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If you look at any martial arts club, from the nonsensical mystical bullshit taught in aikido to the primarily athletic, spectator sport martial art of western boxing, the trappings of magic and ritual are everywhere. Granted they are more obvious in many of the traditional asian martial arts, involving bowing, special clothes, meditation, and sometimes mantras. If you go to a boxing or mma gym, you can see many of the same categories of things, they just look superficially different. You see a lot of the same athletic gear like Everlast, Hayabusa, or Venum, worn to appease the martial spirits to be invoked. Or just to fit in. Or because those are high quality brands, and wearing a high quality brand will mean that you are a better fighter, at least in one's head at some level.
Essentially all forms of martial arts or combat sports involve a preparatory period, like striking the gong or lighting the incense in order to get the mind into the magical trance or mood necessary for spell-work. The preparatory period in the martial arts is a warm up, light exercises to prepare the body to get in to aroused state necessary to meet the upcoming demands of the workout or competition.
And then training happens. Much like a voodoo practictioner plunges needles into his poppet to destroy him, the kickboxer hits the heavy bag in preparation for the fight, simulating in as realistic a form as possible his opponent. The fighters who have teachers that keep current on the state of sports science are well aware of the utility of using visualization as a means to improve the skill of a fighters' techniques. Visualization of course is a time honoured tradition in many mystical and magical paths.
Each training session I argue is no different from a spell; what you do in the dojo is meant to make a certain outcome happen in the objective world. Some systems of martial arts utilize methods of training that are so byzantine that the outside observer can see little relation to that and the act of physical combat. Think of elaborate systems of choreographed movements, some of which are designed to improve woo woo as "chi". These fighters never let their spells come to fruition, their spells fail, for they seldom test their abilities in real life (at least I've found little evidence other than wild claims from their practitioners).
If a truly devoted martial artist lifts weights and diets appropriately to further increase his performance in combat, this is the same thing: An act with absolutely no clear relation to the act of punching someone in the head until they fall down. Yet it cannot be denied that such fighters are those who in fact do defeat their opponents with the greatest skill and frequency, and if they chose could probably go into a crowded area and cause serious damage with nothing but their bodies. In other words, martial artists who have proven their ability through competition or street fights after casting their spells (years of training) are fucking wizards.
My interests include devil worship, magic, fun, the art of comedy and mass media. I truly enjoy a good argument that allows for respectful debate. I may hate what you say but I'll never hate you. ...
Science and magic are often spoken as if they are opposed. Science supposedly is based on hard facts and magic is the domain of the unexplainably mysterious, occult and often blatantly horseshit.
Neither of those descriptions are accurate of science or magic. In fact, they're not descriptions of either of them at all. They're descriptions of Houdini style skepticism aimed at a certain kind of fraudulent huckster selling something to the credulous. (Usually books or psychic readings.)
The focus of science and magic isn't to debunk the bullshit of another person but to tease out the secrets of the the mysterious universe in which we live and apply them. Both are a persuit of knowledge and the application of that knowledge (power.)
Essentially science and magic are the same disciplines -- reverse engineering and engineering -- with a few differences.
1. Science is overwhelming academic and magic is purely practical. As such, the scientist is limited by academic standards, the magician by his own abilities. This allows modern day magicians to benefit from the research of more academic researchers even though they show no interest in anything outside their own ivory tower.
2. Theory, research and application within science are almost always separated to the point that all three are done by different groups of people. Magicians must be all three. In the end, the magician must always rely on his own first hand experience, his own judgement, his own understanding, and his own abilites.
3. The mechanism of validation of knowledge in science is peer review. Magical knoweldge can only be proven by first hand results. Even when knowledge is originally from an academic source, a magician must validate it for himself.
4. Science is generally thought of as mainly involving the physical sciences, thus, "hard science" is a science which works directly (or as close as possible) with some kind of matter. Magic, on the other hand, is primarily psychological and social and works using universally applicable models such as networks and systems. It matters less to a magician what something is made of than how it functions.
5. The point of view of a scientist is looking outward. The point of view of a magician is through their own eyes. For example, within science psychology is studied and explained as if it only pertained to other people. Magicians study psychology from their own first person perspective "from within the subject" wherever such first hand observations about themselves can be made.
6. Self-awareness and situational awareness is much more important in magic than in science. A magician is thus much more aware of himself and his surroundings and the dynamics of change in the moment than a scientist.
7. Science ultimately is focused on the advancement of a body of knowledge. Magic ultimately results in the personal evolution of the magician.
