The Beginning of Magic and Ritual

 Part I

All the books about magic struggle with one thing: the beginning.

Now, that's not to say that these books do not have a good initial phrase. They do. But that is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the beginning of magic—of ritual itself.

In some aspects, I don't care much about the how as I do about the why, and that is where my thoughts differ from other, far better works. The why is, to me, the most important question.

We can trace—or mostly try to trace—the beginning of magic to the time of the Pharaohs. And from that moment on, all other magic systems were just a copy of it.

But if we start thinking with a little pause, and force ourselves to travel back in time, what would we see? Not the first priest. Not the first magician. But the first person who ever said, "Yes, I can", when confronted with an unanswerable question and an impossible request:

Can you make it rain?

I think…

If you don't, we'll cut your head off and find someone who can.

Give me a few days to prepare and I'll talk to the Gods.

How many days?

Four… to thirty, maybe sixty days?

And that, I believe, is the beginning of magic. Not out of nowhere, but born from the fear of what could happen if no was the answer.

This scenario can be projected backward into the darker corners of our history: a time where the dark was truly dark and full of real danger, where crops were far more than hobbies, and fish was often the only available meat.

If fear is a powerful enough motivator to make one say yes to an impossible task, imagine how the seers were used in Greece, Rome, Viking times, and so on. Men in power demanded impossible answers and impossible actions, often under penalty of death.

Could a seer in ancient Greece truly speak with the Gods? Or was the fear of starvation, death, and rape enough to make her say, Yes—Zeus will protect you and your two thousand men against that army of ten thousand.

She didn’t fear the ten thousand. She feared the man in front of her.

And that very real, tangible, undeniable color of a blade at one's neck would probably make even me—born in an age of free information and relative enlightenment—speak with the Gods.

Which one? Doesn’t matter. Which would you like to talk with? I have an open line to all of them in every country known to man, so long as you keep that blade away.

Now, this lie has a fifty-fifty chance of working—and in both ways, it benefits the seer, not the king. If the king loses, the seer has nothing to fear. If he wins, she gains everything: prestige, belief, survival.

And this cycle can be repeated infinitely. In almost every case, the seer gets to live another day.

My theory borders on the fringe, maybe even hopeful. But it stands alongside any other theory since, like all the rest, it cannot be proved. And if it could, it wouldn’t be a theory—it would be fact.

Still, one can assume, almost to a fault, the mentality behind such things. Consider the caveman: energy was not wasted on the superfluous. So why invent gods? Why rituals?

Historians and scientists claim the first rituals were about connection, about bonding. But to leap from the need for a hug to the invention of sky creatures with dominion over fire and death? That’s not a step. That’s a chasm.

Even if a specific situation like the blade-to-the-neck was not present, the foundation of religion remains the same: fear. Fear of the dark. Fear of the ocean. Fear of fire.

Fear became structure. Structure, over time, became dogma. And dogma became religion.

Part II

Wishful thinking is the glue that holds all magic systems and beliefs together. It sounds disrespectful and dismissive of all the people who truly believe in a higher power, but, in reality, it's not what I'm trying to do.

Historically and over hundreds of thousands of years and a multitude of books, grimoires, studies and rituals, not a single one was observed to truly alter reality; there's no real ritual to make it rain, and no real ritual to make one fly or contact any kind of spiritual entity.

Reality is only real because it doesn't bend. From the moment any act of magic could alter reality, reality wouldn't be deserving of its name and therefore we would have to find another definition for it. And, paradoxes are all well and good in language and books, but reality observes and allows none to exist.

Let me explain without being disrespectful; almost every extremely religious person comes from either a place of true suffering or true happiness. Both extremes seem to cater to belief as naturally as the Sun shining in the sky.

You can make an experiment; in your circle of friends, ask who believes in God or Gods. And analyse their answers. You'll get:

God saved me from a hard time.

Or, God gave me the possibility of living a better life.

Meaning; I'm thankful for what I have now, or I'm thankful for what I was born with. Rarely a person that lies in the middle spectrum will fall into this category. True suffering or true privilege seems to birth belief.

But there's a third category; the ones born to it. Sons and daughters of extremely religious and zealous parents that were themselves sons and daughters of extremely religious and zealous parents. But the more you travel in time the more you come to the initial assessment. A person living in the middle ages couldn't afford not to believe in God when the power of a flame and torture were stronger than any convictions you could have. It sounds like a circle of behaviour because that's what dogma truly is; a behaviour repeated until it becomes the norm.

