The Story Within the Story - Practise

 Hello. C J here. This is another post about the real life spirituality that inspired me to become an author. What is magic? My definition is as follows. Any change caused through subtle means. This means a few things. One, the original cause of the change has to be invisible. Two, the change has to be noticed in the world somehow visibly. Three, the change has to happen on purpose and be the one desired by the magic or the person using it.

Then the question becomes, how does it work? And, more specifically, what do I want from it? Me, the author. What did I go into this looking for? The one problem with researching magic professionally is that it all seems to work regardless of how it’s done. Sacred prayer chants. They work. Prayer using passages from holy books. They work. Tarot cards. They work. Ancient Norse secrets of the runes. They work. Summoning a video game character to advise you on a chemistry midterm. I’ve never done it but I’ve heard a number of people say that it works great.

Then what are the rules? There have to be some, right? But there is a thing I went into this looking for. One thing. Mass. Let me explain. So atoms including the electrons that run computers aren’t really in a location when you’re not looking at them. Matter is more of a concept in quantum physics than an actual solid thing. Matter can be generated at a small scale easily but then it collapses back into what I call the quantum substrate. This is my science shorthand for that.

Why can’t we make matter on a larger scale? It’s in Isaac Asimov’s amazing work Nine Tomorrows in the last story The Last Question. A person asks a supercomputer if there’s a way of preventing the human race from running out of energy they can use. The supercomputer says it doesn’t know. No one knows. According to the Laws of Thermodynamics we’re eventually going to run out of heat to run the stars in the sky. But is that right?

You can’t get energy into or out of a closed system. But according to quantum mechanics particles can teleport, be generated and alter their state without effort. What then is a closed system? To put this in shorter language, there are hundreds of thousands of spells that are designed to conjure a magical familiar, aid, or even a lover out of thin air. They work or they wouldn’t be in the books. How does it work? Hoe do they make mass, energy, out of nothing? And, really, can I have one? They sound fun. That’s my question. That was always my question. I’m going to answer The Last Question and the answer is going to be yes.

C J Mcpherson