People are often confused about the relationship between prayers and spells, or magical rituals. I think the first time I wrote about this subject I was in high school. More than twenty years later, I would like to think it would no longer be a subject about which people routinely shared misguided claims. It is, however, something that still needs to be routinely addressed. It feels like a very remedial subject on the surface, but I think some of the expansions and improvements in how people explore and practice magic that have occurred over the last 15 years or so have maybe made this question more confusing.
To start off, there is definitely a relationship. Magic often develops within the context of or adjacent to religion. As this has become more evident to people, with the academic study of magic becoming more common and also more accessible to the public, the interaction between religious practice and magical practice has become more evident. The perception of the medieval and early modern period, which has led to the idea that religion is inherently at odds with magic, is starting to wane a bit.
While that perception of religion and magic being inherently at odds is incomplete to the point of being incorrect, the idea of religion and magic being the same is also incomplete to the point of being incorrect. There are examples where magical practice is often the work of priests, but, there are also magical practices which are illicit and outside of the space of official clerical practice. Sometimes this insider outsider role blurs, and illicit magic is still practiced by people in clerical roles. Various cultures, time periods, and the individual needs and interests of people, cause there to be myriad forms this relationship can take.
While magic can be part of religion, or it can be outside the bounds of the socially acceptable, or anywhere in between those poles, it still tends to have its own character. Magic frequently treats elements of religious practice and religious figures in manners different from how they are treated in a purely religious context and the perspective of the magician is often different in concern to the agency of the magician and what that expresses about the relationship between the magician and the gods or spirits they engage.
The practical components are no less nuanced than the developmental and ideological components. There is not a single simple answer as to what complexes of actions are purely magic or purely religion. In many ways they overlap. Sometimes they inform and shape each other. Sometimes there is tension between them. Sometimes they are rooted in the same elements applied or experienced in a different manner or context. Sometimes, magic will include religious elements or religion will include magical acts, but these are subservient to the overall nature of the larger ritual activity. In different times, places, cultures, a variety of interactions occur. Simple answers that they are at odds, that they are the same, or that one group’s magic is another group’s religion, all often ignore elements that reveal a more complex series of interactions, distinctions, and similarities.
But, our topic isn’t really religion vs magic or religion as magic. We’re looking at whether spells and prayers are the same. On the low end, there is the common claim that spells are just prayers with props, or that spells and prayers are the same activity but with different words applied by people of differing religious persuasions. On the more informed end, there seems less of an issue involving people making assertions that misinform and more that people just aren’t sure where one ends or begins because of the way the two can work together when engaging spirits and gods in magic.
This post is divided into two segments. “The Less Interesting Part” deals with the simple issue of misinformation. It discusses how and why it arose, how it might have seemed useful, but how it can be harmful, and why it is clearly incorrect. “The More Interesting Part” digs deeply into the nuance and overlap of prayer and spell. It gives multiple examples of different types of magic and explains what parts are prayer and what parts are spell work and why. It addresses several ways of doing magic, and frequently gives detailed examples. Through those examples, this post serves almost as a short booklet introducing or exploring several forms of animistic magical practice.
The Less Interesting Part
The idea that spells are just prayers with props was a somewhat goofy assertion that got popularized during the nineties, maybe going back into the 1980s. During and after the Satanic Panic of the 1980s it was advantageous for Wiccans and other NeoPagans to distance themselves in whatever way possible from Satanism and public perceptions around Satanic and ritual crime.
By the 1980s, NeoPaganism was only about thirty years old, and it was small. In the US, the estimates by the early 1990s were that there were about 10,000 Wiccans and NeoPagans. The earliest forms of the religion may have started in 1950, but for the US, the growth of hippie and festival culture in the 1960s gave these alternative faiths a space to take root. The link with feminism and Goddess-spirituality and the books that spread that perspective started spreading in the 1970s. So, by the 1980s, a recognizable NeoPaganism was essentially a brand new thing, or at least, the American flavor of it was new. The Church of Satan was also a new thing in the 1970s and the two movements hit public awareness more or less together. Even without being related movements, it was easy for the public to associate them, and adherents to them didn’t necessarily make distinguishing them from one another easy initially. For example, Isaac Bonewits appeared in an old video of a Church of Satan ritual. Both groups made use of the Pentagram as a religious symbol, and both used the word witch. It was easy for the public to be confused, and that confusion was a potential cause of real and serious danger.
It was important for the growing NeoPagan movement, which grew dramatically in the 1990s and early 2000s, to distinguish themselves from anything people might think of as frightening or dangerous. As a result, rhetoric was adopted to highlight distinctions from Satanism, and to make witchcraft and Paganism seem normal and suburban. This included lots of attempts by Pagan and witchcraft groups to get highlighted in the media, to push causes that made them seem mainstream and legitimate, and to show that they could have institutional structures like everyone else.
Being a teenager in the 90s, it was super exciting to read articles about witchcraft and Paganism in mainstream media. That excitement always turned to disappointment. I was always left asking “how did they pick this person as an expert?” It felt like everything being said was wrong, or it only applied to a small group of people - certainly not to me or to people I knew. Some of it was probably people who didn’t really know better, but some of it was sloppy - but, likely intentional sloppy for a purpose. Some of what was shared was just overly general, but some of it was misinformation. The idea that spells are prayers was part of this misinformation.
