Open and Closed Systems: Magical Models

In Science class, I learned about open and closed systems when I learned about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Ok, maybe I learned about it from the link over there. Anyway, POS post reminded me of it. I liked his post, it was appealing. The last paragraph is what I wanted to draw your attention to:

It is important to know which tool to use for which type of magick. I saw little need to ask the universe to sacrifice to make this goal happen. Nor did I see a need for any other human to sacrifice anything financially for this. Frankly, it is only important to me. Sometimes practical magick can be purely internal.

I totally agree with the sentiment he expresses. Sometimes practical magic can be internal, and he's got a great methodology to deal with paying off debt by doing magic to make him responsible in his money management. I need to do similar magic to get the power to overcome the ongoing temptation to splurge when I can't afford it. Every character flaw we address using magic will have a huge reward in practical terms when we stop behaving in ways that sabotage our success. I couldn't agree more about that, and that's his main point, or at least the main point I took away from his post.

But in the paragraph, he uses the word "sacrifice" in a way that prompted me to write this post. I'm sure he'll correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the premise he's working from is that the universe is a "closed system," that is, the universe exists and all that is within it is all there is. Ergo, if you do a ritual for money, the money has to come from somewhere. Like the Universe has a bank account with limited funds, and taking a withdrawal for yourself results in there being less left over for anyone else to use. So the universe or someone else has to "sacrifice" some of its stuff to take care of your magical request.

In a closed system, entropy is always accumulating. Eventually, in a closed system, everything becomes a jumbled chaotic mess. There is a tendency for disorder to accumulate. It's like if you pour salt into a bag, and then pour pepper on top of it. When both are in the bag, it starts out neat and ordered. The pepper is all together on top of the salt. If you start shaking the bag, the pepper and salt mingle, and the more you shake it, the more mixed it will get. No amount of shaking will result in the pepper gathering together and the salt gathering together, statistically speaking. It's extremely improbable.

One of the arguments for Creationism is the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. People say that if the Earth is a closed system, life wouldn't have evolved on it because that's order accumulating, and not disorder. (I think an argument could be made that life is actually a manifestation of disorder, but it becomes moot when you consider the obvious.) The Earth is not a closed system. The Sun is constantly adding its radiation to the mix, asteroids crash into it, and comets bring water and hydrocarbons from the bowels of space to power our vehicles. (You don't REALLY think decaying carbon-based life forms turn into oil under pressure, do you? They don't. That's a theory from the 1700s. If that worked, we could produce oil. We can't. It comes from comets.)

So if the Universe were a closed system, magic done for money for me would potentially be magic that takes money from you. However, if we really look at "money" (for example) and where it comes from, we find out that it's completely created. The Federal Reserve just added a few billion dollars to the economy by simply printing it, inflation be damned. It's poor economics, but it reveals that there is no limit to the amount of "money" that can be conjured. It doesn't come from a closed system.

Now, before I go any further, I'd like to point out that the following parts are all theory, not fact. Belief, interpretation, conjecture, and opinion. I'm not saying I'm right, I'm just saying this is how I see it and it works for me. Your mileage may vary.

In my cosmology, the Universe is not a closed system. God created it, emanated it, extended it from his infinite self, and part of that infinite self is temporarily encased in denser parts of itself in the form of matter. I believe God is present and active in the universe. I speak with him and/or his agents on a regular basis. I think he's still pumping stuff into being in this universe at a constant rate, and that the moment of Creation never ended.

I see the relationship between the Sun and the Earth as a reflection of the relationship between God and his Creation. The Sun transmits power that is absorbed by plants and turned into oxygen and other useful things. The Sun is a finite source, so it's not a completely accurate analogy, but the snapshot of the Sun powering the Earth to offset entropy is a good representation of how I see God's influence on the Universe at large.

When things are requested by magicians, I don't think it comes from the "Universal Bank Account" that has a fixed sum. I think it just manifests out of thin air. It has to come down through the heavens following the chain of manifestation, of course, and by the time it reaches us, it looks like it came through from completely "natural" means, but it still started as an Idea in the Mind of God that manifested on our behalf when it was necessary.

The idea that it's a sacrifice for the universe to provide for us seems to me to be off. It's like we're saying, "God, you did all this, made the heavens and Earth and stars and planets, but now you're at Rest, and you don't do anything anymore." That's a popular belief, and there are a lot of Deists or near-Deists that believe basically that. There are Christian doctrines that teach that God isn't present and active anymore, except through his Holy Spirit as it operates through the human members of the Church. On the seventh day, God rested, and that's where he's been ever since (except for those thirty or so years in the flesh).

I disagree with them too.

I used to debate with a guy named Logan online in a lot of message boards. Those who had to suffer through our debates likely remember them with a shudder. We got evil with each other. It was fun, we managed to maintain mutual respect despite our sometimes vitriolic attacks on one anothers' characters.

He and I had the closed- vs. open-system debate, and there are valid pros and cons to both approaches. I personally see the closed-system magical model as restrictive to magicians. If you think your magic to bring you prosperity is going to leave a family in Indonesia poverty-stricken and homeless, you won't feel it's ethical to do prosperity magic. You can't really do healing rites for people either, because you're taking the healing that would go to someone else and applying it to whomever you love. You can't even pursue enlightenment, because that would be stealing someone else's enlightenment too, right?

When I look at the magical models we have to work with, eventually I see in all of them the point where we reach something akin to the Pleroma, or in kabbalistic terms, the "Ain Soph Aur." Light without limit. It is from this pool of limitless light that all things come and are manifest. If it were a pool of limited light, I could understand the assumption that there's only "so much" that is available for everyone to share, and that the Universe would be sacrificing some of its stuffness on behalf of POS to pay for his car.

But it's not. It's limitless. Infinite. Eternal. The Light is constantly flowing down through the Tree and its spheres, constantly washing through each, taking on characteristics from each and then ultimately manifesting in the patterns and structures we experience in this realm. Yes, there are rules, and there are limits, and there are Natural Laws that all magic has to operate within, but it all starts from an infinite pool.

I've come to use the Emerald Tablet of Hermes as the standard operating procedure for magicians performing the Great Work. We rise to the heights, tap into the Power, and bring it to Earth. Thinking of the pool magicians tap into as a closed system, in my opinion, is opposed to the revelations we have of the nature of the universe within our magical traditions.  Having seen the unlimited Light of God, I am not comfortable at all thinking that we're stuck with what we have on hand to work with.

And again, I'm not disagreeing with POS's approach to paying off his car. I think it's the most responsible use of magic I've seen in a long time, my own practice included. I just think it's also important for us to remember where we come from, and what our potential truly is.