C&C: Magic

I previously published a lot of these over at Catholic Stand before life started getting in the way of writing regularly; slowly republishing over here as things seem relevant. You can see the rest of the Conspiracies and Catholicism articles on this blog at this link. 

First things first:
WE ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DO MAGIC

You can’t be a Catholic witch, sorcerer, magician or magus.

Great, that was quick! See you next mon– oops.

Wait.

We’re obviously not forbidden from pulling coins out of kids’ ears or rabbits out of hats– that’s just silly, even if we call slight-of-hand “magic” I’d suspect anybody reading this realizes that is not what is meant by “magic” when we’re talking about what the Church forbids.

First things first, what does the Catechism say?

CCC 2117
All practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one’s service and have a supernatural power over others – even if this were for the sake of restoring their health – are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion. These practices are even more to be condemned when accompanied by the intention of harming someone, or when they have recourse to the intervention of demons. Wearing charms is also reprehensible. Spiritism often implies divination or magical practices; the Church for her part warns the faithful against it. Recourse to so-called traditional cures does not justify either the invocation of evil powers or the exploitation of another’s credulity.

Important and just prior, but I wanted to define “magic” first, is CCC 2115-2116:

God can reveal the future to his prophets or to other saints. Still, a sound Christian attitude consists in putting oneself confidently into the hands of Providence for whatever concerns the future, and giving up all unhealthy curiosity about it. Improvidence, however, can constitute a lack of responsibility.
All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to “unveil” the future.48 Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.

So, I’m going to slightly broaden ‘magic’ to include divination as being a sub-section of “attempt to tame occult powers to one’s service.” Someone could probably argue that’s actually over-broad, but I’m aiming for more on the safe side and really don’t expect resistance in that direction anyways.  I will now use the horrible kludge word of ObjectiveWrongMagic, to mean “attempt to tame occult powers to one’s service,” or the magic that Catholics definitely can’t do.

What is occult?

Unhelpfully, New Advent’s encyclopedia defines it as having to do with magic, or the supernatural. Alright, so what’s the supernatural? This is actually a bit more helpful: it is that which is outside of the natural order; things having to do with God, gods, demons, spirits, goblins, etc.

So ObjectiveWrongMagic must be: Outside of Nature
That means that stage magic– being slight of hand– is a totally different thing. Likewise any games that are not actually an attempt to use the supernatural– like video game mechanics, those horribly annoying “fortune telling” games from school where you do a silly chant and make embarrassing predictions, or the classic “he loves me, he loves me not” flower petal picking. (….if someone is using those with an actual intent to bind the supernatural to their service, then that intent is sinful, on the “committed adultery with her in your heart” principle.) Contrast with an ouiji board, where the whole idea is that you are “calling to the spirits.” I generally find it to be a bad idea to issue general invitations to something you don’t want to show up, although I suppose in theory someone could see it as a really silly game that taps into your sub conscious and how constantly thinking about not moving effects motor actions. There were some studies that found if you focus really, really hard on not doing something simple and immediate like “touch but do not push on a table,” you tend to do it anyways.

In born abilities often found in stories, like talking to snakes (“Parseltongue” of the Harry Potter books), telekineses (Jean Grey in the X-men series) and visions of the future or ability to see and communicate with ghosts (Odd Thomas of Dean Koontz series by the same name) would also not be of the ObjectiveWrongMagic, since they are something a person is simply born with, not an attempt to call on any outside force. Amusingly enough, while I haven’t gone back through the Harry Potter books in years, the only shown attempt by the Hogwart’s teachers to call on occult powers I can think of is notorious for being an absolute failure– Divinations Class does not work.  Even Snape’s “potions” class is just chemistry for people born with a strange skill, which makes sense for a book that is a repainted English boarding school. Begs for a paper on “the lack of functioning magic in Harry Potter.” Side note, just because something isn’t magic doesn’t mean it’s OK– curse or gun, if you kill someone it’s a big deal; binding someone with a honed natural ability is not more or less OK because it’s martial arts gestures and strength rather than those for a rare mind-based ability, and wiping someone’s mind with drugs or a hand-wave and a “these are not the droids you are looking for” is evil for entirely different reasons far beyond “magic.”

Do I really have to explain why products where “magic” is used to mean “you will be amazed how easy this is!” aren’t ObjectiveWrongMagic? How about stuff like “Black Magic Fireworks!” where it’s supposed to indicate “this is impressive and scary” or something similar? Oh, good, hate to waste the pixels needlessly.

So what IS out of bounds?

Well, the anime series “Slayers!” has a ton of by-the-book ObjectiveWrongMagic. The video up at the top is of the main character calling on a very major outside-the-natural-order power, AKA demon, to make things explode. Several of the plotlines involve studying to gain enough knowledge to have power over the supernatural forces. Arguably the Mercedes Lackey romance series, “The 500 Kingdoms,” has managed to make the magic of their fairy godmothers ObjectiveWrongMagic because they manipulate a supernatural force called the “Tradition,” which is basically Narrative Casualty.

Stepping out of stories, there’s the obvious things like trying to call up ghosts. If you come around a corner and there’s a pale, see-through guy standing there, I can’t see any problem in talking to him like any other person, but trying to get spirits to show up and answer questions? Oh my goodness, didn’t you read the article I did on demons? And the really obvious problem that you are definitely trying to bypass the natural order (dead people aren’t generally going to answer questions) to get what you want. (questions answered, to talk to your mom one more time, a thrill, whatever)

But wait, you may say, Catholics call on dead people all the time– we ask the saints to pray for this, that or the other thing. Well, asking those who are standing at the Throne to harass Himself for you is no more outside of the natural order than asking God (praying) yourself. There’s a catch, there– you’re asking. There’s actually a form of ObjectiveWrongMagic that involves trying to order the saints and angels around, to control and force rather than to ask a favor. It’s sometimes called theurgia. You don’t avoid the wrongness of trying to tame supernatural forces to your service just because you dress it up with “Saint Anthony” instead of “Oh spirit of the north wind.”  Yes, God is supernatural; so don’t try to tame Him.  (As a rather popular Christian author once wrote about a God figure– He is not a <I>tame</i> lion.)

Obviously, intention matters a lot; the whimsical prayer of “Tony, Tony, come around– there’s something lost that must be found!” is not an order to the saint, at least not any time I’ve heard it or used it– it’s a prayer and an attempt to defuse the anger that builds up when you’re flustered at not finding something with a silly chant.

It’s a very human thing, to want to be in control of everything– and when we try to do that in an area we really don’t have authority, we’re doing wrong. A little bit like how folks will try to apply their judgment of what is prudent– like my not thinking an ouiji board is ever a good idea, even with zero intent to tap into supernatural powers– with what is actually taught— that we’re not to attempt to get what we want by bypassing the natural order.

Mandatory statement, if you are tempted to sin by something, don’t do it— but also don’t get nasty with folks who aren’t tempted to sin by it, and the other way around. (Paraphrase the gospels? Why, yes– imitation is sincere flattery!)
My grandmother use to read tea leaves until she got scared by some too-accurate “predictions;” she removed even fairy stories from her home, and did not approve of my reading fantasy, but she never mistook her judgement for the word of God.