Secrets and Lies

When my five-year-old cousin died, her parents--my aunt and uncle--went to their pastor for counselling. This wise and compassionate man turned to the crumbling humans before him and said, "You must have sinned terribly, or why would God have punished you like this?"

That, Dear Readers, is why I cannot stand The Secret.

Contrary to Byrne's claims, The Secret is not some hidden, arcane knowledge that is suddenly being revealed to the public for the first time. It's old hat. It's that evil pastor sitting on his saintly chair and accusing my aunt and uncle (two kinder people never lived) that their child's life was ended by a compassionate God because of something they did or didn't do or thought or didn't think. It's the woman who told me that if I'd managed to convince myself that I needed my "miracle drug" (insulin) to stay alive, then it was my own fault, but she wasn't about to judge me for it. It's arrogant, indulged, privileged people who sit on top of a mountain of labour performed by the less fortunate for their entire lives, and then congratulate themselves for their "hard work" and "positive attitude," while criticizing the people who keep them in their fortunate position for the perceived failures that keep them from enjoying the same successes.

All of this is annoying enough; but what really pisses me off about The Secret is this: it's magic. It's the same magic that neopagans and wiccans practice all the time--only hamstrung, shallow, and without kindness, ethics or compassion.

Hamstrung

At the risk of saying this one too many times, thus fatally boring all of you and causing your untimely deaths--words are powerful because they not only reflect reality, but manipulate our perceptions of it, thus altering the course of our lives. Magic largely involves getting around, under and over words by using images, scents, sounds, and so on.

There are two ways this can work, and I'll say up front that I personally don't care which is correct. As far as I'm concerned, it's like electricity: as long as the light turns on when I flip the switch, the precise mechanics and engineering don't interest me. The two ways that magic can work are: changing yourself (goal setting, positive attitudes, self-improvement), and changing your environment ("energy").

That The Secret, if it works at all, will do so primarily through goal-setting and attitude adjustment seems self-evident. What will every weight loss guru on planet earth tell you to do before you begin a new diet or exercise program? Write down your goals, of course, and post them somewhere you will see them often. Pull out photos of yourself at the weight you want to be and stick them on the fridge. Tempt yourself with treats you can get when you rack up a month's worth of workouts. I know I'm poking a giant pin in a thousand balloons, but isn't that The Secret? And how does it work? By keeping your goal before your eyes so you are not tempted off the path--it works by altering you and your behaviour. It hasn't got a damned thing to do with sending energy out into the universe so the universe can send it back.

But if it's energy you're interested in, try this:

Stand still, somewhere quiet and where you're not worried about looking like a doofus. Imagine there are roots growing out of the bottom of your feet; they're growing fast, twining deep around boulders, through groundwater and solid rock, deeper and deeper, until they twist around earth's magma core; and now, through your shoulders and the top of your head grow branches, higher and steeper, into twig and leaf, right up through the stratosphere, with the sun beating hot on the leaves. Imagine the energy of the magma travelling up through your roots, through your body, through the branches to the leaves; and then raining back down again into the earth, back to the magma core, and over and over again.

Once you've managed this, and you feel like a human lightning bolt--now picture what it is you want.

Shallow

The Secret ignores action. Any witch worth listening to will tell you that magic by itself gets you nothing. All the positive energy in the world won't bring you your heart's desire if you're not also doing the work necessary to bring it to pass: you won't find your dream home if you refuse to look for it; you won't land your dream job if you never hand in your resume. Filling your head with pretty pictures and forcing yourself to walk around believing that you already live in them would, I presume, make one feel much better about the things one doesn't have, as a starving person might feel better about their empty stomach if they went around visualizing ice cream and forcing themself to believe that they would eat it for supper. But it is not going to fall from the sky.

The Secret also works only, so far as I can tell, with positive mental imagery. Which is all well and good, so far as it goes; but pictures don't make the world any more than words do, and where's the rest of it? We have five senses, not two.

