Magical Truths

"By the time I was ten I had developed a secret fictional character, a child with a silver circlet, and before I slept each night I told myself stories in which she was the central actor and in which novels and television became the basis for her scripts. The nightly stories became almost sacred inner worlds.


Perhaps my shyness made the romance more central than it might have been. But I have almost been troubled and intrigued by the intensity: I always wanted to make sense of the vividness of my own daydreaming. I was enchanted by the imaginings, and yet I always knew, when I was a child, that the make-believe was never real. I never have and do not now 'believe' in magic."
Persuasions of the Witch Craft - T. M. Luhrmann


In order to better understand how people immerse themselves in magical rituals and come to believe in their truth anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann spent eighteen months immersed in doing what people do in order to become magicians.


Reading her book made me aware that many of the "magical" beliefs coloring my world are a hop-scotch arrangement of ideas gained from fantasy books, movies, self help books, therapeutic tales, tarot cards and the dreams of frustrated clerks at the turn of the century. Becoming aware of the truth made me face the possibility that magic is nothing but make-believe.


However, separating the real from the not so real opened my heart to a whole new magic. The magic-of the not-knowing. Every morning I wake up and set sail into the unknown. I know not who I truly am, where I come from and where I will depart to. I do not know whom I will encounter during my day and who I will be when the day draws to a close.


Each night I drift into sleep without knowing where my dreams will take me or what I won't remember when I wake up.


Sometimes I catch a glimpse of truth in the movement of wind through a group of singing leaves, in a line of poetry, in a well constructed academic argument, in the voice of a friend, in the flick of a tail disappearing around the corner.


Alternatively, like a magician diving into a whirlpool, I allow myself to sink into my feelings of confusion, depression and not knowing. There hidden deep behind the no longer wanting to try and the I will never be loved because I don't know the truth and I don't care anyway because I am angry and I dislike this world and everyone in it, rests the knowledge that I do want to try, I do want to love and like everyone else I do want to be happy.


Through this moment a spell of forgetfulness lifts from me. I am filled with wonder at the magic that surrounds me.


"Trance states are states in which we narrow and constrict our attention (and our sense of selfhood) by identifying with our thoughts, feelings, and emotions in a matter which seems to be autonomous - rather than recognizing that we are the knower of these trance states, which are transient. We actually go in and out of trance states all day long.

What is exciting about recognizing and experiencing the multitude of trance states we create throughout the day is that it leads to a transient experience of oneself. Each trance state has a beginning point, a middle point, and an end point. As you begin to to step outside your trances by identifying these component parts, what you begin to see is that the only common factor behind the series of trance states is you."
Trances people live - Stephen Wolinsky.


For me the journey through these trance states are the ultimate magical quest. On our journey we meet many strange and wonderful inner characters. Like the hero or heroine in a fantasy novel we sometimes discover our greatest magic by accident and sometimes we discover hidden strengths when battling demons of depression and self-hatred.


To pursue our quest sometimes requires immense perseverance and courage and sometimes we simply wander into a magical glade where true knowledge interrupts its run through tall purple grasses to lick our faces until we shout with laughter.


"In childhood we could project all our own pent-up fears onto the little match girl, our jealousy onto the stepsisters, and our rage onto the giants, and then go to sleep in peace. We did not have to deal with these fears, jealousies and rages as our own unabsorbed states.


As adults we can no longer project out of us which is in us and belongs to us. Our task is to wake up and try to understand what is going on in our own subconscious, because its dynamics are controlling our outer behavior. "
The Maiden King - Robert Bly and Marion Woodman.


And so we get up each morning and set into a day where anything can happen in our inner and outer worlds. And we encounter many other living beings who are also drifting in and out of dreams of reality.


And sometimes deep magic occurs. For a moment we see the world of another through their eyes, we hear the music of their hearts through their ears and we feel the magic of their spirit as it enfolds their world.


"My training there had taught me to sense the spirit in everything, and to recognize that for the most part the world went its way with little interest in humankind. The raven that croaked from the rooftop did not know that the man who listened would hear a message - it was the man whose mind must be altered in order to find meaning in it, not the bird. Spirit moved through all things; to learn to live in harmony with that movement was the way of the wise."
Priestess of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley.

ps. Please forgive my continued absences in blog land. The lightning, forming part of our highveld summers, loves to play through the wires connecting me to your many worlds.