Is magic “real”?

Is magic “real”? No, of course not – but also, yes, absolutely.

Some people think that magic exists out there in the world.

Many others think that magic doesn’t exist at all.

I believe that a more accurate view than both is that magic “exists” but only in the specific way that “redness” exists.

Before I get into why I believe this, first let me explain what I mean by “magic.” I don’t mean magic as in Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or even spells from Wiccan magic. I’m referring to situations where it’s common for us humans to perceive things as having properties that exist merely psychologically, but we view those properties as not merely psychological. For instance, we may think a property corresponds to something in the physical world when it doesn’t, or we may think that it has an existence that’s independent of psychology, which it isn’t. These “magical” properties that we perceive deeply change the way we interact with or relate to those things. I’ll give more examples later, but these “magical” experiences often arise for us humans in altered states, in nature, and in connection to death or sex.

Okay, so when I claim that this magic “exists” but only in the specific way that “redness” exists, what do I mean? Well:

Photons of red light are out in there in the world, but redness is not in the world – it exists only in our experience of the world. In other words, redness is part of the simulation constructed by our brains that forms the content of our moment-to-moment awareness. When photons of certain frequencies hit our eyes, specific signals are sent to our brains, which we then experience as seeing something red (unless we’re blind or color blind). The concept of “real” is ambiguous. Our experience of redness is “real” but it’s not real in the same sense that photons of light are “real.”

Similarly, magic is not out there in the world, but it is part of the simulation constructed by our brains – unless we’re “magic blind,” as some of us are.

What are some examples of this “magic” that I’m talking about? Well, magic occurs when our brains assign deeply important seeming non-physical aspects to things that go well beyond their physical properties.

To give some examples, most people experience magic as existing in:

1) The dead bodies of those we care about. To us, bodies are not just inanimate meat; they represent the person or animal who died – hence why desecrating a body or having s*x with a body seems immoral in a way that desecrating a rock would not. We treat dead bodies as though they are still the living person in a way that they aren’t anymore. They have important psychological properties, but it’s very easy for us to think and act as though these properties are not merely psychological.

2) Sex. To most of us, sexual activity is not like other physical actions (such as a handshake or even a vaginal or rectal exam from a doctor); we treat it as though it transforms people. This helps explain why some people would rather be severely physically assaulted than painlessly r*ped. It helps explain why people seem to view losing their virginity as being something of great importance that permanently changes you, even though usually there is nothing permanently physically different afterward. Sex has important properties psychologically, but we sometimes act as though it’s transformational in a way that is beyond psychology, even when it’s not.

3) Unlikely coincidences: to many people, they mean more than just the chance co-occurrence of those events. Many people see coincidences as saying something about the world that (I believe, at least) they don’t actually say. Yes, coincidences can have meaningful psychological effects – but it’s easy for us humans to view them as though they have prophetic or symbolic properties related to the world itself.

4) Certain human interactions: it’s not so uncommon for a person to work with a reiki energy healer (who either doesn’t touch the recipient or only puts hands on them lightly) and be convinced that a profound healing has occurred. In my opinion, such cases do not involve any physical healing, but they do produce an intense psychological experience for some people (especially people who come in already deeply believing in the practice). Not so dissimilarly, sometimes when encountering spiritual gurus people report having an intense psychological experience, even though the guru may have only said a few words to them (especially if they have pre-existing beliefs about the holiness of this guru). People have intense magical (psychological) experiences in these sorts of human interactions that (in my view) they sometimes misinterpret as involving physical changes or changes that are not merely psychological (such as healing of disease).

5) Nature: many people feel a deep connection to nature and that nature has more to it than animals, plants, water, and rocks – that it has some fundamental essence that is, itself, alive. They think some intelligence or consciousness is lurking in nature itself that (I think, at least) is not there.

6) Especially vivid dreams and psychedelic drug experiences: while most people acknowledge that many dream and psychedelic experiences are random or lack fundamental meaning, they are often interpreted as being real – for instance, as corresponding to an event that transpired, or that the being they witnessed during the experience is a real independent entity.

How can one understand what this “magic” is that I’m referring to? I think an analogy helps:

Suppose that there is a fantasy-themed augmented reality game that you play using AR goggles (i.e., Google Glass-style goggles through which you see reality, but the goggles layer game elements on top of reality for you to see and interact with). And suppose that in this AR game, magic is real – it’s simply one of the fantasy elements of the game. So when you’re playing that game, you REALLY DO experience magic (overlayed by the goggles onto physical reality).

Well, magic in real life is much like that, except the “AR goggles” are instead the simulation our brains make for us, which forms our experience of reality. This simulation is formed from all of our experiences of colors, sounds, smells, feelings, and so on that constitute our representation of the physical world. But, like AR glasses, they can have elements that don’t correspond to anything that’s physically there or that add additional features to things that are physically there. For instance, we know that some small percent of humans experience visual hallucinations that they perceive as being part of the world, but that are just part of the simulations made by their brains. This is a striking example, but none of us perceive reality directly; we only perceive the simulation our brains create, and none of our simulations match reality exactly as it is.

So magic, I claim, exists in our simulations of reality but not out there in reality itself.

Some people experience magic a lot less than others (I tend to be low on this scale, but I have close friends who are high on it). For those that are higher on the scale, magic is as real as redness – it just isn’t part of the external world – it’s a feature of our internal simulations that they experience deeply on a daily basis. It also isn’t merely a case of people being “imaginative” – we’re talking here about extremely common human experiences shared across most (and perhaps all) cultures.

Or, to summarize, magic exists – but it exists in “Experience Space” (the realm of what conscious beings experience), not in “Matter Space” (the realm of the physical, such as atoms and wave functions). In my opinion, a great many people who are high in the perception of magic make the serious epistemic mistake of believing magic exists in Matter Space. And those skeptical of magic sometimes make the mistake of dismissing it in a way that doesn’t properly acknowledge that others are having genuine, profound feelings *experiences* of magic – which can make magic believers feel gaslit. They are having those experiences, and those experiences are deeply meaningful to them – even if they are misinterpreting the nature of those experiences (e.g., incorrectly assuming they are real the way photons are real rather than real the way redness is real).

Or, as Duncan Sabien concisely summarized it in a comment on this essay: “Magic is in the map, not in the territory. But like. It really actually IS in the map! It isn’t not-there.”

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This piece was first written on December 13, 2024, and first appeared on my website on February 12, 2025.