We are all wizards. You may think I mean because of our technology. But that’s only half true: our technology is a manifestation of our actual magic. This magic is in the modes of thought we possess.
You may scoff. Thinking isn’t magic; or shouldn’t be. But compare humans to the rest of the animal kingdom. We alone can communicate with full languages to each other, effectively sharing our thoughts, feelings, and needs. That sharing is a kind of magic no other animal possesses.
Further, we harnessed that language into the creation of stories: with that act, we could separate a sequence of events from a person. Memory effectively became a fungible; I can possess vivid “memories” of events I never experienced. And stories allowed an idea of memory totally separate from a person: group memory, memory in ancestors, in places, and so on — gods and spirits of a new form. That is magic.
We can go further along in human (pre) history. We learned to do ritual, and enact meaning in events around us. That was magic. We learned to take esteem and move it around, pooling it in some people more than others — creating tribal leaders, emperors, and divine kings. That was magic. We learned to extract social obligation and place it, mentally, into physical tokens; creating debt, and taxes, and the basis for armies. How could another animal, or a human being without that mode of thinking do those things? They couldn’t; it was magic.
Finally, we took words and transposed them into visual systems — allowing thoughts to exist outside our own heads; giving us the capacity to grapple and deal with thoughts explicitly, as entities; and giving us universalisms of all kinds, from scientific law to omnipotent deities. That was, perhaps, the greatest magic trick of all. It brought us writing and symbology and theory. It is the magic that underlies out civilization, and is our preferred mode of thought today.
Of course it’s not the only mode possible: we can still practice older magic. The magic of money and debts is a hand-maiden to our society, and second-nature still. We all tell stories, too; though not with the same power or ability that those in oral cultures did. Other magics, though, are almost forgotten, banished to dark corners. Ritual, for instance, has only a vestigial place in public life, and for many Americans is entirely foreign (though some minority religions and sects are one of its bastions).
When an “alternative” religious source discusses magic, keep your hackles down. You’re already doing magic: every time you read, write, code, do math, or word games; every time you tell stories; every time make the sign of the cross, or remember exchanging wedding rings with your spouse. It’s all magic, with real consequences, and real power.
What that alternative practitioner is talking about is accessing a mode of thought — a mode of magic — that is unfamiliar. That may be just what you need right now, and it may be just what a society needs. Like many others, I’m convinced we need some different magic today. After all, what else can help? Politics? Technocratic efficiency? Science? None of these things can tell us how to live, restore our passion, or compel us to live without destroying what’s around us — we have to want those things, and need a way to do it within our own psyche/soul/will/mind. We need magic. More magic than we have, in fact; and not more of the same.
Maybe it’s old magic we need. Bringing back ritual, or oral stories, or nature revelation, would be significant, and might shock us out of our stupor. Maybe it’s the right mixture of different magics.
Or maybe we need some entirely new magic. None of us knows what that might be exactly, but we sure as hell aren’t going to find it by sitting on our hands, or insisting that magic isn’t real: that’s just another way of saying the current paradigm is the only paradigm there can ever be — that there can be no alternatives. Well, I’m sure that’s what some neolithic people thought about their culture too. Nothing lasts for ever, and every magic has its limitations. We’ve run up against the limits of ours, so let’s get cracking with something different. Let’s experiment. Let’s bring back old way. Let’s syncretize, pick-and-choose, and mix-and-match. Let’s be bold, and let’s not be satisfied with what we have.
More magic, not less; right now.
