I wanted to write something from the new book and I began thinking about magic. That it is a word that has a lot of bad press yet it is such a creative beautiful work we do when we accomplish magical living. It has a bad press because it has been condemned by patriarchial thinking-- both superstitious definitions and intellectual definitions condemn magic as being both occult and female. Churches--Buddhist, Christian, Islamic-- condemn it and the practice of it.
To me it is a beautiful word and it implies something beautiful. It implies a beautiful relationship with Creation; it implies the conscious and wise transmutation of form. It implies miracles. I love living a magical existence, a miraculous existence. I would like to know your thoughts. I know that some of you resisted that word because of status pressure and a need for validation, for spiritual apporval from a larger audience. Did you ever feel that way? Do you still feel that way? What is your relationship with the word magic?
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As a child I was IN love, TOTALLY enraptured by Magic. I felt it at my fingertips and saw it in everything and I always felt so satiated and complete knowing this Magic. I could see things, feel things, travel to other places...I felt like I was part of a secret club that only the most faithful knew about.
ReplyDeleteThen, of course one day I didn't feel the Magic anymore and didn't really think "about" it until my early 20's. I remember at this point really consciously beginning to long for a "path" - thought I don't think I would have called it that at the time. This longing made me remember my childhood experiences and etherial and interconnected quality that came so easily. I wondered why that felt SO far away, as thought it never really was...I felt a bit robbed, but not sure who had done the robbing.
I was introduced to Sylvia just a few years later and loved that she was using the word Magic. Though I didn't dare tell that to anyone else for fear of their crumpled expressions and their "what?!" "what's that?! are you a pagan now or something?" So, I would just tell people that I was "working on myself" or "trying to be better" or something like that.
I am still a bit shy to claim the word Magic...I've never articulated it before...why?
I believe it is because the word feels playful to me. Isn't that silly? In my old belief system, spiritual is not playful. Spiritual is silent, stoic, wise, deep...
The word Magic, feels - LIGHT, BRIGHT, POTENTIAL, TWINKLING - I am liking this more all the time, much more fun than my old heavy suitcase called "spiritual".
Great question.
As you know, I LOVE magic. I love the word magic. And you know what? I think everybody does, they just feel guilty at loving something that suggests ease, and sparkle, and light and joy and god and miracles.... it's not manly. Manly is struggling through the wasteland, smiting dragons (beautiful dragons!), taking prisoners, stoically enduring, etc, etc. And in a patriarchal culture, everyone wants to be manly, even us women. But that's what we're changing. But yes, it's deeply biased against loveliness and ease, and magic... But, like you say, presence is like patience, it is a constant, and as the reward of patience is patience, and the reward of presence is presence, also the reward of magic is magic, and God is alive, and magic is afoot.
ReplyDeleteI have had such a lovely afternoon catching up with our blog site reading the comments and discussions and feeling such connection and camaraderie with fellow students.
ReplyDeleteThe word magic – because of Sylvia’s long and courageous use of this word it feels just very natural to include it in my everyday vocabulary. Through our course work the beauty of this word, MAGIC, just shines and twinkles and demands we recognize it is about potential (intentionally using Tanya’s lovely words to describe-thanks Tanya). Magic, synchronicity, miracles - these words seem synonymous to me now. I used to find myself qualifying the word when I would talk to people about the Course and about the book title. Either I have changed, or others have changed, or both, because I no longer explain the word. I do think the world is becoming more comfortable with the word "magic" because I hear it being used more and more during spiritual discussions -yet another example of the rest of the world catching up with the RM world.
Ditto, you have become a master word smith – I love your story of the changing patriarchal world. And yes, “magic is afoot” when I am living my truth and walking my path – allowing my heart to softly guide me instead of my head. Now, when I hear the word MAGIC my whole being knows it’s about we humans, with hearts open wide, joyfully dancing through the Universe, our playground of creative magical potential.
Leonard Cohen:
ReplyDeleteGod is alive, magic is afoot
God is alive, magic is afoot
God is alive, magic is afoot
God is afoot, magic is alive
Alive is afoot, magic never died
God never sickened
Many poor men lied
Many sick men lied
Magic never weakened
Magic never hid
Magic always ruled
God is afoot, God never died
God was ruler
Though his funeral lengthened
Though his mourners thickened
Magic never fled
Though his shrouds were hoisted
The naked God did live
Though his words were twisted
The naked magic thrived
Though his death was published
Round and round the world
The heart did not believe
Many hurt men wondered
Many struck men bled
Magic never faltered
Magic always lead
Many stones were rolled
But God would not lie down
Many wild men lied
Many fat men listened
Though they offered stones
Magic still was fed
Though they locked their coffers
God was always served
Magic is afoot, God is alive
Alive is afoot
Alive is in command
Many weak men hungered
Many strong men thrived
Though they boast of solitude
God was at their side
Nor the dreamer in his cell
Nor the captain on the hill
Magic is alive
Though his death was pardoned
Round and round the world
The heart would not believe
Though laws were carved in marble
They could not shelter men
Though altars built in parliaments
They could not order men
Police arrested magic and magic went with them
Mmmmm.... for magic loves the hungry
But magic would not tarry
It moves from arm to arm
It would not stay with them
Magic is afoot
It cannot come to harm
It rests in an empty palm
It spawns in an empty mind
But magic is no instrument
Magic is the end
Many men drove magic
But magic stayed behind
Many strong men lied
They only passed through magic
And out the other side
Many weak men lied
They came to God in secret
And though they left Him nourished
They would not tell who healed
Though mountains danced before them
They said that God was dead
Though his shrouds were hoisted
The naked God did live
This I mean to whisper to my mind
This I mean to laugh within my mind
This I mean my mind to serve
Til' service is but magic
Moving through the world
And mind itself is magic
Coursing through the flesh
And flesh itself is magic
Dancing on a clock
And time itself
The magic length of God
God is alive, magic is afoot . . .
