What is Magic? Part 3

I think that, with magic, we want proof. We want flash. We want miracles.  And when we don’t get those, we wonder what magic is. When we see how magic works, it doesn’t seem very flashy…or, we realize how unimportant the flash really is.

Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to put my finger on magic. Because magic is, at its core, one of the mysteries. You can’t work it til you experience it, and it’s really hard to put it into words.

People try. They write spell books that read more like recipes, they create informational graphics like the Kabbalistic Tree of Life to explain how the universe works…but that doesn’t teach what’s going on beneath. It’s a map, but it’s not the terrain. Nor is it the only map. It’s not the actual underpinnings of the universe, just one map to it that may or may not work for you or for me.

And at the core, I think that word magic has so much bound up in it. It’s a powerful, loaded word all on its own.

I think we desperately seek magic. We humans desperately seek that unexplained, that enchantment, that thrilling delight that there’s something intense below the surface. We seek that breathtaking reveal…and that’s the essence of the mysteries.

Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it. But it also isn’t something you can readily explain to others–that’s the nature of one of the mysteries.

Some people want to be part of the in-crowd that understands these mysteries, wanting that power, wanting to be special, wanting to control the forces of nature. I think magic will always have that inherent fascination and attraction. Take the word charisma; I talk a lot in my ritual classes about what charisma means and how to be a charismatic facilitator, but the word alone has that magical quality to it–a sparkle, a charm.

I think that what a lot of other folks want out of magic is to believe in miracles. To believe that there is something out there looking out for them, that’s going to rescue them in a time of need. Or perhaps we’re just looking for proof that there is some order to the universe and that we have some control over that.

I think perhaps it’s a little terrifying to think that we are alone on a floating marble spinning out in the blackness of space and that we’re on our own, that there’s no divine plan, no divine beings to rescue us, no powers to control all the things that could go wrong.

External Magic and Need
That’s also some of what I mean with what I wrote earlier…the more out of control I feel in a situation, the more I feel that I’m powerless and things are happening to me, the more I want something magical, mystical, and unseen to be able “rescue me,” in the case of working with the divine. Or…the power to manipulate the forces of the universe to rescue myself.

Now, again, that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe external magic is impossible. I have done the occasional specific, focused magical work to solve  a specific problem. In the class, Taylor spends some time talking about the difference between magic that is more reactive to fix a problem, vs. magic that is more intentional and by design, more proactive.

I think that it’s the easiest to see the direct impact of magic when we do the big external magic spell…but I think that the magic that has more power and more lasting impact tends to be more of the internal magic and magic by design.

I liken it to a laser beam and a tsunami. The tiny earthquake can cause the tsunami; that’s magic by design, working the subtle energies that have a bigger long-term impact. But most of the magic people talk about in the Pagan/magical communities and in books is more of the “laser beam” magic. People want to be able to light a specific candle and incense, chant specific words, and target their laser beam and have phenomenal immediate results.

What I think is really core to making any magic work is need. Deep need. The deeper the need, the more juice there is.

We start with that deep need. We need something to fuel the change. But we also need perception. We need to be able to perceive at least a little bit of that Matrix code of the universe. In many cases I think we do this by instinct. But one core piece of this is, we can’t ask for an outcome if we cannot perceive that outcome. The need leads to a focused intention. A lot of magic really boils down to, what do you want? And what are you willing to do to get that?

Through the popularization of the law of attraction, most folks probably already know that a positive intention works better than a negative one.

Most magical texts focus on the process in the form of spellwork. In other words, it breaks magic down to the recipe. But, a recipe is not a cake. Various functions are broken down into tactics, logistics, steps…use this incense, light that candle, use this sigil, do this only when the moon is ___, speak exactly these words…

Need Vs. Tactics
What I can tell you is that the most potent external magical work that I’ve personally done–the stuff that clearly had a particular external outcome–I wasn’t thinking too hard about the steps. It was pretty primal stuff; I was filled with a specific, driving need. I wasn’t lighting blessed candles and burning incense or looking at correspondence tables and spellbooks.

Sometimes I was rocking back and forth, weeping, burning things someone had given to me…breaking a symbol of someone else’s power over me…tearing apart a piece of furniture or a shirt to move past my rage…drawing symbols representing a particular intention in my own blood.

….And if bodily fluids gross you out, keep in mind that a lot of old magic uses urine, blood, and other bodily materials. I know candles and incense are “prettier” but the deep magic often requires that we move past “pretty.” I’ll write more about that in my Hexes Part 2 post coming up.

For that matter, I’ve used modern tools and woven magic into some of my graphic designs and artwork, or even into Facebook posts and blogging. Use the tools that work.

Specific tools and scents can become a mnemonic, but I don’t tend to believe they bear any power on their own, they just anchor the intention and are important because of their connection to me and my association with them. And not to discount that power–since I believe that most magic really is about intention. My associating a power with an object becomes part of the intention package.

We each are going to have our own associations with those things–candles, colors, sigils, tools, scents. It’s also utilizing the idea of what Starhawk calls Younger Self, Thorn calls Sticky One, or just going with the more visceral aspects of ourselves, working with the learning modalities that take us into our deeper self, getting at our subconscious.

I find that my talky self/conscious self doesn’t do great magical work. Me crying and rocking back and forth in front of a fire? Yes. Me trance dancing for hours til I’m sweating? Yes. Me zoned out working on a photoshop file for ten hours straight? Yes.

How Does it Work?
It’s not the candles doing the work, it’s not the incense or the athame. It’s your need, your juice, your focus. Your will. I think that’s probably half the battle–because, I work with a lot of people who genuinely cannot articulate what they want. Sometimes they can articulate what they don’t want, but often they can’t even articulate that.

I think that’s a lot of how external magic works. By perceiving that reality, that dream, that goal, you make it more likely to occur. If you can’t perceive the goal, you can’t reach for it very effectively.

I think rather a lot of magic, internal or external, is ringing the bell of the universe, if the universe were music. It’s saying, “Hey, I need it to happen. Pay attention to this, this is the outcome I want.” And sometimes, the Matrix code of the universe is going to be in alignment with that and the synchronicities will start to fall into place.

Sometimes, you are swimming upstream. Like if you are trying to levitate a rock.

People ask me all the time if I believe in energy healing, and I suppose the best answer I have is a quote from the movie Deep Impact. “Sometimes, the answer is no.” I believe we can pray and ask for healing, we can do energy healing, and sometimes it’ll work. And sometimes, it won’t.

I can say this though; if you don’t ring that bell, if you don’t imprint what you want into the probability field, it’s even less likely to happen.

What I think gets in our way is our ego hangups. I see a lot of people trying to do magic who get caught up in wanting their magic to work. And, it sounds pretty reasonable–of course you want that thing to happen, otherwise why would you be doing magic for it.

But, what seems to happen is that a lot of people chasing after magic are looking to be acknowledged as badasses–and that’s a problem, because ultimately that’s poor self esteem, that’s a hole in the ego. Thus, while I don’t believe internal work is the only magic, I do believe it’s the best place to start because if you have all those holes in your ego, it’s hard to hold water–hard to hold the spiritual juice that fuels your magic in the first place. It’s hard to have enough juice to make things happen; you’ll be spending all your energy on looking like a badass.