Giving too many specifics while trying to make something digestible for the public is counterproductive. Getting into details and nuance makes people tune out if they’re not already interested in going deep. Making a statement and explaining all the exceptions and variations can make things look suspicious or like you’re hiding something. Giving a lot of details, and a range of specific forms creates a lot for the speaker to remember, but also a lot for detractors to try and find holes in or to simply twist into something untrue.
In hindsight, misinformation seems bad. But, it may have been the best solution at the time. When the threat of an overculture deciding that you are a group of demonic baby eaters is a real looming threat to your safety, you might not have the luxury of deciding to create complex nuanced talking points around the truth, or the ability to say that it’s ok that you’re different from the norm. Incomplete truths, or slight twisting of facts might have seemed right for broader media, but it becomes a problem when it starts erasing actual information and creating misinformation to be received by people within the community you’re protecting. People in the NeoPagan community began to accept the misinformation; it was included in books, websites, and other media created not for outsiders who could be dangerous if they thought witches, Pagans, and NeoPagans were dangerous, but rather it appeared in in-group materials intended for witches and NeoPagans to learn from.
Spells and prayers being the same seems to come largely from this context. It isn’t an issue of using different words to describe the same thing. It isn’t an issue of a word having a new meaning. It’s inaccurate, and it obscures a deeper understanding of both spellwork and prayer.
Spell could refer to a lot of different types of magical acts. It’s a somewhat broad word already. In all of its uses there is an element of agency on the part of the person who works or lays the spell. Spells are magic. So, they are efforts to create some real change in the world through uncanny means, or means which involve a less than normal form of causality. Prayer can overlap with that in part, but it doesn’t always. The shared portion of the Venn diagram here might even be a bit misleading.
A spell involves the agency of the magician on some level. It’s magic so it is, typically, intentional. The magician is deciding to do magic for a particular end. The decision to do it, the decision as to what to do it for, and the decision that the desired goal is what needs to happen and what is going to happen, all exist within the magician. When prayer overlaps in the middle of the Venn diagram of “elements of spells” and “elements of prayers” the shared portion is “seeking the occurrence of a goal through less than normal causality.” This shared portion still doesn’t make prayer and spells the same, because the center of agency remains different when talking about a prayer versus a spell. In a prayer, the god or spirit who hears the prayer decides whether or not to do what needs to be done and whether or not to make what the supplicant wants to happen come to pass. As said above, in a spell, it is the magician making the decisions.
Obviously, not all magic that a magician does will result in the effect the magician wanted. When magic doesn’t go as planned, it isn’t because the magician asked for it and whoever they asked said no. The magician might not have the skill, power, or leverage to cause their desire to happen. They might have formulated their intention incorrectly, or made a mistake in their magical act. They might not have asked the right spirit, or they might not have been able to exert enough influence to make the spirit do what they wanted. There could be competing factors that they didn’t take into account, or competing factors may have just been too powerful.
Prayers also fail to come to fruition sometimes. Maybe it wasn’t within the capability of the god or spirit, or maybe the request didn’t fit a plan they believe needs to unfold. It could be that whoever was asked simply didn’t agree with the request, or that they didn’t feel it was best for the supplicant, or they didn’t feel the supplicant deserved it.
The reasons why each might fail do have some overlap, but also significant differences. Those differences are because one is about you deciding something you want to do and the other is about you asking someone for something.
The split between prayer and spell isn’t limited to that difference. That difference is mostly relevant when comparing petitions, or supplications - prayers that ask for something - with magic. Those aren’t the only type of prayer though, and this is one of the most obvious ways that spells and prayers aren’t the same. You can do a prayer that is simply contemplative, you can do mystical prayers to alter your state of consciousness and come into contact with the divine, you can do prayers of thanksgiving, you can do prayers of praise. Prayer is often offered to gods because the gods are seen as deserving of prayer.
Spells are different. Spells are done because you want something to happen. Contemplative prayer and mystical prayer are useful for magicians, but they’re still different from spells. Spells don’t really overlap with prayers of thanksgiving or prayers of praise. Spells pretty much have a singular application - make stuff happen. Prayers have many applications.
It’s just clumsy and inaccurate language to say they are the same. Reducing them in that way also leads to not really understanding either, and could prevent people from getting good at either, or having meaningful experiences with either.
The More Interesting Part
While spells and prayers are different, they can work together sometimes. If in a religious ritual, we command something to be something that it isn’t, that is magic. We’re not asking a god to change the thing, we’re asking the thing to be something it isn’t, and we’re using our position as the ritualist and whatever authority is conveyed by our status in the ritual to assert that in this time and space, the essence of the object needs to obey. If we tell the story of creation, and tell the fire in the bowl that it is the primordial fire from the story, we are using the power of the story and the influence of its essential quality to shape the essence of the fire, and we’re using our position in the ritual environment to tell the fire to obey. That’s magic, even if it’s kind of a soft and limited magic. It’s a tool we use routinely in magical work. It’s also a magical tool that comes into play in religious ritual.
There are lots of examples like this going in both directions. It’s not uncommon for a religious ceremony to require something which is magical, or like magic. Elements of the ceremony or the status of the cleric, create the agency through which they accomplish the magical elements which support the religious ceremony. Likewise, magical ceremonies sometimes use prayer or religious components to facilitate elements of what the magician is doing or to create agency for the magician.
