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 goo d.
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 church es.
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 may have been one underlying factor behind medieval witch hu nts.
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 superstition 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.
One needs to distinguish between magicians who use slight of hand and deception, and spiritual activity that will often appear to contradict “normal” laws of science or reality.
As in the existence of actual miracles demons or other mystical creatures and/ or phenomenon.
I agree. It is not just in our ‘superstitious’ or ‘traditional’ practices (‘fun, fun’), sometimes it is intertvined even in so called Christian practices.
I wached some movies with demon-possessed persons and priests that tried to drive the demon out. The ‘movie excorcisms’ includes elements that I would classify as magical thinking.
In the movies, the priest often uses much effort to find out the name of the demon. When the name is revealed, the priest can drive the demon away. The idea that knowing the true name of someone gives you power over that someone is magical thinking.
A typical part of the ‘movie exorcisms’ is an element where the priest takes a small crucifix, points it towards the demon-possessed person and commands the demon. A crucifix is a very Christian symbol but when used in that way, the practice includes magical thinking. A powerful item is used to direct power and command.
I guess we might find magical thinking also in less dramatic practices of Christians.
Yes, in an even more mundane example, I think the prayer habits of some Christians can take on magical thinking in the sense that if you “pray the correct words” or with an “appropriate amount of inner faith and conviction” that this will unlock God’s positive response to your wishes. Much of that vibe may be associated with ‘prosperity gospel’ or ‘New Thought’ or name-it-and-claim-it theology?
If you think about it, that is the whole point of the episode of Moses and the burning bush and the Jews reluctance to utter even the word God, let alone give Him a name.
Knowing the true name of something was associated with the belief that the name gives power over that something. The power structure became such where the human using the true name gets authority over the something that is named.
Moses asking the name was understandable because there were tens or even hundreds of gods. It was not enough to tell ‘god told …’ because the god could have been any of the multitude.
The practice of avoiding saying the name of God is a later tradition. The name of God represents God Himself. Using the name ‘in vain’ was forbidden and avoiding the use of the name (JHWH) was a security measure - if you do not use the name at all, then you do not risk using it ‘in vain’.
In such a behaviour, the authority structure is clear: God is ruling, a human is a servant.
Regardless of any later tradition, perhaps God is claiming that a name is less important than His associations or actions. If so then dismissing other faiths because of the name they use might not be valid.
In truth Christianity does not give God a name either. We say Father, or Creator God, or Loving God. Specifying Jesus is often seen as a channel rather than a name for God.
If you think about it, we do not make friends because of the name. The name is a references or identity to distinguish one from another, after the relationship has been formed.
The whole point of the fairy tale “Rumpelstiltskin” is the name and the power of knowing it.
Among the religious traditions of Christians, the old custom of collecting and preserving relics of dead Saints is a practice where I see more magical than Christian thinking.
In magical thinking, barriers between the living and dead, or mortals and non-mortals, were among the strongest sources of magical power. Any item that became in contact with such magical power absorbed part of that power and could be utilized in magical rituals. Parts of ordinary dead humans were powerful ingredients in magic. If the person had special powers while living, his parts were especially powerful. A Saint was assumed to contain special power from God, which made the remains of dead Saints very powerful. Also items that had belonged to the Saint could include power, especially if the item had touched the Saint at the death.
From this magical worldview, collecting and preserving the relics of Saints would be logical behaviour.
From the worldview of a modern Christian believer, not so much.
A sceptical believer might point to the fact that selling the claimed parts or items of dead Saints has been a rich source of income for the fraudsters - I guess there are many more claimed relics than there are true relics in the world.
Demonology comes into the matter here. If we are to believe the second-Temple Jewish ideas about demons, it may be that to the demons themselves their name being known is important. OTOH the most ancient rites aren’t heavily invested in learning the name.
It can be magical thinking, but the idea is to remind the demon that it was defeated at the Cross, using a physical representation. It’s actually a very human thing, too; we often grasp ideas better when they are brought with a visual representation. The priest applying it so is also telling the demon that it isn’t the priest the demon is fighting, it’s the Crucified One Who by His Blood disarmed them.
