Hello, friends. This is the second episode in the two-part series on White Magic.

I decided to do this series because White Magic is a pathway available to us to study, understand,

and eventually practice. But it's something that is not really known outside of it being

an oppositional force to black magic. In fact, people seem to only mention white magic

when they're talking about black magic, and yet it's so ill-defined.

On the other hand, information about other magical practices could not be more available.

It seems to be everywhere. There's now magic in political spaces and activist spaces.

Magical accoutremen even even appear in talks about economics.

And certainly they show up in culture, in art, and in conversations about everyday life.

On the last episode, I tried to tell some stories about white magic using the figure of St. Brendan, the Navigator, as a focal point.

And also my encounters with that saint.

In this episode, instead of a story about white magic, I'll be working towards describing what white magic is.

It is difficult to define white magic, not just because not that many people

have tried to do it, but because, as I will explain, it does not live within the cause and effect

relationships bound by time or the progressive structures of logic. I know that sounds really big, so instead of trying to just define it,

I will offer the aspects of it that I've noticed again and again.

Sometimes I'll qualify these, sometimes not.

These are in some ways not even defining aspects, but more akin to the verse from Matthew 7.

Therefore, by their fruits, you will know them.

The way white magic works is also what it does.

That means to understand some of white magic's workings however dimly is also to be

touched by it, however lightly. Just a caveat here, I will be talking mostly through the Christian

...