Thank You, Ditto. I used to have an album with this song on it. I think a woman was singing it-can't remember her name- sort of a folksy singer but not Joan Baez. That was a loooooooong time ago! I don't know if it had all those words in it though. This might be a different version. With Leonard Cohen you never know. I know it was long and I don't think I liked it but I don't remember why -- the only words I remember are "god is alive--magic is afoot." Interesting! I'm such a crank, god knows what I was thinking in those days! I'm so glad I magically transmuted my self to Self.
ReplyDeleteThese comments are nice. It is funny (strange) I never think of magic as light or twinkly. Although I think magic is often defined that way --usually as a Tinker Bell, a fairy-like being, or as Harry Potter,a magician, ----or occult superstitious scary movie stuff.
ReplyDeleteI think of magic as deep, deep, deep and very profound, a mystery but not a secret, the mystery and beauty of God, dark blue, Sophia and Mary and Isis. And Deeper still! The High Priestess and the Star. Van Gogh's Starry Night where you can see how the energy actually moves and how it looks and how it feels. Energy - as deep as it can go. As beautiful as it can get. As true as it is possible to be! I think of the Magi, the Wise Men,coming from the East, following a Star and arriving at the birth of the infant Jesus. This is where the word magic comes from, from Alchemy, from Asia, from Arabia, from Egypt, from the beginning of time magi--the root word for magic, has stood for wisdom.
Magic to me is:
ReplyDeleteenergy moving,
miracles in motion,
physics, quantum theory, quarks,
sound vibration & frequency, music,
Creation & the birth of Jesus,
"may we all know wisdom & be wise"
It is not occult, dark & mysterious.
It is Wisdom and Grace,
a state of being,
transcendent & silently patient.
*Thank you Debora*
ReplyDeletewhen you think of magic think that magic came from the word magi which means "wise". It is a kind of intellectual spiritual snobbery now-a-days that gives it an aura of something that shouldn't be taken seriously. I have been meeting with this all my life, especially when I first began teaching. The new age people, the Zen people, the intellectual Christians and Buddhists--high end Buddhist people from Naropa and low end born again street people--none of them liked me to use that word magic and everyone I met had SOMETHING to say about it. Many people tried to educate me to the fact that using the word magic just wasn't cool. In that case, I was doomed to be uncool and proud of it because I was not going to give up the beauty I felt in that word. So lets keep using the M word knowing that it means we are bringing wisdom back into it's true lineage.
ReplyDeleteThank you all so much for these wonderful, magical comments. And thank you for loving magic!
ReplyDeleteI know when the course was called The Creative Way that name somehow resonated with me. Magic somehow seemed too small a word. Too much baggage somehow.It conjured, for me, images of rabbits and hats and "tricks". It didn't seem to do justice to this incredible "technology" I was learning. It seemed sort of silly frankly.It seemed to trivialize the course and I see now how that was my own ego's need for importance.
ReplyDeleteIn time I opened up to the history of the word, the context and I began to understand why it was so important to understand it as Magic. This took years for me. I think for years I just decided to ignore the "Real Magic" name and go with it since it was important to Sylvia to call it that. I trusted her even though I would think of it from a marketing point of view and think " why make it harder for people to grasp this by calling it something with so much baggage". And we know how little Sylvia cares about that.
In time it came to resonate with me, as I learned more about the history and lineage. It softened and grew on me and now has a sort of glow for me.I understand it as the mystery, there's a depth to it as a word that I can't express in words but somehow the word itself says that for me. I think its beautiful now.
I do find explaining it to friends that ask interesting as most people don't have that context so its a little bit of work. When you say I practice Alchemy or Magic...what response do you get? Usually I get confusion and a sort of immediate disinterest, it sounds odd and complicated. But then explaining anything new can seem that way to some people. In the end it rarely comes up these days unless its with people who are open and interested, or have a practice of their own that is outside the mainstream understanding of what is "spiritual".
Now with Alchemy blossoming into the mainstream and the intellectual understanding of transmutation becoming such a trendy concept it will be interesting to see where that takes us. I suppose it will be like all trends, some will be authentically moved and others will be inspired for a time and changed by that, and most will move on to the next fabulous concept...still the underground stream keeps flowing and still more people will find a path that helps them be more free so perhaps the trend of "trends" is the natural path of unfolding in this information age...each evolution and unfolding of these ancient ideas reaches more and more people and opens more and more hearts to the divine mystery we walk in every day...
Lovely, Jared - thank you so much for your honesty. The Creative Way was a comment about what I teach, Real Magic IS the reality of what I teach. That is why I changed it. The honesty of your journey - for many students felt the same way - is exactly the reason I was so determined to hold to that name - authentic magic! This is exactly the movement of the world's trends - and we live a rich and vital truth that soars above all concepts and ideas about reality (and ideas about who has the right idea) We live authentically in an aura of rich and wild beauty. Thank you so much for this tribute and for speaking for so many students!
ReplyDelete