Launching altmagic

I’m Drew.

16 years ago I cast my first spell.

I was young, skeptical, and I followed directions from a book.

Two things took me by surprise.

1:/ a palpable, tremendous energy that I felt as I chanted

2:/ it worked!

I began to study and practice ritual magic. However, I also entered university and studied philosophy. Early in my academic career my professors + colleagues confronted me. They presented extensive scientific research on the topic of magic.

Everything they showed me said it didn’t work.

Latter-day magicians deal with this in one of two ways. Some give up their art, decide it was bullshit, and quit. Others insist what they feel is real. They ignore science, turn their back on it, and tell the world that gut feeling is more important than facts.

These approaches disappoint me. The results and feelings provoked by magic come from somewhere; that somewhere can be studied. Magic rituals became a favorite subject of mine. I not only learned and practiced them, I studied them. I wanted to know how + if they work.

//

In time, I practiced magic less and less. As a priest, it’s my job to make traditional ceremonies available to my community. That includes magic ceremonies. But I don’t like how people act toward the promise of magic. I’ve had people with clear signs of epilepsy or schizophrenia come to me and ask for an “exorcism.” They always refuse to go to a doctor. I stopped advertising my services.

But my love of the art form never died.

//

altmagic is my way of making traditional spells available on my own terms. Here you’ll find a blog of art, magic, and one man’s journey to found a business around his passion.

I’m marrying my love of visual art + my love of magic ritual. You can join me step by step as I construct beautiful handmade objects. Each work of art will be ritually enchanted using the strongest ceremonies I know. They’ll become available in small lots and, if you like them, you can buy them here.

Intrigued? Please tell a friend. Tweet or Facebook share this post.

Add a little magic to your life.

Comments

  1. Sarah says:

    I hope you’ll go to Haiti someday. You’ll feel as if you’ve gone home. I think.

    • altmagic says:

      Sarah, thank you for being my very first commenter. Welcome :)

      I’d love love love to visit Haiti. My only Haitian friend told me it is really unadvisable. But I’m tempted to add a little Carribbean-hopping side-trip to the great Adventure when I’m in that area. Have you been there? Are you from there?

      • Sarah says:

        Unadvisable? Au contraire. We’ll have a conversation sometime. Skype maybe. I was just returning from my first trip to Haiti 5 years ago almost to the day today. Been 5 times altogether. Have spent 18+ yrs traveling to Dominican Republic 2 or 3 times a year. Have a little concrete block house there now that my Dominican friends have built me on a small piece of land I purchased from them a dozen years ago. When you’re ready to go to Haiti, I’ll get you some connections near Port au Prince and Jacmel. You will be completely overwhelmed/amazed in a good way! Mark my words.

  2. I am shaking with joy as I write these words. I do not know what to say. This makes me very happy. I support you! Let me know if there is any way I can help.

    This also inspires me to do more like this on my own website. You are doing the same thing I live for!

    • altmagic says:

      Val, that’s great! Thank you. The best thing you can do to help is spread the word as far and wide as you can!

  3. You once mentioned to me that there is some very slight evidence that magical healing prevails over placebo (I think you said it like 1.5% above placebo or something low like that). While that is low, of course, it’s still very interesting. Any way you could link a source on that?

    • altmagic says:

      I’m not aware of any study like that B.T.

      I think what you’re remembering is something different. I was asked to do a healing ceremony once and the person asked if it really worked. I said “Even if it is only placebo effect, it will still help you.” In that case, I gave her the example from studies that even in cases of terminal illness patients given placebo treatment had a 0.25% greater chance of living, not much of a boost but worth taking if you’re facing cancer.

      The study I got the 0.25% figure from is no longer linked on Wikipedia but I did a little digging after seeing your question. Placebo treatment is still considered to correlate with lower mortality from life-threatening diseases. This study shows how adherence to a placebo drug treatment correlates with reduced mortality.

      I should point out that I rarely offer healing ceremonies because many people want to use them instead of going to their doctors.

        • altmagic says:

          That said, I’m not aware of any studies that actually compare magical healing to placebo treatment for efficacy. There are studies on prayer healing that are riddled with issues, and there are excellent studies on alternative treatments like accupuncture, but those are both quite different than magical ritual.

  1. [...] said before that I’m very interested in the scientific study of magic. Recently I talked about one example of a traditional technique that has been proven to [...]

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