Jeff Russell

I'm not familiar with this writer, but, to play the devil's advocate (ha), I'll offer the square, conventional take from the Church (which, after 7+ years in the occult, seems to me more and more probable with each passing day): the difference between (Christian) religion* and magic is the difference between "Thy will be done" and "my will be done," between Augustine's celestial city, which puts God before self, and the terrestrial, which puts self before God.

This sounds extremely binary, and it is, but I don't find there's much wiggle room there. It's been my experience, and the Church seems to concur, that any dabbling in magic is less about the processes involved and more about putting up a big sign saying, "Hey demons, this person is open to infestation." (In general, it's thought that only demons have any interest in explicit congress with humans.) One may (by the grace of God) avoid that fate, I reckon, although it seems pretty reliable results ensue. This is, I suspect, why some of the Desert Fathers were so vocal about not employing visualization techniques during prayer—it's thought that this is essentially an open door through which the demonic can enter the nous via the imaginative faculty (Evagrius, On Prayer 67). Again, per Evagrius: "In your prayer seek only righteousness and the kingdom of God, that is, virtue and spiritual knowledge; and everything else 'will be given to you' (Matt. 6:33)."

* Most everything we know of "religion" here in the West generally has been filtered through the lens of Christianity, so to what extent we can even know "religion" in general is, to me, an open question.