We can’t pick apart every example of magic in a religious ceremony, or of prayer or religious behavior in a magical ceremony. They are too numerous and would vary from tradition to tradition and culture to culture. We can highlight a few examples which will be common for a lot of our readers. Hopefully, these examples will elucidate how magic and prayer interweave without becoming identical.
The most common place where this question comes up probably has to do with offerings. I wonder about it myself. Have I just built a household religion with a group of spirits in which I make offerings, give prayers of thanksgiving, and ask for help with things? It certainly can start looking like personalized religious practice and less like magical practice. This is especially the case when we have a court of spirits we work with routinely and with whom we have daily, weekly, or some other regular interval of interaction.
On some level, if we’re able to understand the differences; if we comprehend what we’re doing and nothing is preventing us from seeking deeper understanding or practice, it might not matter so much which side of the blurred line of religion or magical practice we end up on. If we have a good relationship with our spirits and our lives are benefitting from it, then those two things are paramount. Still, certain specifics of our behavior can help us sort out if it’s magic or if we’re just praying in the context of religion.
Do you expect the spirits you’re working with to do things because of the relationship or do you hope that they might do things because of the relationship? These two things sound similar, but they are very different. Understanding how they are different can help shape our behavior.
Magic works on the basis of expectation. The magician maintains a good relationship with the spirits which gives access to the spirits and leads the spirits to believe the magician will follow through on what they promise. The magician might also have certain authority, or charismatic power that gives more influence or leverage when working with particular spirits. The magician could know stories and spells that increase that leverage and power. These pieces are factors of the relationship. The shape of the relationship means the magician makes a request with the expectation that if it is in the spirits’ power the spirits will accomplish the request.
In that scenario, offerings are somewhat transactional. The magician offers something on the contingency that the request is fulfilled. If the spirit doesn’t fulfill the request the magician doesn’t give the offering. Some spirits may need a preliminary offering, but that preliminary offering is still tied to the request. The preliminary offering is either given in the context of something to entice the spirit, or something to assist the spirit in working. A magician might give an offering as part of maintaining the relationship, but it is offered in exchange for their time, attention, or their willingness to continue the relationship.
In that context, offerings aren’t given just because the spirit wants it, or just because the spirit is a wonderful spirit who deserves offerings. But, what if you ask spirits for things with the hope that they’ll give them to you, and with the understanding that it’s up to them what’s best?
In that case, we’re probably getting more into the space of religion and prayer. The agency is with the spirits. The spirits are seen as arbiters of what we receive and what our experiences are and should be. Relationship is still important here. The supplicant maintains a good relationship in part because the god or spirit deserves goodness from the supplicant. Part of that maintenance is because the supplicant wants access and a relationship, kind of like the magician. Instead of wanting the spirit to believe you’ll follow through on promised offerings, the supplicant wants the spirit or god to see them as deserving.
A supplicant’s offerings are devotional. The god or spirit is deserving of offerings and so the supplicant gives them. This giving conveys the supplicant’s love for the god and, hopefully, entreats the god to look on the supplicant favorably. An offering can occur for numerous reasons, and not necessarily ones tied to the god doing anything for the supplicant. If the god doesn’t fulfill the request of the supplicant, the offerings still happen.
Both of these relationships involve the Guest-Host principle, or the idea that one is a good guest so they have a right to the host’s hospitality, and in turn they will be a good host and return that hospitality in kind. In the case of the supplicant, their function as a guest or host is much more like a Vassal to a Lord, or an admirer wooing a lover who is far beyond their league. For the magician, the guest-host relationship is often more like one of colleagues or business partners. These are imperfect metaphors but they convey some of the essential qualities of each. Both relationships can draw in elements of the other type, and sometimes we might have both types of relationship with the same spirit or group of spirits. How we’re approaching them will vary based on the capacity in which we approach them, or the capacity in which we wish for them to respond to us.
While both relationships have similarities, and those relationships often exist by moving on a spectrum between each type, their distinctions can be important. Understanding those distinctions can help us engage each type of relationship better. That understanding can help us consider our attitude and manner when we work with spirits in either context. The ways in which those distinctions shape us can seem subtle, but they are still powerful and can influence how effective we are.
Moving on from offerings, we have some other approaches to magic where prayer and spellwork can interact. A simpler one to consider is aspecting, or possession. Many people call this invocation. Invocation and evocation actually mean more or less the same thing. They are frequently synonyms. In magical, Pagan, and NeoPagan spaces they’re often used with more specific meanings and those meanings aren’t always consistent. That is a whole other blog post. For our purposes today, it’s enough to say that no matter how you’re using the words invocation and evocation, when you do the activity you’re doing it through prayer. Similarly, aspecting or positive possession are also accomplished at least in part, if not primarily through prayer.
Since aspecting, or positive possession, is accomplished through prayer, does that mean it isn’t magic? Generally, I’d say no. There is space where this interaction can be primarily religious, but some element of magic helps negotiate the character of the experience if the medium is not fully relinquishing control. Magical techniques might also be used to facilitate or create the possession. If the magician has control over what they do while possessed - how they use the power of the spirit or how they apply its wisdom - then there is certainly magic happening at that point.
So let’s break this down a little more, but not too much because it is one of the more simple examples. Hopefully, it’s also one of the ones people will be more familiar with.