I have noticed that the healthier my self esteem got, the more true confidence I gained (vs. arrogance,) the more energy that I had for the work that called to me. I didn’t have to be defensive all the time. Being defensive takes a lot of energy.

Values, Beliefs, Ethics, and Morals
I find myself in agreement with Taylor’s writing on this topic–that our personal beliefs and ethics will significantly impact what type of magic we can do, or feel that we can do. If we’re trying to do something we genuinely don’t believe in, that isn’t really going to work. And if we’re going against our ethics, we’re going to be worrying about that and that’s also pretty ineffective for magical work.

Harm none is often the one ethical rule that’s cited for Pagans, though it’s actually something that comes out of modern Wicca and I have a feeling it was more of a PR move to make people feel more comfortable with the word “Witch.”

Though harm none is something that I think is good to aim for, I don’t really believe it’s possible. For that matter, I’ve written in my Pagan leadership articles that I see Pagans work out elaborate phrasings for their spellwork so that it serves the highest purpose and doesn’t hurt anyone…and then I’ve later seen that person doing incredibly harmful things to people. I don’t believe there’s much purpose in separating out what I do ethically in my magical/spiritual life and my mundane life; my ethics are my ethics.

Harm happens, and it’s a part of the cycle of life. When I eat fruit or vegetables or meat, I’ve contributed to the death of that plant or animal. When I brush my teeth, I’m killing millions of bacteria. When I apply for and get a job, I’m taking that job from someone else. When I fire someone from a job–even if they did poor work–I’m definitely screwing up their life. If I remove someone from my group for bad behavior, even though there is cause, that may be causing them harm. But it’s a choice that I’m comfortable making because it’s the right thing to do.

For me, my own ethical approach is trying to avoid harming whenever possible, but when I have to make a choice, I go with the Vulcan “Good of the many outweighs the good of the few or the one.” It’s a rule of thumb…and sometimes the path to hell is paved in good intentions. But I do my best; I still screw up sometimes.

I think that the essence of my belief as a Pantheist is that I can’t know every single impact my life will have. My stepping on this bug here may flap a butterfly’s wings there, and so on. The nature of God/The Divine is that there’s a pattern to it all, but it’s a way bigger pattern than I can encompass, and that’s about the place where I lean into agnosticism–there’s stuff I just don’t know. Can’t know.

I can strive to do the least harm possible. And sometimes, I need to hurt someone to prevent further harm. What I mean is, perhaps you come to me with a broken arm. I need to set the bone, and it’s going to hurt you. But, it’ll heal straight, and that’s what you really want.

I face situations like that all the time where I need to do or say something (like offer direct constructive feedback to a team member) that may cause shorter-term hurt and distress, but it’s in the interest of longer-term good.

What is Magic?
I think that magic is at its essence energy and shaping energy. And if I want to take the word magic out of it for just a moment, if I look at energy, I can look at how I can shape someone’s day with my intention. I get onto a city bus and smile, and thank the bus driver. Or, I get onto the bus, scowl, and berate him for the bus not taking my card.

I look at the way we each can impact each other’s energy, and how people can either work to make people’s day better with a smile, or work to make people’s day suck just by scowling and berating service employees.

That may seem pretty unmagical, but it’s energy, it’s intention followed through by action, and it’s largely unseen. In fact, going back to the example of charisma, one of the ways people try to encapsulate what makes someone charismatic boils down to, “They just made me smile, I felt good being around them.” That feels like magic, but really, all you need to do to have that kind of charisma magic is smile, and genuinely thank them for their work. That’s all it takes.

Not very flashy–but pretty effective.

What is magic for me?

Magic is the ability to tap the unseen. To change myself, to change the world around me, with my will. It’s also the ability to connect to that greater divine, to reach a fingertip past the veil to connect to that something larger. It’s the ability to inspire, to enchant, to bring the power of hope into people’s lives, to help others connect to that something larger, something deeper.

It’s the ability to focus on a particular intention, a dream, a goal…and to manifest that through my will, through my actions.

In my specific case, any of the magical work I do, I ultimately hold the the goal of bringing positive change to myself, to others, to the world around me. I look at speaking the truth as a form of poetic magic. I speak the truth and my words have power. And I speak the truth of what I will to be so, and my words have power. My upcoming Hexes and Curses Part 2 article will touch on truthspeaking as a form of hex or curse. Truth is my very favorite form of hex–or of any form of spellwork, for that matter, and I’ll explain more what I mean by that.

I think magic is, by its nature, mystery–something that is experienced and hard to explained. It’s power–the ability to take an action. And it’s in human nature to envy someone with a power we want.

Magic isn’t “making things happen without work.” It’s not levitating stones. Magic is the hidden, unseen that not everyone else can see, and so there is a mystery to it. When you see the unseen, you can shape it, reach for it, shift it. But you have to understand the language–magic has both an art to it, and a science.

Magic is still that thrill up my spine when some synchronicity falls into place or I connect to the divine. But it’s also technology.

Magic is shaping the world around me with my intention, and working to bring that into being.

** If you’re interested in exploring your own relationship to magic and getting a good baseline of training, I do recommend Taylor Ellwood’s class the Process of Magic.

What Is Magic? Part 2

I think the word magic has different meanings in different contexts. I think across the board, it tends to mean “the hidden.” Or, things that happen in a way I can’t easily see/unravel.

A related definition might be how I see most people use it in terms of spellwork. “Magic is doing a spell and getting what I want without having to do any work.” I think the idea is that you set your intention, light the right colored candle, and the universe brings you what you want if you’re cool enough.

Obviously there are some problems with that concept. But if you haven’t read Part 1, you might want to go to the previous post and check that out so that this one makes a bit more sense.

I tend to use the definition that magic is science we don’t understand yet. It’s science, it’s just science we can’t readily perceive or see. If you want to know more about what I mean, watch the show “What the Bleep” for some pretty cool science that sounds an awful lot like magic.

I suppose one way to put it is that some of us can more easily see this type of magic because we’ve trained ourselves to, or because we have particular psychic abilities like precognition. But, the more we know about magic and how it works–the more it seems to become science and technique–the less magical it might seem. We’ll just chalk that up to paradox.

Ultimately, what I’ve come to is that magic is a lot like the Matrix code. In the ritual I mentioned in Part 1, there was that moment where I realized that so much of what I thought was magical in ritual was actually just ritual technique. It was like that moment where Neo wakes up and realizes what’s actually going on. It’s not a comfortable moment.

But understanding magic is going that layer deeper when Neo sees the underpinnings of the Matrix, when he can look at an object in the Matrix and see its underlying code. I think that that begins to describe what a skilled magician is doing and perceiving. They see/sense the underpinnings of the world, the energy, the physics, the quantum entanglement. I suppose it’s a general axiom that you can’t really manipulate/transform things unless you can see/perceive/feel them.

I think some of the common connotations of the word magic include cool, powerful…and the sense of control.

And I think it’s the idea of control–of power–that is where we start to run into some problems.

Illusion of Control
Imagine we live in a world where the elements can rip your house apart with a tornado or cause a tsunami or crops fail in drought…wait, we do live in that world. Ok, imagine that it’s 4,000 years ago. When the sun starts to go south it gets cold, and every year we wonder, will the days ever grow longer or will we all just freeze in eternal night? When the sun is blacked out in an eclipse or a comet appears in the sunset sky, we wonder, is this a portent of doom?

