Everyone needs a miracle. And the miracle service providers are two—magic and religion. Because practitioners and believers of magical activities, which include crystals, Vaastu, Feng Shui, palmistry, cards, and so on, try and turn processes into Truths, magic is often likened to religion. But the two, as a brilliantly-written recent paper by Eli Berman of University of California and Laurence R. Iannaccone of George Mason University, argues, are different (what’s new?), and how (that’s what).In Religious Extremism: The Good,The Bad,and The Deadly, the authors differentiate between the two: “Religion consists of beliefs, practices, and institutions that relate to one or more supernatural beings. Magic, by contrast, consists of beliefs, practices, and institutions that concern impersonal supernatural forces.” And, while the former involves supernatural production (which is impersonal), the latter entails supernatural exchange (interpersonal).It is here that within the wider classification of ‘new age’, a Reiki master, an astrologer or a face reader has to combat the fuzzy line that divides the two. If after a few lakhs that financed a few broken walls, the consumer of Vaastu services turns wealthy, his advisor becomes a permanent part of his future strategy and has to diversify into, or outsource from, other services like astrology, palmistry, Feng Shui. But if the wealth doesn’t turn up, there is an immediate loss of confidence in not only the service provider but the whole process, even the force.Religion is different. Even when a master—living or an institution based on one—fails to deliver the goods, there is generally no loss of confidence or feeling cheated simply because “failure can be explained in terms of the gods’ autonomy and personality”. Maybe it’s not right for you, maybe the time’s not right, you don’t know what’s best for you—we all know the spiel.Non-performance by magicians, most of who try and project themselves as masters of their art and often call it a science, is not acceptable. To a consumer, the force—if it is indeed one and not a placebo—should work “here and not just there, now and not just then”. The same consumer, when he approaches God through religion, is more compassionate, more accepting of his failures, of not getting a good deal.How unfair!