Let’s first consider the more common version of this experience. A magician or a NeoPagan “invokes” a god. Now, some might think of invoking as calling higher entities, or calling entities into a circle, but in NeoPagan literature this has frequently been used to refer to calling a god to enter the individual. The word invoke really just means to call upon in prayer, but, the act of calling a god in is what we’re talking about in this case. In ceremonial magic, this is called “Assumption of Godforms,” and sometimes it also gets referred to as aspecting. It’s a form of positive possession, but for most people, it’s a very mild one. The deity is present and some element of them flows through the individual, or the individual blends their nature and self-awareness with the awareness of the deity.
In this form of possession, the magician is generally mostly in control. They feel the power of the deity. The deity may communicate to them and give inspiration or guide them through magical methods to apply their power. In group religious rituals, sometimes the possessed will express this inspiration and try to convey the nature of the deity based on their internal experience through outward behaviors. The magician is still in control, so there is potential for a blend of inspiration, guided action, and theatrical effort to convey something real.
In magical rituals, the magician will use the power and authority of the deity to work whatever spell is being done. So if you’re doing a jar spell, and you invoke a deity to aspect them in this way - you’re the one doing the spell, but you’re empowering it through the deity. If there are spirits being called, or materials being awakened, you’re doing it in the voice of the deity and calling them with the deity’s authority. As you combine the materials and incant the spell, you’re charming the materials through the deity’s voice and power. If you’re moving creative light through the materials of the spell or shaping a thoughtform through your work, you are vivifying it with the deity’s light and power combined with your own.
This is probably one of the most common ways in which prayer and magic interact. The invocation isn’t magic. The invocation is a prayer. The aspecting of the deity is a mystical experience - it is an act which draws the supplicant into direct experience of the divine. What you do once you’ve aspected the deity is magic. This is the part where a spell might occur. You are working with materials, words, or ritual actions to channel agency to create change. In this case the agency is a combination of your own and the deity’s, but you’re the one actively deciding what to apply it to.
Let’s break it down more specifically. It gets pretty obvious when we do.
If you stand facing the sun, holding aloft a chalice with a solar drink and you open your heart in full devotion to and in adoration of the sun, and open yourself to accept its nature as you reflect upon its warmth on your skin, its light in your eyes, the way it touches and penetrates everything, and how its light connects things, then, as you fully feel immersed in its presence and the adoration of that presence you begin to speak and say,
“Swift-paced Apollo, whose chariot illuminates the sky before returning beneath the earth, wise Apollo who knew that Phaeton could not steer your course, as only you, mighty and deathless, can chart the path of the heavens, Oh far shooting archer who delights in music and gives prophecy, hear me and come unto me, for I love you. I am your devoted priest, and like Laurel, and Adonis I have known your love, but know, shining light, that I love you as you loved Hyacinth. My love for you is boundless, and so unbound come to me, my love for you is unfettered, and so unfettered, come to me, my love for you is all-reaching like your golden rays, so reach forth and come to me, for I have known you and I have loved you so much so that it is as I have loved myself. For you see yourself in me, and I myself in you, for we are likened unto one. My eyes cast forth your light, for it is our light, my arm draws back your bow, for it is our bow, my hand gently touches the Hyacinth, for my hand is your hand and your hand is mine, for we are one. Thus, I come forth, I the sun, I the charioteer, I draw my bow and light rains forth upon the world.”
This is clearly a prayer. You’re calling upon the god. You extoll the virtue and power of the god in praise of him. You express your familiarity and your love. All of this would be normal for a praise prayer. It takes a turn though in a more mystical direction as love becomes identification with one another and that shared identity becomes proclamation of identity. It might be easy to wonder if the second portion is magic, as you’re kind of declaring how things are. Nothing coerces the god here, and there is no leverage applied. The god still decides whether or not to come. You’re asking, very nicely, and you’re presumptively describing where it’s going, but the bulk of what is happening here is prayer, although, potentially mystical prayer.
There are elements of contemplation and spiritual engagement which can go with this process, but those are still mystical in nature.
So, you drink the chalice of solar libation and your insides are warm with the light touch of Apollo’s power. Faintly, you hear his voice but mostly you have senses and feelings of inspiration. This inspiration and his presence illuminate you so understand both the god and the nature of your magical act more fully. This is a very simple and mild sort of partial possession. You could reside in this contemplatively, you could do devotional acts throughout the day to strengthen the connection and its impact on you. There are lots of ways the experience can continue as a primarily mystical experience with no added magic.
But, in our example, you’re a magician doing magic. So, you’ve sung your love chant to the noon-day sun in all his glory and the giver of prophecy has allowed a small piece of himself to enter you. You feel your sense of self shifted as his light warms and shapes you slightly. Now that you’ve drawn in his power and authority you’re ready to work. You look down at your table and you have a bit of purple cloth with some shining golden thread. There is a magnet, some mint, and some cinnamon.
Earnestly feeling your connection with Apollo and his light shining from your heart into your voice, you pick up the cloth and the string. You touch them to your face happily and feel their softness and you hold them gently and whisper to them, “Rich purple cloth, like the regal toga of youth, be a sign of richness, wealth, and providence, golden thread, shining like my arrows, reaching long like the course of their light, know me and awaken, hold together with this cloth the life that I will put inside and become the worker who brings wealth.”
Then you pick up the magnet, you breathe upon it, you sprinkle iron on it, and pour oil on it and say, “sacred earth, breathing, drawing, quickening with life. Awaken and live, become the heart of this creation just as you are the heart of the earth, and draw forth the wealth for which you have been anointed, for as I travel around the world each day, it is your grasp which guides the way, like the core of the world, guide wealth to the one who possesses this creature.”
