[Help] How Should I Approach Magic in a Scientific World?

[Durward]

The problem is your premise. Science doesn't know how consciousness or the placebo effect work, either. But they seem to be repeatable under certain conditions. But we genuinely don't know exactly why some things make people lose consciousness and not others.

Does that invalidate study of those things? Of course not. Science is a process. It's not a collection of settled fact.

Magic is poorly studied, often due to bias on the part of people who study it rarely, and only to "debunk" it, starting with a bias against it. Plenty of studies have happened that prove psi abilities not only exist, but that their effects are statistically significant and repeatable - if you believe in them. That last part is usually the critical factor that scientists neglect when replicating studies, then get null results and claim they did the experiment right (to other people also looking to "debunk" something and ignoring the obvious error) and it's just one more example of bias and subjectivity on the part of scientists.

I can debunk the sun is real by doing experiments meant to observe the sun at midnight every night. Doesn't mean it's correct, it means I have a bias that prevents me from doing the study in a way that is how an expert in the field of knowing how the sun works would also tell me is going to yield observations.

Magic, which is the power of intent to shape our world and experience in it, is very much real. And you don't need to call it magic to see the effects. But not knowing the method by which some people focus and use their intent, science only searches for slight of hand or charlatanism because that's the only thing they know how to observe.

Did you know that 100 scientists signed a scathing letter about the Theory of Relatively, demanding that Einstein retract such a clearly preposterous piece of fantasy? That's the scientific consensus for you - human emotion and subjectivity. They were all prominent researchers who were wrong AF. There's a lit review from which you can start.

Sounds like we actually agree on certain things, and you may have missed my point, which is simply that some people are meant to be dreamwalkers, and not anything else. Others will never be dreamwalkers, they just are not cut out for it. The majority of people are simply bat shit crazy and delusional, or mentally ill. That is a serious fact of this subject matter.
It is about the individual, and the skills of each individual. You can practice some magickal practice your whole life and never have any success, because a bird isn't a turtle, and we don't all have the same skills or energetic configurations. It is as simple as that.

Where you went with the science aspect, yes and no to your statements. I have followed and studied the science aspect of many Psi phenomena experiments that went well, and the huge pile of failures. And it all points to the skilled practitioner as the key ingredient. The very common mental health issues of those who are off kilter is what leads to most of the failed attempts, and poor science results. People who are deranged trying to perform for actual science, when most of what they do is hallucination or imagination. They waste everyone's time and they exist everywhere.
Another failure of science is taking 150 students in a local college to test something. This is a perfect example of scientists not understanding the basic and necessary ingredient, which is someone who actually can do something, a skilled person that has control over their abilities. Even then, the setting has to be correct, since it is now obvious that a solar flare can actually block even a skilled person. So the failure is also not understanding the proper setting, with all the proper ingredients in place.

Psi phenomena will never dance to any other music than it's own, and science has to come to that party to study it.

We have enough proof of multiple Psi events, and human control and influence of multiple things, and most of these things make sense from many different hypothetical and theoretical points of view. Trying to keep this in a secret magical box is coming to an end, perhaps slowly. When we do have explanations, the closet practitioners are usually the first to cry about it. Not updating your common sense and logic is a bad sign that you have lost your ability to use critical thinking. Preferring magical explanations when there are perfectly reasonable physics explanations is another way to feed your own bias. So bias goes both ways, and the losers of that challenge are always the superstitions and fake-believe nonsense followers.

However, my statement is always 'Prove It' for a reason, and that reason is that we have way too many people with mental health issues or delusions that think they, or others, can do things they seriously can't. These people should not be instructing, or writing books, or speaking out like they are authorities, when all most of them need are serious medications.

There are likely other forums for the DND or LARP folks and their fantasy poser roles. I do consider the inability to separate fantasy from reality an illness.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

Success in magic is perceived as luck - luck does not cause magic

 

[Durward]

Success in magic is perceived as luck - luck does not cause magic

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[Swampdweller900]

And it all points to the skilled practitioner as the key ingredient.

I think we agree on most points as you say, though certainly not all. Case in point, that the person is key. It seems like you're saying as a sort of natural talent. Psi abilities or magic use can be learned, and while some people have a natural talent or ability, I would guess that the ratios are about the same as people who have a natural propensity towards language or psychical strength or coordination, etc. Some people can learn or be taught without seeming to have a natural strength, and get quite good. Some people might never get good despite a lot of effort.

