Isaac Bonewits is one of North America's leading experts on ancient and modern Druidism, Witchcraft and the rapidly growing Earth Religions movement. He is the author of Real Magic, Authentic Thaumaturgy, The Pagan Man, Bonewits's Essential Guide to Witchcraft and Wicca, Bonewits's Essential Guide to Druidism, Real Energy, and Neopagan Rites, as well as numerous articles, reviews and essays. He is a singersongwriter with twoandahalf albums to his credit. As a 'spellbinding' speaker, he has educated, enlightened and entertained two generations of modern Goddess worshippers, nature mystics, and followers of other minority belief systems, and has explained these movements to journalists, law enforcement officers, college students, and academic researchers.

CHAPTER 1

The Laws of Magic

"Law: a statement of an order or relation of phenomena that so far as is knownis invariable under the given conditions ... the observed regularity of nature."

—Webster's Third New International

Over the centuries a collection of basic magical and mystical axioms hassurfaced in culture after culture throughout the world, even in cultures thatwere totally isolated. These we can, and will, call the Laws of Magic. Like thelaw of gravity or the law of diminishing returns, these magical laws are notlegislative acts (as some theologians have tried to make them) but rather theyare descriptions of the ways that phenomena in a field—in this case magic—seemto interact and behave. They are the results of observation, testing, andtheorizing until a coherent whole is produced.

Not all these laws are consciously known or understood by those using them, andnot all will automatically appear in every single culture with a tradition ofmagic. To understand them, it is not necessary that you become a magicianyourself. In fact, it is often easier for an outsider to discover and organizethese laws.

For example, suppose a physiologist is watching Arnold Palmer play golf. Now thescientist may understand everything that's going on inside Palmer's body when heswings his club; that is, he will know what neurons are discharging, whathormones are being released into Palmer's bloodstream, what muscles arecontracting and releasing. The fact that he knows all this, however, won't makehim a pro like Palmer. As for Palmer himself, he probably doesn't understandeverything going on in his metabolism; all he knows is that he moves his body insuch and such a way and sinks a putt. Knowing how to play golf does not make hima physiologist. The scientist has a slight advantage here because he can studyathletes from many different sports.

The situation described here is similar to the relation between a professionaloccultist and a professional magician, where the former would be thephysiologist and the latter, the athlete. An even better comparison would be theoccultist as scientist and the magician as engineer. A person can be a superboccultist and a lousy magician and vice versa; the basic talents involved arenot the same and only rarely do they show up in the same individual. I, forexample, am a much better occultist than I am a magician; and most of mycolleagues are better magicians than they are occultists.

Now all magicians believe in the Law of Cause and Effect, that exactly the sameactions done under exactly the same conditions will always be associated withexactly the same results. Actually the whole theory of causation gets shaky assoon as you look at it twice, and those "exactly's" are hard to get, but itworks quite nicely for day-to-day planning. This is not a law limited to magic,but I'll toss it in here to keep things neat.

We will examine in this chapter some of the most basic and important Laws ofMagic, give a brief description of their meaning, relate them to the workings ofthe mind, show some of their interrelationships, and throw in a few examples forgood measure. But before we do, consider the words of J. W. N. Sullivan's TheLimitations of Science:

But these laws are purely descriptive laws. They are just statements of fact,like saying gold is yellow. Kepler gives no reason why his laws should be asthey are. The observation and recording of laws is the first step in scientificprocedure. Science begins by hunting for uniformities amongst natural phenomena.The scientific man finds, for instance, that light is propagated in straightlines, that unsupported stones fall to the ground, that heat passes from ahotter body to a cooler one. In this way he introduces a sort of order intowhole groups of happenings. And this sort of knowledge is often quite sufficientfor practical purposes. Indeed, in many cases of great practical importancescience has not yet advanced beyond this knowledge.

The Law of Knowledge is the most basic of all the laws. It states that"understanding brings control," that the more you learn the stronger you are. Ifyou know all there is to know about something, then you have absolute and totalcontrol over it. Now this is the basis of all modern science and technology, andobviously matches the way the human organism—or any other that we know of, forthat matter—actually works. The more data input the organism has about phenomenaeither inside or outside its body the greater a possibility it has of solvingproblems and thus surviving. The key phrase for this law would be: "Knowledge ispower."

Its major sublaw is the Law of Self-Knowledge which says that the most importantkind of knowledge is knowledge of oneself. This also has a very logical basis.Constant review and reorganizing of the contents of your mind and body lead tomore effective survival. You might say that only when the machine is cleaned andgreased are you thoroughly tuned for living. Its key phrase would be: "Knowthyself."

All the other laws depend upon these two; it is wise to keep them in mind at alltimes. I don't really think that these need any more explanation or defense, andsince this is not officially a book of philosophy or phenomenology, we can go onto the others.

The Law of Names is related to both the Law of Knowledge and the Law ofAssociation. It states that knowing the complete and total true name of aphenomenon or entity gives you complete control over it (almost all phenomena inmagic are personified and can be considered to be "entities," or beings). Thislaw is based on two premises. First: in simpler languages than our own a name isa definition of that which is named. This is true also in complex languages,though you often have to search long and hard for the name-meaning of a word,especially one with foreign roots. Knowing the name, you know that which isnamed. As you get more information about the thing named, the name changes andevolves to fit the new data, often getting longer in the process. If you canonly learn the full name of a strange phenomenon, you will fully understand itand therefore control it. This is the connection with the Law of Knowledge.

Second: names are associational devices (memory gimmicks, used to remind you ofsomething) both as aspects or descriptions of a...