According to the books which dominated best seller lists last year, indeed the last decade, the world is full of magic. But of course the wonderful Harry Potter is fiction for children.  Also riding high in best seller lists last year, helped by brilliant marketing and a DVD film, was “The Secret”, by Rhonda Byrne. This book by contrast was not intended as fiction and was written for adults. It is the most successful by some way of books espousing “cosmic ordering” or “the law of attraction”, which is broadly the idea that you get what you wish for as long as your wish is strong and persistent. It suggests that the universe will arrange itself to your wishes as long as you are clear, consistent and wholehearted in expressing them. The world, in other words, is full of magic and (even better) you are a magician. Like every apprentice sorcerer though you must be careful, because if you dwell on negatives they may manifest themselves instead of what you want, which the film illustrates amusingly.

That this idea is utter drivel may hardly seem worth pointing out, but the sheer success of the book/film means that it apparently needs to be done. Of course our thoughts and feelings influence the world in many complex ways, not least by the impressions they create in those we meet and our own assessment of the limitations we are prepared to accept. We can change our fortunes by application and attitude in many cases, perhaps more often than not if we live in prosperous societies and certainly more often than we think. But to extrapolate from this that we are masters of circumstance in every case is superstitious nonsense. What is worse, the political message it carries or at least supports is grim. If it were true those who lack or are disadvantaged would have only themselves to blame since their negative attitudes would be the causes of their suffering. There is something quite nasty about the idea that those who suffer have brought their suffering on themselves, not even by their actions but by hapless thought. Natural disasters, famines, wars and plagues apparently don’t just happen, they are conjured up by people, indeed by their victims, idly or fearfully thinking about them. It is only a small step in this magic-driven world to identifying the culprits and teaching them a lesson. Witch hunting may soon be back in season.

But let’s not blame the book or film. If a book sells like hot cakes it is only because we want to believe in it. Like children, we apparently want the world to be magic, or vast numbers of us do. Our thirst for magic is, surely, about control - over our own lives, our circumstances, the fates of our loved ones and ultimately our own mortality. We desperately want there to be a secret which, once we are in on it, will enable us to control the world. Perhaps this is one reason why centuries of rational thought have made far fewer inroads on religious belief than might have been expected.  The runaway success of The Secret is evidence that this yearning for magical control is alive and well, even in the Age of Dawkins.

Rational persuasion is likely to have a hard time if magic is what people really yearn for. Childish it may be, but if that is what people feel in their guts their feelings will not give way in the face of finely crafted arguments. This has consequences for all of us whether we share the feeling or not, for the gut feelings of our neighbours can govern our lives. Wily politicians will always tap such inchoate yearnings to gain favour, they always have. But it gets worse, for we can be led to pit one magic against another and find ourselves in conflicts without really understanding how we got there. If our decisions are based on childish yearnings for a controlled world reason will always struggle for a hold and we end with a world which is not only uncontrolled, but unreasonable.

There are answers to this “magic v reason” dilemma but they cannot lie in reason alone, any more than they lie in magic. They depend on satisfying or diminishing the yearning for control sufficiently to allow reason to govern the important decisions. Again, religion has sometimes achieved this by separating the realms of faith and reason but in societies which find faith difficult, or which see value in many faiths, something else is needed. Another way also found in religious traditions but more easily adaptable to secular society is to focus on the importance of the inner life as the key to personal satisfaction and a replacement for control of the external world. The first step though is to see that there really is a deep seated problem if people want magic and are offered reason. For making that obvious we should, reluctantly, thank “The Secret”.