IMO, it's a bit reversed. We see skilled practitioners that stand out to the point they go on TV and gain media attention.

A skilled practitioner is key to replicability or study the same way that if it was a study to find out what is the absolute maximum weight a human can lift, asking 200 18-25 year old college students will not get you the same result as 50 gym rats, and certainly not the same as looking at the world's top 10 power lifters. The problem is that scientific study of magic or psi seems to chose the first option and throw a gym rat that steps forward into the mix, and can't figure out why they get the results they get.

But let's also recall that a scientific method that is often not sensitive to understanding how magic or psi works doesn't know how to test it. If you watched the Korean show Physical 100, it's looking for the "ideal body" by running people through tests. The guys that lift tons of weight and ended up going fairly far don't do well at the very first task, hanging from a scaffold. Many drop almost immediately because they don't train for THAT exactly, and also their weight works against them. Similarly, scientific studies are the blind leading the blind, and the Amazing Randy leveraged this specifically for his own notoriety. He designed "tests" that only experts would know were guaranteed to fail. Only fools, egotists, and amateurs would attempt them, and always fail. To an unwitting audience, he "tested' the abilities.

Also worth noting is that a skilled practitioner has confidence they can do what they will do. Society does a lot of work to tell most people that what we do doesn't exist, that it's fraud or fake or lies. To the point that IIRC, one experiment on thought affecting a random number generator showed some people negatively affected the outcomes, because those people believed it wouldn't work so hard that they pushed the average down, not up as they were told to do for the experiment.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

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I read that and it is very interesting - some sensible advice. The interesting one is "use your intuition" and then one example he gives is a guy who listened to his intuition and decided not to get on a plane - then the plane crashed. So, Mr. Wiseman, how did you think that worked in your sceptical outlook? Can people subconsciously 'cold read' aeroplanes now?

 

[Durward]

I read that and it is very interesting - some sensible advice. The interesting one is "use your intuition" and then one example he gives is a guy who listened to his intuition and decided not to get on a plane - then the plane crashed. So, Mr. Wiseman, how did you think that worked in your sceptical outlook? Can people subconsciously 'cold read' aeroplanes now?

I was also told by another researcher that Wiseman's study was shot down as being totally unscientific and that he fudged the results. I haven't dug deeper into that, but it is tragic that we have to get involved in proving or disproving studies and papers. I guess it goes with the territory.

Post automatically merged: Thursday at 3:03 PM

one experiment on thought affecting a random number generator

I remember that test, and others, and it is super interesting that certain people will actually block others. They can be so negative that they actually block Psi skill, and yes, that does include some scientists.
Dean Radin and others have pointed out that this factor has been measured and shows that they push it so far that it is on the other side of the spectrum, and thus beyond chance. So by blocking it with their own energy or skill, they are showing that it actually does work.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

I was also told by another researcher that Wiseman's study was shot down as being totally unscientific and that he fudged the results. I haven't dug deeper into that, but it is tragic that we have to get involved in proving or disproving studies and papers. I guess it goes with the territory.

I was just curious to see where his conclusions matched - or did not match - with mine. I will look for comments on his research...

I remember that test, and others, and it is super interesting that certain people will actually block others. They can be so negative that they actually block Psi skill, and yes, that does include some scientists.
Dean Radin and others have pointed out that this factor has been measured and shows that they push it so far that it is on the other side of the spectrum, and thus beyond chance. So by blocking it with their own energy or skill, they are showing that it actually does work.

The way I see it, everyone has the ability to affect the outcome, because when the outcome is over, everyone has to agree on what the outcome was. The only way to overcome this 'experimenter effect' is to have more people on the 'positive' side to outweigh the negative. Think of a tug-of-war, and how many people are on each end of the rope

 

[cormundum]

Ignore so-called "science" in favor of the reality. Go full Medieval.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

Ignore so-called "science" in favor of the reality. Go full Medieval.

Pfft. I wouldn't have lasted ten seconds in medieval times.

 

[cormundum]

Pfft. I wouldn't have lasted ten seconds in medieval times.

