The Map is not the Territory

All models are wrong, but some are useful

"What a useful thing a pocket map is!" I remarked.

"That's another thing we've learned from your Nation," said Mein Herr, "map-making. But we've carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be useful?"

"About six inches to the mile."

"Only six inches!" exclaimed Mein Herr. "We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!"

"Have you used it much?" I enquired.

"It has never been spread out, yet," said Mein Herr: "the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well."

from Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, Chapter XI, London, 1895

George Box said “All models are wrong, but some are useful'“, take a moment to allow that to sink in and try to consider what he means by this.

Mistaking the map for the territory is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone confuses the semantics of a term with what it represents. The classic example is mistaking the word water, for actual water. You cannot drink the word water!

We live in a constant stream of language and words constantly swamp us from all directions, as magicians it is important to stand on the firm ground that everything we are using is a model of reality, not actual reality. Alfred Korzybski remarked “The word is not the thing”, Stoics know not to “React to first impressions, and Marshall McLuhan expanded this argument to “The medium is not the message.

It is important to clarify, before we get rolling in this series, that my thinking cannot be pinned down. I know there is an ultimate reality, but I also know that I cannot comprehend it with my limited cognition. I sit in the place of not knowing, using differing models of magic to unveil what I can. 

What is vital, is not to mistake the belief system or ideology you are currently living in, as the real thing. Kaos magic (I am reclaiming the original Greek spelling, besides Crowley loves a “K”) allows us to belief switch, through differing models or maps, due to the underlying position of “Emptiness”, more on this as we progress.

Gregory Bateson alludes to this a little in “form, substance and difference” he argued the essential impossibility of knowing what any actual territory is. Any understanding of any territory is based on one or more sensory channels reporting adequately but imperfectly:

“We say the map is different from the territory. But what is the territory? Operationally, somebody went out with a retina or a measuring stick and made representations which were then put on paper. What is on the paper map is a representation of what was in the retinal representation of the man who made the map; and as you push the question back, what you find is an infinite regress, an infinite series of maps. The territory never gets in at all. ... Always, the process of representation will filter it out so that the mental world is only maps of maps, ad infinitum.”

Coming back to my philosophy, all I know is I don’t know, the world is a wonderful marvelous, and fully compounding mystery to me, that is constantly moving and grooving, it never stops, isn’t fixed, and endlessly flows, despite my attempts to overlay my maps, preconditions, preconceived notions, ideology and so-called “truth” on top of it. When you have been where I have been (we will talk about this, when I set this up properly for you to experience the rollercoaster of self-annihilation through radical undoing work) there is not much to be sure of, which leads to freedom. 

This is a much better stance than trying to impose your map, onto reality and believing it is “thus”. It is not a pretty journey here, you have to unravel most of what you think, and who you are, but I find truth is better than delusion, and besides I am a huge fan of The Matrix.

The relevant point then, is as we attempt to simplify reality with useful models (which I am going to expand on in future posts) there is a danger that we must avoid, as a Wizard, I have fallen for this many a time, and it is the belief that the model itself is reality! The map isn’t the territory, the theory isn’t what it describes, it’s simply a way we choose to interpret a certain set of information. 

For example, Jorge Luis Borges's “On Exactitude in Science” describes the tragic uselessness of the perfectly accurate, one-to-one map:

“In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guild drew a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, coinciding point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography saw the vast Map to be Useless and permitted it to decay and fray under the Sun and winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of the Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; and in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.”

I spend most of my time in change management, and I have learned from experience - that the map is not the territory. The maps in my head need to change and update as soon as reality changes. I have seen many a colleague using the same principles applied in a different context and failing miserably because they couldn’t adjust their software to navigate a different terrain. The models they had used successfully in the past, the maps that had navigated a lot of difficult terrains, were not the maps that were needed anymore. The terrain had changed, but the old ideas stuck. This only leads to failure or worse - a self-denial of reality.

As a summary then

Maps are useful but can lead to mistakes

• Don’t confuse the map with reality

• Don’t treat the world as static, the world is constantly changing and adaptable

• The world is dynamic, fixed and unchanged maps lead to dogma.

• If reality changes, the map must change, reality is the ultimate update.

Finally to come to the point…….

How do we take this thinking into our work with Grimoires? Angels and Demons? We have a description from the old books, but not our reality of it, but we do have a map to explore. This viewpoint can free up your magic. It is important though to recognize what I am not saying here is the old chaos magic version of summon Superman. The old maps, which are conserved are more accurate, but they can never fully tell us what the reality underpinning it is, but we should consider ourselves explorers of the high seas and have adventures.

This concept, the first of many I am going to extrapolate in this work, enabled me to move past the concept of “belief”. Magic is not a belief for me, it is a real thing and should be treated as such. Absolute reality has a way of exposing your belief system as inaccurate when you fall for the map is the territory error, and forget yourself. Imposter syndrome is a side effect of such thinking errors, until you readjust, remove the faulty belief system, and realign with the actual reality that all maps are trying to point to. The great “What is”.