We don't really experience the "real world" (which is to say, the objective material world). We experience sensory impressions of what we think it might be in our minds. Physics tells us that there are many things we can't see but which are nonetheless physical and real. Similarly, the instruments we create to augment our physical impressions and view otherwise imperceptible physical phenomena are always limited. Humanity cannot (yet) perceive all physical reality accurately or at once.
So there is a difference between what is objective / material and what is subjective / perceptual.
Reductive atheist materialism says if it can't be perceived (i.e. measured or recorded), it does not exist. This includes thoughts, emotions, aspects of spirituality, etc. It's an important perspective for industry and we may not be surprised that it became very widespread in the West at the time of the Industrial Revolution. It enables a vertical model of industrial growth ultimately unencumbered by religion, ethics, ecological, or humanistic concerns because it turns everything into a commodity and accepts reality only in that context.
But this kind of materialism is just another belief system founded on "Unverified Cultural Gnosis." As John Michael Greer puts it in a recent blog post on reincarnation beliefs (http://www.ecosophia.net/a-few-notes-on-reincarnation/): "Materialist atheists insist that there is no such thing as post- (or pre-)mortem existence—why? Because they say so, that’s why." It's the scientistic assumption that materialistic science is equipped to address (and summarily dismiss) all issues, even those outside its purview. Or, as "Simon" (aka Peter Levenda) puts it in his "Prolegomena to a Study of Occultism" (apologies if you already read my complete post of this essay elsewhere):
In short, positing that the "real world" (i.e. the material world) is the only reality is like "Unverified Personal Gnosis" on a cultural scale. We view reality this way because it's what we have been told and it's what we accept.What they “know” is what they have been told. You will find that the dullest, most functionally illiterate mental mushroom has a very definite, very “scientific” view on one thing: the impossibility of any kind of psychic phenomena. “There ain’t no such things as ghosts,” might typify one of these brilliant scientific assessments of centuries of human experience. And anyone who “believes” in ghosts is crazy. By linking the twin concepts of belief and the paranormal we arrive at a cogent example of the use of language to alter perception, for we either “believe” or don’t “believe” in ghosts, magic, God, the Devil.
But what about the magic that happens inside our heads—the subjective experience we have when we chat up a god or cast a sigil or stare into the scrying crystal? I've written here before about the possibility of a "Magical Link" as a transmission point from the subjective happenings in our minds and the objective state of affairs outside our minds. And I've said (here) that magic is probably subjective (in the head) first because it models experience and creates a virtual experience for the practitioner. Without this (narrative) modeling, no transmission, no objective result can come about.
This theory is essentially Neoplatonic in form: an ideal model is created in the subjective space of the mind; it travels across the transmission point (magical link); and it comes into manifestation in objective space outside the mind. As a theory, it is just as valid as reductive materialism, which is to say, it relies on belief. But even if there was no transmission and, as one of our colleagues having a magical faith crisis recently argued, it's all in the head, the subjective experience would still be valuable. Crowley admits as much in his controversial "Initiated Interpretation of Ceremonial Magic" that prefaces the Mathers translation of the Lesser Key: "I am not concerned to deny the objective reality of all 'magical' phenomena; if they are illusions, they are at least as real as many unquestioned facts of daily life; and, if we follow Herbert Spencer, they are at least evidence of some cause."
In other words, the subjective experience of magic is valuable in itself.
At least in our Neoplatonic model, to forego the virtual subjective model and leap to the objective reality in an attempt to manifest some "change in accordance with will" would be impossible. The form of the thing (the arc of the narrative) must first come into the mind in some way before it can be made into an objective reality. So it may be that "personal and subjective evidence" is even more important than so called "real world" impressions.
S+A