Their sense of science was a lot more real than ours. A fusion of Medieval scientific systems (astrology, humoral medicine) and modern knowledge (quantum mechanics, slightly more advanced than basic physics) leads to a pretty integrated system for handling everything.

 

[Roger Bacon]

Sounds like we actually agree on certain things, and you may have missed my point, which is simply that some people are meant to be dreamwalkers, and not anything else. Others will never be dreamwalkers, they just are not cut out for it. The majority of people are simply bat shit crazy and delusional, or mentally ill. That is a serious fact of this subject matter.
It is about the individual, and the skills of each individual. You can practice some magickal practice your whole life and never have any success, because a bird isn't a turtle, and we don't all have the same skills or energetic configurations. It is as simple as that.

Where you went with the science aspect, yes and no to your statements. I have followed and studied the science aspect of many Psi phenomena experiments that went well, and the huge pile of failures. And it all points to the skilled practitioner as the key ingredient. The very common mental health issues of those who are off kilter is what leads to most of the failed attempts, and poor science results. People who are deranged trying to perform for actual science, when most of what they do is hallucination or imagination. They waste everyone's time and they exist everywhere.
Another failure of science is taking 150 students in a local college to test something. This is a perfect example of scientists not understanding the basic and necessary ingredient, which is someone who actually can do something, a skilled person that has control over their abilities. Even then, the setting has to be correct, since it is now obvious that a solar flare can actually block even a skilled person. So the failure is also not understanding the proper setting, with all the proper ingredients in place.

Psi phenomena will never dance to any other music than it's own, and science has to come to that party to study it.

We have enough proof of multiple Psi events, and human control and influence of multiple things, and most of these things make sense from many different hypothetical and theoretical points of view. Trying to keep this in a secret magical box is coming to an end, perhaps slowly. When we do have explanations, the closet practitioners are usually the first to cry about it. Not updating your common sense and logic is a bad sign that you have lost your ability to use critical thinking. Preferring magical explanations when there are perfectly reasonable physics explanations is another way to feed your own bias. So bias goes both ways, and the losers of that challenge are always the superstitions and fake-believe nonsense followers.

I'm interested, would you be able to name some of these proofs that you would consider firm evidence?

However, my statement is always 'Prove It' for a reason, and that reason is that we have way too many people with mental health issues or delusions that think they, or others, can do things they seriously can't. These people should not be instructing, or writing books, or speaking out like they are authorities, when all most of them need are serious medications.

There are likely other forums for the DND or LARP folks and their fantasy poser roles. I do consider the inability to separate fantasy from reality an illness.

This makes me very interested in your opinion, could you answer these three questions? I'm new, but please don't think I'm trying to entrap you in a scientific debate, I'm just genuinely curious about this subject.

What do you consider magic?
What are the observable effects that would indicate to you that magic has been done?
Where would you draw the lines of what is a realistic expectation to achieve and what lies purely in the realm of fantasy?

 

[Robert Ramsay]

Their sense of science was a lot more real than ours. A fusion of Medieval scientific systems (astrology, humoral medicine) and modern knowledge (quantum mechanics, slightly more advanced than basic physics) leads to a pretty integrated system for handling everything.

sorry man, but I can't see what you've said here as anything other than complete nonsense.

"Their sense of science" - the scientific method had not yet been rediscovered from Greek times.

"Astrology" is a system, but not a scientific one.

"Humoral medicine" bears as much resemblance to actual medicine as homeopathy does.

"Quantum mechanics slightly more advanced than basic physics" - I don't even know where to start with this one.

"leads to a pretty integrated system" - how would you even integrate humoral medicine and quantum physics? Unless you just pulled it as whole cloth out of your arse.

Build your own magical system, your own ways of working, but please don't try and pretend it's science if you're going to talk about it like this.

 

[cormundum]

sorry man, but I can't see what you've said here as anything other than complete nonsense.

"Their sense of science" - the scientific method had not yet been rediscovered from Greek times.

"Astrology" is a system, but not a scientific one.

"Humoral medicine" bears as much resemblance to actual medicine as homeopathy does.

"Quantum mechanics slightly more advanced than basic physics" - I don't even know where to start with this one.

"leads to a pretty integrated system" - how would you even integrate humoral medicine and quantum physics? Unless you just pulled it as whole cloth out of your arse.

Build your own magical system, your own ways of working, but please don't try and pretend it's science if you're going to talk about it like this.