Which ironically is a total misunderstanding of the command! By saying “We are children of Abraham” they were taking the Name of Yahweh. It’s not a matter of speaking the Name, it’s a matter of labeling yourself as His. A good comparison is a sports team where the athletes take the name of the team, and are thus expected to represent it positively.
For many people, sure. But the original concept was like that involved when the woman with an affliction touched Jesus’ robe, and when cloths blessed by the Apostles effected cures: the touch of something associated with Jesus, or an Apostle, and later a saint, was regarded the same.
Especially since the magical idea of the principle of contagion came into play. Luther and others noted that there were enough “pieces of the true Cross” in Europe to build a ship from; this was so because a relic of the True Cross might have just a tiny splinter of the Cross embedded in a large piece of wood, then by contagion after some period of time the regular wood would become just as holy.
Relics of saints put into altars carried some of the same contagion; their holiness made the entire altar holy.
A bit of the concept of sacred space was/is involved, but a bit twisted; the pure idea of sacred space (and the Name) would make the altar holy because it was blessed with the Name of Christ.
That is the ‘Christian version’ of it. After Christianity spread, the new teachings and the old magical beliefs and customs mixed. Biblical scriptures include passages that fit better to an ancient magical worldview than to the current western worldview, which helped to preserve the old magical beliefs even in an officially ‘Christian’ society.
It is an interesting question in itself how the biblical passages like the clothes ‘transferring’ the healing should be understood. According to the magical worldview, the item absorbed part of the power of the Apostle or some other powerful character, and the power stored in the item could heal. That is not the only possible interpretation for such a case. The physical (visible) item can strengthen the (invisible) faith, so that the faith can better ‘connect’ to the promises and power of God. In this interpretation, the healing power does not come from (or through) the item, it comes straight from God, the healer.
I guess this interpretation is close to what you wrote in another comment:
“It can be magical thinking, but the idea is to remind the demon that it was defeated at the Cross, using a physical representation. It’s actually a very human thing, too; we often grasp ideas better when they are brought with a visual representation.”
There is at least one passage in the OT where the power seems to come from the parts of a ‘Holy man’. A dead man thrown in the grave of a prophet returns to life when the body touches the remains of the prophet. Easy to explain within the magical worldview but may be a puzzle for a modern western worldview. Too easy to dismiss just as a legend that does not tell what actually happened.
In the magical worldview, the items (physical objects) that have absorbed power are influential ingredients in what is hoped to happen. The focus is on the item or other physical ingredients. That separates the magical approach from the Christian model where the focus is (directly) on God.
This comment made me think what do we mean with the word ‘magical’ in the context of Christian practices?
In definitions of ‘magic’ or ‘magical’, there is often the word ‘supernatural’, ‘supernatural powers’ or a related expression. When we are talking about Christianity, the word ‘supernatural’ becomes an obscuring rather than clarifying word. If we would think that God is ‘supernatural’ or that He has ‘supernatural power’, then everything in Christianity would be magical. I do not think that is a healthy approach.
A better approach might be to look on the practices of magic. One definition describes that ‘magic’ includes “the use of charms, spells, or rituals intended to use supernatural or occult forces to influence natural events or produce impossible results”.
In this definition, a person tries to influence or alter natural events through particular type of mechanical acts. The actor is the person, the magical acts utilize and direct external power but basically, the focus is in the acts of the person and s(he) is the actor that guides or rules what happens.
Praying may resemble magical rituals if it follows the basic practical approach of magic. God becomes ‘the external source of power’, what matters is what the acting person does, how s(he) performs. Check the correct boxes and you can get what you asked.
I do not think that Christian believers would willingly try to utilize magical practices in prayer. Where the prayer slips into practices that resemble magical rituals, that happens unwittingly. The intention is good but the focus slips from God to the person praying, what s(he) does, correctly or not.
When I became a believer, I was given books with a strong teaching about faith - close to prosperity theology. As I did not know better, I tried to practice what the books told. When in a troublesome situation, like a snake bite, I remembered that teaching and prayed/commanded with the faith I had (the faith of a child) and what I prayed happened. God can show loving mercy to a believer who does not understand and answer to the prayers. Despite this, the longer-term goal of teaching is to shift the focus from the human to God Himself.