You sprinkle the mint and cinnamon with water and breathe upon them, then say, “Here me, the sun who helped raise you. I remember, cinnamon, when you were the wealth of great peoples. I remember when you adorned temples and were made as a gift to lovers. Remember yourself, remember your power and your value and awaken. Bring your fire to this creature so that it will bring the wealth and richness that you have always conveyed. Menthe, arise from the slumber of the Tartarean gloom. Beloved of my uncle Hades, awaken and bring that desire, bring the sharp bite of your breath, and with it the wealth and prosperity which you imply.”
Then, you combine everything in the cloth. Before you tie it off, you spit into it and breathe into it, and whisper, “the divine light within me courses in my breath and flows in my waters, now that light gives you life. Child, shine forth like my arrow and carry the will of your creator so that your light ever draws wealth.” Once you’ve enlivened it, you tie it off, hold it to your chest, and let yourself shine as brightly as possible before allowing that shine to collect within the satchel.
There are more things to do so as to nurture it to life, but you could do pretty much exactly what is laid out here and you’d have most of a spell. Notice the difference here from the invocation. You’re speaking, just like you spoke when you earnestly prayed to Apollo to come forth. There is a bit of historiola in both, or the practice of using story to convey a divine or magical nature and bring it to bear, or to shape the actions of spirits. In both cases, you’re drawing on mythic space, but perhaps more heavily as you work with the materials. You’ve reminded them that doing what you want them to do is what their natures are. You’ve reminded them while speaking as a god who knows them intimately and thoroughly going back into the time before the age of heroes.
You’re not hopefully and patiently asking these materials to do what you want with it being left up to them. You’re stirring them to act, and as the god that they recognize you’re directing them to wake up, do what they do naturally, and impart that nature to the new being you’re creating by combining physical representations of those natures and behaviors you’ve stirred. Ultimately, the real thing being done is being done by the life you’re creating, but you’re acting as an authority to tell these materials to help create that life.
The center of authority, the center of decision making, and the nature of the communication and the relationship are the things which help make it clear how the acts post-invocation differ from the act of invocation.
With more complete forms of positive possession, the line might get blurry. You still have prayer and ritual actions to create the state of possession. There is a negotiation between the spirit or god and the human. The human does contribute to the process through openness, or through engaging in the right ritual components. There is a collaborative element. Ultimately, if the god or spirit is choosing whether or not to engage in possession, or chosing who to possess and work through, you’re probably using prayer and ritual and there is a religious element to what is being done. Like with the more mild example, mystical relationships can occur here which change and shape the supplicant. The god or spirit can also teach and guide the supplicant, and an ongoing relationship and connection could form. This part of the process is arguably mystical, but it’s possible some people may not see it as such because we have historically prioritized certain cultural expressions of closeness to the numinal as mystical and others as primitive, as sorcery, as witchcraft or a host of other things. When we categorize the cleric as a shaman we unconsciously give ourselves permission to erase the mystical from what they are doing, since we associate mysticism with learned refined approaches in either particularly restrictive or enlightened religious contexts, while dancing and being possessed by spirits and journeying to other states of awareness and spiritual realms is understood as an element of noble savagery surviving on the fringes to remind us of the forgotten pasts of our more advanced cultures. The bias regarding how we recognize religiosity and the mystical in spaces unfamiliar to us is sometimes extreme, but we need to recognize that in order to understand how to describe what we perceive and experience and deepen how we comprehend our perceptions and experiences vis a vis the myriad potential elements of spiritual existence.
So, again, the mechanism can be prayer and religious ritual, the experience can be mystcial, but does magic enter in? I think so. Magic could facilitate the mechanism and the experience, but the real space for magic, in my view, is what happens once the experience is achieved.
If the possessed individual is giving over control primarily to the spirit or god we might assume that the god is the one with agency and so this is a fancier form of supplicative prayer. It can be. People could approach the spirit while they are possessing someone. Those people can then give offerings and praise and ask for the assistance they desire. After the ceremony, the god or spirit leaves and decides which things it wants to do for people. In that case, I wouldn’t see it particularly as magic so much as religious cultus through the use of possession to allow the community to experience the presence of their deity.
If the possessed individual is still in there and able to guide and communicate with the spirit, then this opens the door to magic. Alternatively, if there is someone else conducting the rituals who is able to facilitate and also make requests of the spirit while having leverage, power, or a pact through which to ensure the spirit fulfills the request, then we’re also probably looking at magic. If the individual, or an individual facilitating the spirit contact is deciding what goal the spirit is working towards, I would still see that as magic. Even if the spirit is the one working with other spirits, or empowering people, or removing problems or reshaping someone’s spiritual condition, if the god or spirit is the one being instrumentalized to do it because they have the power, authority, and faculties to do so, but a human is conducting them towards the end or goal then, to me, that sounds like magic.
We can also invoke a god or goddess, or call upon a spirit in a manner in which our interaction with them remains a prayer fully, while the rest of what we’re doing is a spell.
