Models Matter
Misunderstanding leads to mistakes...
The psychological model of magic, as it is popularly understood in Pagan and occult circles, generally follows ideas that Wikipedia explores in its article on the subject, and Frater U.’.D.’. lays out here. The Raven’s Crucible has a good, quick overview of five models for magic here.
Models matter, and when we make mistakes with them the problems they produce are profound. My personal experiences with folks who espouse the psychological model is that a lot of understanding of it is rooted in the writings of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, and that the understanding folks are working with here is not from those two sources directly, but filtered through a more pop-science understanding of their material. The problem here is that there is a lack of understanding the nuance of each, what each was driving at, and those problems extend into the verbiage used, eg the Id, Ego, and Superego of Freud, and the archetypes (especially Shadow nowadays) of Jung.
Quoting Frater U.’.D.’.: “The psychological model of magic does not purport to explain how magic works, its only premise is that the subconscious (or, as Carl Jung later retagged it, the unconscious) will do the job if it is properly addressed and/or conditioned. This again is achieved by magical trance, suggestion and the use of symbols (i.e. selective sensory input) as tools of association and as a means of communication between the magician's conscious will and his subconscious faculty responsible for putting it into effect.”
Quoting Raven’s Crucible: “The Psychological Model posits that magic operates through the action of the placebo effect.”
I think what bothers me most about the psychological model is at the beginning of Frater U.’.D.’.’s quote: “The psychological model of magic does not purport to explain how magic works”. The psychology model of magic as it is popularly understood just explains the phenomena of magic as belonging to the subconscious, and that acts of magic act on, towards, or for the mind. It relies on the field of psychology to fill in the gaps that the psychological model for magic itself lacks. The psychological model, then, is a model with a good chunk of the parts missing for what a model often does: explain a given phenomena. To make things even more difficult, the model then relies on those applying the model to have a cogent, and informed understanding of both psychology and magic.
Misuse and Misunderstanding
The misuse of psychology and its terms as a result of this lack of cogent and informed understanding of both psychology and magic is part of why I have such an issue with the ‘psychological’ model of magic. The quotes around psychological are not just there for show.
With the way it is often popularly put, the psychological model is not actually about psychology, but solipsism or strict materialism. Either the point is made that magic only exists as an expression of and in relation to one’s mind, and that it is the only thing that is real, aka solipsism, or the point is made that magic is a product only of the mind, and this, in turn, is generated by the brain aka materialism.
Then there is the misuse of psychology terms which makes my teeth itch. The one that is getting passed around right now, ‘religious psychosis’, is just one of many, but it is so popular to use regardless of the circles it is used in, that like a lot of psychology terms, it is beginning to lose meaning. For starters, there is no such thing as religious psychosis. There is psychosis with religious features. There is psychosis with a basis in religion, whether through trauma or expression of particular symptoms. However, there is no such thing as ‘religious psychosis’. It is a pop-science term that strips meaning from its purpose, and which, like a lot of pop-science terms, is then used as a cudgel.
Folks can have religious experiences we disagree on without folks resorting to using terms like religious psychosis. We can doubt the veracity, believability, and content of a person’s experience in terms of material or metaphysical reality without being ableist, discounting their sanity, doubting their experiences and/or understanding, or denigrating their humanity. Using scientific language in this way muddies both scientific and religious understanding, while also obfuscating how folks are disagreeing or taking issue with a given perspective or experience, all the while terminating conversation in what is fast becoming a thought-terminating cliche.
What Starts in the Model Extends to the Territory
What problems extend into the language used then extend into the model deployed, what it does and does not tell us, and its ability to help us understand what we are doing, how, and why. From here, these issues with the model extend into the territory of lived experience. To be clear, the psychological model can be a useful way to model one’s understanding magic. I am saying that the psychological model of magic is not useful at modeling a lot of things, and among them is a theoretical understanding of the place, use, and deployment of magic and spiritual phenomena generally.
By placing things into a psychological context, and a generally flawed understanding of psychology at that, limits the usefulness and applicability of the model and what it says to us about what we are doing, feedback from the magic we engage in, and wider implications. When those who espouse it engage in solipsism or strict materialism it also limits the applicability of the psychological model to certain this-world conditions, the limits of those philosophical models, and then limiting the wider context magic exists in outside of the strictly psychological model. Sometimes that is utterly appropriate. If I want a magical act to help increase my willingness to do work around the house, then understanding what it is acting on from a psychological model of magic may be useful.
The problems with such a model are many. As an explanatory model it does not have a theoretical framework on its own with what magic is, how it acts, and what it is doing when we engage with it. It can tell us what our psyche does as a result of engaging in magic, but not what magic itself is beyond something that is potentially generated from and acts on our subconscious or the collective unconscious. As a model of useful magic it lacks the most needed aspects of troubleshooting: the framework for success, failure, and determination of what happened. It cannot tell us why a given magical act succeeds or fails excepting in that it does/does not produce the effect looked for. The problem with relying on folks’ understanding of psychology to inform what information the psychology model of magic has to say is that it relies on them understanding psychology as a science, the terms employed on its own terms, and how these in turn relate to us and what magic we engage with.
Shared Issues Between Models
This problem of understanding that I am talking about with the psychological model of magic also exists in the spirit model. If you do not understand the spirit model you're working with, you are going to misunderstand all the rest of what that model is supposed to be telling you. The psychological model is quite open to misinformation, disinformation, and misunderstanding through its association with the selfsame scientific field. A lot of the understandings of psychology at the moment are filtered through a popular culture lens, and that pushes and pulls on the psychological model of magic.