Now–you’re probably thinking, none of that is magic. True, it’s science. But at that time, it was part of the unseen, terrifying world. If you didn’t know why something was happening, or how you could fix that, it fell into that realm of the magical, the terrifying.

The druid/shaman/witch/wise person who knew the cycles of the seasons and the solstices, who knew the phases of the moon and when the eclipses happened–they held the magic. The wise one who held the mysteries knew what signs preceded a drought, what signs would lead to water or to game. They knew how to heal with specific herbs. None of this is magic, unless you don’t know the mysteries.

But I think part of what gets woven into our idea of magic is the idea that we can control these vast forces with enough magical juice. By vast forces, what I mean is the weather, for instance. The idea that we can end a drought, that we can turn aside a tsunami.

I’ll be honest. I believe in a lot of specific types of magic, and I believe in the power of intention, but for the really big stuff like that, I think it’s a lot of hubris on the part of the magical workers.

Though, I believe that a lot of magical beliefs and religious beliefs are actually social controls. The idea that if you live a good life and give to the church and follow the rules, that you’ll get rewarded in heaven…that’s a social control. Similarly, humans don’t cope well with feeling like we can’t control what’s going on, so the idea that we can do spellwork to break a drought or to turn aside a storm is also something that I feel falls into the category of social control.

Some of our ancestors certainly spent a lot of effort making offerings (including the occasional human sacrifice) to appease the gods and shift the weather, or end a war. Do I think it works like that? Not really. I think that everyone stays a lot calmer when we feel like we’re doing something.

We humans just don’t cope with the idea that the earth could shrug and we’re wiped out and we have no control over that. So I think in some cases, magic becomes an illusion of control.

I’m not saying that magic doesn’t ever work–I’m just talking in terms of perception and scale. And keep in mind, I’m also looking at magic from the perspective of, it’s working with the universe, with physics, with energy…and ultimately a lot of things that once were considered “magic” are now things you can do on your cell phone. You can tell the day/time of year, you can tell the compass points, you can tell what the weather is going to be like this week.

Internal And External Magic 
Let’s take a step back and talk about some specific types of magic framed as internal and external magic. In Part 1 I referenced how many of my mentors put forth the idea that the only “real” magic was doing personal work, in other words, transforming myself.

Now–you could do worse as far as an approach to magic, because most people come at magic from the more external-focused perspective. They are trying to impact the world around them without having done the personal work to become the person who can manifest that work. Much less, the personal work to approach magic without being egomaniacal about it.

And let’s be frank; in the Pagan and magical communities, there is no lack of egotistical “I’m a powerful magician” types.

Internal magic is basically working on myself, working to become a better, stronger person. The idea with this flow of magic is, by transforming myself, I can become the person who manifests my dreams. That the magic works on my consciousness and identity so that I myself, physically and through my actions, can manifest what I want.

Taken to an extreme, the idea is that no external magic works, ever. I’m not in that camp, I just tend to believe that the bigger and more physical an external magical working is, the more I’m swimming upstream against physics.

I want to make a brief re-mention of Dion Fortune’s definition of magic. In Part 1, I pondered whether the idea of “Changing consciousness at will” was a reference to being able to get into an altered state to be able to do magic, or, whether the magic was the change in consciousness, the change in self identity. Again, I think it’s both. If we’re talking about getting into a trance state/altered state, that certainly makes it easier to see the underlying “Matrix code” of the universe.

But, it’s also worth pointing out that internal magic–actually hacking your own personal programming to transform yourself and heal yourself–is some of the hardest work there is. Just because it’s internal doesn’t mean its easy.

External Magic
Getting back to external magic, I do believe that it is possible to influence the world around me with magic. But, again, I also believe that the more of an external physical result I want, the harder I have to work.

I also believe that a lot of people want to light the pink candle and wish for love and bam, the universe drops someone on their doorstep. Whatever spellwork you’re doing, you still need to do the physical, mundane work.

Too many people look at magic as “that thing that happened because I wished for it and I didn’t need to do any work.”

I believe that external magic requires an external action. Will is powerful, but without action, nothing happens. I look at a lot of the magical work that I do externally as changing consciousness. It’s actually fairly easy to change the consciousness of others just through writing. Posting a blog like this one, posting on my Facebook, I have the power to bring up ideas, to potentially change minds.

And if you think that isn’t magic, remember–changing consciousness is a part of magic. For that matter, think about how Bards and Poets were part of the druidic order.

Words, stories, and storytellers have always been a part of magic. So has music–think of the word enchantment. En-chant-ment. Chanting is a powerful technique for changing consciousness; I use it every time I facilitate a ritual.

I think that magic is easiest to achieve in ways that are more subtle, but the problem is, those results aren’t very flashy, and if you’re looking for big flashy results, internal magic/personal work isn’t what’s going to get you there. But then you have to ask yourself, why do you want the big flashy results? I know that once I did a lot of internal magical work, I had a lot less need for flash. The more self confidence I built, the less external validation I need.

Magic works really well for changing myself. It works well for changing the consciousness of myself and others where I have that influence. But the more specific external physical results I want, the more I’m swimming upstream against the nature of physics. Or, the more physical work I’m going to need to do to take it beyond just my intention and my will.

Magic and Self Identity
I have used magic to change my life, to become the person who can do the things I want to do. I have used magic to become the person who isn’t crippled by depression. This took will, it took focus, it took transforming my deepest programming about who I was.

I often refer to this type of magic as breaking the spell.

Every time someone repeats words to us, particularly those hurtful words like, “You’re fat, you’re ugly, you’re worthless, nobody likes you,” or whatever we’ve suffered in our past, that becomes a spell that binds us. See what I mean about the power of words? This is what I meant in my article on hexes and curses.

It’s pretty easy to hex someone, just keep repeating something until they believe it. (That’s also called emotional and verbal abuse.) But it’s a pretty powerful form of enchantment–I say this because it obviously works.

All the little things that we think every day, all the negative self talk…it’s all a spell that was cast over us. And then we keep casting the spell, over and over. I’ve written a bit more about this on the Pagan Activist blog http://paganactivist.com/2013/12/02/media-mind-control-myth-and-magic/

By shifting those stories, we break the spell that we–and society–have placed on ourselves. There are so many ways that we keep ourselves stuck in the role of victim, and then we contribute to our own problems, our own self image.

It’s powerful magical work to transform ourselves. To move past an addiction, to move past a damaging behavior. In my case, I can see the clear results of years of hard work and internal magic.

In March of this year I wrote 100,000 words, and I have several books published and more on the way. The me who was stuck in the pit of depression couldn’t have done that. My work paid off, but it’s not as flashy as what people have come to expect with “magic.”

Divine Communion
Divine communion is probably the most common type of magical work that I do besides internal magic. This type of magic falls under the category of theurgy.

Magic to connect to the divine is also often about changing consciousness. For that matter–I actually have a difficult time getting into a deep enough trance state to connect to the divine, which has frustrated me for a lot of my life.

In my tween and teen years, I felt like the divine was just beyond my fingertips. I had visions, I had dreams. The dreams got more intense in my 20’s and I began to experience something I called the Water Temple. It was like the Grail, but an entire temple, and I would connect to the flowing water and know that it was my goddess/angel. I’d feel that resonant sense in my chest, that tear-bringing sense of union.

