Magick is just a science that people still struggle to understand. As the late Crowley said “Magick is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with Will”, I think we can take it for granted that science doesn't really explain magick. Sure, it thinks it does, but "placebo effect" and "hallucination" come no closer to explaining the real experience of magick than "chemicals" and "evolution" do to explaining the real experience of love. Science can only deal with things on a particular level of abstraction. It only works with physical, material fact.
But I wonder whether, as the title posits, magick can do a better job of explaining science than science does of explaining magick? Obviously, magick is a broad subject, but most systems offer a picture of reality which, by necessity, takes into account the existence of science. Is science so charitable toward magick? Science's response to magick has been to scoff at it, then try to explain it in "real" terms, then wander off to do something else. It has demonstrated itself to be incapable of comprehending subjective reality without throwing around terms like "cognitive bias". And that's perfectly fine. Different perspectives, both have their uses. But can magick understand science? Can it explain it?
Occult' literally means 'hidden'. It's not a study of the spooky, or the creepy, or, necessarily, the unknowable. To study the occult, and be serious about it, you're literally trying to peer behind the curtains that obscure whatever is hidden behind the surface consensus reality we all share. To be a serious student of 'magick' is to adopt frameworks of thinking and working that allow you to make sense of the world around you.
There is no better 'magick' than the scientific method. Science is, literally, magick. Tested, debated, reproducible magick. If science can't explain a particular phenomenon, it's either because there isn't enough data to study and/or the magician studying the data isn't creative enough/resourced enough to make the cognitive leaps necessary to bring that particular hidden realm into our reality for all of us to study at our leisure.
Science itself is just a suite of techniques for seeing the world. It's not just what 'scientists' do. If nasty boring rationalists are scoffing at you, that's because they're nasty boring rationalists stuck in their particularly narrow framework. Specialization tends to do that to us - demanding fields of study, and the results of the lifetime work of thousands of talented magicians before us, sometimes makes it difficult for us to see the world through any other lens. When magic works it is a formidable seductive mistress.
Your world is built from some serious magickal stuff. People two hundred years ago would see it as such. Until they did the work and initiated themselves into the necessary cognitive frameworks. So, yes, magick can understand science, because it is it. Some esoteric frameworks may not be able to mesh with others. That's why creativity and hard work are needed, not just wishful thinking and a love of all things spooky.
When science tries to examine magick it tends to take a slightly narrower view because in science there is a view that the Truth is a constant, immutable object. Magick takes a different view which enables the practitioner to accept scientific thinking more easily than science can accept magickal thinking. Is then magick superior to science? Subjective but I would go as far as to say that science is absorbed into magick better than magick is absorbed into science.
LVX - Patrick Gaffiero
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