 If I read one more beginning magic book that talks about magic and spellcraft as if it's quantum mechanics, I will scream. Hey there saplings! My name is Danny and welcome to esoteric moment today. We are outside in the ridiculous heat of the east pasture on our farm so that I can rant and scream at you about magic and spellcraft. I'm hoping that the yelling geese in the background won't be too loud but we'll see how this goes. So if you're like me you've read a ton of books geared to pagans of all sorts not just druids but the neopagans or any book about magic. Many of these like beginner books talk about magic as if it is like quantum mechanics and I have so many issues with this. I understand why many pagans feel the need to kind of like justify magic and its importance in our lives and its impact on our lives by using science. In our world today it's really easy to say this is fact this exists because of science. We understand our universe in a host of different ways that we didn't in the ancient worlds. That is amazing. But as someone who took physics as their undergrad major I can't tell you how wrong this concept is. So let's talk about quantum mechanics first generally. Quantum mechanics is a field of physics and it describes a lot of different phenomena and we're going to talk about things pretty generally mainly because that's all that's necessary to dispute the fact that magic is just like quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is about scale and it's really about the subatomic and small scale of our universe. It's not talking about pendulums or levers that's all about classic physics and even a lot of the science that we use to describe phenomena in space space time in general that's still a lot of classical physics at work. It's easy to think that because magic works on really like limited scopes or because it's really subtle that it would describe the same scale as quantum mechanics i.e. small subatomic and of course the subatomic affects our macro level as well but the physics that's talking about quantum mechanics is like really small really really really small and the magic we're doing is subtle not small we're making huge impact on our life we're talking new jobs abundance in our life um romance we're talking about garden magic we're talking about house and like home blessings cleansings all of these things are macro in scale something i also read a lot is how schroidener's cat is a lot like magic schroidener's cat is a thought experiment from the 1930s if you want more details definitely check out my blog there'll be a link in the description or wikipedia surprisingly great at describing physics in the general terms anyway schroidener's cat a thought experiment that is often kind of misconstrued in our day-to-day conversations but generally we had quantum mechanics being new very trendy and schroidener's cat was a thought experiment to prove how absurd the general and like accepted way of understanding quantum mechanics was at the time they were talking about particularly superposition it's really talking about the result of being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not have the Copenhagen interpretation at the time was that something was both alive and dead at the same time until observation and at the point of observation is when things shifted or you know chose one state or the other urban schroidener was like that's absurd so he designed a thought experiment with a cat in a box being linked to being alive or dead based on the state of a subatomic particle obviously you can't have a cat both alive and dead that's absurd the point is your magic is not an example of quantum superposition magic is not both happening and not happening at the same time your will is what is deciding magic to happen you might be changing something making something happen in your life but it's not in this subatomic state of being alive or dead it is you making change making shit happen the other point I want to make is quantum mechanics isn't really about absolute values you know a lot of quantum mechanics is about probability and uncertainty and evaluating probability in a certain area due to a certain particle taken atom for example the electrons are not in a particular position at a particular time we have like a probability cloud of where those electrons will be do you really want to describe your magic in terms of probability are you 35 sure that you're going to make that money spell work for you uh no at least when I do magic I don't when I do magic I am talking about real change that I am making happen my will brings power to my abundance spell I am doing the work outside of my magic to bring in the money that I need sure there are times where spells don't work but it's not really about probabilities it's about our understanding the environment in which the spell was made and you know the implications of the words and symbols and actions that we use to make that magic happen if you want to use physics to describe magic these stick to classical mechanics you know when we're talking about exchanging energy and moving our will to create the situation that we want you'll find a lot more synergy in the math that is involved in pendulum and levers and moving energy on the macro scale let's stop selling magic short don't forget that the why behind our spells is our very own will belief and our ability to connect to the energy around us that is what makes magic happen and we don't necessarily need to justify magic working with science understanding the universe studying science so we feel more at home and forever are expanding the lens of our universe that is a great thing please don't stop studying science just stop using it to describe a phenomena that isn't appropriate science and magic are both languages and they work well in the realm of their experience but mixing them there are some translation errors and we don't have them figured out yet and when writers who really don't know anything about science try to use it to describe something that i love magic it just doesn't work well and it makes the writer sound idiotic and it makes it harder to defend magic as a real tool and solution for the things that are happening in our world and i want it to be a real solution finally if you are someone who has decided you know what this science theory totally works for what i'm trying to describe on the metaphysical level fine use it but i want to see some damn math all right in the comments below let me know do you agree have you read about quantum mechanics and magic and books before how do you feel about science and magic mixing uh yeah i'm curious if anyone else gets as frustrated as i do maybe it's just because i was a physics undergrad major but like oh so frustrating today's sapling shout out goes out to katie flowers i'm sure you are all subscribed to her fabulous youtube channel uh but she has been a just wonderful dear friend and i really love her videos but when i decided to do this series i mentioned how i wanted to rant about quantum mechanics and physics and she really said that she was curious about my thoughts on that topic so thanks for giving me the boost and courage needed to actually hit publish on this ranch video if you want to be the next sapling shout out please don't forget to comment below and let me know your thoughts that's how i know to choose you thanks for watching and as always may you find peace in the sacred grove