Say we are trying to acquire a lover. Perhaps we write five characteristics we want in said lover, then rotate the paper clockwise and write our name overtop of it five times. Then, while speaking our intention, we write our intention in an unbroken circle so that it surrounds the previous writing. We take a few drops of rose oil, cinnamon oil, honeysuckle oil and dragon’s blood oil and mix them. Before mixing them though, we take each oil individually, breathe its scent in deeply and feel its nature, then breathe the breath of life back into them and talk to them about their power and call upon their life to aid us. Then we mix them. We take a drop of the mixture on our finger and touch the middle of the paper and each corner of the paper. Then, we take a red candle and anoint it clockwise and towards us while visualizing what we want in a lover and focusing that concept into the candle. We set the candle on the center of the paper. We light our lighter and call upon the flame saying something like “Life and light of fire, I call you and conjure you in the names of Helios and Eros, as the light of the candle shines, let it heat and stir this spell and cast its light into the world to bring it to fruition.” Having conjured the flame, light the candle.
You’ve done the magic, but maybe you want the potential for some extra oomph without calling a god into you to work through you. If we go back a few steps, we can mix the oils before we do all our work with the paper. Once the oils are awakened and mixed, we can consecrate and conjure the mixture. You might say something like, “In the names of Aphrodite, Eros, and Kalleis I call and conjure this oil and consecrate it to the powers of love and beauty.”
Then, with the oil now consecrated, if you have a statue of Eros, and you want Eros to help bring about the work of the spell you might pray to him, as you pour a bit of oil over his statue. You might say something like “Mighty Eros, who brings passion, lust and desire, hear my earnest prayer. Accept this oil, consecrated in your name, that its scent might be pleasing to you and draw your attention here. Look upon my work, guide my hand, and aid me in achieving my desire.”
Then, you’d do the rest of the spell as described. Again, there are other components we might include, but this gives the rough sketch of it. In this case, the interplay with the living components of the spell is an animistic conversation. In a sense you’re engaging the atavism of power and life within the material that we often treat as inert, and in doing so you’re reminding the material that you know it and you know its living nature and are asking it to be the conduit for the living spirit that enlivens material of its kind. I don’t know that I’d think of this as a prayer anymore than talking to my neighbor is a prayer. The components of the spell, the written and spoken intention aren’t asking anyone for anything. They, like the conducting of directed light and thought into the candle, are an expression of desire and active will. Calling upon Eros is a prayer. It isn’t a spell because you’re turning to Eros as a supplicant asking him to help. You aren’t offering anything or engaging any leverage or control. It’s fully up to Eros if and how he helps.
So, this is an example of how prayer and magic can go together by working adjacent to one another, rather than the prayer being a facilitating component of the magic being done. It’s pretty clear to see how it’s different from invoking a god for the purpose of aspecting so as to use the god’s power and authority. It’s still an example of invoking a god, but now with the intention that the god watch over what you’re doing, and if they choose to, use their own power and authority as they see fit to help you. The small distinctions which create major differences show how much room for nuance and variation there is in the relationship between prayer and spellwork, and how a magical act, just like a religious act, can have pieces of each working together.
Our last concept is the one which got me thinking about writing this blog. I’ve probably thought about writing or doing a video on this subject previously, but while doing a ritual the other night I thought, “magical names could be a really good illustration of the prayer/spell divide. I could write a short simple blog on that subject.” Clearly, short and simple doesn’t exist, but hopefully, in addition to addressing the question of prayer vs spell, this blog is illustrating some useful things to think about as far as magic goes.
There are two ways in which I want to talk about names. Both involve the names functioning as words of power. Neither involve the idea of reducing names to magical formulae on which to pattern the structure of rituals.
The first way of using names is the method that has shown up in all the examples above. This is the use of names for conjuration. There is a really great book on animistic magic which talks at length about the meaning of conjuration, it just happens to be by me. You can also find some examples of Dr. Francis Young discussing the meaning of conjuration in some interviews online. Essentially, conjure and exorcise are more or less synonyms, one being Latin in origin, the other Greek. The words refer to binding by oath, and in context, the oath is sworn or created by the power of a divine name. When a magician conjures something, the power and authority of the name ensures that both the spirit conjured and the magician will engage with one another correctly in accordance with the stipulations of the conjuration and any pact made between them.
So, if we wanted to work with Nike, the spirit of victory, we might use a conjuration like, “Hear me Nike, winged Victory, fly forth and come, for I call and conjure upon you by the mighty and powerful names of the eternal One and the Good, by Aion, by Zeus, by Styx, and by Athena, by these powerful names and the might that all mortals and immortals recognize that they wield, by their ability to shape the foundations of the world, I call and conjure upon you Nike that you come forth swiftly and bring about Victory for me in all matters for which I request your aid.”
A conjuration like that is easy to think of as a prayer to the various gods who are being named asking them to send forth Nike to aid us. When we’re working with Christian and Jewish conjurations it’s easier to perceive them as a prayer asking HaShem to bind the spirits to do what we want because we’re using a bunch of names but for one god. If you think about it though, a lot of those conjurations call upon multiple figures if we’re looking at pre-Reformation conjurations. You might have a conjuration that says something like “By God the Father, by God the Son, by God the Holy Spirit, by Mary Queen of Angels, by the Blood of the Martyrs, by the Key of Saint Peter, and by all the Saints, by the Blood of the Lamb, I conjure and call upon you in the Holy names Adonai, Eheieh Asher Eheieh, Tzaveot, and by all the angels who stand in Heaven and cry Kadosh Kadosh Kadosh before the splendorous face of the creator, come forth spirit and obey!”
