“[Magic is] a category of exclusion, used to define an unacceptable way of thinking as either the opposite of religion or of science”.
— Karen Louise Jolly
Justin in 2019: Magic is mostly nonsense, but if it existed, it’s because some people have woo powers beyond my understanding.
Justin in 2020-2021: I am forced to accept that the phenomenological and experiential reality of magic is true, even if this doesn’t prove its objective existence.
The reason I am forced to accept this is because I reject that an objective existence is possible at all, therefore, all subjective experiences takes priority as the primary reality.
Since all modern magic deals with enacting experiential change (ie, of the mind in a world which is mind only), magic is therefore a real phenomena experienced by some peoples.
If Ontological Idealism is true, then the implications are more profound.
Magic is difficult to prove, because it is not a standardized experience, but is an experience everyone experiences for themselves as unique and true, even if other people cannot experience it.
It is much like a religious experience, or even a scientific one. Suppose you don’t take a mathematical equation on faith, not everyone have the ability to go and verify its veracity (to experience it for themselves), but if they did, they would be utterly convinced it really is true (despite the fact that math as a discipline is of course, a construct, and could be very wrong on several axioms).
Likewise, someone who has personally talked to Jesus would be unlikely to consider another cause for why they had (to them) an authentic theophanic experience.
Justin C. Hsu 