Some see God as a magician able to fulfil all our wishes…

• Another variation on this metaphor of the all powerful God is thinking of God as a magician, able to pull things out of hat. Those who see God in this way subscribe to a form of magical thinking. They pray to God to fulfill their wishes and expect God to come through for them. God is there to respond to and fulfill human needs. Flora A. Keshgegian
• I believe, or sense, that the universe has not been constructed from a purely mechanical, logical, rational point of view, but there is a magic afoot in the universe, that God can be looked at as a kind of a magician in which we get to perform tricks ourselves, without knowing that we’re doing so. Fred Alan Wolf
• God is alive. Magic is afoot. God is alive. Magic is afoot. God is afoot. Magic is alive. Alive is afoot. Magic never died. Leonard Cohen

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…hoping that God will work his magic for us

• People have always asked God, in prayer, for what they want. When they do so they are appealing to God’s power and God’s ability to be in charge. When people pray to the magician God, their expectation is that God will work magic for them, for them. Flora A. Keshgegian
• Popular preachers sometimes advocate this thinking by making promises about what God will do and making God out to be a personal miracle worker. Drawing on biblical miracles these preachers portray God as someone who will provide manna from heaven, work instant cures, and deliver plagues on enemies. People then expect God to provide vide money for the electric bill or instant healing of chronic illness. Flora A. Keshgegian
• Theurgy is ritual magic – but magic that enacts the will of God, not of the magician. It brings divine energies down to earth, elevating and spiritualizing the world of matter, including the very being and substance of the participants. Each time the believer takes part with attention and devotion, he or she becomes more attuned to God. Richard Smoley

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The hope is often that God can be manipulated to magically meet our desires

• Even though God the magician is viewed as all powerful, able to do whatever people wish for, magical thinking implies that God’s will can be manipulated to respond to human desires, human will. God exists to meet human needs. God’s power is subject to human desire. Flora A. Keshgegian
• In the anthropocentric, if not narcissistic, world of modernity and postmodernity, this is a popular perspective. Many expect God to fulfill their needs and wants, magically. If God is so powerful, then he can use his power to answer their prayers and give them what they want and need. Flora A. Keshgegian

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This metaphor views God as all powerful, able to defy even the laws of nature

• People who believe in this approach to God may also imagine God as a wizard, such as in The Wizard of Oz. He is an all powerful and demanding being, hidden from direct access. Yet it is he whom we must encounter in order to get what we need. God’s ways of working are other than human ways, but his power is unquestionable. He is able to defy the laws of nature and do what we lowly mortals can only imagine as magic. Flora A. Keshgegian
• Now glory be to God, who by his mighty power at work within us is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask or even dream of – infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, or hopes. Ephesians 3:20

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This metaphor sometimes confuses God with Santa Claus

• We have confused God with Santa Claus. And we believe that prayer means making a list of everything you don’t have but want and trying to persuade God you deserve it. Now I’m sorry, that’s not God, that’s Santa Claus. Harold S. Kushner

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Some argue we should trust less in God’s magic and more in our own resources…

• God is not a magic eight ball we shake up and peer into whenever we have a decision to make. He is a good God who gives us brains, shows us the way of obedience, and invites us to take risks for him. Kevin DeYoung
• You got to understand the god thing. It’s not magic. It’s about being you, but the you that people believe in. It’s about being the concentrated, magnified, essence of you. It’s about becoming thunder, or the power of a running horse, or wisdom. You take all the belief and become bigger, cooler, more than human. Neil Gaiman
• It’s only when you’re lost and frightened and in the dark that you call on the Gods, and they like us to call on them. It makes them feel powerful, and that’s why they like us to live in chaos. Bernard Cornwell
• Ninety percent of what’s wrong with you could be cured with a hot bath, says God from the bowels of the subway. but we want magic, to win the lottery we never bought a ticket for. Mary Karr
• Being born on the earth is the highest honor and greatest privilege. To be alive as human beings gives us the chance to pull off exquisite and Herculean feats of magic that are not possible in nirvana or heaven or any other so-called paradise, higher dimension, or better place, being alive right now is the greatest gift I got from God. Rob Brezsny
• I have come to believe the sooner we will fall in love with the God who keeps shaking things up, keeps changing the path, keeps rocking the boat to test our faith in Him, teaching us to not rely on easy answers, bullet points, magic mantras, or genies in lamps, but rather in His guidance, His existence, His mercy, and His love. Donald Miller

