–– EVERYDAY MAGIC ––

My friend George in Texas has a number of parts in this essay. For starters, he pointed me to the following tale some years ago. I don’t know where it originated to give proper credit, especially as the story circulates through the internet in various forms. But, it is very touching and a fine way to begin talking about Magic.

“When the newborn infant was brought home from the hospital, the two-year-old son asked to hold the smaller child. But when the infant was put into his arms, the boy would say that he wanted to be ALONE with the baby. The parents didn’t think that was a good idea.

“A few months went by and still the two-year-old insisted that he wanted to be alone with the baby. The parents put it off as long as they could, hoping that the older child would forget, but his demands just got more and more persistent.

“Finally, they agreed to leave the two children in a room alone for a few minutes. Standing just outside the room, they listened carefully, while their son was finally alone with the baby.

“The two-year-old whispered loudly to the newborn: ‘Tell me what God is like, cause I’m starting to forget.’”

To this writer’s view, most all humans — young and old — have been forgetting God and God’s magic from very early in life and continue so through their years. That is especially true in the modernized, civilized West.

God and Magic have been essential to human beliefs everywhere for thousands of years. Even today, magic is believed and honored in many parts of the world.

Paradoxically, belief in magic — the power to influence events through mysterious, unaccountable means — is almost universal. Really?

You see, most everyone has his or her own magical ideas — some call them superstitions. That seems to be the case despite our common obeisance to the reigning scientific model and our general distaste for “superstitious and magical ideas.” Much of modern magical thought has been in fact spawned by churches. Members are given the lead to empower rote prayers, lines from scriptures, and rituals emulating priests and ministers. Other present-day magical beliefs are simply based on fears, like not walking under a ladder or in front of a black cat. Or they may relate to things like getting help from the “magic parking-spot angel.” But, there are many others. Surely, the reader can quickly think of some.

Where does praying to angels and asking the aid of other less exalted beings begin? My friend George fits here again, because he might call all of this “magical thinking.”

BTW: Isn’t the very idea of “thinking” quite magical? Does any scientist or physician really know how we think? The brain and the mind hidden amidst it are still pretty much terra incognita.

How did magical thinking ever get started? Why does it persist — here there and almost everywhere in various guises? If there is no such thing as magic, why is the word in such common usage?

Here is an analogy which should quickly illustrate the state of things: What we call stage magic is akin to counterfeit money. If there was no real money, the counterfeit kind would never have appeared. Simple logic. The same follows for stage magic. Without true magic, what we call stage magic would never have appeared and found place in society — good bad or indifferent. Harry Houdini and David Copperfield would never have gained an audience.

Fake magic, or fake anything, pretty much proves the case for the real thing — to one degree or another. Without real crab, there would be no fake crab. No fake eyelashes without real eyelashes. No false god without the Real Thing. No false magic unless there be genuine magic.

God is Real and so is Magic. The writing is on all kinds of walls, for those who care and dare to read. Let’s begin at the Beginning to generate some perspective for Magic in Everyday life.

POINT I

God is the original magician.

The Divine created the visible universe out of the unseen realms of pure energy. Traditions East and West give the idea much credence. Science hasn’t gotten there yet. Except to suggest Creation may have started with The Big Bang!

Interestingly, that simple idea blends with those of the Eastern Scriptures as well as the Christian Bible which tell of the Creator singing a Song or speaking a Word. “God said let there be light.” The Divine moved [and continuously moves] the waters — the ethers — to bring out of the void the tangible, visible, material worlds.

“The visible world is governed by the invisible.”
Sebastian Wirdig, 17th century.

POINT II

Real magic is based on the ability to work with Energy.

Energies lie behind and within the whole of creation. Every thing we perceive is “concretized” Energy. Much, much more in the universe is largely unimagined and unperceived because it is tenuous, lacking in density. EVERYTHING which happens in and around us is based on ENERGY. Our eyes and brains “solidify” what we call material things.

In the modern era, we manipulate Matter [Mass] in all sorts of ways to fulfill our needs and wishes with the aid of technology and science. That is so, even as we are just now beginning to “crack codes” which allow us to manipulate Energy in ways similar to the Divine and to true Magicians. The discovery of the planet Pluto and the awesome releases of atomic energy give us hints of what yet lies hidden from our usual vision.

