What Magic Is and Isn’t

My trusty 11 year old wand

I live a very magical life and I am so deeply grateful for it. A magical life is a wonderful and wonder-filled existence. It’s a life of delight, of gratitude, of beauty and of power. A magical life is a life of growth and joy, of surprise and rhyme. Of rhythm.

What it is not is an easy life. A painless life. A secure life. A smooth life. A magical life is not a small life, or a predictable life, or an acceptable life. And as I already said, it is not an easy life.

I say this because when people think of “magic”, sometimes they think of it as an instant, process-less, lazy path. As in, you snap your fingers and boom! There you have it. Which is actually true, but do you have any idea of how much work is going on unseen, beyond the veil, underneath the surface in order to make the snapping of the fingers a powerful spell that makes shit happen? Unless you are a seasoned witch, no you don’t, so let me tell you.

Our human meatsuits need polarity to make sense of the universe and life. Day and night, male and female, good and evil, these are all helpful constructs to navigate life. They are also illusions, as we are all one, and the unity of everything is the ultimate reality – but this truth is not helpful when we’re trying to get the grocery shopping done, raise the children or run the businesses, because our human brains would be in a constant state of awe and implosion at the beauty of infinite love and that is not a very functional state from a meatsuit perspective. So, we use polarity as markers for navigating our human existence.

And to be a powerful witch, you need to surf paradox on the daily: get to know, accept, and inhabit all the polarities within you: your “good” and your “evil”, your “male” and your “female”, your “analytical” and your “creative”, your “conscious” and “unconscious”, your “victim” and your “perpetrator” – and these are all in quotes because the boundaries between them are not and have never been all that clear. In fact, I would argue that a whole lot of our current disease as a species stems from trying to hold these false dichotomies. So integrating them in your whole system – your body, your mind, your soul, your spirit, your emotions, your thoughts, etc. is what will give you access to magic that is transformative and a snap.

Again, do you have any idea how much work that is? First of all, the tools, methods, and practices that help us do that have been ridiculed, banned, persecuted and shamed for a few thousand years (because they work and if we all have access to Deep Power it makes it harder for a few to hoard other kinds of power). So this wisdom is not super easy to access. Second of all, once you have an in to the knowledge and wisdom of the Old Ways, you need to actually walk the fucking Path. Do you have any idea what it will take for you to face your deepest fears, to accept the most disgusting and shameful aspects of yourself, to release your closest held traumas, to truly understand that your pain is the world’s pain and that the Earth’s healing is also your own? 

Let me give you a taste, at least from my experience: a shitton of crying, of dancing in the rain, of writing, of hugging my friends, of feeling uncomfortable so much and so often as I speak the truth that no one wanted to hear but had to be spoken, days of loneliness, weeks of loneliness, months of loneliness, years of loneliness until they transmuted into solitude, physical pain, fear, fear, fear – and doing it anyway, fasting, spending several nights in the woods alone not talking to anyone, journaling, hours upon hours of meditation, trance work, energy healing…and that’s just what’s at the top of my head.

So when folks are like “OMG!!! You are so lucky!!! Your life is so amazing!!! You do all the fun things!!! You get the parking spot in front of the venue every time!!!!” and so on, they have no idea the kind of work it takes to clearly and righteously own your power.

And also: I don’t believe I would be as powerful a witch as I am if I wasn’t also an activist. Because like I mentioned, the power comes from integrating the poles, the extremes. And I can’t claim my own power without looking at the context. My own focused attention and agency and practice can only go so far if I don’t address the system that wants to exploit me until it disposes of me. I am not immune to all of the isms just because I “think positive”, or cast spells. So when some folks out there tell you that you “create your own reality” and can “think your way into the life of your dreams”, (while I 100% believe that they are correct), if they are not also telling you that the system is rotten and toxic and needs to be transformed you can tell them to shove their crystal and green smoothie because these are not witches that are walking their own path of integration. And as such are not in a position to tell you shit.

So, when I say I WORK magic, it’s because it’s work. The most joyful, fulfilling, beautiful, powerful and enjoyable work humans get to do, but work nonetheless. I strongly suggest you consider working magic if you don’t already, because as humans, work is unavoidable. Please don’t buy the story that work is a bad thing. It’s been a bad thing for many of us because we work in exploitative and abusive systems, but actual magical work is the path of liberation. May you find it and walk it in grace. So mote it be.