Using some kind of magical power to cast spells on people or objects is commonly called witchcraft.  In the past, many innocent people were killed in witch hunts, since witchcraft was viewed as an abomination, with witches using their powers in evil ways and against God.  In modern times witchcraft is seen in a mostly more positive light, such as with Wicca, which is regarded as a kind of pagan religion whose followers have good intentions.  One question that may be answered quite differently by scientists than by ordinary citizens is this one: is witchcraft real?  Most non-scientists used to believe that witches did indeed have magical powers, and then the level of belief gradually subsided with the growth of science in the last century, but recently has grown again with the rise of New Age philosophy.  But scientists have consistently held that there is no credible evidence that magical powers of any kind exist, and they further argue that such powers are not consistent with what we know about physics.  New Age thinkers disagree with both of these arguments, but in my opinion, they are wrong.

The argument about physics is one that can’t be adequately covered in a short article like this one, and in any case arguments about theory are much harder to resolve than arguments about facts.  So, to take a look just at the evidence, the principal New Age rebuttal to the scientists is to say that scientific evidence really does exist for things such as ESP, but the scientists find ways to explain away or ridicule this evidence in order to be able to maintain that no actual evidence exists, because they have a bias against believing in such things.  A bias claim like this doesn’t seem unreasonable; what’s to stop scientists from doing the same kind of explaining away of evidence that theologians of the 19th century did regarding fossil evidence because they didn’t want to believe in evolution?  One answer is that although scientists are indeed influenced by bias just as other people are, because they are scientists they are also more committed to using mechanisms to control for the bias and are more aware in general of how bias can influence them.

The other answer, which is easier to defend, is that if you examine the objections that have been made by scientists to specific evidence that New Age thinkers say is solid, those objections don’t look unreasonable.  To cite one example among many, a scientific study concluded that infertile women who were prayed for doubled their pregnancy rate.  The principal objection scientists raised was that one of the authors was imprisoned for fraud, and that doesn’t seem like an unreasonable red flag to me.  The correct answer to ‚is witchcraft real? is no.