Objective evidence for the existence of magic

I’m not entirely convinced that objective magic exists, because I have not seen much evidence for it. But it should be kept in mind that defining what is meant by the term “magic” may be quite difficult. For example, I think divination—especially dream divination—is almost certainly possible,1 and that’s considered a form of magic by many people. The same is true of what is sometimes called “dream telepathy”, i.e. the ability to be with others through dreams directly; in wakefulness, we are isolated from each other, but in dreams we are with the things themselves2 and can therefore communicate directly. But I’m not sure I would really think of this as “magic” per se.

I’d like to learn more about astrology. When I look up my sun sign, I feel like it doesn’t describe me at all. And in any case, it seems improbable that there are basically twelve types of people and that one’s type depends on one’s birthdate. But I get the sense that real astrology is not so much about sun signs, and indeed it does seem somewhat probable that the planets—which used to be regarded as gods—would influence this world through invisible forces.

Our ability to be blind to things we can’t explain is, especially in some people, remarkably strong. It’s possible that magic is all around us, but that we simply don’t notice it because we’ve been indoctrinated into materialist dogma, under which we are not allowed to look for such things. For most of history, most people believed in “supernatural” forces of various kinds. Perhaps the very notion of “objective evidence” contains some presumption that is totally invisible to me because of my cultural inheritance.3

  1. Indeed, it is implied by the existence of the collective unconscious, and Jung himself interpreted some of his visions induced through so-called active imagination as having divinatory value (cf. Sonu Shamdasani’s introduction to The Red Book)—at least in principle, even if accurate divination is in practice exceedingly difficult. ↩
  2. More precisely, we see things in a different way. When awake, what we see is a representation of an idea in the Platonic sense; when the brain is asleep, it allows more of the things themselves to penetrate into the soul. Thus, we have a more direct relatinoship to dream-reality, and hence to each other, the ones who share some kind of meta-dream. ↩
  3. This notion, of course, also contains presumptions that are visible to me, but every linguistic tool necessarily has issues, and none of the specific problems that I can spot with this particular tool are sufficient to dismiss any criticism based on lack of evidence outright. I have heard proponents of magic dismiss this criticism in various ways, but none of them has yet convinced me; either they are being naïve or else they mean something deeper than what I have succeeded in understanding from the words they use—which is entirely plausible. ↩