William H. Keith, The Science of the Craft: Modern Realities and the Ancient Art of Witchcraft, Citadel Press, New York, 2005.
William Keith could have titled this book, The Science of Magic: Quantum Physics and Magical Ritual. I suspect he would have sold even more copies as well. This is a remarkable and unique work. Keith weaves a compelling fusion between two fields usually perceived as unrelated, but which, he reveals, are actually closely inter-twined. Keith, a practicing magician and prolific author, is also well-versed in the basics of quantum physics. He begins with setting out the initially startling Bell’s Theorem, first published in 1964.
In Bell’s revolutionary experiment, Keith recaps:
“Electrons A and B …are correlated, then sent zipping off to opposite ends of the (massive) CERN lab in Geneva , Switzerland. A researcher takes a measurement on A, and he can now predict the outcome of an identical measurement on B. So far, so good. But what is happening, in fact, is that when the observer ‘collapses’ A’s quantum wave by looking at it, the quantum wave for B is simultaneously collapsed as well. This effect is known as nonlocality – “spooky action at a distance” indeed! Spookier still, Bell’s theorem has now been proven time after time.”
Bell’s investigation revealed that we, the observer, had an active, and central role in creating the reality we experience. For those who understood what this meant, it effectively, Keith writes, brought the whole “structure of material realism crashing down.” The engagement of the consciousness of the observer played a crucial part in “collapsing” apparent “reality” from out of a vague and nonspecific state of endless possibilities. Object and observer could not be disentangled. Almost unbelievably at first, Bell showed that electrons “somehow ‘knew’ what their paired electrons were doing whether they are across the room or across the universe.” Whether “matter” was in fact an “epiphenomena of mind” was rapidly becoming one of the most cutting-edge questions in science.
If the observer was a necessary part of everything being “observed”, this implied that every “thing” in the universe was part of a seamless whole. There was no boundary between the “observer” and “observed.” We participate inherently in creating everything that we see, hear, taste, smell, and touch. This is how a magician can “call a particular reality into existence.” The “particles” that make up both matter and energy, Keith tells us, are in fact “momentary knots of non-randomness” within a background of chaotic, featureless “noise.” These knots persist in the same way an ocean wave is a moving pattern.
What we “see, feel, and experience from moment to moment is a durable, embedded pattern of information encoded on the Quantum Sea.” To us, however, our “I” seems to exist even though we know our bodies are far from solid. Each of us is actually a “mega-pattern”. All we experience as outside our “selves” is a far larger mega-pattern. What, Keith asks, if, for example, our memory isn’t stored in our physical brain at all, but actually contained instead within the Quantum Sea? What if our personal minds are instead biological mechanisms for processing, coding, storing, and retrieving that data?
As set out by Rupert Sheldrake, human beings can reach out and seem to “touch” each other, intentionally or unintentionally, even when thousands of miles apart or when one is in a shielded room, even, according to one researcher, when they are hundreds of miles apart and one is also in a submarine beneath the ocean. Electromagnetic waves, Keith informs us, do not possess this kind of penetrating power. He believes what is really occurring is that we are not, in fact, contacting a mind hundreds of miles distant though electromagnetic waves, but instead extending our own reach down into the Quantum Sea we are all part of, where space and time, in the way we usually understand them, do not exist. Such ESP exists, Keith maintains, “because we are connected … sharing an ocean of energy in which there is no such thing as space.”
Within this Quantum Sea, true magicians can engage with “mega-patterns upon mega-patterns…multiple layers and near infinite diversity” where “every possible permutation of reality exists simultaneously.” We need to remember we are not, however, the only one shaping the shared world we inhabit. It is generated by all of us together as well as by impersonal laws of physics. The reality we have the most pivotal role in manifesting is our personal one. These are the wave patterns with which we are most entwined.
So how, Keith asks, does our “free will” enter into this picture? A key is realizing that all possible states, decisions, and choices exist simultaneously in each wave. As our consciousness “collapses” these waves into decisions, we create our “reality.” The magician understands the crucial role of free will to “open the gates of the subconscious mind”, our portal into the Quantum Sea. The key to entrance into this deeper dimension is accessing a “magical gateway” that takes us farther within ourselves. The alternative, according to Keith, is that the trajectory of our lives results from simple chance, is directed by “ignorant parts of ourselves that don’t know what they are doing” or is determined by the “mass input of the other people around us.”
For Keith, the essence of magical practice is ultimately based on the functioning of quantum physics. The mysteries of “magic”, he tells us, can now be scientifically explained. His intention, he says, is not to make magic mundane, but to show that, beneath the familiar surface, the world we inhabit is actually an awesome, wondrous, and magical place. There is a gradual process to learn to access and make use of the creative power within us. If our ordinary minds are, however, full of stress, worry, and the incessant chatter of daily life, these gateways into our still and silent interior will remain locked. It is essential to instead leave those superficial levels behind as we make our way into the more rich and potent dimensions within ourselves.