Idk whose head is in whose ass, but it sure isn't mine.

In this household, humoral medicine works (ask the Chinese if you won't believe your own ancestors), astrology is a science (obviously, horary astrology is hands-down the most accurate divination system on the planet), quantum mechanics is just scientized theistic Monism (intentionally misreading my comment to mean quantum physics is only slightly more advanced THAN basic physics, rather than a separate category is quite unbefitting a man of your scientific integrity), and Christ is King (again, proof is in the pudding).

 

[Robert Ramsay]

Idk whose head is in whose ass, but it sure isn't mine.

In this household, humoral medicine works (ask the Chinese if you won't believe your own ancestors), astrology is a science (obviously, horary astrology is hands-down the most accurate divination system on the planet), quantum mechanics is just scientized theistic Monism (intentionally misreading my comment to mean quantum physics is only slightly more advanced THAN basic physics, rather than a separate category is quite unbefitting a man of your scientific integrity), and Christ is King (again, proof is in the pudding).

In that case we're going to have to agree to disagree by 180 degrees.

 

[Durward]

I'm interested, would you be able to name some of these proofs that you would consider firm evidence?
What do you consider magic?
What are the observable effects that would indicate to you that magic has been done?
Where would you draw the lines of what is a realistic expectation to achieve and what lies purely in the realm of fantasy?

A simple starter book would be:

Evidence for Psi: Thirteen Empirical Research Reports
(2014), edited by Damien Broderick and Ben Goertzel, compiles peer-reviewed studies supporting the existence of psi phenomena (psychic, or anomalous, cognition). The book presents rigorous, statistically-based evidence, including studies on telepathy, remote viewing, precognition, and mind-matter interaction.

I agree with this definition

Real magic is defined as the use of consciousness, intention, and focus to influence the physical world, often manifesting as phenomena like telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis. It is considered a hidden power within individuals, or a natural force bridging psychology and physics. Key categories include mental influence over physical reality, perception of distant events, and interaction with nonphysical entities.

A very basic observable effect is moving an object using psychokinesis, it is obvious, and has immediate and obvious results.
I think you may want more of a magical practice example. However, I'm not a fan or practitioner of waving magic wands or athames and speaking incantations to get things accomplished. I have never met anyone that has any actual, veridical success with that. Using the common practice of influencing events, or improving health, or love spells, as examples, all of those would be too soft of a target to prove anything to me. Chance outcomes are not the best evidence. Anything that could have happened anyway, and are not clearly stated in advance, are likely just cherry picking bias. I could easily say, do it again, and they can't repeat it.
An example of veridical magic, to me, is like when I said (so I announced it in advance with a specific goal), "I will put that man to sleep using my powers" and focused all my energy on him, gathering a heavy fog of every memory I had of what it felt like to fall asleep and be really tired. I then moved that energy into him, and he falls face first into the card table, cards still in his hand, and did not wake up from the impact.
There was a price to pay for doing that, but it worked. That man then died a few years later with a brain tumor. Did I cause that? I can't say. But I won't be doing that to anyone else without knowing for sure.

What is realistic? Hmmm, tough call. I know that all depends on someone's personal skill and how much energy they can utilize. So I think it is realistic to think that precognition is a skill and some can achieve that. Telepathy is a skill. Remote viewing is a skill. Astral projection and lucid dreaming. Everything along these lines should be achievable if someone has any skills. I see that the Chinese are seriously testing a woman that can teleport objects, which I never thought would become a thing, but obviously she has convinced someone she can.

What kinds of powers do the other forum readers think are achievable?

Hey, the main thing is not to close your mind off completely and only believe the scientists that have already checked things. Most of the experiments are not set up the way I would have set them up, and are sometimes pretty blind to what I think they should be testing. These same scientists are not just reporting, but are also trying to steer how they think these things are possible, instead of asking the practitioner or skilled person what they think.

 

[h4rrow]

Re the disagreement above, I feel it's a question of whether science is a historically specific (therefore originating from a specific locale), unique category of thought—or if it's a universal (historically unbounded, present somewhere in all human cultures always) process whereby a body of known knowledge advances amidst a field of unknown via cognition.