Everything, seen and unseen, is really Energy in some particle or wave form. Einstein and modern physicists provided evidence a century past for what ancient philosophers and magicians knew first-hand millennia ago: that matter is really dense collections of living energy.

“The mass of a body is a measure of its energy content.”
Albert Einstein, 20th century.

POINT III

All of life is based on the movement of particles/waves of energy.

These waves which emanate from the finer dimensions of the energetic universe produce outer physical experiences. Our real and persisting existence is based on the substance of our subtler spirit natures. There is no material experience without Spirit, Soul and Mind active behind and within it.

Rhythmically and cyclically, life — humans in its midst — is borne forth on waves of light. Thence the outer worlds are reborn, reawakened and refreshed. Just as we see happen in Nature every spring.

The planet Earth as well as the Solar system began as vortices of energy in the subtlest of realms. Over billions of human years, they have taken on forms composed of denser and denser mass, as Einstein might have supposed.

In a “new wave,” modern science is again catching up to ancient magicians and philosophers as they theorize the presence of the underlying dark energy-matter in the universe. These forces are now thought to amount to over 99 percent of all energy-matter in the cosmos. The existence of Dark Matter is theorized — and apparently proven — through study of gravitational attraction.

Dark Matter makes up 30+ percent of the matter-energy composition of the universe; the rest is called dark energy (69+ percent) and “ordinary” visible matter is less than 1 percent. What we call and perceive as “Real Matter” makes up only a tiny portion of the forces which compose the universe and manifest to our senses.

“The missing link in cosmology is the nature of dark matter and dark energy.”
Stephen Hawking, 20th century.

POINT IV

Mind is the builder of the worlds, whether that Mind is of a god or a man.

Materialization of energy as “ordinary visible matter” occurs through the power of Spirit and the direction of Mind. Basically, this amounts to Mind Over Matter. If we dare follow Eastern thought and even the implications of the Christian Bible, we can readily see that life, the universe, and nature are all Thoughts projected into manifestation.

God thought, spoke the Word, and matter coalesced into appearance. Creation began with a Word of Magic. And, it continues in the same manner.

“The spirit is the master, imagination the tool, and the body the plastic material.”
Paracelsus, 16th century.

“The spirit is the life, the mind is the builder, and the physical is the result.”
Edgar Cayce, 20th century.

~~~

We turn now from Everyday Magic in the Macrocosm toward Everyday Magic in the Microcosm of Man. We will consider how the Greater Forces in the Universe overshadow and bring forth Everyday Magic in every human being.

“As above, so below.”
Hermes Trismegistus, 9th century BCE.

Humanity as a race and humans as individuals are built “in the image and likeness of the divine.” We thus have the potential to create even as God did in the beginning and continues constantly to do so. We are part of that magical process even now. One day, we will step up to be consciously active in the worlds of magic. In the meantime …

~~~

Point V

Human birth is both magical and true magic.

The real magic of birth is in how body and soul are united through Energy to complete a whole being. But in the present day, we tend to imagine conception and birth as being simply mechanical and biological. We try to give all the credit to DNA and genes and chromosomes. But, the fact is that DNA explains very little about the creation, gestation, and appearance of a human being — body, mind and soul. Genetics is largely about the surface of things — the building blocks, rather than the intricate processes which can explain how life appears, blends and changes.

A myriad of things which occur in the passage from a fertilized egg to a bellering newborn cannot be explained by biology and genetics alone. Factors far beyond DNA are responsible for how an ovum attaches to the uterine wall, an amniotic sac is made, and a cord mysteriously appears to attach fetus to placenta; how a body forms, anomalies and defects included; where limbs and organs are placed; how parts function as a whole; when the heart starts to beat; how the fetus and mother interact during gestation; and how the new life survives and thrives or is retarded in development and delivery. Et cetera, et cetera.

The magical part of birthing is very much hidden from human view and understanding. We are talking not just about a body but a Being — an Idea which incarnates Spirit, Soul and Mind to offer a material experience in the outer world. When such occurs flowingly, then Body and Soul blend together like Hand and Glove.

