Over at Magic in These Hills, they’re ruminating about the difference between prayer and spells.
This is a topic I treat in my book The Way of Four Spellbook. Before launching into a section that teaches how to do spells, I first explore the various sources of magical power. In other words, spells use power, but how do you get it?
One way of acquiring power is from the Gods. If you acquire power only from the Gods, you are praying. If you acquire power from your body or mind, or from nature, or from supernatural beings other than deities, or from tools in which power has been previously stored, or any combination of these things, in addition to or instead of acquiring power from the Gods, then you are doing spells.
If you look to religions that forbid spellcraft, such as Christianity, you will see this is spelled out (no pun intended) pretty clearly. You may pray to achieve goals. You may not recite charms to achieve the same goals. It is not the goal that is regulated, but the means to achieve that goal.
It’s a short step from saying the only permitted source of power is prayer, to saying that the only real source of power is prayer. A lot of religions go that route, dismissing magic as superstition while praying their knees off. A lot of witches have swallowed that to such an extent that they define magic as a form of prayer. But magic is only a form of prayer if the Gods are included. They don’t have to be.
So:
- Ask the Goddess for a lover: Prayer
- Ask the Goddess for a lover while gazing into the flame of a pink candle and annointing yourself with rose oil: Prayer and magic
- Gaze into the flame of a pink candle and annointing yourself with rose oil while reciting “Lover come to me, So Mote It Be! Lover come to me, So Mote It Be!”: Magic
Oddly, I’ve thought of prayer as a form of magic. 🙂 Nice working definition of the differences.
Thanks for sharing this. One of the issues I’ve often had with people trying to treat “magic” and “prayer” as synonyms is that it puts everything on the gods. This just made no sense to me.
I think I’ll make some time later to write down more of my thoughts that stemmed from this post. Thanks for the fodder!
Prayer, magic, and my relationship with my gods….
Today, Deborah Lipp offered a brief summary of her thoughts on the differences between magic (or more specifically, spells) and prayer on her blog. It was nice to see someone whose thoughts on the subject echo my own. I’ve always……
Back in my 12-step days, I had to do a lot of translating. But it wasn’t a straight translation, as many ‘elders’ in the program would have me believe. Because the Judea-Christian (mostly Christian) belief about prayer is based off We Are Nothing And God Is All.
We were taught to pray for His (her/them) will for us and the power/strength/wisdom to carry that out. Because of course, my OWN will was a bad thing. ‘My best thinking got me here.’
Try to explain to these people that, well, see, MY gods ENCOURAGE me to seek my own will. To in fact, with great thought and responsibility, invite the universe to bend to my will.
That went over well.
holy shit, I just typed 500 words in response and they DISAPPEARED.
So, what I was trying to say was, it’s very helpful to understand Crowley’s concept of True Will. A person’s True Will is perfectly aligned with the will of the Gods, there is no difference. “Every Man and Woman is a Star,” as Crowley said. The work of magic is to uncover the knowledge of your own True Will, what Crowley called “Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.”
There is a big difference between the Will and the whim. Some 12-steppers believe that you can never make that distinction. That the only solution is to give up all attempt at knowing the True Will. By subsuming yourself to the Will of the Gods, you serve your own True Will without knowing what it is.
You can also ask the Gods to aid your spells. When you do this, you bring the spell to Their attention. If they choose to, they can then stop the spell. We don’t suggest this to Them, but once they’re poking their noses in, they can.