Magic vs Magick?

There are a myriad of names synonymous with magic, or magick. There are also many spelling variations.

What do these variations mean to you? Are they any less or more significant? Which variant do you use and why? Should there be a whole new word for what this energy is we create and flow with and work with and craft with?

"Magic."

I don't think the spelling of it matters. "Magick," if I remember correctly, was a word formed by Crowley to separate his stuff from stage magic. Within other pagan and magical works, "magic" is used interchangeably with "magick." And in academic works, I've only seen the term "magic" used.

Spelling should be personal preference, it's not really important. Context will help readers understand which magic is being talked about.

Before joining this site, I leaned towards the magic spelling. After a while, I began using magick instead. To me they're interchangeable with magic being more like stage magic.

Personally I view "magic" as the kind that magicians use, or that of fantasy movies and books. While "magick" is the genuine practice that most of us here study and practice. It is all personal of course, but I always use magick to represent the real life, practice rather than the fantasy.

I prefer using magic over magick. I know that magick as a spelling is used to differentiate true magic from stage magic, but I'm a geek for magic tricks and things like that. I also like to keep it simple, and magick, magyck, majik, and every other variations just seem pretentious to me.

To me, the many different spellings are interchangeable and otherwise meaningless unless given meaning by a person and their preference. I tend to use "magick" on SoM just because many people, as already mention, view "magic" as being stage-based and "magick" as being "true" magic.

I actually have several points to discuss, though my writing mojo is currently failing and I wish to at least bring up them all.

Ranty Stuff

• The spelling of magic no longer matters to me as I prefer keeping things simple and I recognize that different people have different understandings.
• I don't like people stating opinions as fact and/or "the way things are"
• Magic doesn't really cover everything like an umbrella term. Spirit work, divination, psychic energy, and the likes are all things that have nothing to do with magical energy or practice, yet it all gets lumped in together.
• Not even all magical practices involve the conscious flow and direction of subtle energy, which is so often taught to be a "core" aspect of occultism.
• Sayings like "All you have to do is believe" and "If you don't believe, you'll never be able to cast" have absolutely no meaning to me, whatsoever. A brain does not forget how to breathe just because it is sleeping and we do not get what we want just because we want it (even badly).

Opinions on Magic

• I used to think of it as a living energy that permeated everything. I still hold to a belief similar to this, but that is easier to call animism. Magic, as a practice, is often described as willing change into manifestation (I even have an understanding in cosmology about how this works in my eyes); however, I find magic to be different from that.
• Everything affects everything else in existence, even if only indirectly based on every action having an equal and oposite reaction and it is rather easy to view this applying to subtle reality (even with its lack of temporal and spacial restrictions). This has come about from exploring what nothingness and liminality mean in contrast to animism (which all seem to fit rather nicely together in a Shamanistic manner. Spells, rituals, and the like are "projective forms of manifesting will," because they are clearly formed in our minds and have directive. Nothingness is the opposite of that; it is the form of liminality, the form of change, that we affect without clear form and directive in our minds. It is about who "we" are, beyond even our own identities.
• Basically put, energy is energy is energy; but it's not all the same kinds of energy (as can be seen in SCIENCE). I just call all of what we do Occultism.

Words.

I doesn't really matter to me. To me magic and magick mean the same thing and spelling doesn't make a difference

When I first started on this path I used the spelling 'magic' however now I spell it 'magick' and to me this new way of spelling it represent my progression in the craft. I think the word people could use instead of magick is 'energy' or 'energy flow'or possibly just use the words 'manifestation' or 'banishing'.

"Not even all magical practices involve the conscious flow and direction of subtle energy, which is so often taught to be a "core" aspect of occultism."

Eissy, say that the fuck louder for the people in the back.

I love when people shit themselves when I say "energy [in a spiritual/magical context] isn't a universal idea on how it works." Ruffling feathers is real fun. In fact, the entire time I was a Christian Witch, my favorite authors never once talked about subtle energy. I can get finding similarities (hell, sometimes the words "spirit" and "energy" seem interchangeable), but when we clump everything together and slap a name on it, we can lose some of it's uniqueness. It's harder for people to find their own style (or at least, it takes a while) when ONE way is presented to them, no matter how popular the idea is.