Magick and Prayer: Sept 28, 2005
What is the difference between magick and prayer? This is not a question I will attempt to answer, more a question to provoke thought.
The longer I look the less obvious the answer is. In magick there is an emphasis on technique and training. This is not something I have heard much discussed within the practice of prayer, however it may be that people who practice prayer have developed personal modes of inner alignment that could be seen as "technique." One exception (that I am aware of) to the rule might be Max Freedom Longs articulation of Huna Magick and prayer and his strong connection of prayer with technique.
I don't want to define magick in any final sense here. Most practitioners will have heard Crowely's definition of magick as "the art and science of causing change in conformity with will." This is helpful, even insightful, but seems an obvious generalization rather than truly definitive. Magick can be thought of as a spiritual discipline, one that uses techniques that cause inner and outer alignments for various purposes, some of which are to cause change within ones own being and some of which are to cause change beyond the personal realm. Magick has often, if not universally, been linked to the use of symbol, sound and various techniques invoking "ecstasy" (not necessarily ecstasy as "pure bliss" but more as "A state of emotion so intense that one is carried beyond rational thought and self-control." In my own experience the word, used magically, is to be "outside ones self" or ones "notion of self." This is the condition of "trance."
How are prayer and magick the same? Both are beseechments, both are askings (putting aside for the moment who or what being beseeched). Austin Osman Spare says in his "The Book of Pleasure (Self Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy", "to ask is to be denied." I guess Austin is in basic disagreement with the conventional christian bibles', "Ask and you will receive." My own personal experience would suggest "ask and you may receive." In many ways this could apply to magick as well...do magick and you will either achieve your end or you will not. Magickians will usually assign a "failed" magickal attempt as a failure of technique. Prayer-makers will often assume that whatever is being "beseeched" just has a different will or purpose than the prayer makers understanding and so will assign a "failed" prayer as being the prayed-to's answer as "no." Or something similar.
I both pray and do magick. When I pray, I am usually using tobacco and addressing the sacred mysterious. I am usually talking out loud and pouring out my hopes/wishes/beseechment from the core of my heart. When I am doing magick, I am involving myself more physically, am using more symbolic imagery and sound and am attempting to achieve a state of consciousness that is beyond my normal personal state.
I have a hunch that one of the difficulties of prayer is in the "letting go" of the prayed-for desire. To let the "prayer fly." Some achieve this "letting go" by the belief that "all is in the beseeched's hands" and that they can then not carry the worry of non-fulfillment of the prayer (doubt) with them. Some use techniques of exhaustion with prayer. And at this point prayer becomes very close to magick. For this exhaustion allows things to move and change that do not have "room" to move and change without some form of exhaustion of belief and desire.
Both prayer and magick (to be effective) seem to require a "energy" of some source; emotional, physical, etc. to push the beseechment outside of the personal and into a deeper or more transcendent realm. Both magick and prayer seem to imply a possibility that a "something" exists that can cause change to occur beyond the bonds usually associated with a mechanical interpretation of existence. Magick usually, and prayer sometimes, use visual imagery (a "thought form") as a medium of transference across the personal/transpersonal divide. The articulated rationale (at least for many magickians) for the use of this imagery is that the subconscious language is more visual than verbal. At least that is my sense of things. The above mentioned Austin Spare created a system of turning verbose beseechments into "sigils" (sigils being a "symbol" that does not invoke visually its meaning.) Symbols provoke "meanings" to the conscious self. Sigils propel and disguise their meanings to the conscious self to aid in the transference of of "meaning" from the beseecher to the beseechee (I just invented a new word here, I believe.)
I end where I have begun. I cannot find a hard line between prayer and magick that essentially defines them distinctively, though they do seem to have their own flavors.
The most distinctive difference I can find seems to be that Magick involves the actual transformation of energy mediated by the Magickian.
Axis