Magic and the Supernatural - Lancaster University

Brian Feltham
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have a reason to research it. 2 My goal has altered the value to my viewing (and
reading about) art; it is now part of the pursuit and achievement of my goal that I
observe a wide range of paintings. The reason is derivative – on the value of art
and its study and on the value of achieving our goals – but it is dependent on what
my goals are, which is in my control.
The second way of altering what is good for us has a clearer place for explicitly
magical practices. Imagine that you have arranged to visit an art gallery this
afternoon. If you arrive out of sorts after a troubled morning, you may not be in the
mood. But by taking the time to put your troubles aside and open yourself up to the
possibilities that the gallery has to offer, you can increase your chances of a
rewarding experience.
This is an example of a central principle of chaos magic. You open yourself to
patterns and probabilities, looking for ways to nudge them in a particular
direction. 3 The method of getting the most out of this experience is to open
yourself up to world. This purposeful opening up, a willed alteration of
consciousness, is perhaps the essence of the method of ritual magic. While it might
be achieved by other means, it can also be encouraged through a magical ritual. On
the assumption that magicians understand what they are doing - the psychological,
spiritual and magical character of their rituals - we might reasonably expect such
rituals to be especially effective.
4. The Teleological Suspension of the Ethical
The title of this subsection is taken from an idea of Kierkegaard’s. He recounts
the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, when God tells Abraham to sacrifice his
son, and Abraham obeys - only being stopped by God at the last minute. 4 The story
of Abraham is not one of blind obedience, of a man who was ‘only following
orders’, but instead of faith. Faith that while everything will be given up - his son,
his conscience, his hopes for the future - nevertheless everything will be restored.
His son will be killed and yet live; the future of a chosen people will be stifled at
birth, and yet flourish. At any rate, that is how Kierkegaard tells it. For our
purposes, what is important is that Abraham’s faith has made intelligible a
suspension of the ethical. Morality can only condemn Abraham and yet we can
recognise that what he did was not simply immoral. It had other meaning as well.
A meaning and a value that is not understandable on the ordinary scale of human
aims and achievements. The ethical here is suspended for a reason, a purpose or
telos (hence, a teleological suspension), that is not ethical in kind. Nor is it simply
a matter of not being moral in a narrow sense, since many ordinary practical
decisions are not obviously moral. Instead, Kierkegaard describes the possibility of
a kind of meaning that we can’t relate to worldly concerns at all.
This meaningfulness is transcendent, and perhaps it need not be good. At the
beginning of Arthur Machen’s story ‘The White People’ two men are discussing
evil. Ordinary evil is said to be mundane, even uninteresting. A person committing
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