I read an interview of a researcher studying the magical folk beliefs and customs. He had some interesting viewpoints about the matter, mainly based on his studies in Finland.
Do you have knowledge or experiences about ongoing magical practices elsewhere?
The researcher told that there was a major shift in magical practices from hunter-gatherers to agricultural societies.
The hunter-gatherers asked hunting luck and prey from gods and spirits; gods and spirits were an important part of their worldview, and they revered these stronger forces.
The agricultural societies instead tried to affect what happened through more mechanical magical acts.
Christianity affected the way people lived but did not erase the magical practices. The practices continued until the agricultural societies started to break as many moved to towns and cities. In Finland, that happened about 70-80 years ago .
What the researcher stressed was that the magical practices were not just random acts, they were logical consequences of what the people believed. Christianity did not change the magical folk beliefs, which explains why the magical practices lived side-by-side with Christianity, mixing at the level of everyday practices. Most of the magical practices aimed towards good, so people did not necessarily feel that there was a conflict with the teachings of Christianity – both aimed towards good.
Affecting the reality through magical acts was based on a belief that if you have enough of power, you can change what happens. The magical acts aimed towards ‘channeling’ power. Power could be taken from various powerful sources. The barrier between death and life was one of the most powerful sources, which is why the parts of dead or matters that had been in contact with the dead were powerful ingredients in magic. Another barrier between life and not-life was birth and the female parts that delivered the new life. When Christianity came, it became an additional source of power. That is why people stole small items like candles or Holy bread (wafers) from churches.
One part of the magical beliefs was that the sum of luck was constant. If your neighbour had luck, that reduced the luck that was available for you. Magical acts that caused unluck for the neighbours made it possible that you got more luck. That is why all magical acts did not aim towards the luck of others. It also led to the belief that any unluck was caused by black magic done by someone else. That was one underlying factor behind medieval witch hunts.
There was also other details but these were perhaps the most relevant ones in this context.
Actually - most of us (I include myself in this) are not such strangers to “magical thinking” as we may think we are, even in our scientific-mindedness and awareness. Superstition is not just a relic of bygone cultures.
My prime example - is sports. For myself right now: pickleball. In pickleball, it’s honor system that the nearest player gets to entirely adjudicate whether a ball landed out of bounds or not (though his own partner is allowed to override him. It’s a matter of humor for us (but not entirely I don’t think!) that if we make a questionable call on the pickleball court (like calling the ball ‘out’ in our own favor when the call was close enough to be disputable - at least in the minds of the opposing team), there is a running joke then of observing how the very next play goes. If it goes badly for the team that had called it ‘out’, then everybody looks knowingly at each other and declares “the ball don’t lie!” - as in, there was comeuppance to be had for an apparently unjust call. Probably nobody there seriously defends such a thing - as in (so long as all parties were playing their best and not deliberately throwing a point away) - there is really no action by the universe or God or magic to “balance the ledger” of sports fairness to make sure bad calls don’t go unpunished. And yet - we all humor each other in this even when we know better. (Or do we really?)
I have always been of the view, not to meddle with things I do not understand.
waits for sarcastic interjection
Wicca and witchcraft fall into that category. My knowledge is enough to steer clear.
I have a certain amount of confidence that White witches believe they are on the good side and their persistence would indicate that there might be things the rest of us do not understand.
I did once complain to the the BBC when they put so called magic spells onto the Merlin pages of their Webb site, but never got a valid response. I am also aware of people who have fallen foul of Oijah or the Occult and a Minister friend who had to contest with Devil worshippers in a local disused church.
The Media like Vampires and goblins and some other fairy type folk but it is often tongue in cheek or deliberately fanciful.
What seems clear is that there are forces at work that we are not really aware of, without getting to melodramatic about Spiritual warfare.
I think on a whimsical level such things can be entertaining, but trying to relate them to reality might cause more harm than good.
Interesting to hear that about Finland. A very similar thing happened in Mexico with the mixing of Catholicism and folk religion, and i am sure happens other places as well. This we have the Day of the Dead celebrations, etc. as well as others.
It did not happen so much in the US, as we tended to kill the natives rather than try to make Christians of them. However, I was reading this short article about what folk religion is, and Olson makes a statement about MAGA being part of folk religion, which makes perfect sense, although there are many other examples of how we have folk religion practiced today. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2024/04/what-is-christian-folk-religion/
My exposure to magic is twofold: The first was in Miami, where Santeria is common and even Christians fear it. I was working at a Christian school and one morning got a phone call from one of the kids; he was afraid to leave the house because of a dead chicken sacrificed as a curse on the porch that supposedly guaranteed serious harm to anyone who crossed it. I asked him if he’d been baptized, and he said yes; I asked him if he’d been to the Eucharist last Sunday, and he said yes – whereupon I told him that Baptism puts a moat around him that the devil cannot cross, and that the Body and Blood of Christ make him proof against any curses or spirits that might try to enforce them. So he used a shovel to move the chicken, and jogged to school. I heard later that the Santeria priest (or whatever they call them) was furious because his curse had been disarmed.
The second was at university, where a Wiccan group did spells for/on people – but they said it was all symbolism aimed at changing the thinking of the subject of the spell, so I can’t really call it the same sort of magic but more psychological effort.
