The Feminine Mystic
December 9, 2016 7:50 AM   Subscribe

"The Golden Dawn (and Spiritualism) fostered women’s rights activists, activists against poverty, educators, anti-colonial revolutionaries, and radicals of all stripes. And the way they broke through the despair of daily life was through magic." Jessa Crispin looks at what magical thinking actually does for a person.
posted by Think_Long (14 comments total) 42 users marked this as a favorite
 
At the heart of magical belief is the belief in your own free will, in your ability to make changes and influence the world. It wasn’t accepting your circumstances, it was working to understand and directly change them.

The concept has merit.
posted by y2karl at 7:56 AM on December 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


As I've gotten older I've become increasingly fascinated with the fact that the simple act of women gathering in groups has been seen as innately laden with magic, sometimes innocuous but often dark or threatening, since time immemorial. A group of men is just a group of people, but a group of women is a coven. And I am so totally here for that.
posted by amnesia and magnets at 8:35 AM on December 9, 2016 [45 favorites]


And as our society is in another dark place, with nationalism, racism, and misogyny on the rise and little imagination about how to change things on display, perhaps it’s time to look at what magical thinking actually does for a person.

Also perhaps worth mentioning in this context is H. P. Blavatsky - who brought Hinduism and Buddhism to prominence in the West, as well as bringing a revival of interest in those traditions in the East, inspired pretty much the whole New Age movement, and was a direct and important influence on both Gandhi and Hitler. And of course, the Golden Dawn.

Apart from any other light her legacy might shine on such questions, that's quite a track record.
posted by iotic at 8:40 AM on December 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


The Golden Dawn is a fascinating historical phenomenon, a group that in its original incarnation had a total membership much smaller than its future reputation would imply, but that went on to influence an entire subculture that still exists today. Anybody interested in the linked article would probably enjoy Mary Greer's "Women of the Golden Dawn", a more in-depth treatment of an aspect of the Order that hasn't gotten sufficient attention.
posted by Ipsifendus at 8:49 AM on December 9, 2016 [10 favorites]


...the simple act of women gathering in groups has been seen as innately laden with magic, sometimes innocuous but often dark or threatening, since time immemorial. A group of men is just a group of people, but a group of women is a coven.

Because women have traditionally had less or no power, a gathering of women to create, which is usually the "reason" women gathered, whether to sew a quilt or to birth a child, was passed down from mothers to daughters. Those gatherings were also steeped in ritual. Religious rites need/ed men to intercede for women with god, but the "small" rituals of women-only spaces are seemingly impenetrable. Hence, their sinister mystique.
posted by Sophie1 at 9:13 AM on December 9, 2016 [5 favorites]


Seems pretty dubious, since the same magical thinking can be used to justify not taking effective action, and because there were plenty of non-religious or non-magical counter-examples of prominent women rising around the same time, e.g. Emma Goldman.
posted by klangklangston at 3:34 PM on December 9, 2016


That's looking at it all wrong. Magical thinking is a survival technique. Without it, you accept your powerlessness. It allows people to seek change, even if it doesn't provide a guaranteed roadmap towards that change.

And you don't have to be religious or mystical to engage in magical thinking. Uneducated lower class white men voting for Trump are certainly engaged in a secular type of magical thinking, that they're all millionaires in the making, once they work hard enough at their bootstraps.
posted by politikitty at 3:54 PM on December 9, 2016 [11 favorites]


> Magical thinking is a survival technique.

The category is weapons of the weak. Bohemian Grove is a party. When those guys want to make something happen they pay cash.
posted by bukvich at 4:57 PM on December 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


As Golden Dawn teacher and leader Florence Farr wrote in her 1910 book The Modern Woman: Her Intentions:

Life seems hopeless to the middle-aged. Most of them once thought they could put it right in a week if they had a free hand. They try, they fail, they marry and spend the evening of their lives trying to destroy the illusions of their children as quickly as possible, so that they also may ‘settle down’ to hard facts. To excuse himself a thinker will say, ‘I know the dangers of cultivating the imagination; I know that unless it is nipped in the bud this wild flower of the mind will twine its tendrils round me, cover me with its shadows, intoxicate me with its fragrance, and destroy reason and physical health.’
posted by y2karl at 5:45 PM on December 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


"That's looking at it all wrong. Magical thinking is a survival technique. Without it, you accept your powerlessness. It allows people to seek change, even if it doesn't provide a guaranteed roadmap towards that change."

And that's a false dilemma. You don't have to accept your powerlessness without magical thinking.

"And you don't have to be religious or mystical to engage in magical thinking. Uneducated lower class white men voting for Trump are certainly engaged in a secular type of magical thinking, that they're all millionaires in the making, once they work hard enough at their bootstraps."