Again, if you look at the conjuration we’re not calling upon or asking any of those divine names, or divine personages to do anything. We’re weaving the names together into a kind of nexus of power and authority that both we and the spirits recognize. It’s kind of like the woman touching Jesus’s cloak and power automatically flowing from him to heal her, or the soldier asking for his servant to be healed and Jesus doing it from a distance. The gods don’t have to actively be engaged in what we’re doing for some piece of their power and authority to be present or for the recognition of that power and authority to bind those who swear under it.
In these examples, we’re very clearly not praying to the gods who are being named. We’re calling out to and conjuring the spirits we’re calling. The power and authority of the names is used without the gods being supplicated through prayer directly.
But, we can also do conjurations where we call upon and pray to the god or gods we’re working with.
If your child has a cold and you’re hoping it gets better by the morning, then “Almighty Creator who guides heaven and earth, Lord of Hosts, hear my earnest prayer and send your good angel Raphael, whose wings carry divine healing. In your mighty name Adonai Tzaveot, send forth Raphael and let him be bound to answer and obey my request in your mighty and holy name Adonai Tzaveot.” Or, “Apollo, hear my prayer and shine your light upon me, father of Asclepius, send forth your daimones, and those of Hygeia, and by your mighty name, and the brilliance of your chariot, command those spirits to come forth and bring healing to my household.”
In these examples, you’re praying to the god whose authority you seek, but you’re conjuring the spirit who will actually do the work. The prayer facilitates the conjuration and the reception of the spirit and it pre-directs the spirit before you give them your request. So, one component of this, the interaction with the god, is prayer rendered by a supplicant, while the other component, the interaction with the spirit, is conjuration performed by a magician.
Your own experimentation will tell you why to use one over the other. In my experience, I like the former approach for more formal ritual conjurations, and the latter approach for simpler smaller conjurations without a whole ritual set up. The latter also works well when there is a relationship already with the spirit being conjured.
Our last approach to names takes us into the fun magical feeling part of magic. Magic words. Some of the more popular modern approaches to magic don’t often dive into magic words, but growing up, they’re one of the things most of us think of as a key to magic. If you start off in Eclectic Wicca and NeoPagan witchcraft, you might end up thinking magic words are a silly part of movie magic, because they’re not at all part of the approach to magic generally used in that context. Chaos magic includes them, but often as verbal sigils that the magician creates to interact with their “subconscious.” So you might make a magic word by taking your intention, “I will win the local basketball championship,” then omitting repeating letters, “Iwlntheoca” and that could be your magic word. But maybe you mix the letters up into smaller pronounceable words, so your spell becomes “thocen iwal” and you would chant those magic words repeatedly while engaging in a special posture, meditation, or a sex act to activate the intention in your “subconscious.” More traditional ceremonial magic uses Hebrew names of God, and applies them as magic words, sometimes also reifying them into formulas for studying the structures of rituals or to express coded magical teachings. But it’s not quite hocus pocus or abracadabra.
Exploring those words, you might encounter that “hocus pocus” was originally mocking the Latin of the Catholic Mass and ties to the idea that Catholicism was Pagan witchcraft in the eyes of Protestant Reformers. This might make you think even more that magic words have no place in magic. But, you could, perhaps more easily, find that Abracadabra is a traditional reducing charm. A traditional application of abracadabra is to write the word, and keep writing it with one less letter each time until there are no letters left. This can be used as a talisman to remove illness, or really, to reduce any number of vexing conditions.
Digging into Abracadabra, you might find the explanation that it means “I create as I speak” but you might also find things pointing to a relationship with divine and magical names like Abrasax and Ablanathalba. From there you can start to uncover the really fun and fascinating world of barbarous names and magical words. These are words that often appear in ancient and late antique spells. There are different ways of explaining them. Sometimes they are presented as words in the spell with no explanation. Some of them clearly relate to names of gods and spirits and others are more mysterious. Some people assume they are gibberish, or they might reflect special mystical combinations of sounds rather than specific words themselves.
At one point a lot of people assumed they were coded misdirections. For the most part, these days, people dig into them on the basis that they are often corrupted words or name or corrupted pieces of language, usually from religious sources that were foreign to the author of the spell. We see this in early modern folk magic. The power of Catholic prayers remained within the consciousness of Protestants in Europe and so there are local charms based on mangled nonsensical seeming syllables that are more or less an attempt at rendering Latin by people who don’t actually know the Latin prayers and don’t fully remember them. These broken versions get repeated and passed down, warping further, until they become local folk charms.
In many examples of late antique spells, the magician declares that these words of power are secret names of a god. Magicians will often explain that they know the secret forms of a god, their birth place, other powerful beings known to the god, and their secret names. One element of this is establishing familiarity. The magician entices the god to listen and acquiesce because the magician knows the god’s secrets and is therefore a devoted follower of the god. The magician might also declare that they are initiated or ordained as a priest or some functionary of the god. But these efforts can also step up to exert more force. The magician might reference historiola to invoke the god’s power through the memory of the use of that power in myth, or the magician might use historiola to establish a magical identity as a god or an ally of a god who can command or terrify the god who is being called upon to work on behalf of the magician. The use of special names can fall into both of these categories.
