The Book of No Magicks

[gurdonark]

I'm always intrigued by the mystical "I" things--incense, incantation, inward directedness. I once went to a rather high Anglican church service in England at Wakefield Cathedral, where the fellow wore a giant mitre and the incense wafted from swinging swing-things. I read about automatic writers and mystical, short-lived opium-laced mendicants, gifted in sketching and witty phrases, thirteensomes of Edwardian magicians and frenzied diarists. That sense that everything has treble meanings, and yet ends badly--I do not regret that my life lacks much of that.

When I was young, magic was spelled without a "k". There was magic in all sorts of curious places. The hallway doorknob caught the glow of a distant street light, and a demon's face appeared. I could fall asleep and dream of flight. I could imagine that I heard thoughts. I could send a kite aloft, and watch it flutter, miles away.

This kind of magic was practical magic, rather more like the hobbit magic in the Tolkien books than the
movie magic with Sandra Bullock in it. I've always valued those non-magic but magical-seeming skills, like woods lore and that deep intuitive sense--I know this feeling, I know this place.

It's now a science fiction truism that technology mimics magic--the notion of the "techno mage" has now descended from novel to nearly trite. But when I open my personal book of Life, then what if no incantations are present? What if I cannot summon thunder with my fingertips? What if I'm not fated to move mountains, or draw blood with a scratch of my palm, and see the future open before my eyes? What if that thing I see when I close my eyes is the inner portion of my eyelids? Why is it important to move mountains, when merely obtaining enough faith to fill a mustard seed would be Heaven enough?

"I saw the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world and I said groaning, 'What can get through from such snares?' Then I heard a voice saying to me, 'Humility'."--St. Anthony the Great.

I'm intrigued by the need to be special. I have a fair dose of it. A sort of grandeur-wish, a Gandalf moment.
Imagine Merlin, aging backwards, knowing what is to come--a power wrapped up in Fate.

But lately I see the frustrations that arise for people for whom the Fates refuse to measure and plan their destinies. Imagine Clotho, decling to spin, but just allowing the yarn of life to spin out everywhere.
Imagine the other Fates, waiting patiently, one with scissors, one ready to measure length, but the thread emanates in no particular order, and has no particular length or destination.

My own inclinations do not run toward the notion of a chaotic universe, governed only by laws not particularly enriching or useful to know. But I do wonder, somehow, why this being significant matters so much. I don't mean that in some deep, metaphysical sense--of course so many folks, including myself, want life to have meaning. I mean instead that I wonder "what if" one had to live as if one did the meaningful things, without any great assurance of the big picture. I never fully connected with that John Lennon song in which merely by imaging no Heaven or Hell, all the people would live life in peace. I suppose that I am less an optimist than John Lennon was in that song. Yet I am an enormous optimist.

So what to think if I imagine that my book of incantations raises nobody from the dead? What if my particular spells run no deeper than the ability to light a sparkler using a match, provided I am outside city limits? What if my book of the dead really has no life in it?

Perhaps if I knew that my spells cannot raise Lazarus,
then I'd have to focus on more practical things I can do in the face of death. If my life is to be more than winning some train ride to Heaven, then I will have to live life as though I'm doing more than trying to raise the fare at some mystic ticket counter. Perhaps one does lose oneself to save oneself. I imagine, sometimes, that if I could have one extraordinary power, it would be to have a cool flame come from my palm. I have no idea what metaphor that idea enacts within me, but it would be my "super power". I remember the old Inferior Five comic books, where the heroes all had nearly useless "powers". I choose for my useless power a radiating, heat-less, useless light--about palmward, please, radiating upward.

So if I live a life in which I only chant songs (and then, only if they are within my narrow vocal range) and in which I am neither the Wizard card, nor the last trumps, but instead the non-magical deck of cards that I see by the check-out line at Dollar General, with the requisite (but no more than the requisite) number of Jokers. I love, by the way, that Old Maid cards cost half price.