I'm pulling from Lionel Snell's 4 directional compass for human activity (expounded in SSOTBME). Because it's a compass, Snell points out that all 4 human activities (magic, art, religon, science) contain shades of each other and are employed in different concentrations by different people, such that any given group of people doing 'the same thing' (eg sport boating) might be making art of it, making magic with it, making it a science, making it their religion.

In the universal case, religion is a similarly bounded field of knowledge amidst a field of unknown, but is 'filled in' cognitively rather than advanced cognitively, and is achieved in the first place through an experience of intuition (internal 'revelation', or internal felt as external) rather than sensation. In the universal case, science can also be said to be compatible with magic since they're the basic combinations of elements that can be employed in any given activity and its body of thought. Durward above is an example of a greater concentration of 'scientific approach' than 'magical approach' within the same general activity of magical practice—other people's practices might be entirely soft and non-veridical, and this is fine and still 'magical practice' in itself, with a greater concentration of 'magical approach' (per Snell's compass model). It just isn't Durward's magic—we each make every activity we do our own, to everyone's chagrin.

I feel, for unexplored reasons, that the above statement of science and magic being compatible can't be said to be true if science is historically specific and 'discovered' rather than intrinsic to human use of consciousness. Perhaps that's the crux of this whole thread—as well as our temporal locale wherein I see magic is typically maligned by 'the crowd' speaking on science's behalf.

 

[Durward]

Re the disagreement above, I feel it's a question of whether science is a historically specific (therefore originating from a specific locale), unique category of thought—or if it's a universal (historically unbounded, present somewhere in all human cultures always) process whereby a body of known knowledge advances amidst a field of unknown via cognition.

I'm pulling from Lionel Snell's 4 directional compass for human activity (expounded in SSOTBME). Because it's a compass, Snell points out that all 4 human activities (magic, art, religon, science) contain shades of each other and are employed in different concentrations by different people, such that any given group of people doing 'the same thing' (eg sport boating) might be making art of it, making magic with it, making it a science, making it their religion.

In the universal case, religion is a similarly bounded field of knowledge amidst a field of unknown, but is 'filled in' cognitively rather than advanced cognitively, and is achieved in the first place through an experience of intuition (internal 'revelation', or internal felt as external) rather than sensation. In the universal case, science can also be said to be compatible with magic since they're the basic combinations of elements that can be employed in any given activity and its body of thought. Durward above is an example of a greater concentration of 'scientific approach' than 'magical approach' within the same general activity of magical practice—other people's practices might be entirely soft and non-veridical, and this is fine and still 'magical practice' in itself, with a greater concentration of 'magical approach' (per Snell's compass model). It just isn't Durward's magic—we each make every activity we do our own, to everyone's chagrin.

I feel, for unexplored reasons, that the above statement of science and magic being compatible can't be said to be true if science is historically specific and 'discovered' rather than intrinsic to human use of consciousness. Perhaps that's the crux of this whole thread—as well as our temporal locale wherein I see magic is typically maligned by 'the crowd' speaking on science's behalf.

Results are the only thing that really matters, science or not.
Not fantasy results, or seeing synchronicity where there is nothing but wishful thinking or imagination, or popularity contests.
Most everything popular ends up being a rabbit hole draining energy with very little to show for it.
What can people really do or accomplish? That is the measure.
Not sure where I was going with that, but it boiled up from the depths, so it was likely meant for someone.

 

[Roger Bacon]

A simple starter book would be:

Evidence for Psi: Thirteen Empirical Research Reports
(2014), edited by Damien Broderick and Ben Goertzel, compiles peer-reviewed studies supporting the existence of psi phenomena (psychic, or anomalous, cognition). The book presents rigorous, statistically-based evidence, including studies on telepathy, remote viewing, precognition, and mind-matter interaction.

Thanks, I'll give it a read.

A very basic observable effect is moving an object using psychokinesis, it is obvious, and has immediate and obvious results.
I think you may want more of a magical practice example. However, I'm not a fan or practitioner of waving magic wands or athames and speaking incantations to get things accomplished. I have never met anyone that has any actual, veridical success with that. Using the common practice of influencing events, or improving health, or love spells, as examples, all of those would be too soft of a target to prove anything to me. Chance outcomes are not the best evidence. Anything that could have happened anyway, and are not clearly stated in advance, are likely just cherry picking bias. I could easily say, do it again, and they can't repeat it.
An example of veridical magic, to me, is like when I said (so I announced it in advance with a specific goal), "I will put that man to sleep using my powers" and focused all my energy on him, gathering a heavy fog of every memory I had of what it felt like to fall asleep and be really tired. I then moved that energy into him, and he falls face first into the card table, cards still in his hand, and did not wake up from the impact.
There was a price to pay for doing that, but it worked. That man then died a few years later with a brain tumor. Did I cause that? I can't say. But I won't be doing that to anyone else without knowing for sure.

