What Exactly Is “Magic”?

Magic: having or apparently having supernatural powers; wonderful, exciting.

As a physicist, it has long seemed strange to me that some real processes are seen as “supernatural”. I get calling stuff humans have little impact on “natural”, and the rest “artificial”, but what else could “natural” mean? And why are stories and religion so obsessed with “magic”?

Traditional “supernatural” items include miracles, karma, prophecy, revelation, divination, reincarnation, heaven, underworld, deities, angels, demons. Compared to our usual familiar world of things and interactions, this special realm seems to contain rare extreme exceptions; they are more emotional, idealized, and set-apart, and in this set-apart idealized realm causality less follows a usual space-time path.

This makes some sense in terms of the sacred, I’ve said we see sacred things from afar, to see them together, which explains why sacred things are very valuable, we show this fact, their view binds groups together, and sacred things are set apart, idealized, and to be felt not calculated. Priests and magicians are specialists of the sacred, with priests more authorized by authority. 

It also seems to me that rarer things more like us are more magical; there’s increasing magic from simple boring dead matter, to life, to minds, to minds with language, and finally to minds with emotional art and powerful tech. 

But I’m still not very satisfied with this account. For example, how can we make sense of Disneyland calling itself a “magical kingdom”, or your calling a nice experience “magical”. Other natural things that “feel magical” today include advanced tech, natural and celestial wonders, birth and death, love and affection, art and creativity, and mind-altering experiences.

I have an idea though:

The closest thing in our world to magic is: motivation. It is very powerful, yet hard to tell when or where it arises and why. We have many magic beliefs re what works, & hire magicians who perform complex incantations, which only sorta work. (More) 

I start with the observation that is doesn’t seem to imply ought; knowing what exists and what causes what how doesn’t obviously imply any particular action priorities. And yet we often feel quite compelled to take particular actions, seeing these not as arbitrary personal preferences, but as the universe demanding them. Maybe such motivations, strong and clearly compelling, but not obviously implied by stuff, are our prototypical “magic” things.

Now we know that life often seems compelled by simple physical necessity to take some actions, just to exist. Like eating, and avoiding being eaten. But because we can see pretty clearly how simple ordinary context compels such actions, these motivations don’t seem very magical to us. No, motivations seem most magical when we find it hard to see how an ordinary universe could compel them. As when our motives are sacred.

That is, compelling sacred-like motives, yet far from necessity, are the most obvious “supernatural” things, as we can see most clearly they really are there, as clearly as we see anything, and yet they also seem clearly independent of the ordinary universe of things and processes around us. Their existence makes it plausible that there could also be a whole realm of other idealized set-apart rare extreme things, such as deities. And our world becomes vivid and meaningful to us exactly to the degree that we see and reflect such motives.

Consciousness is related thing that we can clearly see which suggests to us there is more than the simple world we see around us of things and their interactions. The core of this is the fact that we feel, and most of our strongest feelings are close to motivations. Being unmotivated, e.g., depressed, is to not feel much. We feel that we deeply care.

So, maybe the core of magic is motivation, i.e., compelling value. As things more like us motivate us more, that’s why things more like us seem more magical. The sacred being a nearly ideal magical motivation is why magical things have many features of the sacred. “Supernatural” things seem possible and plausible because we feel sure magical motives exist. Great experiences are “magical” as they are so motivating, and stories and religion seek out strong motivations, to motivate associates.