Yes, and that's a major problem with both religious and secular life in, well, pretty much every human society. It's not like a plurality of white women wouldn't fall under the same rubric of voting for Trump out of magical thinking, and there's plenty of superstition that's flat out magical thinking. So arguing that magical thinking is positive because it gives women a way to believe they are affecting change is circular reasoning (much like a lot of magical thinking!) and the idea that it was especially empowering to women seems contrived based on cherry-picked examples.

I mean, even down to the citing of the placebo effect in the article: you could write nearly the same article arguing that homeopathy was uniquely empowering to women, citing women like Victoria Woodhull, Dorothy Shephard and Louisa May Alcott, and that the American Institute of Homeopathy admitted women before the AMA did. None of that empowerment would overcome the fact that homeopathy itself is bullshit, and that there were other women being empowered at the same time who didn't buy into it.

There's also a danger of reifying the mystical as feminine, playing into the same anti-feminist cliche of women as irrational and outside the bounds of society. Arguing that women have a special connection with the spiritual has been historically used to reinforce traditional domestic roles and exclude women from the public square.

I'm not saying that there isn't plenty of interesting stuff about women in the history of mysticism, or that women haven't been overlooked and underrepresented in histories, but that placing the locus of feminist activism in mystic experience is pretty problematic, and that this article reinforces woo more than it should.
posted by klangklangston at 6:06 PM on December 9, 2016 [8 favorites]


I don't think there are only two options. I'm pushing back against your dismissive attitude towards magical thinking.

We tell a woman the most important thing to do in an assault is to survive. Because a lot of coping mechanisms are both common and shame inducing. Like blaming themselves (aka attempting to reassert agency), or not fighting back or having a kink fantasies afterwards. Abused women don't leave because it's the most dangerous act they can do.

These responses can be maladaptive. And they often leave emotional debris that bleeds into other relationships without work. But they are protective and natural, and its stigmatizing to say "why weren't these ladies more rational?"

These actions are rational, but we call them irrational because we fail to understand the inner lives of marginalized women. And it's demeaning to think religious or mystical views make people unable to think seriously about science or policy. Some religious folks might be antagonistic towards science and liberal arts. But too much of social progress was pushed by religious leaders to pretend that's a universal certainty.
posted by politikitty at 7:02 PM on December 9, 2016 [5 favorites]


"I don't think there are only two options. I'm pushing back against your dismissive attitude towards magical thinking."

That's like saying that you're pushing back on me being dismissive of superstition. Which, OK, but stepping on cracks does not in fact break mothers' backs.

"We tell a woman the most important thing to do in an assault is to survive. Because a lot of coping mechanisms are both common and shame inducing. Like blaming themselves (aka attempting to reassert agency), or not fighting back or having a kink fantasies afterwards. Abused women don't leave because it's the most dangerous act they can do.

These responses can be maladaptive. And they often leave emotional debris that bleeds into other relationships without work. But they are protective and natural, and its stigmatizing to say "why weren't these ladies more rational?"
"

Right, but you agree they're maladaptive. So if there's a situation where there's both a maladaptive behavior and a healthy behavior, saying that the maladaptive behavior was a positive because it gave a sense of empowerment ignores that while it's natural, it's not healthy, and is something that benefits from work to overcome it.

So, I'm not saying, "Why weren't these ladies more rational?", I'm saying that this essay argues that irrational mysticism empowered women to make activist changes, and that since that's neither necessary nor sufficient for the activism that is ostensibly the good celebrated in the essay.

"These actions are rational, but we call them irrational because we fail to understand the inner lives of marginalized women."

No, they're not. They are predictable and natural, but that doesn't mean they're rational. And again, it's not like there weren't plenty of marginalized women that achieved as much or more without centering it on magical thinking.

"And it's demeaning to think religious or mystical views make people unable to think seriously about science or policy. Some religious folks might be antagonistic towards science and liberal arts. But too much of social progress was pushed by religious leaders to pretend that's a universal certainty."

It's also demeaning to think that religious people must be magical thinkers, and that secular people aren't. I mean, that's been a constant theological refrain for at least the last 300 years. Magical thinking in religion is treating God like a wish-granting genie. It's Creflo Dollar. But a faith without magical thinking doesn't mean renouncing all rite and ritual — it means recognizing that your rites and rituals aren't causing changes in the external world. It's not worshipping a piñata god, it's believing that god can exist without miracles at all. It's believing that the reason you would say a spell is to focus your own mind on whatever you're casting, rather than thinking that the spell is the mechanism of action.