I sometimes think that the magic of inner calm is the strongest magic there can be. I remember sitting on open fields, staring up into passing clouds in blue skies. I remember driving down winding country roads, gasping at fields of susan flowers or tiny country churches, and feeling as though I'd found something for which my soul was longing, though it was nothing but a view from a Colt Vista wagon, with "Prairie Home Companion" in the background on public radio.

I imagine closing my eyes, and travelling to other dimensions, only they are not dimensions from Serling, Lovecraft or some elven-addled fantasy writer, but instead merely the dimensions of my imagination, staring at the red-hot insides of my eyelids.

I think that imagination is such a deeply desirable thing. Dreams are wonderful--and so powerful--but require so much work to control. I have never had the patience to be a vivid dreamer. But I am an entirely vivid daydreamer. I can fly in my daydreams. I can salt march and cure polio. I can even sometimes find the resolve to do the things I need to do when my daydreams are over.

I imagine the poet Poe, pondering weak and weary, then scribbling words about "nevermore"-ing ravens. I lack the tintinabulations to ponder ravens, and my weak/weary times tend to focus more on deadlines and the need for a diet soda. My pondering might be aided by getting out my cheap shortwave, just as my sight might be aided by my 7 dollar Mohrson binoculars. I can't see the exotic birds, but nearby butterflies come completely into focus.

I don't think my magic has pentangles, nor summoned spirits, nor ringing bells. I have never seen book nor candle, outside a late night movie. I am more at home in the dollar cinema than in trance.

Sometimes I think that I want less magic and charms in life, and fewer people killed on the street in Monrovia. I do not mean to criticize anyone's beliefs, as magic as I use it here is not a literal thing, or even a spiritual thing, but a metaphor for all the artificial ways in which one stalks grandeur, but finds it an elusive prey.

What if the solution is not going to be found in some trumpet which knocks down Jericho's walls, but in people who live as if no deus et machina will fix this mess? What if I'm just supposed to get out my broom, and sweep rather than fly on it?

I have never been to Tibet, and I have no personal mandalas. But what if my own symbol is less a mystic
image, and more a way of escape from this humdrum?
I choose a life in which I have no ability to get the Holy Ghost across, but in which I live as if I can give a little comfort.

I love the idea of a quilt. A hand-made thing, which inspires so many hopes and wishes and warmths and even prayers. I love to run my fingers along the pattern--wedding ring, crazyquilt, whatever it may be. A person planned and plaited it. Yet it casts a spell of its own. It's a little incantation, I suppose, a thing of beauty, if one only has the Second Sight. I have no third eye, which is too bad, because when one has three cowlicks, one should have 3 eyes.

I would say I want to be Shaker furniture, but it is always so pricey and expected, when it is supposed to be just simple and filled with grace. But let me instead be someone who relaxes in joy and does the right thing, and that's charmed enough for me.

via edit Nothing in this post is intended to imply that magic does not exist, that those who practice magic are in the wrong, or that a way of looking at the world which includes magic is in any way wrong. The "negative reference" above to some of the tragically short-lived folks in the early decade of the last sentence who encountered certain difficulties is intended to refer to a narrow range of persons, and not to the concept of magic, paganism or the earth religions in general. The "no magicks" in the title and text refers to my own lack, and not to some desire to denigrate those whose beliefs are different than mine.

Comments

[gbdances.livejournal.com]