And when I finally gained access to the kind of leadership training I had been seeking…those dreams and visions went away. I wrote about this at some length in my essay in the anthology “A Mantle of Stars.”

I don’t have words for the aching frustration of the years without that divine communion. That connection was what had called me to spiritual service in the first place. Now I was serving–but I was cut off. I could get other people into that headspace, but not myself.

Taylor Ellwood wrote something on his Facebook that resonated a lot with me. “The genuine experience of magic is something which changes you and your relationship to the universe. It’s not a result. It’s an ongoing relationship that informs how you experience the world and your place in it, as well as how you change it.”

That made me think for a good long while. I started to wonder, what is the difference between magic and mysticism? What’s the difference between magic and divine communion?

That’s when I went back to what I had been taught at the Diana’s Grove Mystery School and I had to acknowledge that some of their definitions of a Magical vs. a Mystery tradition (as I referenced in Part 1) were not really working for me, and were in many ways inaccurate.

Divine communion is a magical experience. In my essay in “A Mantle of Stars” I reference how I eventually found my way back to divine communion. I found myself at last in a weeping rapture, complete love and connection with that divine I had found just out of reach.

And there isn’t much point in putting it into words because that’s the nature of mystery–I can talk about it, but I can’t give you the experience. A mystery is something only you can live.

What is Magic?
And maybe that starts to get at what we want magic to be. We want proof. We want flash. We want miracles.  And when we don’t get those, we wonder what magic is. When we see how magic works, it doesn’t seem very flashy…or, we realize how unimportant the flash really is.

To be continued in Part 3…

** If you’re interested in exploring your own relationship to magic and getting a good baseline of training, I do recommend Taylor Ellwood’s class, the Process of Magic.

What Is Magic? Part 2

I think the word magic has different meanings in different contexts. I think across the board, it tends to mean “the hidden.” Or, things that happen in a way I can’t easily see/unravel.

A related definition might be how I see most people use it in terms of spellwork. “Magic is doing a spell and getting what I want without having to do any work.” I think the idea is that you set your intention, light the right colored candle, and the universe brings you what you want if you’re cool enough.

Obviously there are some problems with that concept. But if you haven’t read Part 1, you might want to go to the previous post and check that out so that this one makes a bit more sense.

I tend to use the definition that magic is science we don’t understand yet. It’s science, it’s just science we can’t readily perceive or see. If you want to know more about what I mean, watch the show “What the Bleep” for some pretty cool science that sounds an awful lot like magic.

I suppose one way to put it is that some of us can more easily see this type of magic because we’ve trained ourselves to, or because we have particular psychic abilities like precognition. But, the more we know about magic and how it works–the more it seems to become science and technique–the less magical it might seem. We’ll just chalk that up to paradox.

Ultimately, what I’ve come to is that magic is a lot like the Matrix code. In the ritual I mentioned in Part 1, there was that moment where I realized that so much of what I thought was magical in ritual was actually just ritual technique. It was like that moment where Neo wakes up and realizes what’s actually going on. It’s not a comfortable moment.

But understanding magic is going that layer deeper when Neo sees the underpinnings of the Matrix, when he can look at an object in the Matrix and see its underlying code. I think that that begins to describe what a skilled magician is doing and perceiving. They see/sense the underpinnings of the world, the energy, the physics, the quantum entanglement. I suppose it’s a general axiom that you can’t really manipulate/transform things unless you can see/perceive/feel them.

I think some of the common connotations of the word magic include cool, powerful…and the sense of control.

And I think it’s the idea of control–of power–that is where we start to run into some problems.

Illusion of Control
Imagine we live in a world where the elements can rip your house apart with a tornado or cause a tsunami or crops fail in drought…wait, we do live in that world. Ok, imagine that it’s 4,000 years ago. When the sun starts to go south it gets cold, and every year we wonder, will the days ever grow longer or will we all just freeze in eternal night? When the sun is blacked out in an eclipse or a comet appears in the sunset sky, we wonder, is this a portent of doom?

Now–you’re probably thinking, none of that is magic. True, it’s science. But at that time, it was part of the unseen, terrifying world. If you didn’t know why something was happening, or how you could fix that, it fell into that realm of the magical, the terrifying.

The druid/shaman/witch/wise person who knew the cycles of the seasons and the solstices, who knew the phases of the moon and when the eclipses happened–they held the magic. The wise one who held the mysteries knew what signs preceded a drought, what signs would lead to water or to game. They knew how to heal with specific herbs. None of this is magic, unless you don’t know the mysteries.

But I think part of what gets woven into our idea of magic is the idea that we can control these vast forces with enough magical juice. By vast forces, what I mean is the weather, for instance. The idea that we can end a drought, that we can turn aside a tsunami.

I’ll be honest. I believe in a lot of specific types of magic, and I believe in the power of intention, but for the really big stuff like that, I think it’s a lot of hubris on the part of the magical workers.

Though, I believe that a lot of magical beliefs and religious beliefs are actually social controls. The idea that if you live a good life and give to the church and follow the rules, that you’ll get rewarded in heaven…that’s a social control. Similarly, humans don’t cope well with feeling like we can’t control what’s going on, so the idea that we can do spellwork to break a drought or to turn aside a storm is also something that I feel falls into the category of social control.

Some of our ancestors certainly spent a lot of effort making offerings (including the occasional human sacrifice) to appease the gods and shift the weather, or end a war. Do I think it works like that? Not really. I think that everyone stays a lot calmer when we feel like we’re doing something.

We humans just don’t cope with the idea that the earth could shrug and we’re wiped out and we have no control over that. So I think in some cases, magic becomes an illusion of control.

I’m not saying that magic doesn’t ever work–I’m just talking in terms of perception and scale. And keep in mind, I’m also looking at magic from the perspective of, it’s working with the universe, with physics, with energy…and ultimately a lot of things that once were considered “magic” are now things you can do on your cell phone. You can tell the day/time of year, you can tell the compass points, you can tell what the weather is going to be like this week.

Internal And External Magic 
Let’s take a step back and talk about some specific types of magic framed as internal and external magic. In Part 1 I referenced how many of my mentors put forth the idea that the only “real” magic was doing personal work, in other words, transforming myself.

Now–you could do worse as far as an approach to magic, because most people come at magic from the more external-focused perspective. They are trying to impact the world around them without having done the personal work to become the person who can manifest that work. Much less, the personal work to approach magic without being egomaniacal about it.

And let’s be frank; in the Pagan and magical communities, there is no lack of egotistical “I’m a powerful magician” types.

Internal magic is basically working on myself, working to become a better, stronger person. The idea with this flow of magic is, by transforming myself, I can become the person who manifests my dreams. That the magic works on my consciousness and identity so that I myself, physically and through my actions, can manifest what I want.

Taken to an extreme, the idea is that no external magic works, ever. I’m not in that camp, I just tend to believe that the bigger and more physical an external magical working is, the more I’m swimming upstream against physics.

I want to make a brief re-mention of Dion Fortune’s definition of magic. In Part 1, I pondered whether the idea of “Changing consciousness at will” was a reference to being able to get into an altered state to be able to do magic, or, whether the magic was the change in consciousness, the change in self identity. Again, I think it’s both. If we’re talking about getting into a trance state/altered state, that certainly makes it easier to see the underlying “Matrix code” of the universe.