Mistaking this as science against religion is conceding that religion is all magical thinking. Instead, science is corrosive to magical thinking because it replaces the ineffable with the mundane. Stage magic is a pretty good analogy, especially given Houdini's relentless debunking of mystics — magical thinking says that it's really your mother who's communicating from beyond the grave. But even if it's comforting to think that, it's neither real nor empowering, no matter if she gives you good career advice.
posted by klangklangston at 12:03 AM on December 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


All human beings are at the mercy of huge, unseen forces over which we have no power, and do not understand: The structures of society and how they affect us. And I don't mean that we as individuals don't understand, but that the collective scientific, humanistic and religious thinking of our species has yet to understand these forces. Some of the most powerful and visible of these forces are oppressive, e.g. the patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism, and so on.

Sociology, and its many related fields and subdisciplines, has made enormous progress in understanding the workings of human societies. But much like with the study of the human brain, we're still very much in the early days of knowledge.

Let me now say what I'm not claiming. I don't think that because humanity has yet to understand something it therefore follows that all conjectures are equally valid. Striving for a correct understanding is very important, but the first step in that process is to acknowledge what is unknown.

Everybody engages in magical thinking. I'm not endorsing the old and obviously incorrect saw that there are no atheists in foxholes. But a single human brain is only capable of paying attention to so many things, and we have only a limited amount of time to learn about the world (limited as in we sometimes have to sleep and that eventually we die). Therefore we expect various things to simply work, even if we don't understand them. The classic example is that we assume that the sun rises every morning even though we don't understand the physics behind it. Of course, there are lots of people who do understand why the sun rises every morning, and why indeed it does no such thing as "rise" in any actual sense. However, humans in the past saw the sun arc across the sky and the knowledge was useful to them, even if they didn't understand why.

We all behave and think in ways that are ultimately based on axioms that we believe without proof. These axioms can include anything from the inherent worth of all living beings (or indeed its opposite) to science being the best way to understand the universe (or that it's not). If you want to affect social change, you must change people's axiomatic beliefs. These axioms are in turn being worked on by huge, unseen, societal forces.

From the scientific point of view, a phrase like "the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice" is wildly inaccurate. But as rhetoric, and as a metaphor, it is true. Its truth comes from the fact that in terms of racial equality in the US, things have have been getting ever so slowly better. And also, as a phrase it is very efficient in reinforcing axioms that Martin Luther King wished to strengthen and undermining axioms that he wanted to vanish. The whole of King's "I have a dream" speech worked wonderfully in that way. The morale of his side got better, and the other side was put on the defensive. That is not to say that Martin Luther King spoke and everything got better. Hundreds of thousands of people, millions, did concrete things that brought social change.

The human ability for magical thinking has been weaponized for at least as long as we have any kind of written record. One example of that was the Easter Rising of 1916 in Ireland. In conventional military terms it was an abject failure. But the revolutionaries' use of religious and national symbolism, and the story that was told about them, altered the way Irish people thought about their society. From then on the people who did the hard and dangerous work of securing an independent Ireland had the wind at their back, even if the sailing wasn't exactly smooth.

The point of all this is that people generally reason from their axioms, so that for profound social change to happen, these axioms have to somehow change. One of the most effective ways is to work through the human propensity for magical thinking. People performing magic is a reification of that.

Any sufficiently huge, unseen, societal force is indistinguishable from magic. If people feel those forces pushing against them, using magic of their own, as Crispin pointed out, is a very effective way to fight back. At the very least it can keep your spirits up. When woven together with other methods of resistance, it can affect great social change. Of course, on the other hand, it can also be used to reinforce unjust social structures. That is the way of all powerful tools. Magic shouldn't be underestimated as a way to bypass reason and change or reinforce people's deeply held beliefs.
posted by Kattullus at 2:51 AM on December 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


"Everybody engages in magical thinking. I'm not endorsing the old and obviously incorrect saw that there are no atheists in foxholes. But a single human brain is only capable of paying attention to so many things, and we have only a limited amount of time to learn about the world (limited as in we sometimes have to sleep and that eventually we die). Therefore we expect various things to simply work, even if we don't understand them. The classic example is that we assume that the sun rises every morning even though we don't understand the physics behind it. Of course, there are lots of people who do understand why the sun rises every morning, and why indeed it does no such thing as "rise" in any actual sense. However, humans in the past saw the sun arc across the sky and the knowledge was useful to them, even if they didn't understand why."

You're conflating mystery or irrational or unprovable with magical thinking. Magical thinking isn't that the sun rises every day and we don't know why — it's that the sun rises every day because we knock three times on a table, and that it won't rise if we don't knock.

You're right that everyone engages in it, and you're right that you can see a historical use — magical thinking is the sacrifice to ensure good crops, because the cause of good crops is unknown. But it's not just a belief, it's a belief in a form of mystical action that doesn't actually work.

