Magic as a logical given
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Someone asks a pertinent question about how to properly contextualize the realm of magic as a logical given, esp. at a time when the mainstream consensus reality conceives of the supernatural and its reality as non-existent. This question has many routes and byways, but let me contextualize it through the lens of three basic categories of Avicennan ontology.
When we speak of being/existence (wujūd/kawn), there are three ways to speak of it: the Necessary (wājib), the contingent/possible (mumkin) and the impossible (mumtaniꜤ). God/Divinity is the Necessary Being (wājib al-wujūd) without whom neither of the other two categories are possible. All of creation and created things, including the noosphere of the mind (individually or collectively), fall under the rubric of possible being (mumkin al-wujūd). The impossible being (mumtaniꜤ al-wujūd) is all that which whose being/existence, such as a squared circle, cannot by logical definition exist because its causality is a disruption or contradiction to the possible; or, in other words, its causality and reality is to be a priori non-existent/non-being (Ꜥadamīya).
The reality of magic straddles the possible and impossible simultaneously at every moment, often neither concretely actualized nor remaining concretely unactualized. This is the realm of the logical tetralemma, i.e. both/and, neither/nor. Like everything else in creation, what brings magic into being as actuality is already-always the Necessary Being (wājib al-wujūd). But what is it about the Necessary Being that actualizes the reality of magic? Or, to put it another way, what is it about the Necessary Being that we can tap into in order to realize the individual will's conception of things and bring it into actuality and creation? The answer is the Active Imagination which is a spark of the universal Divine Imagination thinking Itself and by thinking Itself overflowing creation out of itself into being/existence, i.e. the Hidden Treasure desiring/loving to be known. Indeed we are speaking of a reversal of the Cartesian cogito ergo sum ("I think therefore I am"). Rather "I am because I am thought." This Active Imagination is neither fantasy nor random mental processes of the mind. It is something much higher albeit hidden behind the veils of the individuated human mind and its collective/individuated noosphere. Tap into that and you have tapped into the already-always creative process of the Necessary Being actualizing the possible in every moment. But in order to tap into that, you must follow to its end the dictum articulated by ꜤAlī (ع) such that whosoever knows themselves, knows their Lord, i.e. the Necessary Being who is closer than one's jugular vein! This is the why and the how, and is the reason why visualization and invocation are the two poles of magical action bringing things into being.
More can be said. But I will leave it here for now.