I think many people that see themselves as "magic(k)al" think that other people lead ordinary, boring and uninformed lives. And I think that people who scoff at so-called "witches" and "sorcerors" think that their lives are out of their control. Well, the first part is only partially true. The poet, saint, magician, witch or seer leads an ordinary life, too. The difference is that they is able (or willing) to see the extraordinary in the ordinary, or to see the magical in the mundane. It is that "translation" that a true "wizard" makes, to describe something absolutely commonplace and ordinary as if it were truly a unique moment in time, extraordinary and absolutely exquisite because of its solitary being, that identifies a true person of magic. If you don't see each moment as fraught with that possibility, each thing filled up with that essence of potentiality, then perhaps you will be a reciter of spells, but never a witch or "magical being". And that is something that cannot be taught, unless you can truly teach how to live, as an individual, informed by one's true self and attuned to one's true place in the universe, and its place in you. People who are magical are like poets, in a way. There are many true poets in the world. Only some of them use words to frame their poems. ANYONE has some "poetential". It only requires the willingness to see and hear the world in a different way - a way that finds everything significant, and expresses solitarity with that significance in a personally significant manner. Alas, we live in a world that does not think living "poetically" (or "magically" if you will) is either possible, practical or reasonable. And so we have many who we classify as insane, because they refuse to drink from this well that causes such blindness and separation from any kind of "divine" spark, and insist on sipping from their own private supply.

The truly magic(k)al act is akin to the principle of Occam's Razor: the simplest path is almost always the most efficacious route. For example, if you want to change the mood of a room, when you enter it, smile. If you would have your neighbors treat you kindly and with respect, go and do thou likewise.

And what if there is magic(k) afoot in the world, and you just don't see it? Where does that put you?

All religions, be they considered Christian, pagan, heathen, animist, witchcraft, etc. have as their basis a structured system of ethics. And what is the basis of ethics. Thou, before I. Your interests must be considered before I enforce or move to achieve mine. How that is accomplished, whether with prayer, mandala, spellcraft, a handshake or smile, communication between equals, or whatever, is merely the means. And those means justify the end. Nothing is filled with grace, unless it is seen as such.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Many roads, one Rome. I revere any magic that leads to a source.

[gbdances.livejournal.com]

But there are sources outside each person's scope of understanding, just as each map does not contain the details of every place that is. To question another's journey, suggesting that perhaps their way is somehow less valid than another, is to limit the possibilities of being to one's own experience.

Perhaps Rome is not the only destination. Every step shows different paths, along which different journeys lay. Certainly, one would like to think that some goals are shared. But just wishing it were so does not necessarily make it so. Crying out "Astronomy, astronomy" does not provide the crier with a guaranteed knowledge of the cosmos. For each seeker, different tools are required. As the Hindus say, the divine appears in the form that can be comprehended by the one who looks to meet it. It is a given that there is more to the divine than that; but can a small pail of water hold the entire ocean?

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Here I guess that I feel badly, because my intention was not to question the path of those who follow different paths than mine, and in particular my intention was not to question those for whom magic is a day to day reality in more than a limited sense.
I do not find all paths equal for me, but I do not mean to criticize someone who is pursuing a different path. The last thing I meant to do was to
make someone feel as if I wished to attack their way, and yet I seem to have done just that.

I would delete the post, but I suppose I will let it stay up, so that I can learn from the experience.

my word, what words!

[asphalteden.livejournal.com]

I hope that kind gurdonark does not delete this post, but in the meantime, dear Ogden:

Once you really get thinking about thinking,
It's worse than drinking.
You begin to think that because you think, you exist,
And you proceed to think that anything not thought
about by you has no more existence than the clench
after you have unclenched your fist.
You become so involved in the spirit
That you think a noise is not a noise unless you are
there to hear it,
And speaking of noise, by this time you are thinking so
dreamily
That you think your voice when you listen to it in the
bathtub rings out Wagnerianly, or at least Frimly.
Your id is now cooking with iridium;
You think that a couple of Martinis improve your
French in both accent and idiom.
The only trouble is that the French have been thinking,
too,
And they think faster than you,
Which they naturally have to by at least two thirds
Just to keep up with their own words,
Because you may be the language-ropin' champion of
Texas, mah deah suh,
But still they can say, "Qu'est-ce que c'est que ca,"
quicker than you can say, "Huh?"
Nevertheless, I think that nothing is but thinking makes
it so,
And I intend to take two Martinis and sing "Frere
Jacques" in my bath and think the French into
talking slow.

