#7
The whys was one of three quasi-academic projects that occurred concurrently during this time at The New School. Recall, if you will, the two years that I spent trying to quit anthropology because the Rastas were not cooperating. Without belaboring details that I feel would not improve understanding of the episode, I inadvertently explored psychosis on a part-time basis. It has generally been accepted since the work of Rollo May that insanity is relative to culture—that is, what might be considered crazy in one society can be seen as sane or even gifted in another—and I indulged myself in an exploration of a type of logic that is common or even universal among traditional peoples but condemned as lunacy in our own—what can be called “magical thinking.” But I call it this in hindsight. At the time I knew it only as an immersion into coincidence, then later took it as an insight into magic, a classic topic in anthropology, and infused it into a course at the school.
We are, of course, talking here about “real” or sincere magic, not the illusions of the stage performer. In glib terms, magic involves invoking the “supernatural” to alter events in the “real” world. (It is ironic that in contemporary culture “real magic” is trick magic (since it is real physically) while truly real magic is regarded as fake or unreal, if not evil.)
There are said to be two understandings of magic in anthropology—which I contend are essentially the same. One says magic is a part of religion, the other that it is a primitive form of science—the difference being whether on the one hand magic involves the agency of a spirit or spirits, or is a mystical but nonetheless mechanical act in which the magician believes he or she can control nature using certain formulas. It is my contention, however, that those who use formulas hold a deeper but implicit belief in the agency of a spirit or spirits. If one, for instance, were to ask a scientist who is Jewish what causes water to freeze he would simply refer to temperature, but if pressed further might admit that all things are caused by G-d. So too, a Kapauku shaman in New Guinea might not think to mention Ugatame, the source of all things, as ultimately the source of his magic. So magic can be characterized if not defined in part by its relation to spirit or spirits (supernatural or not).
Magic is also defined in part as having an aim, so in conjunction with the connection to spirit/s, petitionary prayer (as distinct from pure worship) that asks God to intervene in life, is contained within the concept of magic. (Historically the word “magic” was used to distinguish Pagan acts from the “miracles” attributed to the God of Jews, Christians and Muslims.)
But people of the scientific mind are also predisposed against magic as a reality because we equate reality with physical causality, which is not present in magic. (The absence of physical causality can be considered another defining element of magic: You can’t really make it rain by beating on a drum regardless what you believe because the drumming has no physical effect on the weather. (Some people like to say that God “causes” things to happen, but the word “cause” has a specific meaning in science.))
So while many religionists see magic as morally ignorant or evil, scientists, despite their profound relativity when it comes to many other things, can’t help seeing magic as technically ignorant or inferior. My approach to magic was to embrace what the scientists call “coincidence,” so that magic is primitive science in the sense that people used it long before science evolved as a method. Otherwise it was noted that magic exists alongside science today, it is defined in ways that are distinctly different from science, and it is not (necessarily) in competition with science. This is consistent with the various ways in which people who practice magic (and prayer) actually experience it, and our experiments were intended to illustrate these principles to anyone in keeping with the principle of openness in science.
While the connector between events according to science is matter, the connector in coincidence is meaning. The psychologist Carl Jung is credited with a seminal work on coincidence and the concept of synchronicity, meaningful coincidence. Jung’s theory is often used to account for passive (coincidental) experiences—the psi or ESP, while I extended it include the active experiences of magic and divination, the so-called occult (the word meaning “hidden” but perhaps in the sense of private or personal rather than a secretive concealment).
In 1984 I designed a course, Studies in Cognitive Anthropology: Experiments in Intuition, to unify and clarify the two levels of para-normal phenomena—the psi and the occult under the rubric of “intuition” defined as a form of logic based on the meaning found in coincidence—and each year in the course we devised “experiments” or explorations of an experiential nature into the intuitive frame of mind.
The centerpiece of the course was the experiment in magic, which occupied four weeks, first choosing an aim over which we had no control, then designing and implementing a ceremony using elements symbolic of the aim but invoking no spirit in particular (leaving each person in the class to privately invoke her or his own) and finally tracking the results in some relatively objective way. (There was also the understanding that no one in the class was compelled to participate or be present in the room during the ceremony. Over the course of 15 years I recall two students who left the room.)
What I impressed on students with emphasis was that the experiments were not testing whether magic works or is real any more than prayer tests the existence or efficacy of God: It is in the nature of magic that it is seen as special when it works, unlike science in which the usual rules. In that regard these were not controlled experiments: They were explorations in experience, and the “experiments” were “merely” demonstrations of the “mechanics” of an act, to see how it might be viewed in the “eyes” of the magician, abstracted in such a way that it could apply to virtually any “religion.” And one did not have to believe in anything in particular in order to “see” it in the “experiment.”
