this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2025
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I feel like the concept of magic doesn't become any more credible if you use the archiac spelling "magick", and differentiating between "spiritual" vs "supernatural" is splitting hairs. It's close enough to the same exact thing that i don't believe a person can call bullshit on one without calling bullshit on both. If brooms and cauldrens are fake then so is Beltane.
Magick is demonstrably not bullshit. It works, just like prayer works, just like meditation works. Partly because you believe in it, partly because rituals have inherent effects on human minds and emotions.
Spirituality serves the purpose of using those parts of your brain and mind that are not strictly rational, and/or inaccessible through rational thought alone.
Just thinking real hard about it can’t help you get over a breakup, for example. Or get closure over someone’s death. Spirituality is there for those sorts of times.
I think that you don't think that there's any meaningful difference between "spiritual" and "supernatural " then you're missing the point.
I used to be an atheist anti-christian skeptic type that didn't understand my partner's beliefs at all, because why have beliefs if you know they aren't real? sugar_in_your_tea's above quote from Equal Rites actually fits it really well.
Your beliefs have an impact on how you act, and your acts have an impact on the world. Therefore I choose to live by a set of guiding principles and interact with the world in a way that fits what I want it to be like. The whole point is that you can only influence what you interact with, but also you never know what you'll interact with.
That said, I think that people who claim to be able to influence the lives of others without interacting with them directly are on ego trips.
However, I also don't think that anyone can say anything for certain, as we live in a universe driven by probability, where "spooky action at a distance" is an actual scientific phenomenon.
tl;dr: Spiritual describes how people interact with the world but supernatural describes hypothetical (meta)physical phenomena.
This is why I usually self-describe as “Christian” : I believe (for the most part) in the philosophy of Jesus Christ.
Do I think he was a real guy ? Probably not. Historical evidence seems to suggest he was at least two guys, plus a story about an angel, plus a few other things on top. That’s kinda irrelevant to me, though.
Do I believe in god ? Only in the deistic sense, even then I’m not sure.
Jesus is like Frodo or Heracles to me, a character that we can learn from. I really like the whole “love your neighbor as yourself” “give to the poor and help the needy” which I see as his main message.
I’m a Christian in the same sense that I’m a Pragmatist, but Christianity has the edge in that it has a story and a character to relate to. The guy preaching love and getting trampled by the world for it, is sadly still a relevant image today.