The spirit model is open to a range of issues like this. This is especially true for those who have taken up a spirit model of magic without unpacking the Protestantism that exists as a background, even for atheists, Catholics, and those raised in various polytheist and animist homes. Without readily being willing to confront this head-on in one’s own worldview and modeling that follow, the spirit model of magic can very easily take on shades, if not wholesale assumptions from the overculture.
One way that this manifests (ha!) at the moment is through Prosperity Gospel type New Age influences that infect folks’ understanding of magic. The notion that those who are powerful and skilled in magic are automatically blessed with wealth and resources. This notion is tied back to the Calvinist idea that those who are wealthy are blessed by God. If you bring this into your model of magic, then there is an awful lot of victim-blaming and gaslighting that gets included, eg you did not manifest hard/well enough and therefore you deserve poverty, blaming the individual when the system we live in overwhelming those already wealthy and powerful. This has the potential to eat a person’s willingness to engage in magic at all. It also says some truly terrible things if you were to take this on and succeed in a magical endeavor: you did the work and got the results, therefore your magic is superior. Without a clear model unfettered by such gunk you may mistake effective magic for a privileged upbringing or a lack of obstacles in attaining your objective as proof that your magic worked as intended. Assessments and discernment become clouded and compromised as a result.
The lack of a theoretical framework for what magic is, how it works, and what it does within the model of psychology is part of why I do not recommend it. Without the ability to actually look at the reasons for success, failure, and how magic is employed within a theoretical framework, it makes the entire point of modeling moot. Now, it is entirely possible that I have yet to run into a person who works with the psychological model of magic and has cogent explanations for these things within a psychological model of magic framework. What I have seen up to this point, however, is that often folks will blend the psychological model of magic with others. As I understand it, this works, but for me the spirit model itself does not negate the psychological effects of magic that the model itself puts forward. I take it as a matter of course that magic affects multiple levels at once, our mental state being among them.
My questions flow from here: why are you appending a model like the spirit model of magic with the psychological model? What is it that the psychological model of magic brings to the table that the spirit model lacks? What is it that the psychological model of magic can tell us, but the spirit model cannot effectively explain? How is the spirit model of magic enhanced or improved by the inclusion of the psychological model?
Some folks that I've run into seem to think that the spirit model of magic lacks the coherence and predictability of a more scientifically minded model. I think that has more to do with individual practitioners than the model. Part of the reason I do not use the psychological model for my magic is because I have a Bachelors of Science in psychology. I work in the field of psychology. While I am not applying the idea of non-overlapping magisteria, I also am very aware that the psychology model of magic has limits. I want the explanations and coherent worldview that the spirit model of magic has to offer, and for my purposes, it makes more sense to go the spirit model.
Frameworks Further Construct Understanding
When made well, understood well, and used to further our explorations, frameworks further construct understanding. It provides us foundation to build from and means to test our building of knowledge, discernment, and experience. I find the spirit model of magic more satisfying and useful in this regard because it has answers for ‘what’ and ‘how’ magic works beyond a relatively narrow band of human experience. Magic exists in part as a result of the existence and interconnectedness with spirits. Given we are among those spirits, we share in the existence and use of magic.
The basic understanding of polytheism and animism is that we are in relationships with Others. How we understand how these theological frameworks unfold is up to our the particular philosophical basis we may engage with, such as Platonism, Stoicism, or a more modern gestalt. A particular theological framework also affects how our understanding unfolds, such as a Kemetic, Heathen, or more general polytheist or animist framework as your baseline. From here, particular cultural frameworks fill out information as we engage with them. This difference can be seen between Heathens who are informed by, and may identify themselves through, distinct ancient culture groups such as Anglo-Saxon, Icelandic, and Norwegian.
With this basic framework we can then construct different understandings of how this model is expressed within a given worldview. In Heathenry, the weaving/carving of Urðr/Wyrd on a fundamental level is the push/pull/integrated existence of all things that allows for magic to exist, have its effects, and to inform how we understand the way our magic affects ourselves and others. We have souls like the Líkr (physical body) Önd (breath, akin to chi/prana), and Hamr (second skin, akin to the etheric or astral body in occult teachings) through which those actions are given existence and affect others, and from there those effects are felt, expressed, and acted upon in kind.
From the basic knowing that magic is centered in or comes from the interaction between spirits and from there acts, we are able to see how magic works. From here we can understand who and what it affects, and why a given act may produce a given result. When it comes to evaluating a spell, enchantment, or other act of magic, that ability to ask and answer “Why?” is paramount to discernment, evaluation, troubleshooting, and corroborating experiences. We can then understand why a given act of magic with many of the same features may be more useful in a given situation than another, eg why Rune galdr may be more effective at delivering results in a given working vs marking something with a Rune.
Models of magic are part of the basis of the expression our religions give form to, understand, and know power. By understanding and having a living knowing through how we relate to power, mold ourselves with it, and give expression to it, we better understand ourselves, our communities, and the effects we have on the Worlds around us. By understanding and living well through a well-constructed and well-understood model, we allow for both the basics of a well-lived life for the average exoteric Heathen, and for the work of Heathen vættirverkar (spiritsworkers) to be couched in terms and knowledge the community can understand, use, work with, and live with.