But, it’s also worth pointing out that internal magic–actually hacking your own personal programming to transform yourself and heal yourself–is some of the hardest work there is. Just because it’s internal doesn’t mean its easy.

External Magic
Getting back to external magic, I do believe that it is possible to influence the world around me with magic. But, again, I also believe that the more of an external physical result I want, the harder I have to work.

I also believe that a lot of people want to light the pink candle and wish for love and bam, the universe drops someone on their doorstep. Whatever spellwork you’re doing, you still need to do the work.

Too many people look at magic as “that thing that happened because I wished for it and I didn’t need to do any work.”

I believe that external magic requires an external action. Will is powerful, but without action, nothing happens.

I look at a lot of the magical work that I do externally as changing consciousness. It’s actually fairly easy to change the consciousness of others just through writing. Posting a blog like this one, posting on my Facebook, I have the power to bring up ideas, to potentially change minds.

And if you think that isn’t magic, remember–changing consciousness is a part of magic. For that matter, think about how Bards and Poets were part of the druidic order.

Words, stories, and storytellers have always been a part of magic. So has music–think of the word enchantment. En-chant-ment. Chanting is a powerful technique for changing consciousness; I use it every time I facilitate a ritual.

I think that magic is easiest to achieve in ways that are more subtle, but the problem is, those results aren’t very flashy, and if you’re looking for big flashy results, internal magic/personal work isn’t what’s going to get you there. But then you have to ask yourself, why do you want the big flashy results? I know that once I did a lot of internal magical work, I had a lot less need for flash. The more self confidence I built, the less external validation I need.

Magic works really well for changing myself. It works well for changing the consciousness of myself and others where I have that influence. But the more specific external physical results I want, the more I’m swimming upstream against the nature of physics. Or, the more physical work I’m going to need to do to take it beyond just my intention and my will.

Magic and Self Identity
I have used magic to change my life, to become the person who can do the things I want to do. I have used magic to become the person who isn’t crippled by depression. This took will, it took focus, it took transforming my deepest programming about who I was.

I often refer to this type of magic as breaking the spell.

Every time someone repeats words to us, particularly those hurtful words like, “You’re fat, you’re ugly, you’re worthless, nobody likes you,” or whatever we’ve suffered in our past, that becomes a spell that binds us. See what I mean about the power of words? This is what I meant in my article on hexes and curses.

It’s pretty easy to hex someone, just keep repeating something until they believe it. That’s also called emotional and verbal abuse. But it’s a pretty powerful form of enchantment–I say this because it obviously works.

All the little things that we think every day, all the negative self talk…it’s all a spell that was cast over us. And then we keep casting the spell, over and over. By shifting those stories, we break the spell that we–and society–have placed on ourselves. There are so many ways that we keep ourselves stuck in the role of victim, and then we contribute to our own problems, our own self image.

It’s powerful magical work to transform ourselves. To move past an addiction, to move past a damaging behavior. In my case, I can see the clear results of years of hard work and internal magic.

In March of this year I wrote 100,000 words, and I have several books published and more on the way. The me who was stuck in the pit of depression couldn’t have done that. My work paid off, but it’s not as flashy as what people have come to expect with “magic.”

Divine Communion
Divine communion is probably the most common type of magical work that I do besides internal magic. This type of magic falls under the category of theurgy.

Magic to connect to the divine is also often about changing consciousness. For that matter–I actually have a difficult time getting into a deep enough trance state to connect to the divine, which has frustrated me for a lot of my life.

In my tween and teen years, I felt like the divine was just beyond my fingertips. I had visions, I had dreams. The dreams got more intense in my 20′s and I began to experience something I called the Water Temple. It was like the Grail, but an entire temple, and I would connect to the flowing water and know that it was my goddess/angel. I’d feel that resonant sense in my chest, that tear-bringing sense of union.

And when I finally gained access to the kind of leadership training I had been seeking…those dreams and visions went away. I wrote about this at some length in my essay in the anthology “A Mantle of Stars.”

I don’t have words for the aching frustration of the years without that divine communion. That connection was what had called me to spiritual service in the first place. Now I was serving–but I was cut off. I could get other people into that headspace, but not myself.

Taylor Ellwood wrote something on his Facebook that resonated a lot with me. “The genuine experience of magic is something which changes you and your relationship to the universe. It’s not a result. It’s an ongoing relationship that informs how you experience the world and your place in it, as well as how you change it.”

That made me think for a good long while. I started to wonder, what is the difference between magic and mysticism? What’s the difference between magic and divine communion?

That’s when I went back to what I had been taught at the Diana’s Grove Mystery School and I had to acknowledge that some of their definitions of a Magical vs. a Mystery tradition (as I referenced in Part 1) were not really working for me, and were in many ways inaccurate.

Divine communion is a magical experience. In my essay in “A Mantle of Stars” I reference how I eventually found my way back to divine communion. I found myself at last in a weeping rapture, complete love and connection with that divine I had found just out of reach.

And there isn’t much point in putting it into words because that’s the nature of mystery–I can talk about it, but I can’t give you the experience. A mystery is something only you can live.

What is Magic?
And maybe that starts to get at what we want magic to be. We want proof. We want flash. We want miracles.  And when we don’t get those, we wonder what magic is. When we see how magic works, it doesn’t seem very flashy…or, we realize how unimportant the flash really is.

To be continued in Part 3…

** If you’re interested in exploring your own relationship to magic and getting a good baseline of training, I do recommend Taylor Ellwood’s class, the Process of Magic.

What is Magic?

I’m currently taking Taylor Ellwood’s online class, The Process of Magic. Largely, I’m interested in this class because I’ve never done any formal training in the Western Mystery Traditions when it comes to magic, and I’d like to piece together what I’ve learned through osmosis over the years.

Probably the more pressing reason for me to take this class is that over the years, my definition of magic has changed a few times.

When I wrote my Hexes and Curses article I got a lot of push-back from people who said I was wrong, that I didn’t understand how Hexes worked, or who even said, “Well, you obviously don’t believe in magic at all.”

The truth is, I do believe in magic–but, my relationship to magic has gotten both more complicated–and yet in some ways more simple–the more I’ve learned over the years. Like many things, I’ve gone back and forth to different sides of the pendulum, and so I’ve been asking myself this question a lot. What is magic? What do I believe about magic?

What is my definition of magic? Why do I use that definition? How does magic fit into my life? What are my core values and beliefs and how do those connect to my beliefs about magic?

These are some of the questions I’m pondering that are part of the homework for the class. And for me, coming up with that definition of magic is really the hard part, because that means I have to articulate if I believe in magic at all, and if so, what that means to me.

First I have to take a brief spin through my past to explain why the word magic is complicated for me. Because, what I realize is that if I don’t use the word “magic” in the sentence, I absolutely believe that I can shape the world around me with my will. Which is, in essence, a definition of magic. So why does the word magic bug me?

Magical Child
Like a lot of kids, I grew up with an imaginary friend and pretend magical powers. The more the other kids bullied and ostracized me, the more my fantasy world where I had magical powers seemed to draw me in. As I matured and realized that no, I didn’t really have the power to zap people with magical spells, I began connecting more with the idea of psychic powers. These felt different from the idea of magic spells, and yet–like magic–psychic abilities are hidden, unseen, mostly not proven by mainstream science. And only the “special” people seem to have them.

