That’s right kids, don’t believe in magic. It’s bullshit; I promise.
Now, those who’ve read any amount of this crazy site or who know me personally are probably hitting the OMGWTFBBQ button at this point, wondering if I’m off my rocker, or if I’ve been faking all along and I’m hitting the post-breakup psycho sauce after all. See, I’m a believer when it comes to magic. I’ve seen a lot of evidence when it comes to it and I experience it often. So why, pray tell, would I say something like the above statement? It’s pretty simple: magic is misconstrued, filtered, bastardized and generally FUBAR. It’s dead folks. Not really, but you might as well stop looking for it, because your looking wrong. Yes, you eyeliner-sporting pentacle-brandishing overweight Wicca kids, I’m talking to you. Stop trying, the magic school bus already left for the trip and you’re left once again screaming for attention by dancing naked around a fire and swearing up and down you hate Christianity, but you and I both know when you hit 45+ you’ll be back in church every Sunday For those of you who are older and just recently quit church to go to the Wicca drum circle party, you’ll be doing it at 70, or whenever death starts getting a little too close for comfort. New age bullshit has the name for a reason. Don’t get me wrong – I’m no Christian and have a general distaste for Abrahamic religion in general, but I’ve seen this happen in Western culture – folks drop out of Christianity, Judaism or whatever for a dip into the “Old Ways” and find out that the people teaching those Old Ways are doing so out of books written by folks in the ancient days of Woodstock and only wishing they could be half as cool as the folks in The Wicker Man.
So why am I dogging on all of this, being the preacher of hope faith, belief in the beyond laugher-at-science that I am would I say all these things? See, when it comes down to it there is energy about people, there is a force out there beyond comprehension of such indescribable power as to baffle the philosopher and the scientists alike, to bring us to our knees, it’s just not what we think? Why the hell would I know? It’s everywhere – it’s easy to see and base with logic. That’s right, I went there. Logic does apply and is an important factor in this. Logic and faith do go together, in fact they work extremely well together. You know what simple observation and logic can tell us about Magic? It’s not what you want it to be.
There you go. There isn’t really too much more to it than that, because this is the end-all driving factor that I’ve seen in just about every modern interpretation of magic there is (especially magic with a k on the end). Magic will not bend to your will, your whims, fancies or ideas about it. It does not make you special and it will not grant you anything. You will find no epiphanies from its existence, nor will you come into knowledge of some prophecy. Because, to wax into Fight Club, you are the same decaying matter as everything else. Seem cynical? It’s really not. True I am cynical about it, but I’ll lift this all up in a bit. Those spirits you feel in a candle-lit circle with all your black-clad friends, the heat that comes off objects, the sinister presence you all feel standing alone in the dark, well that’s called hysteria folks – even in a small form. You can psyche yourself up into anything – mobs and individuals alike have killed over this stuff. The magic here, the wonder if you will, lies not in the practice, but rather in the laughable ignorance of it all. Do you really think that if there is a power so great in the universe that you can possibly comprehend it, much less bend it to your will? We humans sure are proud of ourselves and we sure are gods-damned dumb. If you think you have ever seen magic in your life that involved any practice of witchcraft, any concentrate-till-you-zone-out, any “do you feel that?!” or anything that was influenced by someone else, you have been duped I’m sorry to say. The universe has not duped you. Gypsies didn’t do it, unless you paid them. While the universe may not care about you in particular enough to laugh at you, the nice Romany lady you paid to read your cards sure as hell is. She knows what you don’t: Magic is not what you want it to be.
There is no making folks fall in love with you. There are no invisible cords connected to other people that can be used to do you metaphysical harm. There are no spirits whispering to you the secrets of the universe. The dead do not talk to you when you ask them, I promise. I can list a million other examples for you. The idea of magic as it is commonly considers relies on the proposition that we might actually be able to exert some form of influence or control over the core stuff of existence, of the universe. That idea is an egotistical fallacy of epic proportions, one almost certainly only capable of being perpetrated by humanity. Folks say you can learn about magic from animals, that they have ways of knowing things that extend beyond our ability. I sure as hell don’t see why not, because they operate within the parameters of the system, because it is relevant to them. Because to an animal, to the world, to the stone, magic is what it is. Magic is not what you want it to be.
I will, however, give you a little insight into what it is. The funny thing is, you’ve probably heard a lot of it before. There is an energy in you, but you are not special. My cat has probably just as much energy as you, as does the big dumb dog next door who barks and drives me crazy, but all in all is a very amiable animal. You also have about as much proverbial metaphysical energy as a rock. It’s not an insult, actually, it’s an illustration. Here’s where it gets hokey, here’s where you’ve heard it all before. Magic is in everything, in the flow of rivers to the ocean, in the creation and destruction of mountains and plains. It’s in the canyons, in the sky. You see it at sunrise and sunset, you can catch it just between, dancing in the breeze that blows in the seasons. You used to know this. When you were a child, before you watched Lord of the Rings and the Matrix, played Dungeons & Dragons and read Aleister Crowley, you knew exactly what magic was. You knew back then. Your instincts are raw, powerful magic, and if you listened to them, really listened, you might find life carrying you in a direction that will lead you from harm and to contentment: not success; contentment. There is a power out there that we all worship on some level. You might call it God and Jesus, The Goddess and the God, Mohammad and Allah. Ask Joseph Campbell or Carl Jung, they knew what I’m talking about. Magic is not what you want it to be, that is, it won’t do what you want when you want it to. See, this is the reason why people don’t believe in it or want it to be more, because they want to have power, to understand, to feel special or important. We all want our kids to be Indigo Children, but they’re not and this is fine, they understand magic in a way that they will sadly forget or worse, will grow up and misinterpret to a gross degree.
There’s more, of course, there’s “black magic” as well and we are fundamentally aware of this also, but we sadly disregard this as superstition, not because it’s not what we want it to be, but because we are afraid it might be just what we think it is. I’m long winded as it is, and I can go off on this stuff forever. By now I’ve got some people locked into defense (not generally the people who read my ramblings, but the potential is there). There are folks who could read this and get mighty mad – steaming at the ears mad. There are folks in my life, “powerful” folks who’ve sworn up and down that they could and would curse me, that they could do me supernatural harm, but they’re incapable, they become impotent in the face of my power and I laugh, because I really don’t have any power, but, then again, neither do they. Or rather, we both do, but it doesn’t care what we want it to do, it serves to aid us in where we need to be in the grand scheme of things, I suppose. Want to argue? Want to scream at me that you saw ghosts, that you once made someone trip and break their leg or ruined their life for a month. Prove anything I say wrong – prove this revelation of the nature of magic wrong. There’s the bitch of it – it’s all faith. You can’t really prove me wrong. Of course, I can’t really prove myself right to any degree either. I can, however, be content with who I am as much as possible and try to trust that things turn out as they do, which I think you might find is usually alright when you align with the course. I can’t really tell you how to do that. I’m sure you’ll hear me talk plenty more about magic here and there, but today I got a little hacked about it, as I tend to do and thought I’d blow off a bit of steam. All-in-all, I think if you really cleared your head of all the worry, stress and questions about your existence for long enough to sit at that moment just before sunrise or just after sunset, you just might feel something you have felt before, and, if only for that moment, things might make a bit of sense. That’s magic folks, take it or leave it. It’s there either way.
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