«If a caveman had seen our technologies, he would have thought they are magic. If a modern man saw magic he would take it for technology». A character from Outlast the video game.
It is worth mentioning that we do not really differ from cavemen when it comes to modern technologies.
It seems to be real magic when I think about how my iPhone works.
Our modern world makes us increase our speed and raise our bars higher and higher. Sometimes it may seem that we are living in overdrive. The information flow is over-the-top and nobody is able to comprehend anything anymore. The reality slips away from us and facts, events, a mixture of occurrences and happenings pours at us as if from the horn of Amalthaea
Technologies today are so difficult and innovations turn out to be so complicated that sometimes you become sick and tired of trying to understand which of the wires should be used for your gadget. Moreover, there is no chance of using such gadget as you will have to learn new buttons and their combinations, programs, commands… and what more?
In such conditions, we are all in need of something special, simple and safe. So we will have to turn to two wonderful “simplifiers” that are art and magic
And it turned out so that I have been engaged in both of them for a long time.
Art is my profession. I am a qualified cultural scientist and I clearly understand that art helps to “speak simply about complicated things.” It is commonly believed that there is always a great piece of art standing alongside with every scientific breakthrough or any significant political event. This piece of art always reflects events happening in the society. For example, treating Alice in Wonderland which was written by Carroll and considered to be a reflection of the social and political life of England in XIX, as a kind of a metaphor of Einstein’s theory of relativity has been definitely proved true in the course of time.
And what about magic? Magic is my love. Magic is an amazingly deep and incognizable source of inspiration and a perfect tool to explain in simple words how to transform something complicated. Modern science has reached such a level of development that it seems that simple practices and breathing techniques are not able to keep pace with science. Indeed we cannot say that modern esoteric is worse than esoteric canons of the past. Whereas such things can be easily said about the aforementioned iPhone. Moreover, who of our contemporaries is interested in Crowley’s doctrines or The Pentacles of Solomon?
The Modern Age has presented to us lots of integrative techniques with the help of which one will be able to change and influence the reality in an eco-friendly way. It is really often difficult to distinguish where science meets magic and how any specific discovery works and affects our lives. The greatest scientists confessed many times that they made their discoveries while they were sleeping or that the answer they had been searching for came from the so-called quantum field of possibilities.
So I would like to tell you a story of one of the greatest discoveries of the 1960s which fascinates by its metaphorical and magical aura of poetic sentiment. That very case when two American radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson were working with a large Horn Antenna. Their first intention was to register the emission of neutral hydrogen. But their work was constantly being interrupted by a microwave noise, the origin of which they could not find.
This noise was coming from everywhere…
The scientists thought of military tests, emissions of a big city and other noises. Eventually, they decided to clean the antenna from pigeon dung and shoot down annoying birds.
But the noise kept coming…
When finally after a long discussion they understood the cause of the noise, their discovery led to the Nobel Prize. Indeed the physicists discovered microwave background radiation and thus confirmed the Big Bang Theory. The noise that was heard by the scientists all the time was the noise of the beginning of everything.
That was the noise of the birth of the Universe.
The Modern Age balances on the borderline of Science, Art, and Magic. And this is a win-win situation. Discoveries are becoming more and more sophisticated, precise. Responding to the new discoveries Art proclaims: “Exactly! I have always been telling you about that!” and Magic echoes: “I have known it for ages, but you asked for evidence!”
It is impossible to separate one from another. There is no point in thinking that you deal just with pure science/high art/healing people/building ships while all other “magical tricks” consist just in picking nose of an albino unicorn in a somebody’s nightmare. These are delusions of individuals that are in the state of “non-reality”.
In reality, everything is interconnected and when a Scientist exclaims: “Eureka!”, an Artist shouts “That is exactly how I feel!”, and a Magician declares: “I have always known that!”
