science is the study of magic (pt I) | the syntropy series, letter IV
do we have an obsessive compulsive relationship with magic?
the syntropy series: how to be human, one syntropic insight at a time
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Today I offer an interlude in the traditional syntropic topics (usually referencing at least once to some practical aspect of growing food) to speak more explicitly to the concept of magic. Do stay tuned until the end of the piece (which lies at the end of pt II), where I tie this back into syntropy, and why the topics of syntropy require a keen understanding of magic.
the down low on magic
Often, while it may feel like I am speaking in metaphors related to earth magic, flow, and intention, I am not.
I am speaking about how it is.
And I have a hunch that many of you reading this do not believe in magic.
You believe in science.
Which, at least since The Enlightenment (historians please correct me), has been deemed the rational and reasonable antidote to the wild ravings of magic. Myth, story, ritual, adornment, spells, prayers, nature-reverant culture, and trance states have all been lumped into the realm of ‘magic’ and disposed of by the scientific discretion of what is real and what is pretend.
This is quite ironic, however, because science is absolutely, 100%, without a doubt, an obsession with magic.
Science is the study of how magic works.
Science does not explain away magic, nor rationalize it into a system that makes the whole universe knowable. If you think this is the case, then I am sorry to say, you have been deluded into thinking that humans are the intelligence. And, as syntropic theory loves to remind us: we are not the intelligence. We are an intelligent life form living in the body of an intelligent system.
And that intelligence is magic.
What is magic?
For the purposes of this article, I am going to name magic as forces/energies/phenomena that cannot be truly known, understood, or controlled by human intellect. They can be glimpsed, patterns can be deduced, and channels can be opened. But the heart of magic is unknowable.
Telepathy is magic, spells are magic, levitation is magic, gravity is magic, trees communicating through an information highway of fungi is magic.
Communicating with ancestors is magic.
Experiencing trance states is magic.
Acorns turning into oak trees is magic.
Black holes are magic.
Prisms of light that form rainbows are magic.
Caterpillars melting into genetic goop and transforming into butterflies is magic.
Science is the study of how magic works.
Science especially loves the magic we can systematically observe with predictable results. When we are not able to observe predictable results, we don’t talk about it quite as much, because we can’t quite ‘understand’ it. I put ‘understand’ in light quotes here, because I believe we are deluding ourselves into thinking we understand anything. We can observe how pieces are fitting together before us, but this does not equal true understanding.
Think of quantum physics, a field that noticed that particles change based on whether or not we are observing them. We don’t really talk about it that much. We can’t quite grapple with what that might imply, and we don’t know what to do with it. It’s not quite as observable and predictable as we would like. We have machines observe the particles instead of our eyeballs - but still… there is a machine witnessing the particle. What happens when truly no one is looking?
When discussed more in-depth, non-predictable science creates circumstances that beg magic-forward questions like: What does the world act like when you’re not looking? Is there a consciousness that is non-human that has a proclivity for acting differently based on whether or not it is being witnessed?
You literally already believe in magic.
Let’s look at an example of science as the study of magic.
There is an invisible force that pulls us towards the center of the earth, a force that pulls small masses towards large masses. This invisible force keeps us grounded on this planet, and orbiting in a somewhat predictable journeys around other large masses in the universe. We cannot see, touch, or smell it. We can sort of feel it. Where does it come from? How does it work? How does it pull us?
We have created a name for this invisible force, we have calculated its speed, and observed principles about how it works. As we start to name these observations about ‘gravity,’ we begin to think we have explained and understood the magic. Therefore, it is no longer magic! It is science. Ah yes, gravity. A basic scientific principle. The laws of the universe work via identifiable principles we can name and measure! And this is one of them! How rational and reasonable and enlightened.
But the truth is, we don’t know how it works, not at the core of it all. We don’t know how it was created at the very beginning of “time.” (What was there before time?) How does something come from nothing? And how does it all interact so perfectly with one another so as to create what we know as ‘life’?
While we are not able to know it, we are able to observe it. Gravity, planets, galaxies. And as the industrial era progresses, we are able to observe it at smaller and smaller levels, through microscopes, and telescopes, and complex mathematical equations.
So, just to recap: there is an invisible force in the universe that pulls mass (however that got there) in certain directions, based on a set of intelligent and helpful principles that lock into place with all of the other principles of magic in the universe.
… what?!
Just some of the things we don’t know: What does this force look like? How does it really, deeply work, at the core of things? Why does it come attached with the phenomenon of mass? What other invisible forces exist that work in similar ways?
In essence, you are able to assume and believe in the concept of gravity because it is somewhat obvious before you. You already know that you don’t float around -- you walk, planted firmly in the earth. When you jump, you come back down rather quickly.
Science, through its study of the magic of the universe, helped you see that this can be named and understood as a force that is happening. That it is not a magic to be taken for granted, nor dismissed as play-pretend. That it is magic to be named and observed.
With all these measurements, we can now proclaim this magic as “real.”
And, our religion, as a rational, enlightened, reasonable, modern, industrialized society, is to meticulously observe, study, and measure the magic. It’s a little bit like we have collective OCD around magic.
We are simply obsessed with measuring and proving and predicting the universe’s intelligent magic through a very formulaic method.
What this does to us
It’s good and it’s bad. Like so many things, no?
We are able to document and share and test how things work, which make us more efficient at accomplishing the things we want to accomplish. We can build new technologies, find solutions to problems (or so its seems), and systematize our reverence for the earth.
On the other hand, there is something that is also taken away, as with any belief system that is nestled in a framework of duality.
We feel compelled to study and measure things before we believe them. We had to study, through scientific method, the effects of walking barefoot on the earth or sleeping on the earth’s surface, or meditating, or grounding ourselves in ritual, or using psychedelics to gain insight and clarity, or sticking tiny needles in energy meridians along our bodies in order to believe they were real and true and not “random” and “imaginary.”
Before we studied these effects, we deemed them hippie earth nonsense or cute religious mumbo jumbo, to be infantilized and dismissed as placebos. (Placebos are straight magic, but that’s for another time.)
We use words like ‘hippie’ and ‘woo woo’ and ‘spiritual’ and ‘metaphor’ to dismiss magic we have not yet measured.
This limits our experience of reality and our knowledge.
There is so much knowledge that cannot be measured or discovered through the scientific method. There is so much knowledge that pretends to be understood through science, but, little do we know, science is only looking at a fraction of the whole picture.
By worshiping science and dismissing of all other forms of knowledge, we receive an absolute fraction of the whole.
There is a peace, an esctasy, and a gratitude in the reception of truth. This clarity, this insight, is something we crave. And very often, the total truth… is beautiful. It is peaceful and loving and whole.
We strip ourselves of the meaning & pleasure of receiving a fuller, more dynamic, more total version of truth (at least the totality of truth that we tiny humans have access to channel) by committing to science-worship.
continue to part II of ‘science is the study of magic.’
~ Tid Bits ~
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Photosynthesis is the first magic. Consumable energy from sunlight.