I never flunked philosophy, myself. But I do often recall why it was so much better to read than hear.

[ranunculus.livejournal.com]

I love the line that Rome is not the only destination. Great metaphor.

Well said

[skygoodwill.livejournal.com]

Re: Well said

[gbdances.livejournal.com]

I think perhaps our definitions vary.

To me, if ANYTHING is filled with grace, all things are. To posit otherwise is to put oneself in a position of authority the duties of which are beyond the scope of human understanding. It is not a mere human decision or definition, if it truly is. It is the property of anything that communicates with it, be that anything animal, vegetable, mineral or ethereal. There is no handle that fills or refuses to fill. There is no on/off switch, except for the blinders with which we shield our eyes from the responsibility of being whole.

Re: Well said

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

This interests me. I'm glad you're making these points, as I am learning from this.

[skygoodwill.livejournal.com]

Re: Well said

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

all very thought provoking. I wish everyone did cooperate.

But let me instead be someone who relaxes in joy and does the right thing, and that's charmed enough

[poetbear.livejournal.com]

and it should be enough for any of us, too. after meeting you,
i believe that you indeed have your own magic, however you wish
to spell it, Bob. you have the gift to put people at their
ease and feel they can be themselves. sometimes all of us forget
that the simplest thing is the best. not the easiest, but the best. ~paul

Re: But let me instead be someone who relaxes in joy and does the right thing, and that's charmed en

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Paul.

Re: But let me instead be someone who relaxes in joy and does the right thing, and that's charmed en

[poetbear.livejournal.com]

yvw~paul

[stardances.livejournal.com]

http://www.livejournal.com/users/stardances/76438.html?mode=reply

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing that link with me, and for letting me know your thoughts on this post.

[marstokyo.livejournal.com]

Do you remember when you were getting together with your friend, Scott, and experimenting with your electric football game sounds? When you wrote about having the idea, and collaborating to actually produce the thing, you had such magic and excitement inside you. I know that's what you long for deeply--- that feeling, of freedom, of creation...but it doesn't come by very often for you, does it? Because you constantly question yourself, you question your own magic (do I have it? can I get it? do I really need it?) --questions and recriminations are the death of the creative force(magic). If you spent less time analyzing yourself and more time accepting whatever it is you did--you'd feel that magic more often I suspect.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think that's astute. I handle things in one way, and others handle things in other ways.

[mery-bast.livejournal.com]

What if I'm just supposed to get out my broom, and sweep rather than fly on it?

This sums up perfectly a lot of the qualms I've been having about the "magick" I've seen practiced lately. Very insightful post- thank you for sharing your thoughts.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I see I have failed to set forth what I mean "for my life only", and instead come off as belittling some. My point was instead that in my life, I wonder if I cannot do more with a different way of looking at things. But even in an effort to find a path, it's possible to come off as intolerant ,and that's a lesson for me.

[mery-bast.livejournal.com]

That's just it though- I sincerely didn't interpret your post as intolerant or close-minded or condescending. You verbalized a lot of the same issues I've been having and did it in a more articulate way than I could have. If someone wrote a similar post about buddhism rather than magick, I still wouldn't have been offended by it...

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I think, perhaps, that so many people say so many negative things about earth religions and paganism and alternative ways of doing things, that it is more than understandable that this post, with its use of "movie/TV imagery", might offend. My regret is not so much that I think what I think, but that I could have easily avoided the hurt feelings with a bit more context. It's a drafting flaw, I think. The reason I didn't talk about literal magickal practice was to keep a light-hearted tone and make clear that's not really what I meant, but I missed the mark.

