Thi let me defend myself from the pot shots you took at me a page or two back (i.e. your intrepretation of magickians, your word, not mine).
Di, you are not the first practitioner of magick I have ever spoken to, nor did you invent the term. Any problems that I have with magical thinking long preceded any discussion we've ever had on the topic. There's nothing personal in it at all. I'm sure you know that I think well of you, but something that many people believe in, which you also happen to believe in, concerns me. It would do so whether you were talking about it, or someone else were.
In my belief, the ritual and dogma simply allow a person to reach the mental state where we can change reality with our minds.
I'm not the oldest person here, but I'm far from the youngest. For no reason I can fully understand, I've had a lot of mystic friends in my life. Many of them believe that they can either anticipate reality, or change it with their will -- though not all mystics believe in magic as magic. I've had friends who are into Thelemic philosophy, I have neopagan friends, friends who think they're psychic, I know professional astrologers and so on. They have all been without question interesting, creative, sincere, sensitive, decent, generous and often courageous people.
In my esteem though, not one of them can do magic worth a spit, and I've had opportunity to form such views because they've
tried to make it happen in my presence (I didn't ask them to; that's just how they roll). But they
are very good at telling themselves stories. And that doesn't surprise me because being the kind of obnoxiously inquisitive soul I am, I've looked into magic around the world, and see the same patterns to it: confirmation bias, unrealistic expectations and a tendency to see personal significance in coincidence that happen to everyone sometimes. When I look at people who've made life-studies of trying to get to the bottom of this, I see rigour in the investigation, and an explanation that is far more plausible: people are kidding themselves. I can also see how an average person can easily kid himself if he wants to believe in magic. I don't think it's shameful; I just think it's very easy and that magic is a bit like conspiracy theories: once we start looking for evidence of it, I think it takes some serious discipline for us not to trip over false positives.
My personal view? Some minds just think in terms of magic. Nearly everyone does at around age 4-7, and some people just retain that youthful, creative view of things. In fact some people get better at constructing magical stories the older they get. As far as I can tell it does little harm unless and until people routinely start making important life decisions from it, and then (at least from what I've seen), it stunts people... makes them hesitant, fearful and unconfident. Or sometimes, unrealistically optimistic.
And here I'm not at all talking about you but about numerous people I've known pretty well, who reached a point where they wanted to grow, but were so trapped in a paradigm of waiting for the Cosmos, the guru, or their own emotional state to give them permission to take a step that it never happened at all. Or they wasted their time and courage taking incautious steps badly managed.
It's natural then that I fear for anyone whose confidence rests on a belief in magic. That doesn't give me the right to tell you what to do or think, but I shall (to the extent I can respectfully and constructively do so in this very interesting forum), say what I think and what I have seen.
I believe that science has not found out why yet.
Science so far rejects that there's even a phenomenon called 'magic' to explain, because nobody has managed to bring repeatable, inexplicable 'my will over reality' phenomena to test under clinical conditions, without they are sent away again with their beliefs in tatters. So this is not a 'Science baffled' headline. It's a 'WTF are you
talking about' headline.
I see no sign that you even have doubt, much less skepticism, Di. A skeptical position is 'false until proven true'. The position you seem to hold is 'true but inexplicable'.
I'm not sure what a 'closed skeptic' is, or how I'd defend myself from the allegation (or even if I want to). But if you'd like a skeptic whose receptivity is beyond question, you could try
James Randi. Present your claims to him and if you can prove them, you win $1M from his Foundation, and you'll probably spend the rest of your life giving talks and signing sponsorship deals. (Not only that, but I'll send you a case of decent Australian red wine in contrition for my hubris.) If you can't though, he gets to publish the results with your name attached, and I for one would take no pleasure at all in that.