In fact, the foundation of my self-identity as a tween and teen was the idea that I was somehow special, somehow different, somehow better than all of my peers. It’s a common mental defense tactic in people who are bullied and abused. Ego removes the dangling threat of potential suicide with the compelling fantasy that we are somehow more special than anyone else.

For me, psychic abilities, and later my experiences of divine communion, were part of that compelling inner world of mine, part of my idea that I was somehow magical, special, better than the peers who abused me.

Psychic Abilities
Now–I wasn’t completely deluded; I knew I couldn’t shoot bolts of lightning out of my fingers. It’s also worth pointing out that I had a fair number of intense experiences of psychic phenomena, enough to prove it to me as a reality. I’ve had plenty of dreams of events that came to pass. I’ve had the occasional weirdly-accurate telepathic communication between myself and another person, either hearing words they were thinking, or them hearing words I was thinking. In some cases, I pulled an image right out of someone’s mind and described it to them.

In a few other rare cases, I had psychic “pings” about something they had done, usually related to sex or pregnancy. In a few cases, I knew when a close friend had had unprotected sex. In a few other cases, I knew eerily accurate details about a friend’s wife’s pregnancy. I knew she was pregnant months before they announced, I knew the due date, I even knew how old their first child would be when they had their second child, and that it would be a daughter. With another friend, I knew that he was going to accidentally get someone pregnant and what month. I told him, but it happened anyways.

So I’ve had enough proof of psychic abilities–and in specific, my own psychic abilities–for my own skepticism. I don’t really talk a lot about psychic woo-woo stuff because of two reasons. One is, psychic experiences like that are in no way predictable for me so people who want me to “prove” it or to do a reading on them, it doesn’t really work like that. Not for me, anyways.

The other reason is that a lot of the Pagans who talk a lot about their own psychic woo-woo experiences seem to be trying to impress people. Many seem to be trying to get attention but it comes across as being a show off and a jerk.

As I got older, I started to sort of realize and negotiate some conflicting ideas. Yes, I had had psychic experiences…no, they weren’t really on-demand. Despite many years of work, it wasn’t really something I controlled, it was just a piece of extra information that came up whether or not it was relevant or useful.

So my psychic abilities didn’t really make me “powerful” in any real sense. And they were real–I had enough proof of that–so they didn’t really feel magical, even though they were still unseen, hidden, unproveable to others.

Divine Communion 
The path of the mystic is the path of one who communes–connects–directly with the divine. I had had visions of a particular goddess/angel/spirit since I was young, and so in a way, though this did make me feel special and contributed to my sense of being different/unique/magical, as I got older, this too ceased to feel like magic. It was (and still is) transformative, intense, deep…and goes beyond words, but it didn’t feel the same as what people usually call “magic.”

In fact, in some of the training that I did in spiritual leadership, that particular mystery school took great pains to point out the differences between mysticism and magic, or more specifically, they defined themselves as a mystery tradition, not a magical tradition.

However, when I review what that particular mystery school taught, I realize that it was somewhat narrowly-defined and in some ways, erroneous. In fact, when I reread what they were teaching, it was basically shaping the definitions to suit their purposes, so I begin to realize how I started having such a problem with the word magic.

They wrote:

“Magical traditions:

• Based on the belief that ritual, prayer, and/or spell can create change in the world outside the self – influence weather, other people’s behavior/thoughts, and group dynamics, such as politics
• Invest forms and tools with specific powers and meanings (e.g., invocation summons the power of an element to do the invoker’s bidding; green candles bring healing) and, therefore, hold fairly rigidly to forms and feel strongly about the specific and exclusive uses of tools
• See patterns in the world (e.g., the presence of an animal, a change in the weather) as a message about self
• Often rely on a single intermediary who interprets doctrine and through which we learn about divine intention (e.g., a priest, priestess, minister)

Mystical traditions:

• Based on the belief that ritual, prayer, and/or spell can change only the self – one’s own consciousness, behavior, perception

• Use forms and tools to convey intention and meanings (e.g., invocation honors the power of an element and recognizes its influence; green candles represent green, growing, living things) and, therefore, use forms flexibly and creatively select tools to fit need/intention

• See patterns in the world (e.g., the presence of an animal, a change in the weather) as a message about life and see self as a part of the patterns, not the object of the messages

• Open to individuals’ varied interpretations of doctrine and diverse ways of connecting to divine intention.”

Now–I don’t disagree with all of this, but, it does put things in some pretty rigid terms, and in some cases uses the wrong terms completely. The word mysticism means direct communion with the divine, and that isn’t really addressed at all in the definition of Mystical Traditions in the above. For that matter, many mystical traditions have a central/hierarchical priest or priestess.

Definition of Magic–Dion Fortune
At the Diana’s Grove Mystery School, the definition of magic we were taught was based on Dion Fortune’s. “Magic is changing consciousness at will.” We were taught a variation–“Magic is changing my OWN consciousness at will.”

Now–I want to offer just a brief tangent thought. Dion Fortune’s definition could simultaneously be referring to two different things–the functions of magic, and the outcome. Getting into a trance state, or an altered state of consciousness, is one of the ways to do magical work. However, altering your consciousness is also a potential goal or outcome of magic. Which does Dion Fortune’s definition refer to? I like to think it probably refers in a sneaky way to both.

Back to my challenges with the word magic…Diana’s Grove was, at its core, agnostic, perhaps even a bit atheistic. We didn’t really talk about psychic abilities or woo-woo magic powers. In fact, anything that smacked of delusion and grandeur was kind of subtly discouraged if not outright referred to as being immature.

In essence, there was a pressure to believe that the idea of external magic was hubris. That the only real magic–the only magic that people could actually accomplish–was the magic of personal transformation.

Now–I get why there was the subtle and not-so-subtle disapproval of heavy woo-woo magic. It’s true that in the Pagan community, many of the people who go on and on about their psychic and magical powers are actually really immature and attention seeking. Or they just have really poor self esteem and are looking for positive attention. Or a combo of that and other things. So I get the idea of leaning in the other direction.

But I’m reminded over and over that humans just don’t do paradox well. We pendulum swing, we can’t hold space for gray area.

So now that I have reviewed where a lot of my assumptions about the word “magic” came from when I was doing my leadership training, where to go from there? First I have to go back to a few more of my experiences that disenchanted me with the word.

Ritual and Magic
During my three years at Diana’s Grove I began taking ritual roles with increasing responsibility. The Diana’s Grove rituals had at first felt magical and transformative to me. As I began learning the tricks to facilitate, the “magic” left those rituals. It just felt like technique.

I learned how to trance a group out. I learned about the power of eye contact. I learned about a lot of different techniques that facilitators use to entrance and enchant a group.

One night, I sort of cracked. I was at a weekend retreat at Diana’s Grove. It had been a stressful weekend, and I won’t go into the details of why, but by the time we were stepping into the evening ritual, my heart was thudding in my chest. Later that night someone would clue me in that what I was having was a panic attack. In the moment, I just realized I couldn’t get my heart to stop palpitating. I kept breathing evenly. I had three ritual roles that night. I stepped in for the first one, and the second. I did my part, and my heart kept thudding. When we all sat down/laid down for the trance journey, I had the spins so bad I had to keep my eyes open.

