"Worshiping statues" Hmmm.
On a technical level, sure, Mind Metaphysics magic required none of physical materia magica of sorcery / traditional magic - all those offerings, tools, ritual timings, icons, statues, incense - but it also comes from a worldview that turns reductive very quickly when used as the only tool to look at other forms of magic.
There is no rule in magic that says we have to stick with just one operative model. Right now there are two big models still jockeying for space inside people's skulls, and we have not reached a consensus and agreed upon language , or parlance, to usefully talk about them.
So much energy online is expended trying to justify and "prove" each one, but I see them both as additive and complementary rather than subtractive and competing. I hope others join me here over time.
Modern magic has an uneasy, unresolved tension between Idealism (the mind-first Neoplatonic view) and Relationalism (the spirit-first animist view). Calling animism 'worshiping statues' is like calling a phone call 'worshiping a plastic rectangle' and completely misses the idea that there is a person on the other end of the line. (What that seeming person "awkshully is" I leave an open question for one's own experimentation.)
In the past 20 years, there's been a huge model shift in the online magical zeitgeist. Until recently the typical operative model for magicians was a almost purely the vertical, Neoplatonic top-down model that dominated Western Esotericism - Christianity, Hermeticism, Christian Kabbalah, Golden Dawn, and Thelema, and from there Wicca, and Neopaganism - going back centuries. What has become know as "Psychological Magic."
In this view, everything is an emanation of God, or The One. (There are many names here, The Field . The Source, but these concepts still lurking and coloring ones thinking unless identified and re-blanaced.) Therefore the gods and spirits are seen as 'archetypes' or 'faculties of the human mind.' The practitioner is the center of the universe. Spirits are treated as software to be programmed, or as 'egregores.' Taken too far, it can become world-denying. If the goal is to ascend back to the Source (by whatever name , Azathoth, God, or the gods) then the physical world (and its statues, rocks, and trees) becomes a distraction or a 'lower' rung on the ladder on you way to Ascension into the Pluroima, or UFO Hive Mind, or whatever fills that conceptual pot in you vertical ladder model.
So now we have an uneasy mix with a competing (or complementary, in my opinion) worldviews with other, new (but actually older) kid on the block: the Animist Horizontal model. This is the shamanic / indigenous view that is very very old, going back, I feel, to the first magician. It treats the world as a community of persons, not as a ladder to be climbed. Only some of these persons are human. Here sovereignty is shared. A mountain, a storm, or a statue isn't just a symbol (well it is, but it depends and where you are in relation to it) but a neighbor with its own agency, history, and personality. The practitioner is a negotiator, a diplomat. Magic is about reciprocity (giving to get) rather than just willpower.
In my view, the it's only 'flaw' - because I am still a Neoplatonist at heart - is that it can become Universal Consciousness denying. If you focus entirely on the local spirit of the woods, and elevate them in you head to god-like status - you might lose the big picture (however you call it. I call it God, Love, and Infinite Compassion intermingled with Infinite Freedom) that Neoplatonism / Hemeticsm provides.
Modern pagans struggle here because they can’t quite pick a lane. They really want to 'own' the vibe of animism, calling themselves shamans -c but they still use the tools of Neoplatonism. I love me some Neoplatonic Mind Magic, like New Thought, but I see it as operating within a shared community of minds, some human, some not.
States and offering are absolutely not required in magic of Pure Mind. That is you and The Mystery , The Infinite, mediated through you personal Logos ( again Neoplatonic operative worldview in action) - but they they are incredibly useful when entreating disembodied minds who might come to see those painted eyes on a statue as their eyes, and those hands as their hands - the same way a land spirit perceives a grove to be its body, or a Naga sees a sacred pool of water as itself - and woe be to those who swim in their body without permission. Ritual here becomes as relating to the world and person around you, not just activating you jedi mind powers - but giving gifts. It jut something we humans do.
(Just a quick note. Though the Neoplatonist Iamblichus, from whom we get many of our approaches, would correct us that 'gift' and ritual gear have a place in Neoplatonism, he stands in opposition to the purely philosophical Neoplatonic schools by insisting on the necessity of ritual and theurgic 'materia.')