Just the choice of an intention produced a fascinating insight, if one was paying attention, to what the students believe magic is as they came into the class. Many students suggested, for instance, that the aim be some event that defies the laws of nature—making something (such as money) appear out of nowhere—to perform a stunt—revealing the depth to which stage “magic” had infected their thinking.
There were suggestions to aim for particular ballplayers to do well or the teams to win games and for certain celebrities to reveal certain parts of their private lives. But the process of discussing the options was productive in that it got the class thinking and talking about many serious issues from a direction that was different from the usual, direct, more intellectual approach. So the experiment was already something of a pedagogical success.
We eventually decided (democratically) to do magic for rain. It was spring, there had been a drought in progress since winter, and in terms of taking sides, there were certainly individuals who were benefiting from the drought, such as water dealers, but they were few in number: The great majority would benefit from rain. And we set the date for the ceremony.
Now, I had emphasized in class that this was not a test but we still had to decide how to figure whether or not it worked. In this case, it was simple: We would track the rainfall as published daily in The New York Times from the start of the year, and since class met on Wednesdays, we would see how the week after our ceremony compared with the preceding weeks. And regardless whether the magic worked or not, we would engage in the kind of analytical discussion mages have, our purpose being, again, to reveal the principles of magical thinking.
The date was decided in advance, so the students were invited to bring objects or suggest other types of elements, such as gestures, that had some meaning connected to our aim. As instructor, I would critique the symbolism of each element. I would also decide the composition of the final ceremony, which was designed on the spot. Even students who did not believe in the reality of magic were able to understand the analysis of the symbolism, which was the essential lesson here.
There were ultimately seven items in the ceremony, including a chant from the Pygmies of the Ituri rainforest; a hand-gesture used by Black Elk, a famous Sioux shaman who reportedly had a successful experience with rain; a recitation about rain from the Aranda people of Australia, especially potent because they live in the desert. Also, on the weekend before the ceremony, I happened to be a guest at a house in eastern Pennsylvania that was set in a patch of virgin forest. Near the house was a waterfall that dropped into a ravine that curved immediately, so one could stand on the bank directly opposite the falls and only fifty feet or so from it. I noticed a dried branch on a tree growing out of the side of the bank and, seeing that this tree had lived its entire life in the mist of the falls, I broke off the branch and brought it to school for the ceremony.
The ceremony took place on May 1. Preparation also involved tracking the precipitation back through February. It was determined that 2.41 in. fell in February (3.13 in. normal), 1.68 in. in March (4.22 in. normal) and in April 1.40 (3.75 normal), the four weeks in April breaking down to 0.15, 0.30, 0.48 and 0.09 (the difference of 0.38 in. falling in the first two days of the month). In the week after the ceremony it rained 2.54 in., roughly 3x normal for that week and 10x the average for the four preceding weeks. Moreover, in the week following our result-week (which was not part of our pre-ordained result) it rained not at all (0.00 in.).
I must reiterate that had the magic not worked, the lesson about symbolism and acausal relations—would have been no different. In fact, when magic does not work, there is even more material for discussion since mages then customarily search for what they missed or mistook, a process also conducted in symbolic terms. But when the magic works, there is no cause for further discussion, which, ironically, was my situation as a teacher here.
The course ran again the next spring, in 1986. This time there was no drought, but just a few days before the session in which we were to choose an aim for an experiment, the U.S. became embroiled in a military action in Libya, and the class decided to do a ceremony to reduce the hostility. The discussion led us to establish certain principles regarding our aim that would be followed in the future, for example that we were not to favor any side in a conflict. We adopted the principle of the greatest good for the greatest number, so while there are those who profit from war and other conflicts, they are few in comparison to those who profit, in all senses of the word, from peace.
Again the students and I contributed ceremonial elements and openly considered the symbolism. Tracking the results of the magic proved tricky, but we decided to use the Times again, this time the “News Summary” section, which highlights the major stories of the day, and track the summaries dealing with Libya for two weeks prior to the April 30 ceremony, and allow one week for results. The tracking here was trickier because instead of objective numbers we had to evaluate each development as positive, negative or neutral relative to our aim, and this was done by reading aloud in class the summaries of the preceding week and then voting on each, so that a score could be kept.
During the two weeks prior to the ceremony the tally of developments in Libya was 2+/28-/4n; in our result-week, 1+/0-/0n. This startling count was due in part, as it later appeared, to a genuine reduction in hostilities. At the same time—on the same day as our ceremony—a nuclear explosion at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union occurred, which dominated the news for the week, thus pushing out other stories from limited space. There was some debate as to how much our tracking reflected developments in Libya versus the reporting of them; nonetheless, as I say, subsequent reports about Libya suggested a reduction in hostilities (Libya virtually disappeared from the news after that). And, for better or worse, according to the measure we had agreed on, the results were indisputably spectacular.
