Janet and Stewart Farrar - Spells and How They Work

The materialism of the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions of the past couple of centuries has dismissed as fantasy, or as purely psychological phenomena, all manifestations of psychic abilities and power; though, under it all, folklore and grass-roots instinct have known better. In recent years, the atmosphere has changed; serious scientists are investigating psychic phenomena on the assumption that there is something to investigate. And witches, and many others (including Christian faith-healers), are actively putting psychic powers to practical use. Much of this activity can be classified as spells, even though some of the activists would shun the word and there is overwhelming evidence that, properly done, spells do work.

The rationalism of recent centuries has achieved much. It has enabled us to master the physical level of reality to a degree undreamed-of before. It has made life (in some countries at least) healthier, longer, safer and better provided-for; anyone who thinks otherwise, and could time-travel back to slave-based Rome, or Inquisitorial Spain, or Victorian London or Dublin, within a week would rush back to our epoch as fast as he could press the button.

But the very enthusiasm and single-mindedness of that rationalism has thrown out some important babies with the bathwater. One of the most vital of these is the understanding that matter is not the only level of reality; that the other levels (which we shall examine in the ) are not mere superstition but active areas with laws of their own which can be understood with sufficient application.

The rationalist revolution has come full circle. It has brought us to frontiers within science itself at which the laws of mechanical materialism are no longer adequate; which is why the frontiersmen of that science are rethinking their vision of reality.

This book is about spells. Till recently, our rationalist culture lumped them with the other superstitions it believed it had outgrown. But a spell is merely a deliberate process for achieving a desired aim; what differentiates it from other such processes is that it uses levels and laws which mechanical materialism disowned. (It is interesting that the rationalist culture, with its gift for compartmentalization, has accepted prayer as at least respectable; yet what is prayer but a form of spell, an attempt to achieve what you want by putting yourself in tune with the non-material levels of reality?)

To work a spell, one must not dismiss rationality; one must use it as a tool, to understand the laws of the levels involved, to plan the operation in accordance with those laws, to analyse the results honestly and to learn from experience both the fruitful methods of working and the pitfalls one may encounter. And the paradox of this is that one must learn, rationally, when it is necessary to put rationality on one side and to work by intuition, emotion and all the faculties which rationality prefers to tame. And (again rationally) one must know the right moment to switch back.

Because in our experience, and countless other peoples, spells are not superstition. They are an effective method of achieving legitimate aims.

Let us look, then, at some of the laws and principles involved.