"To believe in one God I would have to believe in all of them."

– Author

Part III

Let’s do an exercise that applies the theory we’ve been talking about. Let’s travel back in time to a place called Dacia, now known as Romania.

Dacia was considered a pagan place; it gave birth to strange gods and beliefs—or at least, in the eyes of those who came to conquer it. And one thing is common in every religion: seeing the other as fake and pagan. Almost every religion or belief system shares this, because faith allows for no questioning. It is the perfect trap of the mind, and one of the reasons why, in Catholicism and Christianity, the simple act of questioning the existence of God was seen as mortal sin.

Dacia had their gods, and the invaders permitted no mutiny.

Obey or be destroyed.

And obedience, over time, became forgotten.

Zamolxis was now incapable of protecting his own sons against a real, tangible threat. Powerful against the night sky, not powerful enough to stop a spear through the air.

The initial act of changing one god for another was lost in time.

This pattern repeated throughout the centuries—most notably in countries like Norway, rich in lore and mythology, and forced to forget the god that once was responsible for breathing life into the Vikings. Again, Odin fared well against his brothers, cousins and fellow man, but not against zealots who believed with all their might that their righteousness gave them the right to murder, torture and rape.

How does one betray a god—and why?

Again, we circle: through fear. Not of a hypothetical Hell or Hades, but of a real, flaming and scalding fire.

I fear not the Hell that awaits me, if the person in front of me can show me what pain really means before I draw my last breath.

In this aspect, the old gods were all buried under obedience and a very real, very painful boot to the neck.

A new God, a new truth, always did—and always will—require true and unquestionable obedience.

Conquest didn’t require the land only, but the absolute destruction of previous gods and beliefs.

From the moment one can be forced to forget his own father, everything is permitted. 

Part IV

We built a language. A trap. As if by naming something it made them more real than when it had no name.

But, the cold truth is that a bird doesn't need to know its name to exist. A river will still flow whether you can say its name and country, or not. The stars and the Sun will still shine bright, long after we are gone and forgotten.

It sounds pessimistic, maybe. But in reality, we simply forgot to observe and be, in a desperate attempt to elevate ourselves above the importance of all living things. Confronted with our own unimportant time on Earth, we panicked. We built systems to try and bring light to the darkness, but that light only cast more shadows; either it was shrouded in dogma or clouded with mystical and scientific jargon.

Gods exist not because they are gods but because we needed them to be. And that is no way for a god to be. That is no way for any living creature to be at all.

The moment I AM becomes the means of one's existence, it is nothing less than affirmation of SELF. And one shouldn't need to affirm itself to exist, because reality cares not for what you think you are, or even, what you know you are. 

Stars are because they are. As it should be. One should exist simply because it does.

But magic and belief systems do not permit this to be. What would be of us if we couldn't name every star or every Ocean on Earth? Nihilism, some systems would say. Humans would lose their sense of self. But a caveman had no names. A caveman had no titles and that didn't stop us from crawling unto where we are now.

Part V

Humans crave meaning. Nothing is more true than this. We cannot fathom something to exist without trying to tag it, name it, bottle it and sell it. It has been like this since the dawn of time and it will be like this until the last man alive draws his breath. To allow something to exist without our approval is, in our sense, the biggest of blasphemies.

We can't and won't accept that a star will simply shine because it has to. We have, by the way of dogmas, doctrines and rituals, to tell the star; I allow you to shine. You have my permission to complete your function. To the God that men believes itself to be, existence without our seal of approval, it's an offence we will not allow to exist.

In truth, we assigned to things that do not require us, necessity. Like a King allowing his subjects to live or to die, under his pretences.

“If you no longer shine, you're no star to me, and therefore, you are not needed.” 

Gods are no different in this. For us, a god needs to be of war, love, beauty, or all of it, or its no god at all.

How truly sad must it be, to be able to create universes out of nothing, but have our importance stripped of meaning, because humans cannot categorise us? 

If doubts the self importance we so blindly assing to our existence, one just needs to look at most rituals, magic in nature or not; humans commanding demons. Humans forcing angels to speak and favour them. Humans commanding Gods to obey… 

This is not done in good will but an assertion of power, of will, above things we cannot comprehend or even dare to try.

As non believer myself I can only say:

If something does exist, may it know that I loved it enough not to reduce it to my reflection and you, whoever or whatever you might be, do not need me and I require nothing of you.

Text by C.M.V.R (MySoulToTake)

2025