Magic and Danger

  In our class today, I learned a bit about Tantric Buddhism. There is so much of this practice that is a mystery to me, and as one of my classmates had remarked to me, there is a kind of endless probing that can take place when one keeps going deeper into these teachings. While a younger part of me might have been quite fascinated and curious about the kinds of supernatural elements that might be found in Tantric Buddhism, another part of me wonders: if I really understood how it works, would it not cease to be magic after all?
    What's tied to the notion of magic is the idea that there are certain powers that the majority of humans have not yet developed the capacity to use, the result of which it can be risky to expose this information to everyone. Anything that seems to dangerous for the majority of people to use is classified as magic, in this regard. But once a certain percentage of the population learns to utilize something, it soon enough becomes formalized. Fire is a good example. I could imagine that in early times, people thought of harnessing fire as magical, and even attributed its presence to the deities. But once humans learned to harness fire in useful or controllable ways, the idea of making a fire ceased to be so magical, and nor was it the property of one or two people who were high-status figures. As soon as one person can predict how to create something using the same principles, it no longer becomes magic, but is a science.
   In my readings of Brahminic sacrifices in India in Buddha's time, I learned how much the sacrificial ritual is complicated by issues of knowledge. If knowledge is deemed as too 'simple', it becomes a public knowledge which anyone can use, and it no longer has the status of authority anymore. To 'know' something is in some ways to have access to special kinds of information that not everyone is aware of. That is why it was so vital to Brahminic power and status that rituals remain complicated affairs, which only certain kinds of people were privy to. Knowledge creates status and prosperity, and it then becomes a kind of power that only certain people can have, or afford to have.