Kindness, Ethics, Compassion

Other bloggers have already noted the cruelty implicit in The Secret itself; notably how one is advised to turn away from obese persons lest one "catch it" like a mental flu. Note the many useful and productive endeavours to which this could be applied: Why, if I never want to be part of a famine, I'd better turn off CNN the moment they start showing pictures of starving orphans in Ethiopia! And I don't want AIDS, I know, so no more sad news from South Africa for me. If those people in Darfur are being slaughtered they must have brought it on themselves by thinking negatively; so why should I bother to intervene or act on their behalf? If no one looks I suppose no one can help and then they'll all die--but that's a small price to pay for my own protection, isn't it? A world of The Secret would be a world of social injustice and sanctioned yet invisible bigotry the likes of which we've never known.

But let's pretend that most of the world has enough common sense to dismiss at least this appalling aspect of The Secret, and it will only be applied as positive mental imagery. What then? Is it ethical and compassionate?

No.

Sending energy out into the universe is only a harmless hobby so long as it doesn't work. If it does work, or if you believe that it works, you are required to exercise the same ethical consideration with "positive energy" as you are with any other action you might undertake to achieve a goal. You cannot use it to impose on or dominate another person. You cannot use it to achieve a goal which is itself wrong.

One would not, for instance, countenance a person kidnapping and holding hostage another person they want to be involved with romantically. It obliterates their free will, which they have a right to exercise, as do you. If you believe that love spells don't work, then go ahead, cast away; what harm can it do? Ah, but if you believe that they do work, then casting a love spell is no different than kidnapping.

Similarly, if you believe that putting positive mental imagery in support of your wants out into the universe will make the universe send back to you what you want, then you need to be sure that no one's free will is being obliterated by your actions. You cannot dominate or impose on them. Every witch I know won't even cast a healing spell without the consent of the sick person involved. That is the first ethical consideration.

One also would not advocate a person pursuing a lifestyle or dream which is innately harmful to other persons or the environment. Well, ok, our entire culture advocates this precisely; but I'll assume that the majority of my Dear Readers agree. We would not advocate for a person to use even the most ethical methods possible for achieving unethical ends--a job overseeing prison torture, for instance; or spending fifty million dollars to build oneself an island in the Pacific on which one will construct one's own mansion. One might follow the hiring process to the letter, and fulfill all of the necessary permits for island construction, but that doesn't make it right.

Similarly with magic, if what you are asking for yourself entails a loss for someone else (no matter how far away) or someones else or somethings else (an ecosystem, an economy), then it order to be ethical the gain it brings you and others must at least outweigh the harm you cause. Again, if it doesn't work, who cares? Buzz like a vibrator and send as much positive energy out into the universe as you can stand. But if it works then you are required to take responsibility not only for the positive energy and desires you send out but also for the negative consequences that they entail.

This is why, as much as I joke about magic never getting me a mansion and a harem, I'd never even ask for them. It would be wrong. It would, if it worked, dominate the free will of other persons and entail a whole lot of negative consequences that I'm not prepared to accept responsibility for. At least 99% of the ritual work I do is on and about me, for precisely this reason.

Of course, it wouldn't work; and it wouldn't work because magic is not a catalogue through which one can order whatever one wishes and have it show up on time and without surprises. I can sit here and imagine myself a new pancreas until the end of time; I can cast spells and do rituals and trance myself a hundred times an hour. I'm stuck with the broken one I have. Magic would probably be effective in helping me to manage it better, in encouraging me to test more often and eat healthier foods; it also might nudge the world a bit closer to a cure, maybe, if I'm lucky. But the actual physical pancreas in my actual physical abdomen is not going to repair itself tomorrow.

If you buy the energy explanation, think about it: there are six billion other human beings on planet earth sending their own energy out into the universe. You could be sending out positive energy around the clock but if it's counterbalanced by the contradictory desires of the other six billion people sharing this world with you, it's not going to get you anything.

Now imagine the universe itself, all of those planets and galaxies and whatever or whoever else is out there. And you, little speck that you are, here and now, with your own paltry store of energy. If you manage even a tiny little nudge, that's phenomenal.

Posted by Andrea at June 4, 2007 11:28 AM under Witch

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