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“They gave him a seashell: ‘So you’ll learn to love the water.’ They opened a
cage and let a bird go free: ‘So you’ll learn to love the air.’ They gave him
a little bottle sealed up tight. ‘Don’t ever, ever open it. So you’ll learn to
love mystery.’”
-Eduardo Galeano
It’s a scene replayed over and over again throughout the history of human
kind: the shadows of a circle of elders tilting and gesturing like giants on the
faces of surrounding rock. Children more curious than obedient watch from
behind a concealing oak or jungle hedge, straining their ears to make out the
strange words and glorious sounds being carried starwards aboard the roar of a
ceremonial fire. In every case the elders would be Adepts, having both taken
the training and survived the tests that prepare one to intercede with the
powers of Nature, or win favor with the Gods and Goddesses for a besieged or
hungering tribe. They first wore little but fate and feathers decorating taut
black skin, then the furs of reindeer and cave bears, the horn headdresses of
Tuva and Lascaux. A gathering of Druid priests. Norse Soothsayers. Apache
Medicine Men. The aboriginals of Australia. Greek Orphics. The Pythoness.
The Priestesses of Aphrodite and Diana. Witnesses could only imagine the
secretive motions of hands concealed behind flowing purple robes or ashen hooded
cloaks-- as the practitioners of every nature-based society, at each stage of
history, performed their sacred rites. They mystify not only the wide eyed
children but those adults who have neither been selected for, nor yet completed
the special training required by any esoteric tradition. There is indeed power
in the focused attentions of the inner circle.... and there is power for all, in
the mystery of the unknown.
Magic is the venerable art of storing and manifesting that power, directing
subtle energies in accordance with a vision or mission. It is the physics of
imagination and intent. Since the days of the Paleolithic shaman we’ve known
that a combination of personal intention and will, rituals and spells can by
their selves influence the likelihood of a particular intended effect, result or
outcome.
Some are born more predisposed to such practice and calling but everyone has
a degree of ability to magically affect and alter events, and the power is
amplified many-fold by those alliances of intention sometimes called covens,
nests or clans. Even without physical real-time participation, a common group
vision can move human evolution in any direction, positive or negative. As with
fire or any other energy, magic is in itself morally neutral. And because of
this, it becomes incumbent on the magical traditions to dedicate their intention
and skills to doing good: contributing clarity, defining priorities, serving
the needs of the heart and the hopes of the children. Continually healing and
binding the relationship between self and others, and between the people and the
Earth. Giving thanks and praise for every lesson and gift. Guarding,
restoring, sacramenting and celebrating the actual places of power that provide
us with inspiration and instruction.
While there are certainly cases of magic being used for evil, the majority of
sorcerers were always “source-erors”: pledged to the natural and spiritual
source, the mother of sustenance and imaginings. The word “magic” is derived
from the Greek “magos,” meaning “wizard” or “wise one,” and from the earlier
Persian “magus”: royal magician-priests. These “Magi” were diviners, healers
and astrologers known to have honored the divinity of the entire living cosmos,
and the sacred haoma (soma) they drank likely included psychedelic mushrooms
that helped reveal the intricacies of the magical universe. The Celtic Druids
protected the sacred oak groves where they gathered. Native American
practitioners bless the modes of human perception and human activity that
contributes to the health of the land, creating taboos and curses to limit any
behavior that could damage the ecosystem, denigrate the holy, or demean the
spirits. Respect for God (Gods or Goddesses) has meant respect for creation
and the creative force-- Mother Earth, Pachamama, Assaya, Prithivi, Gaia. The
natural world was seen as a embodiment of Spirit, and the place one goes in
order to glean the wishes, insights and suggestions of the sacred Whole. The
veneration of a pre-Christian horned god was no precursor to satanism or devil
worship, but rather, the affirmation of the noble wild within us all, the ways
in which the magical human combines the strength of the stag, the the
inner-sight of the owl, the loyalty and insistence of the wolf.
An intentional change in consciousness is magical in its own right, it’s
true. But the greatest magic may be the ways we focus and extend out that
consciousness in order to actively influence the world for the better. It is
this most selfless manifestation, that in the long run, empowers, validates and
fulfills the magical self. There are able individuals who can and do direct
energy in order to win romantic dates, cast a spell for financial success, or
even insure a parking place at work.... but the most intense magic-- the
greatest miracles-- occur when we’re aligned with and act in collusion with
natural and native forces, with ongoing evolutionary processes, and with the
intent and will of the self-directed Earth.
