The word “magic” has many meanings—it is linked to ideas of
deception, trickery, and irrationality. But let’s put the negative associations
aside and focus on the magic that interests anthropologists and psychical
researchers.[i]
There is in fact real magic in
nature. In each of us there is what we can call a master
magician. This “magician” inhabits
the secret depths of our minds.
Most of us are oblivious to its existence and its strange potentials. The magician within?
What else but our own mind, our own soul? Magic is about the elusive powers we inwardly possess to
transcend the obstacles of matter, time and space.
The problem is that with the modern triumph of capitalism
and rationalistic materialism, a condition set in that Max Weber called disenchantment—in other words, the death
of the magical imagination. In
place of the latter, we have witnessed the triumph of the calculating
mind. The apotheosis of the
computer and the mechanization of experience are symptoms of this disenchantment.
Disenchantment is the deadening of the psyche, the paralysis
of the spirit, the murder of mind.
What can we do about it? Be
steam-rollered or fight back? That is the question. What to do to re-connect
with the neglected magician within?
Human beings from early history discovered and codified
methods of waking up our inner powers--fasting, meditating, chanting, etc. All sorts of mind-body exercises,
ascetic practices and group rituals are used to carry on dialogues with the
latent powers of our own minds. A
wealth of information on this is available, waiting for us to pick up on the
trail of our onward journeys.
Is it possible to transcend the common constraints of mundane
life—and create magic? It would
seem from a thousand stories that the answer is “yes”. There is no simple formula
for how such ventures into Magic come about. More often than not they arise in
the course of a crisis, perhaps when it feels as if our back is up against the
wall and the situation is hopeless.
But one can be proactive. The spectrum of magic-inducing practices seems to me as
infinite as the mind is inventive.
Along the journey of everyday life are opportunities to make magic out
of our choices and perceptions. And
there is the field of coincidences that we move through at all times, sometimes
so resonant with meaning that they seem like magic.
I could recount many such stories. Some are dramatic, as is one
recounted to me by a nurse. Driving
her car, she wrote that she came to a stop at a busy cross-section in the town
of Edgewater, New Jersey. About to
step on the gas pedal when the light turned green, she saw her dead mother in
the street before her, and jammed on the brakes. Just then a Mack truck ran the red light, shooting past
her. Had she not braked, she would
have been killed.
Something acted
through her mind that produced the apparition that saved her life. I call that magical: an extraordinary phenomenon of suddenly expanded mental
capacity. Somehow her mind
produced an apparition of her mother at the exact instant necessary to get her
to brake, and thus save her life.
Who knew that we had such strange capacities? Common sense and mainline science are
baffled, and walk away, usually quite silent, after hearing such stories. Even so, such stories are a
constant throughout history—a perpetual metaphysical tease.
In this case, we have two ways to interpret the story, assuming,
as I do, that it’s true. Either
the apparition was produced by the nurse’s subliminal mind or it was produced
by the ghost of the nurse’s Mom herself. Just as likely, the event may have required the cooperation
of the nurse’s subliminal mind and her
Mom’s spirit. On either
interpretation, we have a piece of evidence for the reality of an unknown
master magician within.
[i] De Martino’s
The World of Magic explains how 19th
century anthropologists and folklorists ignored the reality of magical powers. Much
of what we call magic overlaps religion, and in fact the magical pervades almost
everything that humans do.
Don't know about magic, but I definitely believe in guardian angels. About thirty years ago my son and I were sitting at a stop light in a little Vega (small car) when the light changed. I hesitated before pulling because he said or did something and it's a good thing I did. A commercial dump truck rand the red light on the cross street at a high rate of speed. We would have been a smear in the street if I had gone. Something like this has happened to me three times now so I tend to be a little paranoid about pulling off from lights.
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