At times, the use of special or hidden names indicates that the magician has the right to call upon the god by virtue of being an initiate of that god who knows the god’s secrets. The magician is an intimate companion of the god and can appeal to the god. In many instances, the use of secret names is more forceful and the verbiage of spells indicates that the god is compelled to obey because the magician knows the secret names of the god, or because they are using the formula of names and words which force the god to obey. For example:
“Hear me, that is, my holy voice, because I call upon your holy names and reveal to me concerning the thing which I want, through the NN man or little boy, for otherwise I will not defend your holy and undefiled names. Come to me you who become Hesies and were carried away by a river; inspire the NN man or little boy, concerning that which I ask you, BARBETH MNOR ARARIAK TARERIM OAR TEROK SANIOR MENIK PHAUEK DAPHORIOUMIN LARIOR ETNIAMIM KNOS CHAAKTHIR KROPER PHESIMOT PREBIB KNALA ERIBETIM GNORI. Come to me through the NN man or little boy and tell me accurately since I speak your names which thrice-greatest Hermes wrote in Heliopolis with hieroglyphic letters ARBAKORIPH MENIAM OBAOB ABNIOB MERIM BAIAX CHENOR PHENIM ORA ORESIOU OUISIRI PNIAMOUSIRI PHREOUSIRI HORIOUSIRI NAEIOROUSIRI MENIMOUSIRI AMEAOUSIRI ANOROUSIRI AMENEPHEOUSIRI AMENIOUSIRI XONIOR EOUOUSIRI. Enter into him and reveal to me concerning the NN matter.”
In this spell, from PGM IV 850-929, the magician is conjuring a god (seemingly a god linked to Osiris) to appear through a medium and speak on the matter the magician requests by speaking through that medium. The medium is the man or boy referenced in the spell. The spell incorporates a small historiola line to invoke the desired god as well as one to invoke the authority and magic of Hermes to command the god through the use of the secret names and words. The spell lays out that the names are used to command and that the god must obey because the magician has the secret names which were laid out by Hermes in the sacred city using sacred writing. We can dig into the origin of the names, but, in this case it’s not so much a question of whether or not the names inform us of names used for a particular god, the names are present as a structure of binding and command. Whether the names refer to the god or not, the names have power over that god and command his obedience.
So, the obvious question some people might wonder is how does a magician command a god. Personally, my assumption is that in many of these spells it is the daimones or spirits who serve in lieu of the gods rather than the gods themselves which are being commanded. In some forms of Greek and later Roman religion, the gods were understood to be served by a host of spirits at differing levels of existence and those spirits could appear like the gods, collect offerings and prayers and render them to the gods, and exercise some measure of the power of the gods on their behalf. The gods didn’t need to be present or attendant everywhere, and they did not need to actually live in temples and statues, because their spirits did so for them. Most day to day religion, and likely most magic, engaged these spirits.
In late antiquity, we often see very aggressive spells, and it stands to reason that the spirits were seen as a lower order who could be commanded through these aggressive measures and by way of the magician pretending to be Typhon, Solomon, or Moses and by asserting various qualifications, credentials, and relationships that they may or may not have.
The words were not necessarily seen as a way of tricking these spirits though. The words were likely understood to have some power. Names, particularly hidden names, could invoke a portion of a being and give some power and sway over them. So having a host of names for a being, especially the names they kept hidden, would give more leverage over them. The lengthy lists of various names may have been a way of covering all potential words that could function as keys to unlock, or chains to bind, power.
Spells which utilize magical words and names in this manner are certainly not prayers by any stretch of the imagination, at least not prayers to the being who is commanded by them. Sometimes they may include supplication to or reference to other beings who help in commanding the being who is called to act. The names are an array or a structure which allows the magician to exert power or command over those spirits, rather than names which call upon them so the magician can ask for their favor. You might think of them as badges, credentials, keys, passwords, or hooks more than you might think of them as names.
They form a very clear example of a sort of magic where words are spoken, names are used, and a spirit or god is engaged, but not from the perspective of a person praying to them as a devoted supplicant. In this case, there is an aggressive assertion of agency by the magician who uses the names to wield power over the spirits being called. In these cases, to me, it does not seem like the use of names in a conjuration, in which the spirit and magician are both conjured by the authority of the god - although there are clearly examples of the use of magical names in this manner in late antiquity also - but rather, in examples like the one given above, the names are a tool that asserts power directly. They are not necessarily the names of an exterior god who binds the oath of the magician and the spirit, they are keys that directly command the spirit and do not necessarily likewise bind the magician.
Summary
So, on a very basic level, we can understand where the idea that spells are just prayers with props came from. With an honest look at how and why ideas like that developed, we can recognize where they may have been useful at one point, but also how they hurt us now. We didn’t really address how that weakness of language can make us look less serious or less aware of what we’re talking about when faced with the broader world, but that can certainly be an issue. Perhaps more importantly, this conflation reduces the deepness of our understanding of prayer and forms of prayer. It also erases significant elements of what magic is and tells people they’re doing magic when they’re not, leaving them with less impetus to explore deeper and with fewer tools to understand why things they’re doing may not be working the way they hoped. Going deeper, that equation of spell with prayer erases a great deal of nuance. We lose the rich and detailed tapestry which is painted by seeing how the threads of prayer, magic, mysticism, devotion, praise, supplication, and more all weave together to create numerous different patterns and so we also lose the ability to deeply explore the pieces of those patterns and understand how each piece feeds into what we’re attempting to do. By losing those pieces and an understanding of them we cut ourselves off from more deeply engaging the individual elements of a spiritual practice or experience.
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