When a phrase catches hold in language, and becomes part of how we describe something, pay attention. A shift in language is often a shift in understanding. Sometimes the shift in language is a mark of the shift being completed, sometimes it presages a shift. But always, the change in wording is accompanied by a change in thinking.
Lately, I hear a lot more witches referring to the Craft and to its attendant activity as “magical tech.” And there is, of course, a rise in interest about "technopaganism," which is most broadly defined as the willingness of earth-based spiritual practitioners to incorporate modern technology and tropes in their rituals.* It also seems to have something to do with the affinity between people who work in technology and pagan pathways, as among one of the earliest uses of the term was from a 1995 article in Wired about that phenomenon.
Is magic technology?
At its most basic definition, "technology" is the application of scientific knowledge to achieve a practical result. We tend to think that technology must be complicated and inscrutable to "count" as technology, like a cell phone or a rocket ship. But technology can also be simple. A hammer is technology. Butter (especially when you use it to grease a pan) is technology.
But magic isn't scientific knowledge. At least we don't often think of it that way.
Magic is specific knowledge applied for practical ends. If you cast a spell to help you do well on a job interview, or to protect you on your drive to your mom's house, you are applying knowledge to achieve a certain end. The spell is helping you reach a goal or do a thing, much in the same way as that cell phone or that hammer.
But isn't it supposed to be provable if it's a science? Don't we have to know how the magic works in order for it to be a science? Isn't that the fundamental difference between magic and science?
Maybe.
Arthur C. Clarke's famous third law regarding thinking about the future is "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Those of us who practice magic know that while we can't give you a peer-reviewed paper on why a spell works or doesn't, we do know that it works (or doesn't). If you have a good understanding of correspondences and the mechanics of magic, you understand what good spellcraft is and what it isn't. You can look at a working and identify what will play out as intended and what might not go quite the way you thought it would.
Also, we don't have to know how a technology works for it to be a technology. I can probably describe for you exactly how the mechanics of an incandescent light bulb work. I can even give you a pretty basic rendition of how the electric grid that delivers power to the light socket where that bulb is installed works too. But there are aspects of how power is dispatched and the inner workings of certain types of electric power generation that I am very sketchy on, and so when I flick a light switch and the light comes on, I am unequivocally using a technology. But I do not have a complete understanding of everything that goes into that technology. And yet, my lack of understanding does not prevent the light from going on when I flip the switch. I kinda love that about technology.
So clearly, one can make the case for the idea that magic IS a technology. We can't always explain how it works, but being able to explain a technology is not a deal-breaker for establishing that it is, in fact, a technology. But there is also a case to be made that magic is NOT a science, and therefore not a technology.
For one thing, unlike the electric power that makes the light bulb go on, magic is maddeningly inconsistent. Science's key hallmark is that it is replicable. That is, in fact, how the scientific method of inquiry works. You form a hypothesis. You design an experiment to test the hypothesis. And if your experiment is consistently successful, even as you test all the variables that surround your hypothesis, then you can claim to have "scientifically proven" that something is true. The tungsten filament in a light bulb conducts the electricity, and it is because this is always true that the electric light bulb is possible as a technology. If it's not working something has gone wrong -- the filament is bad, the electric current isn't running. Something about the prerequisite conditions to the technology's operations has gone awry. Technology is not subject to the whims of the gods. If the conditions are there the essential bit shall happen, no matter who is creating the conditions. So long as the operation is set up and performed correctly, one can expect that the technology will always work.
To some extent that can be true of magic. If you forget a critical component of a spell, it might not work as intended. And so when magic breaks down, one thing to ask yourself is whether you correctly marshalled the right tools and the right spell and the right configuration of words and elements and implements. But it is also true that two individuals can perform the exact same spell in the exact same way and have wildly differing experiences and differing results. Shit, two people can be in the exact same ritual or working and have two wildly differing experiences. One can be relentlessly consistent in the way one applies "magical technology" and get disturbingly different results each time.
That is because magic is potentially more closely analogous to an art form than a science. What makes an art not a science? The answer is the ineffable intervention of humanity in all its muck and glory. The human touch means that two humans can perform the exact same monologue from the exact same play and it will look and feel different. Two humans can sing a song and they will make it sound a little different. Different inflections, emphasis, emotion. Different humans can even use the same piece of technology -- a violin, for instance -- and play the same song on it, and it will sound different. They can even try to do it the same as each other, but they will fail in tiny ways that will be impossible to ignore. Where humanity is injected into the equation as part of the means of expression or delivery of a result, the ability to achieve the kind of relentless predictability that marks scientific outcomes is difficult to achieve. Sure, human bodies often react consistently to certain things -- cut our skin and it will bleed, give us aspirin and our fever will go down -- but human action on a tool or technology can radically alter the range of possible results.
The same human, making different attempts, can often yield different results based on things like whether they have had enough sleep, or have enough to eat, or are feeling emotionally stable. Listening to Bruce Springsteen now, he sounds different than he did when he first recorded "Born to Run" in 1975. this is not bad or good. It just is.
So is magic a technology or isn't it? But maybe the more important question is, what do we gain when we decide it is, and what do we lose? Thinking of magic as technology is attractive in a world like ours, because we live in a society that lionizes technology. We think of technology companies as being better than other companies. We treat their CEOs like they are celebrities. They receive financial rewards that dwarf their counterparts in other industries. There is a perception of increased legitimacy if we can describe something as a "technology." Although most people would rather be an artist than a technologist, the truth is our society rewards one over the other significantly. Starting salaries in tech are substantial. Most artists can't support themselves with their art unless they are among the lucky few who become very successful.
But calling magic a technology is somewhat reductive. Technology is at its most basic level, nothing more than a tool. And a tool is only ever as good as the hand that wields it. And magic is an exceptional tool that can help its wielder accomplish all manner of things.
That said, magic is more than a big, dumb hammer. Magic can be used as a tool to change your world. But it will also have the effect of changing you too. That is why it isn't for everyone. It's why the people who are most attracted to this path and to the Craft are usually looking for more than just a spell to help them get a new job. It's why some people ask witches for help and other people become witches so they can help themselves. It's why those who practice magic inevitably find that they have to engage with their shadow self, and if they don't, things get seriously problematic really fast. These are not the kinds of things that typically happen simply by using a technology.
When we recast magical practice as a "technology," we're perhaps gaining some worldly legitimacy, but losing the understanding that magic is not something that one merely uses for pure expediency. Those who take up magic as a tool on a regular basis are changing their mindset and their relationship to the world around them and to their very understanding of reality. But casting it as a "technology" ignores this more spiritual aspect of magical practice.
Words matter. Definitions matter. As magical practitioners we know the power of calling things by their right names. And we also know that while magic can be wielded as a technology, it is often so much more impactful when we embrace it as a practice infused with more, with an ineffability that takes it beyond being just a tool we use to do stuff in the universe. "Magical tech" sounds really cool, and is more apropos than you might think, but it sells magic wildly short. Magical tech only reaches its true potential when it acknowledges the human touch.
*For a more extended discussion of technopaganism, this talk by Tom Swiss, Discordian and Zen Pagan, given at the Winterstar Symposium in 2022 is helpful. Long, and covers a lot of ground, but that just means it provides a lot of context. Being a little bit long-winded myself, I relate.