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…in our own magic

• The word is not just a sound or a written symbol. The word is a force; it is the power you have to express and communicate, to think, and thereby to create the events in your life. The word is the most powerful tool you have as a human; it is a tool of magic. Miguel Angel Ruiz
• Man’s word is his wand filled with magic and power! Man comes into the world financed by God, with all that he desires or requires already on his pathway. This supply is released through faith and the Spoken Word. If thou canst believe, all things are possible. Florence Scovel Shinn
• The dream is so thick; the Maya is so thick. There’s no magic as long as there’s all this thought. So the first condition for the practice of higher magic is the stopping of thought. Frederick Lenz

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Some argue God is not a magician and should not be viewed as one…

• God is not a demigod or a magician, but the Creator who gives being to all entities. Pope Francis
• God is a scientist, not a magician. Albert Einstein
• Some people think prayer stops bullets or rockets or land mines. It doesn’t. That’s magic, that’s not God. Sometimes, you’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time. John Shelby Spong

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…and atheists use this metaphor to ridicule the very idea of God

• Why is monotheistic faith better than polytheistic? I mean, either you believe – if you believe in, like, a magic person who can do magic things, why is it different – so different if it’s Superman or the Fantastic Four? Bill Maher
• Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace. Eugene O’Neill

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However, those who experience it cannot deny there is genuine magic to be found in the spiritual realm…

• Call upon the Goddess and God to protect you and teach you the secrets of magic. Ask stones and plants to reveal their powers – and listen. Scott Cunningham
• The concept of an independent “spiritual realm” does not augment, for me, the magic of the mystical dimension, whereas to think of this dimension as emergent from our minds makes it all the more wondrous to be a human. Ursula Goodenough
• When your spirit is free and your body is well developed, magic occurs. You are able to let go and become the play. Frederick Lenz
• What is any religion? A little ritual, a little superstition, and some magic. Gary Snyder
• Religion, mysticism and magic all spring from the same basic ‘feeling’ about the universe: a sudden feeling of meaning, which human beings sometimes ‘pick up’ accidentally, as your radio might pick up some unknown station. Poets feel that we are cut off from meaning by a thick, lead wall, and that sometimes for no reason we can understand the wall seems to vanish and we are suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of the infinite interestingness of things. Colin Wilson

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…including the magic of love…

• Feel the love of God; then in every person you will see the face of the Father, the light of love which is in all. You will find a magic, living relationship uniting the trees, the sky, the stars, all people, and all living things; and you will feel a oneness with them. This is the code of divine love. Paramahansa Yogananda
• Love is like magic and it always will be. For love still remains life’s sweet mystery! Love works in ways that are wondrous and strange and there’s nothing in life that love cannot change! Love can transform the most commonplace into beauty and splendor and sweetness and grace. Love is unselfish, understanding and kind, for it sees with its heart and not with its mind! Love is the answer that everyone seeks… Love is the language, that every heart speaks. Love can’t be bought, it is priceless and free, love, like pure magic, is life’s sweet mystery! Helen Steiner Rice

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…the magic of forgiveness…

• Forgiveness begins the healing process – when you forgive God, life, yourself and other people – magic happens within. That’s why every religion talks about forgiveness. Brandon Bays
• There is magic in sincere forgiveness – magic to heal. Terry Goodkind
• Forgiveness begins the healing process – when you forgive God, life, yourself and other people – magic happens within. That’s why every religion talks about forgiveness. Brandon Bays

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…the magic of grace…

• Grace is not a strange, magic substance which is subtly filtered into our souls to act as a kind of spiritual penicillin. Grace is unity, oneness within ourselves, oneness with God. Thomas Merton

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…the magic of understanding…

• I believe if there’s any kind of God it wouldn’t be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there’s any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it’s almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt. Richard Linklater

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…the magic of awareness…

• Meditation means awareness, watchfulness, a silent witnessing of all the processes of the mind. And the magic of watching is that as your watchfulness deepens, the mind starts evaporating. When the watchfulness is absolute mind becomes nil, a zero. And the disappearance of the mind gives you clarity, absolute clarity, transparency; you can see through and through, you become a mirror. And then life is reflected as it is – not according to any doctrine, not according to the Bible or the Koran or the Gita but as it is. And to know life as it is, is to know god. Rajneesh

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…the magic of prayer…

• My impression is that prayer is one of the most basic forms of magic. That it’s harnessing the powers of your mind. Boyd Rice
• I’ve always believed in the power of prayer. One prayer can accomplish more than a thousand plans. That isn’t a magic formula, but it’s an idea that if you pray, keep praying and then praying some more. Mark Batterson
• Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, discarded the spell for prayer. Patti Smith