I want you to know I appreciate your kindness in reassuring me.

bubble, bubble, toil and trouble

[wayofthelotus.livejournal.com]

I read your post, Robert, and found it to be a wonderful representation of your own opinions, rather than anything of an insulting nature. And I believe in magic, the unexplainable, and mystical happenings that science might otherwise dismiss. My great-grandmother possessed a highly advanced intuition, for example, which allowed for any number of circumstances in which she knew something had happened or was about to happen, including the moment her own father passed away, and I like to believe I've been gifted with the same natural ability. This doesn't mean that I am hurt by the fact that my fiance is more of a realist and likes to tease me about my Acadian rooted sixth sense. It is simply his opinion, which I value.

I don't mean that in some deep, metaphysical sense--of course so many folks, including myself, want life to have meaning. I mean instead that I wonder "what if" one had to live as if one did the meaningful things, without any great assurance of the big picture.

This is the main point I took away from your post, because there is, in society, a tendency to latch on to the unexplainable or out of reach, if only to make the explainable easier to bear. We don't know what the big picture really is, and may never know, and it is only through faith or belief we are given an idea of the possibilities.

So please do not feel you have to police your own journal in order to avoid what you are told is insensitive. You are inspiring and your posts encourage forward thinking, which is, in its way, another kind of magic. If anything, you are one of the more considerate people on livejournal when it comes to pleasing your audience, and I am so grateful to have stumbled upon your place in this world. Thank you.

Re: bubble, bubble, toil and trouble

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

The funny thing is that my own belief structure certainly does not exclude what might be viewed by some as supernatural and by others as truly natural.

But I do like to say things more carefully, and with more precision, lest, as here, I offend people without my meaning being understood. Sadly, sometimes, I offend people just because we don't see things eye to eye, but in this instance, each LJ friend offended is a good person, and it is my phrasing that is at fault.

[ranunculus.livejournal.com]

I've read way, way more than my share of Science Fiction. Starting in the early 60's when I discovered Heinlen's childrens books. For a long, long time I read them for the story. I loved the magic, and still do.
Once upon a long time ago work was really, really slow. I filed for unemployment and was required to go through their jobs program. Part of that program was teaching us how to write a resume. I thought I knew that part. The resume I submitted to the teacher was returned, and she worked with me for a while. When I stated that I had no marketable skills outside the theatre she said: "I'll bet you have all kinds of skills. What did you do during your work days? Think over your jobs and break them down into specific tasks that might be applicable to jobs outside the theatre." Doing that exercise opened my eyes to an entire universe. Suddenly I had options, marketable skills, and far more confidence. As it happens work in my field picked up immediately afterward so I never had to leave my beloved theatre but the confidence stayed on.

What difference is there between the woman who helped me in that class and a sorceress? With words she handed me the sacred potion that gave me vision. Did she see herself as a sorceress? I will never know.
My belief is that you have much magic within yourself. Can you move mountains? Maybe not physically in the blink of an eye. Can you move the mountain in someone's head by helping them to see in a different way? I submit that you do that on a regular basis, and never see it as magic.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

The form of magic you describe--that is the magic I understand. I do not mean that the other kind does not exist--I mean that I practice the kind you describe.

[ranunculus.livejournal.com]

Ok! :)

I should read posts such as yours *after* I have my morning coffee.

I do believe in the other kind, but I also believe that it is often subtle, a quiet magic that cannot be forced. I've had a few too many unexplainable incidents in my life, and have come to recognise the certianty that the "second sight" has acompanying it in my head.
Do we all have it all of the time? I don't know. Will you find it if you seek it. I don't know. I don't usually find it if I try to seek it out, but I often find it by paying attention and listening. Sorting out what is personal desire and what is magic.

[voodoukween.livejournal.com]

oh the controversies your ruminations provoke!

you are so NOT simple :)

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I am simple enough to wish for less controversy, and careful enough to draft more carefully next time :).

Art, magick, obviously not my strongest journal topics. I'm better at butterflies and chess.

[milly-bogtrot.livejournal.com]

Being a believer in magick in all its forms myself, please be assured that nothing in your post offended. It's your journal, and you are stating your opinion. I personally found nothing in this that 'attacked' my beliefs, but it did make me want to help you find a little more magick yourself :)