I stood up to do my third ritual role–each participant was to take a bead from a bowl and hand the bead to Persephone. The woman aspecting Persephone was supposed to take these beads to the Underworld. The beads would represent one wound from the past that each participant was ready to release for healing beneath the ground.

I was one of the people holding the bowls of beads. My job was to stand there and look into each person’s eyes and ask them trance questions while they worked to find the bead that would represent their wounds. So I’m standing there for long minutes. My heart is still palpitating but with even breathing I’m keeping things under control. And I’m asking the questions I’m supposed to ask. “What would would you leave behind? What would you release? What would you give over to Persephone, what would you release for healing in the Underworld? What no longer serves?”

People paw through the bowl of beads, hunting out that “perfect” bead. So I’m giving them deep meaningful eye contact, and asking these questions. But what I’m thinking in my head is, “This is just a fucking bead. It’s just a bowl of fucking beads. It doesn’t matter. None of this is fucking magical. It’s just a bead. Just pick one so I can set this thing down and we can move on. It doesn’t matter. None of this matters.”

I was obviously in a less-than-magical headspace. I had finally hit that point where I wondered, is all ritual just technique? Is there any magic to it at all?

At the end of that ritual when we were doing the final singing/dancing/energy raising, I burst into tears, probably from stress. After that is when a friend clued me in that those were all the symptoms of a panic attack. “But I wasn’t panicking,” I said. She laughed, and said, “Well, that’s because it’s you.”

The next year was my final year at Diana’s Grove doing my culminating year of leadership training, and I consciously worked to bring the magic back into ritual. And I found it again, to a certain extent. I realized that a lot of what I do in ritual is facilitation tricks…but, there’s also the authenticity piece beneath it.

It’s a form of alchemy. Technique + genuine, authentic connection = magic. And explaining that in more depth requires I talk a lot more about ritual facilitation, and that would take us way off topic.

Suffice to say, over the course of many years, I’ve found that there is still magic in ritual, even knowing what I do about facilitation technique, but it takes work to get there.

But then we come back to, what the heck does magic mean?

Magic
I think the word magic has different meanings in different contexts. I think across the board, it tends to mean “the hidden.” Or, things that happen in a way I can’t easily see/unravel. A related definition might be how I see most people use it in terms of spellwork. “Magic is doing a spell and getting what I want without having to do any work.” I think the idea is that you set your intention, light the right colored candle, and the universe brings you what you want if you’re cool enough.

Obviously there are some problems with that concept.

I tend to use the definition that magic is science we don’t understand yet. It’s science, it’s just science we can’t readily perceive or see. Or, that some of us can more easily see because we’ve trained ourselves to, but the more we know about it–the more it becomes science and technique–the less magical it might seem. We’ll just chalk that up to paradox.

I’ll continue this in Part 2 tomorrow.

What is Magic?

I’m currently taking Taylor Ellwood’s online class, The Process of Magic. Largely, I’m interested in this class because I’ve never done any formal training in the Western Mystery Traditions when it comes to magic, and I’d like to piece together what I’ve learned through osmosis over the years.

Probably the more pressing reason for me to take this class is that over the years, my definition of magic has changed a few times.

When I wrote my Hexes and Curses article I got a lot of push-back from people who said I was wrong, that I didn’t understand how Hexes worked, or who even said, “Well, you obviously don’t believe in magic at all.”

The truth is, I do believe in magic–but, my relationship to magic has gotten both more complicated–and yet in some ways more simple–the more I’ve learned over the years. Like many things, I’ve gone back and forth to different sides of the pendulum, and so I’ve been asking myself this question a lot. What is magic? What do I believe about magic?

What is my definition of magic? Why do I use that definition? How does magic fit into my life? What are my core values and beliefs and how do those connect to my beliefs about magic?

These are some of the questions I’m pondering that are part of the homework for the class. And for me, coming up with that definition of magic is really the hard part, because that means I have to articulate if I believe in magic at all, and if so, what that means to me.

First I have to take a brief spin through my past to explain why the word magic is complicated for me. Because, what I realize is that if I don’t use the word “magic” in the sentence, I absolutely believe that I can shape the world around me with my will. Which is, in essence, a definition of magic. So why does the word magic bug me?

Magical Child
Like a lot of kids, I grew up with an imaginary friend and pretend magical powers. The more the other kids bullied and ostracized me, the more my fantasy world where I had magical powers seemed to draw me in. As I matured and realized that no, I didn’t really have the power to zap people with magical spells, I began connecting more with the idea of psychic powers. These felt different from the idea of magic spells, and yet–like magic–psychic abilities are hidden, unseen, mostly not proven by mainstream science. And only the “special” people seem to have them.

In fact, the foundation of my self-identity as a tween and teen was the idea that I was somehow special, somehow different, somehow better than all of my peers. It’s a common mental defense tactic in people who are bullied and abused. Ego removes the dangling threat of potential suicide with the compelling fantasy that we are somehow more special than anyone else.

For me, psychic abilities, and later my experiences of divine communion, were part of that compelling inner world of mine, part of my idea that I was somehow magical, special, better than the peers who abused me.

Psychic Abilities
Now–I wasn’t completely deluded; I knew I couldn’t shoot bolts of lightning out of my fingers. It’s also worth pointing out that I had a fair number of intense experiences of psychic phenomena, enough to prove it to me as a reality. I’ve had plenty of dreams of events that came to pass. I’ve had the occasional weirdly-accurate telepathic communication between myself and another person, either hearing words they were thinking, or them hearing words I was thinking. In some cases, I pulled an image right out of someone’s mind and described it to them.

In a few other rare cases, I had psychic “pings” about something they had done, usually related to sex or pregnancy. In a few cases, I knew when a close friend had had unprotected sex. In a few other cases, I knew eerily accurate details about a friend’s wife’s pregnancy. I knew she was pregnant months before they announced, I knew the due date, I even knew how old their first child would be when they had their second child, and that it would be a daughter. With another friend, I knew that he was going to accidentally get someone pregnant and what month. I told him, but it happened anyways.

So I’ve had enough proof of psychic abilities–and in specific, my own psychic abilities–for my own skepticism. I don’t really talk a lot about psychic woo-woo stuff because of two reasons. One is, psychic experiences like that are in no way predictable for me so people who want me to “prove” it or to do a reading on them, it doesn’t really work like that. Not for me, anyways.

The other reason is that a lot of the Pagans who talk a lot about their own psychic woo-woo experiences seem to be trying to impress people. Many seem to be trying to get attention but it comes across as being a show off and a jerk.

As I got older, I started to sort of realize and negotiate some conflicting ideas. Yes, I had had psychic experiences…no, they weren’t really on-demand. Despite many years of work, it wasn’t really something I controlled, it was just a piece of extra information that came up whether or not it was relevant or useful.

So my psychic abilities didn’t really make me “powerful” in any real sense. And they were real–I had enough proof of that–so they didn’t really feel magical, even though they were still unseen, hidden, unproveable to others.

Divine Communion 
The path of the mystic is the path of one who communes–connects–directly with the divine. I had had visions of a particular goddess/angel/spirit since I was young, and so in a way, though this did make me feel special and contributed to my sense of being different/unique/magical, as I got older, this too ceased to feel like magic. It was (and still is) transformative, intense, deep…and goes beyond words, but it didn’t feel the same as what people usually call “magic.”