I couldn’t say exactly what the students were making of this, and I didn’t know what to make of it other than to try to test its bounds, so the next year I tried a major experiment in divination—in which one seeks only knowledge (divination is to magic what “pure” science is to technology). The experiment hopefully was successful in exercising the experience of divination, but from the point of view of resultant knowledge, it failed. So the next year I returned to magic.
Annual experiments continued to be conducted through 1998. In each case, we defined our aims as developments that we judged as positive in terms of the principle of the greatest good for the greatest number. Following is a list of those aims in chronological order: Israeli-Palestinian conflict; water shortage in NYC; AIDS epidemic; NYC public water system; homelessness in NYC; the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina; strife in South Africa; Tibet; the terminally ill (in which we “raised the dead”); rent laws in NYC; and the rescue of a vertebrate species.
I had decided to continue the experiments until the magic failed, which finally happened in 1998. Until then, the magic had worked, and done so dramatically in all but two instances. Starting in 1995, I began putting together small groups of volunteers to do “extended” experiments, testing principles of “power” within magic—the difference in results between magic performed by a sub-group who shared basic beliefs and another with diverse beliefs (in which we used the whys); the belief in one’s own magical ability as a factor in the results; the ethics of the aim, whether for one’s own good or the good of others; and originality of ceremony versus prescribed ritual as a factor in results. These experiments also resulted in clear insights based on uncanny magical results.
Ironically I seemed to be the one most astounded by the results. Part of the understanding of magic is that, unlike science, it is unlikely and unpredictable: The more unlikely and unpredictable a result is, the greater the magic is judged to be. Our results deserved wonder, but the students seemed either to assume that the magic would work or at least were not surprised when it did, and this seemed to be due to the faith they were misplacing in me. Instead of expanding their interest in the cosmos, it was narrowing it into “my” cult.
While I kept records of the experiments, I purposely did not write about them because as a teacher I did not want our experiments to become true tests of magic, which is where the scientist is compelled to go. True tests are based on repetition, so if you can “make it rain” once, then you should be able to do it again, at will—if the magic is “real.”
Magical acts are singular, unique events, as are all coincidences, and are of the same ilk, ultimately, as ideas of the “supernatural,” such as the role or existence of God or gods. Such beliefs are not subject to true experimentation because they cannot be controlled, nor can the results be predicted in any specific way, “evidence” for such ideas being found only in the subjective interpretation of singular events in the form of anecdotes, the very antithesis of how science approaches truth.
In addition to avoiding publication of our record, I refrained from informing each new class of the past record in the course, for a similar reason: It sets up a kind of challenge that interferes with the lesson to be learned. Even the hard-core followers didn’t take a course more than once, so each spring the class was composed of students who had not participated in the magic before (although they might well have heard about it). By 1995, however, there were so many rumors circulating about the experiments that I set down the basic theory and record on paper and assigned it as a text in the course. The last experiment was in 1999. I left the school in 2002 (essentially over a lack of transparency in the Trustees vetting of the president, who had been accused of war crimes in Vietnam that had not been adjudicated). I updated the record of experiments and wrote an introduction and conclusion explaining the events in almost purely theoretical terms.
This time my inner dilemma took me deeper into my self. Antecedent to how publication of a book might affect my role as a teacher was the question of how one could account for our record. I saw two answers and realized either could put me over that hump, so to speak, into guruhood, which left me conflicted again.
One idea was the ineluctable suggestion of a radical ecumenism in our magic—the compelling implication that Whatever or Whoever was responsible for orchestrating this absurdly unlikely series of events—since it far surpassed any dismissal on the grounds of pure chance—must favor or be in harmony with an extreme diversity of belief, because that was one quality that distinguished our classes from other magic (and prayer) groups, our classes being composed of people with highly divergent beliefs, not excluding atheists and others actively disbelieving in magic (and prayer).
It would be difficult not to argue against the principle of shared belief, of the doctrinism on which all the major religions are more or less based, and not to promote, as in proselytize, ecumenism. (Ecumenism traditionally refers to the reconnection of the Christian sects, a radical or extreme ecumenism here refers to the coalescence of all faiths, including the nihilistic ones.)
The only other explanation for our success, which I did not indicate in the manuscript, was me (or I) since my presence, if not orchestration, was the only other constant in the experiments, which was the way some students, no doubt, saw it. Realize too that in this situation any direct protestation by me would have served in the minds of the students to focus just such attention on me. (I had been fascinated when I was studying the Rastafarians to learn that when Haile Selassie denied he was the Messiah, many Rastas interpreted this as divine humility and, I am told, the denial actually deepened their belief.)
