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On Getting What You Want
I want to write a more serious piece on Christian unlearning, so jotting some ideas down:
a lot of fairytales/films about magic have this undertone of "getting things by magic is wrong and cheating", things like the Magician's Apprentice or the end of Bedknobs and Broomsticks where she gives up doing magic, or Labyrinth and Wizard of Oz where there's no place like home, or the Craft etc. There's an unconscious morality here, that things gotten by magic is Bad and will Backfire. That's occasionally true in our folklore too, like being paid in fairy gold that turns to dry leaves.
But one can think of these stories as propaganda, stories that are told to discourage you from doing magic. or in more prosaic terms, stories told to back up capitalism or a protestant work ethic: hard work pays! don't be lazy, don't steal, the only valid way to get something is by working hard in an unjust world and maybe saving up for it. The shortcuts of magic are an obvious threat to that model; and when you read witch trial records, it is distressingly common for victims to describe the devil or the fairies bringing them food and banquets. You can't have the things you want, because life is suffering - it starts as Christian humility, acceptance of a fallen world, and it;s an essential tool to prevent the mob overturning the social order and building a heaven here in this world where they too live in happiness and luxury.
We can't undo those messages, simply by converting to paganism. They live within us. Recently, I've been praying for extravagant things; my wildest hearts desire. It feels good. In the past, I've avoided prayer because it is bad to ask for things, bad to want things, bad to be greedy; but these are gods, so why not. These are otherworldly entities with immense power, why not say exactly what it is you want - rather than skittering around the edges with the unspoken belief that divine intervention is a limited resource (and this is tempered by the fact that, within pagan lore, our spirits generally aren't omnipotent and require payback).
Still, I find it very grounding practice for me. I struggle with magic because I don't feel there's anything I want. But that's horsecrap. There's loads I want, I've just been so beaten down for self-expression in my life that I no longer recognise my own wants and emotions. I don't want to be broke; I want to be with my beloved; I want to own massive tracts of lands and rewild them; I want to resolve my gender angst; I want to have a sense of purpose in the morning greater than awaking to the reality of being disabled and on benefits in a world that sees that as good as dead; I want to plant hollyhocks in my garden; I want to be a better cook; I want to go back to study; I want my home to be tidier; I want to inherit an island and convert the inhabitants to a politely pagan apple-growing economy; and that's just in the category of selfish things, before we even get onto prayers for others and the wider world. I find that making time in the day to verbalise these desires is good practice, I feel better for having made them, for speaking them into being.
That follows on to magic, which depending on what you do may-or-may-not overlap with prayer. Again, how many whoa slow down there barriers we have, even within magical movements. Karma and the threefold return, doing divinations first, checking there aren't nonmagical avenues, trying to discern if magic is appropriate, like everything just squeezing the breaks against spellwork. As a naturally cautious person, this has a disproportionately successful impact on stopping me ever trying anything.
I've been trying to break this by thinking thus: if the god of the witches or the mother of enchantments are spirits that govern witchcraft, they are empowered by our spellcasting not diminished. We see computer games which, for reasons of game design, use mana or similar as a resource you "spend" to cast spells, like you spend money at the shop for bread; a budget that needs careful managing. And in fiction, authors also need to put a stopper on magical characters not fixing everything - and so we get Gandalf becoming tired after casting spells, or more philosophical messages once again about how the integrity of the journey would be diminished if they solved it with magic.
But these are narratives created by artists so they can make better art, not lessons about how magic works; and I wonder whether they put limits on our imaginations that in-turn impact what we can magically accomplish. What if when I called upon a magical patron for aid this made them stronger, just as I can imagine that attending an orgy could empower Inanna or practicing a martial art empower Mars. What if I didn't run out of magic, if it wasn't scarce within me or the world around me; what if, in fact, like an old violin, it warms up the more it is played, that we're going about it the wrong way to think of magic as what's within our spell-wallets and looking instead to different mental models - like an echo, or a tubular bell, or dropping something into a lake, something that increases as it is done.