In fact, in some of the training that I did in spiritual leadership, that particular mystery school took great pains to point out the differences between mysticism and magic, or more specifically, they defined themselves as a mystery tradition, not a magical tradition.

However, when I review what that particular mystery school taught, I realize that it was somewhat narrowly-defined and in some ways, erroneous. In fact, when I reread what they were teaching, it was basically shaping the definitions to suit their purposes, so I begin to realize how I started having such a problem with the word magic.

They wrote:

“Magical traditions:

• Based on the belief that ritual, prayer, and/or spell can create change in the world outside the self – influence weather, other people’s behavior/thoughts, and group dynamics, such as politics
• Invest forms and tools with specific powers and meanings (e.g., invocation summons the power of an element to do the invoker’s bidding; green candles bring healing) and, therefore, hold fairly rigidly to forms and feel strongly about the specific and exclusive uses of tools
• See patterns in the world (e.g., the presence of an animal, a change in the weather) as a message about self
• Often rely on a single intermediary who interprets doctrine and through which we learn about divine intention (e.g., a priest, priestess, minister)

Mystical traditions:

• Based on the belief that ritual, prayer, and/or spell can change only the self – one’s own consciousness, behavior, perception

• Use forms and tools to convey intention and meanings (e.g., invocation honors the power of an element and recognizes its influence; green candles represent green, growing, living things) and, therefore, use forms flexibly and creatively select tools to fit need/intention

• See patterns in the world (e.g., the presence of an animal, a change in the weather) as a message about life and see self as a part of the patterns, not the object of the messages

• Open to individuals’ varied interpretations of doctrine and diverse ways of connecting to divine intention.”

Now–I don’t disagree with all of this, but, it does put things in some pretty rigid terms, and in some cases uses the wrong terms completely. The word mysticism means direct communion with the divine, and that isn’t really addressed at all in the definition of Mystical Traditions in the above. For that matter, many mystical traditions have a central/hierarchical priest or priestess.

Definition of Magic–Dion Fortune
At the Diana’s Grove Mystery School, the definition of magic we were taught was based on Dion Fortune’s. “Magic is changing consciousness at will.” We were taught a variation–”Magic is changing my OWN consciousness at will.”

Now–I want to offer just a brief tangent thought. Dion Fortune’s definition could simultaneously be referring to two different things–the functions of magic, and the outcome. Getting into a trance state, or an altered state of consciousness, is one of the ways to do magical work. However, altering your consciousness is also a potential goal or outcome of magic. Which does Dion Fortune’s definition refer to? I like to think it probably refers in a sneaky way to both.

Back to my challenges with the word magic…Diana’s Grove was, at its core, agnostic, perhaps even a bit atheistic. We didn’t really talk about psychic abilities or woo-woo magic powers. In fact, anything that smacked of delusion and grandeur was kind of subtly discouraged if not outright referred to as being immature.

In essence, there was a pressure to believe that the idea of external magic was hubris. That the only real magic–the only magic that people could actually accomplish–was the magic of personal transformation.

Now–I get why there was the subtle and not-so-subtle disapproval of heavy woo-woo magic. It’s true that in the Pagan community, many of the people who go on and on about their psychic and magical powers are actually really immature and attention seeking. Or they just have really poor self esteem and are looking for positive attention. Or a combo of that and other things. So I get the idea of leaning in the other direction.

But I’m reminded over and over that humans just don’t do paradox well. We pendulum swing, we can’t hold space for gray area.

So now that I have reviewed where a lot of my assumptions about the word “magic” came from when I was doing my leadership training, where to go from there? First I have to go back to a few more of my experiences that disenchanted me with the word.

Ritual and Magic
During my three years at Diana’s Grove I began taking ritual roles with increasing responsibility. The Diana’s Grove rituals had at first felt magical and transformative to me. As I began learning the tricks to facilitate, the “magic” left those rituals. It just felt like technique.

I learned how to trance a group out. I learned about the power of eye contact. I learned about a lot of different techniques that facilitators use to entrance and enchant a group.

One night, I sort of cracked. I was at a weekend retreat at Diana’s Grove. It had been a stressful weekend, and I won’t go into the details of why, but by the time we were stepping into the evening ritual, my heart was thudding in my chest. Later that night someone would clue me in that what I was having was a panic attack. In the moment, I just realized I couldn’t get my heart to stop palpitating. I kept breathing evenly. I had three ritual roles that night. I stepped in for the first one, and the second. I did my part, and my heart kept thudding. When we all sat down/laid down for the trance journey, I had the spins so bad I had to keep my eyes open.

I stood up to do my third ritual role–each participant was to take a bead from a bowl and hand the bead to Persephone. The woman aspecting Persephone was supposed to take these beads to the Underworld. The beads would represent one wound from the past that each participant was ready to release for healing beneath the ground.

I was one of the people holding the bowls of beads. My job was to stand there and look into each person’s eyes and ask them trance questions while they worked to find the bead that would represent their wounds. So I’m standing there for long minutes. My heart is still palpitating but with even breathing I’m keeping things under control. And I’m asking the questions I’m supposed to ask. “What would would you leave behind? What would you release? What would you give over to Persephone, what would you release for healing in the Underworld? What no longer serves?”

People paw through the bowl of beads, hunting out that “perfect” bead. So I’m giving them deep meaningful eye contact, and asking these questions. But what I’m thinking in my head is, “This is just a fucking bead. It’s just a bowl of fucking beads. It doesn’t matter. None of this is fucking magical. It’s just a bead. Just pick one so I can set this thing down and we can move on. It doesn’t matter. None of this matters.”

I was obviously in a less-than-magical headspace. I had finally hit that point where I wondered, is all ritual just technique? Is there any magic to it at all?

At the end of that ritual when we were doing the final singing/dancing/energy raising, I burst into tears, probably from stress. After that is when a friend clued me in that those were all the symptoms of a panic attack. “But I wasn’t panicking,” I said. She laughed, and said, “Well, that’s because it’s you.”

The next year was my final year at Diana’s Grove doing my culminating year of leadership training, and I consciously worked to bring the magic back into ritual. And I found it again, to a certain extent. I realized that a lot of what I do in ritual is facilitation tricks…but, there’s also the authenticity piece beneath it.

It’s a form of alchemy. Technique + genuine, authentic connection = magic. And explaining that in more depth requires I talk a lot more about ritual facilitation, and that would take us way off topic.

Suffice to say, over the course of many years, I’ve found that there is still magic in ritual, even knowing what I do about facilitation technique, but it takes work to get there.

But then we come back to, what the heck does magic mean?

Magic
I think the word magic has different meanings in different contexts. I think across the board, it tends to mean “the hidden.” Or, things that happen in a way I can’t easily see/unravel. A related definition might be how I see most people use it in terms of spellwork. “Magic is doing a spell and getting what I want without having to do any work.” I think the idea is that you set your intention, light the right colored candle, and the universe brings you what you want if you’re cool enough.

Obviously there are some problems with that concept.

I tend to use the definition that magic is science we don’t understand yet. It’s science, it’s just science we can’t readily perceive or see. Or, that some of us can more easily see because we’ve trained ourselves to, but the more we know about it–the more it becomes science and technique–the less magical it might seem. We’ll just chalk that up to paradox.

I’ll continue this in Part 2 tomorrow.