Nonetheless, I could feel the looks as well as the behavior of students. To illustrate the effect that being regarded as a guru has on personal relationships, a friend reported to me with a combination of amazement and amusement that while sitting at a fast-food store he overheard two young women—students—talking, one asking in awe, “Can you imagine having lunch with Charles Case!?” Now, my question is, Can you imagine having lunch with someone who would ask that question about you? The difference between that and a “normal” relation is the difference between a monologue and a dialogue. (A teacher/student relationship is, or should be, a dialogue.) Immediately past the novelty of being held in awe there is a brief period of amusement, followed soon by boredom and then irritation—unless of course one seeks to take advantage of that person, the main incentives to do so being money and sex.
Sexuality, as I’ve suggested, is intrinsic to teaching adults—sexuality being taken broadly here. So, without referring to any particular act, another question might be, Can you imagine having sex with someone who can’t imagine having lunch with you? I would imagine that the same sequence of feelings that follows having a conversation with that kind of person would follow sex (assuming that other person’s awe is the main source of attraction for you—but even then, I suspect, any other attraction would tend to fade as that other person’s impoverishment of individuality persists).
A student is one who thinks critically even—or maybe mainly—when in the company of a teacher, while a follower accepts what the guru says uncritically. In my situation it was not always easy to know how deeply I was influencing a student, which is to say I could not always tell if someone had gone over the line, and the difference can be significant for the teacher. Two female undergraduate students in one class appeared inseparable as friends, and were alike in other ways—both attractive and rather voluptuous—and both, clearly to me, plagiarized their research papers. In response to my comments they made appointments to see me (individually, because I had no right to assume their plagiarisms were connected). Each in her meeting with me behaved in a manner that seemed to suggest she was expecting to be seduced, each seemed surprised and a little perplexed that she wasn’t, and when I told each to do another paper, she seemed to try to figure out what I “really meant” by that. (Both also admitted it was the brother of one of them who wrote the papers.) It occurred to me later that I was exposed to risk in those meetings—legal, professional, personal pitfalls—and I associate this type of situation more with the guru/follower relation than the teacher/student: Students have interests; followers have needs.
And one more negative aspect of my situation on more than one level was that my courses attracted men for reasons, I suspect, that were not entirely of intellectual curiosity: There were men who were interested in the women in my courses and men who seemed interested in me. At least two marriages evolved among students in my classes.
So I had reasons not to submit the manuscript on magic for publication since, as with the dissertation, a book would have intensified my problems with guruhood. But my reasons for not publishing now ran deeper too. During the time the experiments were unfolding, my personal beliefs about magic were evolving. Back in college, part of the influence that went along with the exploration of consciousness was an interest in Eastern religions, Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism, and that influence revived itself here: All magic involves aims, which means that magic breeds desire, an excess of which is already a problem in our culture, in my view. Even wanting to improve oneself induces discontent with who one is at the present, which undermines one’s experience in life, and so while magic might be explored and explained, it is not something to be encouraged. (It should be noted that the principle derived from the East here is psychological and spiritual, not religious in the sense of dealing with the supernatural.)
Taking the magic on its own terms—as actually influencing events—it also occurred to me that there might be an obligation to reveal these principles in order to promote good in the world. However, almost simultaneously, I remembered that there are two sides to everything, and just because we had turned our aims in the class toward what we conceived as the good, the results were certainly bad for somebody. A new knowledge of magic could be assumed to be used by both sides in any dispute. And when one thinks of ills that are universally despised, such as cancer or car accidents, one must take into account that our magic appeared to work in consonance with the laws of nature, not independently much less in defiance of it, so that if cancer and car accidents are understood, as they reasonably are, to be caused by industrial production, the question would be, how many people would do the magic to eradicate those ills, given the bigger picture? So I concluded that this added knowledge of magic would not make much if any of a difference in how the world ends up.
Yet, with all the reasoning, it still seemed unethical to purposely withhold this work from publication (unlike the dissertation, the material presented here was impersonal, except for that one tacit fact that I was the princiapl functionary in all the experiments). I resolved the issue by submitting detailed reports and a theoretical analysis under the (straightforward but perhaps immodest) title “How Magic Works” only to scholarly publishers. This made sense simply in that it was composed in the academic mode, in consonance with the context in which the experiments were conducted, and by the prospect of a commercial approach to publishing this work, which could inspire ludicrous and even insane (by my thinking) hype. To be candid, I was fully aware that scholarly publishers rarely accept submissions, such as mine, that have not been subjected to peer review, and mine was not the exception. This negative outcome satisfied my ethical and professional needs. (I was fielding the rejections from the publishers just as the Harry Potter craze was blooming, and I recall being struck in so many ways by the publicity of the fantasy versus the obscurity of the reality.
No Guru 