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…the magic of faith and belief…

• Religious teachings and teachers have conditioned us to think of faith as a magic catalyst that makes God work for us. In no way does faith make God work nor does it release some kind of miracle power. Faith simply tunes into and turns on the divine flow that has always been present. Eric Butterworth
• Magic is the divinity of man achieved in union with faith. Eliphas Levi
• Believing is a daring adventure into the unseen, it is a radiant faith in the unexplored, the undiscovered, the miracles of the future. . . There is magic in the art of believing! Believe! Engrave these words of the Master in your memory: “All things are possible to those who believe.” Believe! Believe in the limitless supply of God’s goodness. The universe is filled with more wonders than you can imagine. Wilferd Peterson
• If you don’t get the ending you desire…. have faith in the magic of new beginnings. Rita Zahara
• Any action, like any act of magic, is in some sense an act of faith … I’ve seen the desert bloom, the flower that emerges from the barest hint of water, and I know the power of life will rise, stubborn and persistent to be renewed. May our actions be the wind that brings the rain. Starhawk

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…the magic of music…

• Music is, to me, proof of the existence of God. It is so extraordinarily full of magic, and in tough times of my life I can listen to music and it makes such a difference. Kurt Vonnegut
• Music is Magic. Magic is Life. Jimi Hendrix
• Music acts like a magic key, to which the most tightly closed heart opens. Maria von Trapp
• Magic is what we do, music is how we do it. Jerry Garcia
• Ah, the magic of music, with it, all things are possible. E. A. Bucchianeri
• Music is the strongest form of magic. Marilyn Manson

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…the magic of art…

• I believe that magic is art, and that art, whether that be music, writing, sculpture, or any other form, is literally magic. Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images, to achieve changes in consciousness… Indeed to cast a spell is simply to spell, to manipulate words, to change peoples consciousness, and this is why I believe that an artist or writer is the closest thing in the contemporary world to a shaman. Alan Moore
• I don’t distinguish between magic and art. Alan Moore
• Art is magic… But how is it magic? In its metaphysical development? Or does some final transformation culminate in a magic reality? In truth, the latter is impossible without the former. If creation is not magic, the outcome cannot be magic. Hans Hofmann
• Magic is the art of changing consciousness at will. Dion Fortune
• Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth. Theodor Adorno
• All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising. Joseph Conrad
• Art is magic, not logic. This craze for the logical spirit in irrational shape is part of the present harmful mania for uniformity. Edith Sitwell

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…the magic of the natural world…

• Magic, indeed, is all around us, in stones, flowers, stars, the dawn wind and the sunset cloud; all we need is the ability to see and understand. Doreen Valiente
• If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. Loren Eiseley

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…the magic of mathematics and science

• Mathematics is one of the surest ways for a man to feel the power of thought and the magic of the spirit. Mathematics is one of the eternal truths and, as such, raises the spirit to the same level on which we feel the presence of God. Julio Cesar de Mello e Souza

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…and most all, the magic of ourselves and of life itself

• The appearance of things changes according to the emotions; and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves. Khalil Gibran
• We need a renaissance of wonder. We need to renew, in our hearts and in our souls, the deathless dream, the eternal poetry, the perennial sense that life is miracle and magic. Merrill Root
• I think that life is a friggin’ magic carpet ride – it’s amazing. Everything about life is mysterious and beautiful and touching and tragic and lovely and mystical. Elizabeth Lesser
• We need not wait for the world to become more mystical; the world is mystical. Our problem is not that the world lacks magic; our problem is that we don’t believe in its magic. We do not show up fully for life, and then wonder why life is not showing up more fully for us. Marianne Williamson

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Science has reduced our belief in magic, but some argue our need to recognise God’s magic all around us has never been greater

• I am a 21st century man. I don’t believe in magic. I believe in sweat, tears, life and death. Kamal Haasan
• By 2100, our destiny is to become like the gods we once worshipped and feared. But our tools will not be magic wands and potions but the science of computers, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and most of all, the quantum theory. Michio Kaku
• People agree to say that it is rationality and science which have eliminated what is called magic and religion. But ultimately, the ironic outcome of this techno-scientific development is a renewed need for the idea of God. Paul Virilio
• With the advance of knowledge, therefore, prayer and sacrifice assume the leading place in religious ritual; and magic; which once ranked with them as a legitimate equal, is gradually relegated to the background and sinks to the level of a black art. James G. Frazer

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