Micah Hanks' Magic, Spells, and Sorcery: High Strangeness, or Hocus-Pocus?

Over at Mysterious Universe I've been reading Micah Hanks' Magic, Spells, and Sorcery: High Strangeness, or Hocus-Pocus? and this was my response.

Micah Hanks "do you feel that magic and ritual bear any relevance in modern times, and if so, in what ways?"

The first thing to note Micah is magic and make come from the same ancient root and mean essentially the same thing.

Magicians've always been makers and the greatest of our makers've always seemed like magicians.

As for ritual our entire existences've always depended on ritual.

The magician-maker the carpenter brings a plank into existence by the ritual of repetitively planing away at trees.

The magician-maker the builder brings houses into existence by ritual acts like repetitively banging on a nail until it's flush with the wall.

And the magician-maker the Higgs bosonist collapses Higgs bosons into existence (Rupert Sheldrake style?) by the rituals of repetitively whirling hadrons round colliders for decades on end then flinging open the Schrödinger's box into which the resultant data is deposited.

As for the magician-makers who bring Micah Hanks and alanborkys into existence they do so by the ritual of repetitively telling the child it's Micah/alan and they're his parents until finally Micah/alan begins reciting the same lines back at them.

This's where I suggest ritual in magic's often misunderstood.

It's assumed there's something in particular rituals which if only they're performed correctly'll bring about particular magical effects.

But I suggest to you what really happens is something like this.

We learn to drive by repeating certain sub-rituals until finally the sub-rituals meld together and suddenly we can perform the magical act of driving.

And it is magic. Our elation confirms this. But quite quickly we get used to it and driving becomes a robotic chore we hardly notice ourselves doing until a kid suddenly dashes in front of us.

Ditto when we're first born we're in that state Jesus alludes to when he says "be as little children" or as the Koran puts it we're born true Muslims ie conscious of what 'submission' really means until someone comes along and performs the ritual of repetitively telling us we're Christians or atheists or their particular take on what a muslim is until slowly but surely we become beguiled into believng what're actually only mental equivalents of the security passes we use getting in and out of offices're actually ourselves.

And it's because this ritual repetitiveness goes on all through our lives counter-rituals's evolved like tai chi or yoga.

Ditto magical rituals. The rituals don't actually create the magical effect. They disrupt the mechanical continuity of the enormous build up of rituals unwittingly trained into into our minds and bodies allowing just enough of our real original selves to briefly stir from the hypnotic sleep they've been put into as a result of the endless mechanical repetition to bring into effect the true magic of consciousness of awareness.

But if I've understood you aright Micah you're saying pretty much the same thing.