.

And Hadit makes a very good point.
Magick is very easy to define.

Yes, that always happens when you try and explain something as simple as possible.

A hypothesis and theory is not the same:
"A hypothesis is an attempt to explain phenomena. It is a proposal, a guess used to understand and/or predict something. A theory is the result of testing a hypothesis "

" A theory arises from repeated observation and testing and incorporates facts, laws, predictions, and tested hypotheses that are widely accepted."

[Desecrated]

My extended point was that science is nothing else then how to think about a problem. magic is not science, but you can use scientific methods to observe and test magic.
Same thing with music or any other art.
But just because you can explain something in scientific terms does not make it scientific or a science.

[Stukov]

Desecrated is correct here, and was what I was going to say. I think more empirical study of "magick" needs to occur, but the problem is without an objective way to measure phenomenon like we can with the physical world. I've seen some people try it, but they often make take logical jumps beyond what the evidence provides and ignore other possible answers.

[Hadit]

My extended point was that science is nothing else then how to think about a problem. magic is not science, but you can use scientific methods to observe and test magic.
Same thing with music or any other art.
But just because you can explain something in scientific terms does not make it scientific or a science.

Exactly. We can hypothesize, test, gather data, etc with magic and in fact that's the only way to make a truly successful, personal system. Yet it is a wholly personally and mostly subjective process, which is not the case with science.

[Shinichi]

Magick is a Science when it is exercised as the study of natural phenomena via Metaphysics, learning all the rules and principles that explain the how behind what Magick does.

Magick is an Art when it is exercised as a traditional method of self-improvement and personal development. In the same way Martial Arts utilizes the skills and talents of War in order to develop oneself to be stronger and better, The Art of Magick utilizes the skills and talents of Metaphysics in order to develop oneself to be stronger and better.

Magick is a Craft when it is exercised as a traditional method of weaving and changing nature according to the intentions of the Craftsman. In the same way that a Woodworker or a Metalworker uses his skills upon the raw materials of nature in order to carve and weave a new creation of artistic or practical value, so too does the Magickworker use their skills and the raw materials of nature in order to carve and weave their own vision into the world.

Magick, you see, is not defined as any one thing by itself. Magick is too vast and too abstract a thing to confine to a single definition. Instead, Magick, by its very nature, must always defined by the nature of the person who has it.



~:Shin:~

[asterik]

Magic - art, science, or..? Perhaps a way of Life? Both Desecrated and Shinichi gave you good insights.