What’s the Difference Between Religion and Magic?

[@alexkuron5069]

John Green has taken 3 episodes to tell us that everything is a social construct, and I'm here for it

[@mmead7904]

This series has become my favorite weekly update

[@JustInTimeWorldbuilding]

Fun fact: the priests of Zoroastrianism (or one class of them) were called Magi and Zoroastrianism was the original religion of Persia. So we really got magic from religion :) the word anyway.

[@noahscheibmeir5842]

I notice that many of the names for these native and indigenous practices have also been turned into pejoratives, such as “all that hoodoo and Broohaha”

[@Excusemebut-oi4tb]

The way John Green challenges religious ideas while at the same time humanizing the religious is pure magic.

[@TearaPacheco]

I’ve returned to nerdfighteria after a time away, It’s like coming back to your hometown library

[@HoxTop]

Now that I think about it, it's very common in fiction for supernatural powers stemming from faith to be a form of magic in that world.

[@vulcanfeline]

3:50 people hating on childless cat ladies throughout the ages ;(

[@sergion2777]

Love the way this bridges the two, very nice!

[@candycoatedcactus]

This is really, really great. I grew up as a devout Christian, taught that there are absolute truths in the world with things that are right and wrong. Now I'm 33, still consider myself Christian, and my best friend practices Wicca. Navigating that mentally has been challenging, and this video does an excellent job of laying out things that have taken me years to put together.

[@JohnCoffey-hr2dr]

Hi John, I've really appreciated this series & have been looking forward to it every week :) I just came back here from the Hinduism episode, & the pluralism of it hit in a new way for me. My 'relationship status: complicated' friend was raised with some culturally Hindu elements. She's helped me understand many themes of it & Buddhism, but its pluralism & absorption of so many different apparently contradictory stories hasn't come up. It was a good challenge-of-knowledge, 'lifelong learner' moment :) This video, however, challenged me in a less wholistic-feeling way. Like you, I'm a lifelong learner trying to better live with my OCD & trying to better my relationship with Christ. I've been working through a lot of your OCD media lately. It has really helped me. Thank you. I agree. My OCD leads me to perform rituals that are based on magical reasoning that makes very little logical sense, but I feel most wholistic in my relationship with Him when I'm resisting my compulsions. In other words, when my spirituality is free of magical practice, I feel the most lovingly free. There will always be rituals in our lives. I'm Catholic, so trust me: we have our rituals (as Episcopalians do too :) ). But a ritual freely & logically chosen is something that's very different than a magical ritual in my mind. Those same rituals can be chosen on magical reasoning, but they become something fuller when they're wholistically chosen. The point of this episode seems to be to point out the gray area between magic & religion, & that when we as scholars try to define these terms, we can't reach a consensus. Still, I think your words on this dichotomy--your OCD as a magic practice & its relationship to your experience in Christian spirituality--would help put some words to that dichotomy in my own head (& I would assume many other religious OCDers as well). I'm not sure an episode on that in this series would make the most sense, but maybe a vlogbrothers sort of thing linked to it? Thanks for all the thought-provoking content! Much love, bro :) From, A fellow John

[@jadestined5918]

11:21 So nice. I love your wholesome conclusions. They remind me of the novel American Gods when the atheist protagonist asks the gods why they care so much to help him when he doesn’t believe in them, and they respond that it’s because *they* believe in *him*. I still stand by the identity of humanist though I’ve done nothing to participate recently in the formal Secular Humanist community. I don’t believe in gods, but I believe in people who believe in gods, so their faiths are important to me because that’s the goo of humanity.

[@gruntmanthesound]

Every moment I spend hearing John's voice deepens my love for him and the work that he does for all of us.

[@prettyflower999]

Every week i cant wait for the new episode

[@CaityLouise85]

I’m loving this series, thank you so much for making it!

[@padlockeussy]

I couldn't be more excited for the next video! I was born christian, conservative, and republican and have found Hinduism in my own life. I am Hindu, I am Yogi, I combine many practices into my own and am even beginning to study and mix in Wicca and Witchcraft. Their similarities and overlap are truly incredibly too! Mantras are spells, meditation is focus, Yoga is Intent, it is all connected. By many names it may go, but to all it answers as ONE 🙏Aum Namah Shivaya 🕉🧘 Har Har Mahadev!

[@mimikannisto4418]

I greatly appreciate you covering this topic. Thank you.

[@Davlavi]

Informative as always.

[@bartz0rt928]

Is the title of every video in this series going to be a question to which the answer is, "it depends"?

[@spiritualtempleformeditationre]

thanks for the inclusion of hoodoo and Zora Neale Hurston. So refreshing!

[@dliessmgg]

It's quite simple: religion is what the in-group does, magic is what the out group does.

[@bryanmahar6302]

It's literally nothing apart from scope. Religion and magic both attribute things that aren't well understood to the supernatural. Both can sometimes be fun and contribute to a society but they can also both be detrimental if used by people with bad intentions and/or no integrity or decency. We see that a lot.

[@patriciamooney928]

Love this series

[@aellalee4767]

Didn't even pop up in my suggestions, I just wanted to see if a new video was out. 23 minutes ago ❤

[@lajuana2753]

I looove these series!❤❤

[@HistoryofthePast-g4u]

The video is very meaningful; thank you for sharing such interesting things.

[@wowohmyify]

John! I also have to do an Our Father before every take off and landing!

[@ArtichokeHunter]

i think this is what The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo is about? that and the spanish inquisition, which nobody expects

[@logank9177]

Love this series!