What is realistic? Hmmm, tough call. I know that all depends on someone's personal skill and how much energy they can utilize. So I think it is realistic to think that precognition is a skill and some can achieve that. Telepathy is a skill. Remote viewing is a skill. Astral projection and lucid dreaming. Everything along these lines should be achievable if someone has any skills. I see that the Chinese are seriously testing a woman that can teleport objects, which I never thought would become a thing, but obviously she has convinced someone she can.

What kinds of powers do the other forum readers think are achievable?

Hey, the main thing is not to close your mind off completely and only believe the scientists that have already checked things. Most of the experiments are not set up the way I would have set them up, and are sometimes pretty blind to what I think they should be testing. These same scientists are not just reporting, but are also trying to steer how they think these things are possible, instead of asking the practitioner or skilled person what they think.

This is extremely interesting to me. It's people like you with healthy skepticism that stop me from writing off occultism completely as pure fantasy. I just find it so difficult to believe that, in an age of such easy documentation, any phenomena with verifiable evidence could be rejected by the scientific community at large. Especially considering that many of the accomplishments of scientific knowledge put into practice are actually more unbelievable than magic.

Personally I've dabbled in a few systems but never had any results whatsoever. In the past I've read Bardon's IIH, Kraig's Modern Magic, Bruce's Astral Dynamics, and a few others besides. Probably I did not give any of them the time that would be required, but a problem I've had in the past is that it's difficult to devote a lot of time and effort into something that I don't see a concrete probability of success with. It's a bit of a catch 22.

I'd like to know what recommendations you would make as a starting point for developing any of the skills you mentioned above? (except lucid dreaming, it's a bit mundane as far as occult abilities go) What system did you start with, how long did it take for you to have noticeable results, and would you recommend the system or prefer another in its place?

 

[h4rrow]

Results are the only thing that really matters, science or not.
Not fantasy results, or seeing synchronicity where there is nothing but wishful thinking or imagination, or popularity contests.
Most everything popular ends up being a rabbit hole draining energy with very little to show for it.
What can people really do or accomplish? That is the measure.
Not sure where I was going with that, but it boiled up from the depths, so it was likely meant for someone.

I agree. For myself, my own life and view of it, I'm not sure what magic or magical practice is; but I think for a lot of people, practice either involves framing what magic can be very narrowly, or they don't say out loud the absurd experiences or accomplishments they've had beyond the narrow framing.

That said, I wouldn't have gotten my foot in the door without the 'soft' stuff, and I feel that even allowing myself to open to magic in that way has been crucial for actually experiencing anything. Leaving aside ontological shock, if I had began thinking, and wanting, that I could experience some far cry from beyond mundanity, I likely would have not. Aiming for results without desiring them—or, doing without end-gaining, to use an Alexander Technique perspective—is difficult for me, maybe less so for the talented.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

Re the disagreement above, I feel it's a question of whether science is a historically specific (therefore originating from a specific locale), unique category of thought—or if it's a universal (historically unbounded, present somewhere in all human cultures always) process whereby a body of known knowledge advances amidst a field of unknown via cognition.

Ideally, it's supposed to be the latter. Obviously, 'men are weak' so it's not always optimally implemented.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 4:43 PM

This is extremely interesting to me. It's people like you with healthy skepticism that stop me from writing off occultism completely as pure fantasy. I just find it so difficult to believe that, in an age of such easy documentation, any phenomena with verifiable evidence could be rejected by the scientific community at large. Especially considering that many of the accomplishments of scientific knowledge put into practice are actually more unbelievable than magic.

My personal thought is there is no decent model that has been accepted, and can account for these abilities and still be compatible with the incredibly successful science that we have.

Without such a model, we can't begin to fashion testable hypotheses, let alone create a theory of magic.