And so it has often been. Alchemy was more about the mutability of natural
elements and the transformational processes of consciousness, than it was the
transmutation of lead into gold (although that possibility undoubtedly earned
the alchemist more benefactors than the rewards of personal growth and change).
Animism was not only the recognition of disembodied spirits, but the knowledge
that all things in nature are imbued with spirit. Wicca is an Earth honoring
practice informed by the grounded wisdom of healers and midwives, land stewards
and agents of love. A megalith is not only a reminder of the power of the
Earth, but its spokesperson, spokes-rock. Clairvoyance, the ability to discern
that which is beyond the immediate senses, exists because we are connected at
greater energetic levels to all that is and all that has ever been. Divination
is the knowledge of unfolding events, provided by an more intense than normal
understanding of the past and engagement with the present. The tarot deck
doesn’t foretell fortunes so much as clarify patterns and potentials, for what
every magician knows is the always decisive moment. A talisman connects us to
the natural sources of information and power. Portents and omens are easy to
interpret, when one is conscious of their cellular relationship with the natural
world. Such practices and powers are not supernatural or beyond nature, but
intranatural, intrasensible-- of, by and for the magical world of which nature
is an essential component.
In the vernacular of modern society magic is often maldefined as synonymous
with “illusion” and chicanery. And indeed there has always been an element of
showmanship and trickery to the practice of magic. But while prestidigitation,
pyrotechnics and the power of suggestion have long been used by magicians as
part of their art, it’s generally been to alert and enlist rather than to
overawe or manipulate. These kinds of perception-altering skills can wrest the
audiences attention away from assumption and habit, provoking a suspension of
disbelief, opening eyes to the less obvious and more complex processes and
manifestations of real employable magic. There’s nothing quite like a sudden
explosion of sparks or a voice from the beyond to grab people’s attention. Then
once they’re fully in “attendance” every manner of enchantment, every act of
magic becomes possible.
Similarly, technological gadgetry may be inscrutable and even amazing but it
is not magic. Video, holographic projections and biofeedback machines are
readily employed by modern wizards to arrest the certainty and doubt of the
people they work with, making them more susceptible to the true magical
processes. Real magic cannot be adequately verified, quantified or qualified by
any present or future scientific means? and neither controlled nor harnessed,
reduced nor replicated. It is always that which lies just beyond the
understandings and manipulations of the scientific paradigm. Magic itself
remains invisible, though we are often both instrumental to its success and
witness to its effects.
We hear different magical and philosophic traditions referred to as “Mystery
Schools.” This is because they each honor the power of the mysterious, not
because their rites are withheld or their rituals beyond our understanding.
They are schools of belief that embrace the “mysterium,” the combined forces of
Spirit and Nature that one comes to know through intimacy and intercourse rather
than reasoning and comprehension. Magic is the application of the uncanny and
the unlikely in the service of transformation: our own. And with our personal
realization comes the opportunity to fulfill our most meaningful purpose, to
honor the needs of the Earth and the will of Spirit.
The ceremonial fires die down sometime between the setting of the moon and
the rise of a new day’s sun. One by one the hooded figures make their way from
the circle and down the darkened trail towards the sea. The children have long
ago returned to their straw filled beds, all except perhaps a single young man
or woman determined at all costs to learn the Adepts’ fateful practice. From
the ranks of the insistent few a new generation ever rises to take the baton,
the walking stick, the magic wand. The root and reason for their power is Gaia,
they know.... and that from the fertile soils of mystery, all magic flows.
©New Page Books and
Jesse Wolf Hardin 2004. All rights reserved.
*Jesse Wolf Hardin* is a teacher
of Earth-centered spirituality and nature magick, living
seven river crossings from a road in an ancient place
of power. His latest effort is _Gaia Eros: Reconnecting
With The Magic & Spirit Of Nature_ (New Page 2004),
a book acclaimed by Starhawk as "a must-read for
those who want to worship nature not as an abstraction
but in ways sensual, practical, and transformative.”
When not presenting at conferences and festivals he
can be found hosting seekers for retreats, quests, events,
workshops and resident internships at their enchanted
wilderness sanctuary: Animá Center PO Box 688, Reserve, NM 87830 email: mail@animacenter.org. Visit Jesse's website by going here http://www.animacenter.org/
©Jesse Wolf Hardin 2005 Reproduction
in any form is prohibited without express written permission
from the author.
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