[@claudiamcfie1265]

I'm watching this as research for my DnD game

[@darknesswithin0]

John if you're listening, after watching the recent episode, I hope there is an entire episode on Japanese religious gods like Amaterasu, Susano, Izanagi and Izanami, etc.

[@markphc99]

My level 9 cleric beats your level 4 mage anyday

[@Zirkusman]

Thanks for the video!

[@olufunkeakinboboye673]

I enjoyed this❤

[@yadeel8281]

The real answer is religion scales off your faith stat and magic scales off your intelligence stat

[@AvantNovis]

“Well, you see, I’m not saying that I’ve been everywhere, and I done everything. But I do know it’s a pretty amazing planet we live on here, and a man would have to be some kind of fool to think we’re all alone in this universe.” -Jack Burton, “Big Trouble in Little China” 1986

[@Savagemode473]

I don’t believe in the supernatural. But this video intrigues me. Great work!

[@AscendantCaleb]

John Green continues to make me more and more curious about his specific take on his religion, Christianity. 🤔

[@brbrbrbreannad3610]

Somehow, the clip of the brujas chanting over the soccer ball brought me back to when I was in a youth soccer league, probably around 7-8, and my teammates and I would “pray to the soccer gods” over soccer balls. Obviously, these practices are not culturally comparable, and I want to stress that I am not downplaying the cultural importance of the practices shown in this clip. I just think it’s fascinating how magic, spells and prayer become embedded in our imaginations from a very early age.

[@bizmen81]

Hmm, I never thought about it like that. Also ironically, there was a Harry Potter commercial!

[@mwb229]

Thank you. a million.

[@EduardMedina-ri5fx]

Cool video and is great to learn about religions you're the legend John Green

[@thelonewolf2073]

I’m a Hedge Witch and yes magick/witchcraft is an empowering practice. It’s just a skill. A tool. Something you do. It’s not a religion which is great, but the results always make me happiest. Being a witch is who you are.

[@acetronaut]

Today I learned that baby Jesus was visited by three wizards?

[@bgreen1503]

It would be interesting to analyze this through a psychology lens

[@falnica]

I'm mexican and I gotta ask: Why don't you translate "brujería" and "brujas" to "witchcraft" and "whitches"? It seems to me that by not translating words we make familiar practices seem more exotic than what they really are

[@Reikes2]

Buy why didn't the video actually answer the question proposed? I *think* the thesis was that there is no specific difference between definitions, but folks choose a word based on their culture's meta-views of the implications.

[@joshc-dev]

I LOVE YOU JOHN❤❤❤❤

[@mgailp]

One of the museums in New Orleans has an interesting display telling about how practitioners started associating many of their Voodoo spirits to Catholic saints allowing them to practice their faith with less backlash from the white community. The examples they give show the intelligence in how they were paired according to what the spirit tended toward and what the saint oversaw.

[@afridajahan2004]

Before 1 minute!! Yes, the big fan of crash course amd john green! 💚

[@bethc7243]

There’s nothing weird about your plane ritual! Better than mine to sing (in my head) Nothing But the Blood from takeoff until the ding for seatbelts. 🤪

[@johnsebitmalok2240]

Crash course is the best. I'm surprised by Azande's belief....

[@ketaminekev7041]

FIREBALL!!!

[@erikbjorke5851]

It would be cool if this show addressed naturalism, or just straight up atheism.

[@gangsta8929]

Paulo Coelho covers the idea of magic in a lot of his works. Most famously in The Alchemist. Another great book of his on the subject of magic is The Valkyries.

[@stewartbjorgan4840]

Formal wishing and hoping.

[@razzle1964]

1:31 … you’re clearly too young to remember your team winning the FA Cup, against my beloved Liverpool in 1988, much less playing video games! Don’t worry, your time will come again (don’t hold your breath, tho’, eh).🤔😉✌️

[@modesterpittol8162]

😅😅

[@blaqueathena]

Take off and landing prayer is a thing.

[@manuelberenguerrojas7271]

Magic requires 1 practitioner, religion requires thousands. Or… my believes are religion, yours are “magic”

[@alejandrorp5160]

* mandatory Spidermans pointing at each other meme *

[@sebrussell]

Agreed. It's very in-group/out-group. At least to my atheistic eyes, they are largely the same thing, self-delusions to lessen the existential dread that haunts us as a species that at once knows too much and too little.

[@PhoenixFireZero]

Magick is taking the powers that be to task. Religion is asking the powers that be to maybe help you out, if they can be bothered.

[@trbjrnjnssn]

Nothing. Nothing is the difference.

[@MiVidaBellisima]

One has a *cult following* Last dad joke of the day, I promise 😂

[@keshaconner230]

Magic.😊

[@sciencecafe1543]

First comment! Cool video!

[@ypdd91]

At this point, I consider quatum mechanics and nano tech to he magic. Tech and science have advanced past my understanding

[@StormyTalks]

I used to be Wiccan but I just dabble in witchcraft without the religious part. I do want to convert to Judaism one day though!

[@johnathanrhoades7751]

This is the first video that feels a bit less nuanced. This is a VERY very western perspective on magic and religion (in spite of the few nods elsewhere). Eastern Christianity, African cultures, and non-Muslim eastern cultures have a very different relationship with magic and religion than the post-enlightenment almost post-religious world of the west does.

[@Djellowman]

tl;dw: none

[@Alarcahu]

Great video but worldview affects one’s approach. If there is no reality behind them then no harm, do what you like. If there is a spiritual reality then the source matters. And most of the practitioners believe there is a spiritual source behind these.

[@TheSouthernSiren]

🤲👏👏👏Very well done. Knowledge and a dash of witty humor is always a great magical potion. ✨🩷