“When a beautiful soul harmonizes with a beautiful form, and the two are cast in one mould, that will be the fairest of sights to him who has the eye to contemplate the vision.”
Dialogues of Plato, 4th century BCE.

Point VI

Every day, all humans magically convert energy into bodily form.

We believe in calories and carbohydrates, proteins and fats, vitamins and minerals. But again, these are superficial layers which science has categorized and quantified in attempts to explain bodily nutrition. They are feeble approximations of the true state of human sustenance. True nutrition is effected through essences — living and wholesome — found in foods and elsewhere.

The animal kingdom quickly proves the general principle, as so many wild animals live on little more than stubble for months in frigid winter climates. Hibernating bears have it easy as they sleep through much of the cold, dark months while other creatures pass much of their winter days searching for things to fill their stomachs. Those animals may or may not fill their stomachs and alleviate the feeling of hunger. Regardless, what goes into the belly does not equate with what builds and maintains bodily tissues and functions.

At the same time, there are many thousands of present-day and historical human examples to prove that scientific theories regarding bodily nutrition are insufficient to explain the real deal — a magical one. Those examples are of people who live for days, weeks, months, and years without food. People East and West, in the past and present, and for all sorts of reasons have shown that life does not depend on food, as we know it.

Patriarchs of the Bible fasted in the desert for weeks on end. More recently, saints have lived without food for decades. A noted 20th-century example is that of the German Catholic nun Therese Neumann who lived for over 35 years taking only one eucharistic wafer each day.

Numerous people in the 19th century, generally women called “fasting girls,” lived for years without touching food. Then, there have been the numerous protestors over the ages who “went on strike” and took nothing but water for weeks at a time. Modern practitioners of inedia — existence without eating — also proclaim that they live on prana alone like non-eating sages and sadhus in the East.

In fact, all humans magically turn prana [life force] also called ki, chi, mana, universal energy, etc. — into flesh and bone. The factual state of this contention will be proven scientifically in the coming years. It seems upon close study of the subject that eating is a learned behavior — and a valued pleasure which people enjoy, but is clearly not an ordained necessity. Sages of all times know the facts of true nutrition which is proclaimed in the Biblical words:

“Man shall not live by bread alone;
but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.”
Deuteronomy, 7th Century BCE.

Point VII

Every night and every morning, we all perform a wondrous act of magic.

We may think of being born once — being a magical moment, or not — and then eventually we shuffle off this mortal coil after a few decades. But in fact, we perform a wonderful dying/rebirthing act of magic every day — much like renowned trance mediums. The latter exit their bodies at will and make way for discarnate entities to take possession of them and speak to interested parties at seances for brief periods of time.

In the case of the rest of us, our souls exit our bodies nightly. We “die to the world,” as sleep takes us. Then, we souls experience things for hours when freed from our forms. But, we have neither language nor remembrance to share when returned to the body and awakened.

Memory is lost during sleep as the mind-brain connection itself is lost. The brain and body sleep, but the soul and mind are free to wander, explore and study. We should add that there are credible individuals who have learned to depart and return from their bodies while retaining memory of their excursions. Emanuel Swedenborg, Sylvan Muldoon, Robert Monroe, and even Helen Keller have written of their experiences.

From this magical view, each of us is born, reborn, and reincarnates each day. We die to the world at night and are reborn to new life the next morning. Rebirth is by this view an obvious, wonderful daily fact — much like the one which occurs when we first enter a new body.

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting.
And cometh from afar.”

William Wordsworth, 19th century.

We offer these ideas as starting points for readers to look around and find more examples of Everyday Magic. We all can use our intuition and imagination as well as intellect to come up with images of Real Magic. They are truly all around and within us.

What we have presented regarding Everyday Magic is just an opening to the subject. This first writing has been expansive and inclusive, but much more can be said and elaborated for the benefit of open-minded thinkers.

A hint to those interested enough to look and think further: Magic is simply about energy: moving energy, directing energy, influencing energy — and thus matter. We are talking about the subtle energy present everywhere. Wherever God is there is Energy. And wherever Energy is Magic can and does occur.

This essay is dedicated to would-be believers, like George in Texas. Just as many others, George lives a magical life. It is just a few steps for us all from living in a magical world to realizing as well as honoring the substance of it.

Append comments below or send to theportableschool at gmail dot com.