A large source of friction in occult communities is the lack of consensus on how magic works. Even at a basic, fundamental level. Throughout history, different communities have posited different theories about the mechanics of magic, but every individual practitioner ultimately comes to their own conclusions about what they believe, in response to the results they see in their own practice.
This can lead to confusion when answering questions for newcomers, since practitioners may be operating from wildly different premises. Furthermore, they may not even realize that not everyone in the community is making the same fundamental assumptions as them.
This post explores five of the most common models of magic: the psychological, the collective unconscious, the manifestation, the energetic, and the spirit. We’ll cover the broad strokes of each of these models, which traditions tend to favor them, and where their advantages and limitations are. The goal is not to argue for the ultimate truth of any specific model. I think there is value to be found in most of them.
The Psychological Model
The Psychological Model posits that magic operates through the action of the placebo effect.
Our minds have a startling degree of control over both our bodies and our perceptions of the world. This is extensively documented by modern science, to the degree that every medical trial now includes a control group, who are given what they think is medicine but is actually an inert substance. This helps distinguish the real healing effects of a drug from the healing effects of believing you have taken a drug. This is necessary because merely believing you are being healed can in fact have a healing effect. Moreover, the placebo effect is (to some extent) durable even when you know it is happening – that is, people can experience healing effects from taking (as medicine) what they have been explicitly told are sugar pills rather than medicine.
This model of magic is the most compatible with modern science. Action follows attention; your life will tend to order itself in accordance with an intentionally stated goal. You can be a strict materialist, and still believe in –and practice – magic under this model. You are simply taking advantage of a loophole in human psychology to enact change in your life.
Aleister Crowley was, over the course of his life, on the fence about whether or not he believed magic was any more than this. One of the explicitly stated goals of Thelema – the religious tradition founded by Crowley – was to create a religion that would be fully acceptable by the most materially-minded scientist. So this model of magic crops up a lot in magical traditions that draw heavily on Crowley (some branches of Thelema, the OTO, and the AA).
The limitation of this psychological model of magic is that it only affects the mind. A spell to become rich operates by changing you into the kind of person who easily becomes rich. A curse is only effective if the target knows they have been cursed, believes in curses, and becomes paranoid and anxious to the point that it negatively impacts their life. The conjuration of a demon is about getting in touch with bestial aspects of your own unconscious mind. Magic is essentially elaborate hypnosis.
The Collective Unconscious Model
The Collective Unconscious Model states that magic operates in a way that is fundamentally similar to the Psychological Model, but with the addition of some foundational layer that connects human minds together. This model posits that there is some interlinked oversoul, or deep collective mind that connects all of humanity.
This still considers magic as essentially a hypnotic act, but it opens the door to hypnotic action at a distance. A spell to become rich may in fact change the way people perceive you and open opportunities for you, but it does so by influencing the perceptions and attitudes of the people around you. A curse may negatively impact someone, even if they don’t know consciously that they have been cursed, because your unconscious mind has communicated it to their unconscious mind. The conjuration of a demon is less about exploring your own psyche, and more about getting in touch with shadow archetypes that speak to humanity as a whole.
The writings of Carl Jung delve into the ideas around the collective unconscious, so traditions influenced by his work may fall into this camp. Many of the early members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn – especially Dion Fortune – also subscribed to this model. Magic was about causing a change in consciousness, but it didn’t need to be a change in your consciousness.
The natural limitation of this model is that its scope only covers human minds. It can’t affect, say, the behavior of animals or the physical world – except insofar as those things are affected by the beliefs and actions of humans.
The Manifestation Model
The Manifestation Model of magic is related to the previous two, but takes it a step further. Magic – it states – is still about changing your own mind, but your mind has near unlimited power to affect what you perceive to be “reality.” Our own beliefs and expectations generate the shape of what most people consider to be the material universe, and by changing those beliefs and expectations, we can change the way the universe shows up.
This is the idea at the core of The Secret, and a lot of other New Thought works that were popular around the turn of the millennium. It still regularly makes the rounds on TikTok. You set an intention, visualize the outcome you want, speak/write/emote about it as if it has already happened, and the universe will change itself to make that belief a reality.
This is also the basis for a lot of the Chaos Magick movement.1 Lon Milo DuQuette, author of The Chicken Qabalah, has a quote that nicely sums up this perspective: “[Magic] is all in your head, you just have no idea how big your head is.”
The manifestation model has a frustrating unfalsifiability to it. If a practitioner subscribes to any other model, you can claim that magic works that way for them because that is the way they expect magic to work. And all counter evidence can be explained as reinforcing a pre-existing belief.
In full transparency, this is where I started my journey into magic, and it never sat well. How can you bootstrap up belief in a reality that you know won’t manifest unless you believe in it? It seems impossible to get started.2 Furthermore it seems highly solipsistic – what happens if I believe something different from what my neighbor believes? How does the universe decide which of us to respond to? Do we each just shard off into our own little parallel universes where our beliefs are manifested? Does it take some average between us? The details start to get fuzzy once there’s anyone in the universe besides you.
The Energetic Model
This model takes a different tack from the ones that we have considered so far. It posits there is some subtle force – chi, prana, odic force, etheric energy, etc. – that surrounds and affects living things. This force is often thought to respond to intention and visualization – constructs built up in the imagination are given substance by this force, and can then go out and impact the world.
This is the model that most energy healing traditions subscribe to – acupuncture or reiki, for example. It’s also popular in a lot of Neopagan groups – casting a circle, raising energy and shaping it for a spell, and then releasing that energy out into the world.
This model sometimes gets paired with other models, like the spirit model. After all, if you believe that there is a subtle substance that permeates the world – influencing and being influenced by it – it is no great leap from there to the idea that there may be conscious beings with bodies composed of this subtle substance.
The Spirit Model
The Spirit Model of magic posits that there are non-physical entities, with existence and consciousness independent of human beings, who can influence the material world, including the minds and emotions of humans.
This is far and away the most popular model in the west, historically. It’s still found in both African diaspora traditions (hoodoo, vodou, palo mayombe, santería) and Abrahamic religions. Whether it comes in the form of a Catholic praying to a saint or a Solomonic magician conjuring a demon, this model is all about asking for the intercession of non-physical entities to affect change in the world.
Recognizing these different perspectives, allows us to have a more nuanced conversation about magic than we otherwise could. Say a newcomer in an occult community thinks they may have been cursed and is asking for advice. For a practitioner using the psychological model, advice like “curses aren’t real” is straightforward and pragmatic – if you stop believing in them, they stop existing. For a practitioner who instead subscribes to the spirit model, that advice seems wildly irresponsible – why would a curse stop existing just because you stopped believing in it, any more than gravity would? While a third practitioner, who subscribes to the manifestation model, chimes in to explain that gravity would stop existing if we all stopped believing in it. The conversation becomes a wild swirl of conflicting advice.
Ultimately, these models are not necessarily contradictory. The placebo effect is a real thing. The universe does seem to sometimes respond to our beliefs about it.3 Many people swear by reiki, or have had experiences with ghosts. Perhaps all of these models are true together. Perhaps they are useful to help us along while we search for some deeper and more ultimate truth. I’m not going to tell you what the right thing to believe is.
Just so long as it’s clear that not everybody believes the same thing as you.
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