And I think you're also missing something from the historical view. For example, while the Romans were deeply superstitious and deeply invested in magical thinking, there were plenty of contemporary Romans who questioned this — it's fundamental to Stoicism to set aside magical thinking, and pretty much any determinist or fatalist philosophy also at the very least sidesteps the question.

"From the scientific point of view, a phrase like "the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice" is wildly inaccurate. But as rhetoric, and as a metaphor, it is true. Its truth comes from the fact that in terms of racial equality in the US, things have have been getting ever so slowly better. And also, as a phrase it is very efficient in reinforcing axioms that Martin Luther King wished to strengthen and undermining axioms that he wanted to vanish. The whole of King's "I have a dream" speech worked wonderfully in that way. The morale of his side got better, and the other side was put on the defensive. That is not to say that Martin Luther King spoke and everything got better. Hundreds of thousands of people, millions, did concrete things that brought social change."

But, even as you acknowledge, this is distinct from magical thinking. King didn't believe that blacks got civil rights through prayer; he prayed for the strength to work in the world for those civil rights. King's religious faith wasn't, at least to my knowledge, magical. He wasn't rubbing a St. Christopher medal before he got into a car. Magical thinking is also distinct from rhetoric and metaphor, though they are connected. It's a belief in a concrete, causal power of symbol and metaphor. Distinguishing them clearly, you wouldn't say that it was because King spoke and everything got better — the magical interpretation would be that because King dreamt of a better world, it would happen.

"The human ability for magical thinking has been weaponized for at least as long as we have any kind of written record."

Even this is a misleading, muddled gloss. Arguing that it was magical thinking that used Irish symbols and narrative to reify and motivate their struggle mistakes, again, symbol and narrative for magic. It also ignores that symbol and narrative have been used against the Irish, but even assuming an accurate example, it's hardly something that you could make a coherent positive case for: Magical thinking led many in the Boxer Rebellion to believe that they were bulletproof. This may have emboldened them to rebel, but it also led to mass casualties because it wasn't true.

"Any sufficiently huge, unseen, societal force is indistinguishable from magic."

Well, no. That's a bullshit twist on Clarke. It's only true to the extent that "sufficiently" is a misleading modifier. And this is a fundamentally anti-science, anti-material view. We know that though evolution is largely invisible in our daily lives, that it's shaped by ongoing, predictable forces. We know that economics yields to a material conception of history, not a superstitious one. And even if we don't grasp or intuit immediate causes and effects, that still doesn't mean reducing to magic or magical thinking.

Take, for example, magical realism. One of the big reasons why it works is not because it is treated as literalism, but because the magic is understood as metaphor, as grasping at emotional truths that become more vivid outside of the realm of the mundane. José Arcadio Buenda becomes a tree for the purpose of narrative, not because he literally transformed.

If people feel those forces pushing against them, using magic of their own, as Crispin pointed out, is a very effective way to fight back.

Except… that's circular. It may feel effective, but is it?

What might help here is to contrast magical thinking with illusionary thinking. If you buy a new car, and suddenly see many more identical copies to your green Honda on the street, did buying the car cause those other green Hondas to spring into existence? Or is this an illusion, an example of confirmation bias?

If using magic of your own is an effective way of fighting back, then horoscopes are an effective way of predicting your future.

At the very least it can keep your spirits up. When woven together with other methods of resistance, it can affect great social change."

If you're mixing it with other methods of resistance, why wouldn't it be those other methods of resistance that effect great social change? Keeping your spirits up is fine, but magic is neither necessary nor sufficient.

Of course, on the other hand, it can also be used to reinforce unjust social structures. That is the way of all powerful tools. Magic shouldn't be underestimated as a way to bypass reason and change or reinforce people's deeply held beliefs."

Magic cannot be underestimated as a way to bypass reason and change or reinforce people's deeply held beliefs, because all of that — from emotional bypass to reinforcement or change — can and does happen without magic being involved at all.

Perhaps one of the most common, and generally secular, instances of magical thinking is the belief that people can accomplish significant personal changes through sheer force of will. But while perseverance and determination can aid in accomplishing things, they're different from willing an effect into being. This fallacy is repeated most popularly in sports — the notion that one team won because they "wanted it more." Any reasonable interpretation of that, or the "With God, all things are possible," explanations should immediately show how nonsensical they are — the losing team didn't want to win? They love Jesus less or Jesus loves them less? And the belief that people can effect significant change through force of will shows its danger in the treatment of substance abuse — that some people can go cold turkey is used to support a version of the just world fallacy that sees addicts as suffering from character flaws, not chemical imbalances.

This essay takes the position that magical thinking is both instrumental and expressive. I don't think there's anything wrong with expressive magic. I do think that by lauding the instrumental view of magic, the author does herself, her subjects and her audience a disservice.
posted by klangklangston at 2:30 PM on December 11, 2016


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