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Magic vs. Magick

© Taylor Ellwood

The other day, in my livejournal, I got into a discussion about the word magick and why people use it. It occurred to me that I had been using this word for a long time, so much so that it had become automatic for me to write the word magick, without even thinking about it. I suspect this is also the case with many other magicians who use this word. If we use a word automatically, without thinking about it, can we really appreciate it, or what it represents?

My argument here is basically this: A word such as magick is a word that is loaded with meaning and ideology. A person who automatically uses such a word without thinking about that ultimately doesn't appreciate or realize that s/he is representing more than just his or her own take on a word. Am I being pedantic? Perhaps, but then again how you use the language says a lot about your ideologies and what traditions or beliefs you hold valuable.

The urban legend about the word magick is that Aleister Crowley appended the k to magic as a way of differentiating it from the magic practiced by illusionists and stage magicians. However, in looking through his writing on the subject, I was unable to find any explicit reference by Crowley for the reason he chose to add k to magic. The closest I came to finding a reference to the matter is in the following quote: "I chose therefore the name 'MAGICK' as essentially the most sublime, and actually most discredited, of all the available terms. I swore to rehabilitate magick, to identify it with my own career; and to compel mankind to respect, love, and trust that which they scorned, hated, and feared" (Crowley, 1994, p. 127). Now Crowley clearly states a reason for choosing the word magick, but not a reason that justifies the spelling. This matter gets even more complex because many magicians, in fact, use magic, not magick, when talking about their beliefs or spiritual practices.

In the discussion that occurred on my livejournal as a result of my post, one person told me the following: "I'm so used to seeing scholars and other outsiders spell it "magic," and practitioners spell it "magick," that it looks like I'm pretending to be an outsider when I drop the k" (Ulbh-Livejournal Comment). The irony here is that its not just scholars or other outsiders who use the word magic, but also fellow magicians. What's equally fascinating to realize is that the majority of writers in the occult industry do not use magick, but do use magic. Why is this important?

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