I'm not sure to what extent I endorse these views; my magic is poor, and my practice shoddy, and easily derailed by worries such as these. I can only speak of the impact these new ways of thinking has on me, which is to feel alive with the desire to touch the infinite. And that's not a bad place to start.
a lot of fairytales/films about magic have this undertone of "getting things by magic is wrong and cheating", things like the Magician's Apprentice or the end of Bedknobs and Broomsticks where she gives up doing magic, or Labyrinth and Wizard of Oz where there's no place like home, or the Craft etc. There's an unconscious morality here, that things gotten by magic is Bad and will Backfire. That's occasionally true in our folklore too, like being paid in fairy gold that turns to dry leaves.
But one can think of these stories as propaganda, stories that are told to discourage you from doing magic. or in more prosaic terms, stories told to back up capitalism or a protestant work ethic: hard work pays! don't be lazy, don't steal, the only valid way to get something is by working hard in an unjust world and maybe saving up for it. The shortcuts of magic are an obvious threat to that model; and when you read witch trial records, it is distressingly common for victims to describe the devil or the fairies bringing them food and banquets. You can't have the things you want, because life is suffering - it starts as Christian humility, acceptance of a fallen world, and it;s an essential tool to prevent the mob overturning the social order and building a heaven here in this world where they too live in happiness and luxury.
We can't undo those messages, simply by converting to paganism. They live within us. Recently, I've been praying for extravagant things; my wildest hearts desire. It feels good. In the past, I've avoided prayer because it is bad to ask for things, bad to want things, bad to be greedy; but these are gods, so why not. These are otherworldly entities with immense power, why not say exactly what it is you want - rather than skittering around the edges with the unspoken belief that divine intervention is a limited resource (and this is tempered by the fact that, within pagan lore, our spirits generally aren't omnipotent and require payback).
Still, I find it very grounding practice for me. I struggle with magic because I don't feel there's anything I want. But that's horsecrap. There's loads I want, I've just been so beaten down for self-expression in my life that I no longer recognise my own wants and emotions. I don't want to be broke; I want to be with my beloved; I want to own massive tracts of lands and rewild them; I want to resolve my gender angst; I want to have a sense of purpose in the morning greater than awaking to the reality of being disabled and on benefits in a world that sees that as good as dead; I want to plant hollyhocks in my garden; I want to be a better cook; I want to go back to study; I want my home to be tidier; I want to inherit an island and convert the inhabitants to a politely pagan apple-growing economy; and that's just in the category of selfish things, before we even get onto prayers for others and the wider world. I find that making time in the day to verbalise these desires is good practice, I feel better for having made them, for speaking them into being.
That follows on to magic, which depending on what you do may-or-may-not overlap with prayer. Again, how many whoa slow down there barriers we have, even within magical movements. Karma and the threefold return, doing divinations first, checking there aren't nonmagical avenues, trying to discern if magic is appropriate, like everything just squeezing the breaks against spellwork. As a naturally cautious person, this has a disproportionately successful impact on stopping me ever trying anything.
I've been trying to break this by thinking thus: if the god of the witches or the mother of enchantments are spirits that govern witchcraft, they are empowered by our spellcasting not diminished. We see computer games which, for reasons of game design, use mana or similar as a resource you "spend" to cast spells, like you spend money at the shop for bread; a budget that needs careful managing. And in fiction, authors also need to put a stopper on magical characters not fixing everything - and so we get Gandalf becoming tired after casting spells, or more philosophical messages once again about how the integrity of the journey would be diminished if they solved it with magic.
But these are narratives created by artists so they can make better art, not lessons about how magic works; and I wonder whether they put limits on our imaginations that in-turn impact what we can magically accomplish. What if when I called upon a magical patron for aid this made them stronger, just as I can imagine that attending an orgy could empower Inanna or practicing a martial art empower Mars. What if I didn't run out of magic, if it wasn't scarce within me or the world around me; what if, in fact, like an old violin, it warms up the more it is played, that we're going about it the wrong way to think of magic as what's within our spell-wallets and looking instead to different mental models - like an echo, or a tubular bell, or dropping something into a lake, something that increases as it is done.
I'm not sure to what extent I endorse these views; my magic is poor, and my practice shoddy, and easily derailed by worries such as these. I can only speak of the impact these new ways of thinking has on me, which is to feel alive with the desire to touch the infinite. And that's not a bad place to start.