What I Believe (and how strongly I believe it)

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Do you really believe in magic?”

“Do you believe Bigfoot is real?”

You don’t have to be a Pagan to hear these questions. I’ve heard them from – and directed to – Christians, atheists, and everyone else.

These questions are usually presented as a materialistic binary: is this real or is this a delusion? Respondents are expected to answer “yes” or “no” – “I’m not sure” is considered a cop-out.

I find that approach to be unhelpful… and a bit dishonest. There is no definitive, double-blind-tested-and-peer-reviewed answer to any of these questions. In the face of such obvious uncertainty, why should our beliefs be certain?

On the other hand, for those of us who are interested in such things, “I don’t know” is an inadequate response. We have thoughts, ideas, hypotheses – we have beliefs. I find it much more helpful to say what we think is most likely and also how confident we are in our explanations.

What follows is not a serious work of metaphysics. I’ve written those kinds of posts before and I’ll write them again in the future. This is a lighthearted look some of the things people believe in – or not – and how strongly I do or don’t believe in them.

After all we’ve been through recently, we can use a little lighthearted fun.

Magic

At the risk of getting into the metaphysics I said I wanted to avoid, I need to begin with a definition of magic. And I still have no better definition than the one proposed by Aleister Crowley: “the science and art of creating change in conformance with will.”

I once had an encounter with a skeptic/troll who kept saying “if magic is real, why can’t you manifest a fireball?” That sort of magic – the magic we see in fiction – doesn’t exist. And even if it did, I have no desire to create spectacles for the entertainment of trolls.

Magic is a regular part of my spiritual practice. I’ve written fairly extensively on magic. I have an on-line course on Operative Magic – it’s the most popular of all my classes. Magic doesn’t make things happen. Magic improves the odds that things will happen – many times in strange and unexpected ways.

One magical success may be a coincidence. Two may be confirmation bias. But when you have magical successes over and over and over again, it becomes easier to just accept that magic is real. That provides motivation to work more magic, which brings more successes, which strengthens the belief that there’s something to all of this.

I suppose it could be a Powerball-level case of random chance operating favorably, but it’s much easier to just accept that magic is real.

Confidence level: 99%

Ghosts

Our world is full of ghosts and it always has been. Virtually every culture on Earth has stories of encounters with spirits of the dead, in one form or another. According to a 2015 study by the Pew Research Center, 18% of Americans say they’ve seen a ghost.

I’ve never seen a ghost. I’ve seen activities and disturbances that people credited to a ghost and I don’t have a better explanation. But there are so many reports of ghosts – from famous ghosts seen by many people over many years to unique individual experiences – that there has to be something behind them.

My best guess is that some ghosts are the energetic remains of people and events – especially traumatic events. These are the ghosts that do the same things over and over again and never interact with people. Other ghosts are spirits of the dead that haven’t yet moved on to the Otherworld: they have unfinished business, they’re afraid to move on to whatever comes next, or they’re lost or confused or otherwise unsure where to go.

The skeptics aren’t entirely wrong. It is highly likely that some experiences people credit to ghosts have a perfectly this-world, naturalistic explanation. Jumping to conclusions can lead us to unhelpful places.

But there are too many credible accounts of ghosts and ghostly encounters to dismiss them all.

Confidence level: energetic remains – 98%, disembodied spirits – 97%

Psychic communication

Here I’m talking about the ability to communicate from person to person using non-tangible means, and the ability to see/hear/know things you have no material way of knowing.

There is some materialistic evidence that such phenomena exist. The CIA and the military ran psychic spying programs during the Cold War. They were ended because the information they produced – while sometimes right and occasionally helpful – was often “vague and ambiguous” and “did not produce actionable intelligence.”

There’s something to this – I just don’t know what. I do know I’m very happy it couldn’t be weaponized by the CIA.

Perhaps our minds have capabilities we barely understand. Perhaps the right setting puts us in contact with spirits who are willing to be messengers and informants. I’ve experienced some of this, but not enough to have strong opinions on how it works. I’ve just seen and done enough to be convinced that it does work.

Want to learn how to do this, or how to do it better? Read Psychic Witch by Mat Auryn.

Confidence level: via spirits – 90%, via the mind of an individual – 85%

Life after death

What comes after death – if anything – is one of the Big Questions of Life. I’ve written seriously about it several times, especially in this essay from 2017. At the risk of getting too serious for this piece, I’ll just say that while wondering about life after death is inevitable, obsessing over it is unhealthy. Religions that emphasize qualifying for the “good place” and avoiding the “bad place” are missing the point of this life.

There is no proof of life after death. There is considerable evidence, including ghosts and other encounters with the dead, past life memories, and near death experiences. Those who argue that consciousness cannot exist without a living brain are ignoring the possibility that consciousness does not flow from matter, but rather matter flows from consciousness.

People have believed in life after death (in an afterlife or through reincarnation) for at least as long as we’ve been human. That doesn’t mean it’s true. But I find it likely.

Confidence level: 80%

UFOs

Unidentified Flying Objects are undeniably real. Too many people have seen them – they aren’t all lying. The question is what those people actually saw.

The concept of UFOs is a product of the modern age, where flying machines are a reality. Previous generations would have attributed such sightings to angels or demons or fairies – and they wouldn’t have been able to see them from the air, as many pilots have done. The parallels between alien abductions and fairy abductions are considerable, and as someone who readily accepts the reality of the Fair Folk, I tend to prefer the older explanations.

Given the vastness of the Universe, the odds that we are the only “intelligent” life are impossibly long. There are other technologically advanced civilizations out there, some likely millions of years ahead of us. It’s possible we are the first – someone has to be – but again, the odds are heavily against it.

Even if they’re out there and even if they’re far more advanced than us, the distances between stars with habitable planets makes UFOs as space aliens highly unlikely. Science fiction gets around this through faster than light travel, but physics strongly indicates this simply isn’t possible.

Confidence level: as a spiritual phenomena – 75%, as space aliens – 30%

Cryptids

Bigfoot. The Loch Ness Monster. The Abominable Snowman. Animals that people claim to have seen, and in some cases claim to have photographed, but whose existence cannot be confirmed.

A few sightings have been exposed as deliberate fakes, but most people who have seen cryptids have seen something. As with UFOs, the question is what exactly they saw.

While the idea that we know everything there is to know about the Earth and the creatures who share it with us is incredibly hubristic, I find the odds that large land animals (or inland water animals) could go on for generations undetected to be highly unlikely.

Some may be fairies or spirits. I tend to attribute most cryptid stories to pareidolia, or simply to misidentifying a ordinary animal.

To be honest, I’m not very interested in cryptids. It’s entirely possible my disinterest impacts my beliefs, and I’m overlooking evidence and theories that would otherwise be convincing. I remain open to new evidence, new experiences, and new lines of thinking.

But I think it’s unlikely that cryptids exist as ordinary, this-world animals.

Confidence level: 20%

What’s not on this list

I’m sure there’s some “do you believe in this?” phenomena and creatures I’ve overlooked. That I haven’t really thought about something doesn’t mean it’s not real. Feel free to discuss them in the comments.

I purposely omitted the more overtly religious elements that people sometimes question: the reality of the Gods, the importance of prayer, the benefits of meditation. I believe in all these things, but belief isn’t what’s most important about them. What’s important is practice – doing what I do, what modern polytheist Pagans do, because it’s part of who and what we are. Assigning a confidence level to them misses the point… not to mention being disrespectful.

But after a long run of serious posts on serious topics, I wanted to take a lighter look at some of the things I believe and how strongly I believe them.