Living the Creative Life

Only When We Believe in Magic Will We Find It

9/16/2019

Those who don't believe in magic will never find it. ~Roald Dahl

I believe in magic.

I believe in magic and I have found magic. But not in the places I thought I would. And truth be told, maybe it was actually magic that found me.

By what magic does the acorn become the mighty oak? (artist unknown)

One of the first places I discovered magic was in the power of belief itself.

By what magic is it that we have the capability as humans to shift consciousness and our experience of being in the world through shifting our beliefs? It is no coincidence the premise of this blog, of this website, is "the art of consciously creating life." I believe this magic, the magic of consciously creating our lives, to be a fundamental magic of our existence in this world as human beings.

Through studying the psyche and subconscious and working with astrology and hypnosis (from simple relaxation and guided meditations to natal and past-life regressions) I have experienced and bore witness to the practice of consciously shifting beliefs. I have experienced this magic in my own life and observed it in the lives of others. I have come to honor this as powerful magic.

The magic of beliefs is the magic of turning inward and conjuring self-awareness. It is the magic of consciousness.

There is a magic of the present moment - of being present. There is a magic of intention and of thoughts and words.

There is a magic of forgiveness and a magic of gratitude.

There is a magic found in art - in the way a painting or piece of music can move us, in the way a book or poem or dance performance can inspire us. Art can transfix and move us, opening us to passions and possibilities, transforming us, offering us the opportunity and vision to transcend the mundane.

Johannes Kepler - Diagram of the geocentric trajectory of Mars through several periods of retrograde motion. Astronomia Nova, Chpt. 1 (1609)

There is also a magic found in looking to the wisdom of our ancestors. There is the magic of the archetypes of the gods and goddesses and the way mythology - their stories - speak to the common threads of the human experience.

There is a magic only accessed when we follow the footsteps of our ancestors and commune with nature. This is the magic of the seasons, of the sun and moon, of equinox and solstice. This is the magic of stargazing and astsrology - of following the celestial bodies through the night sky. This is the magic of the elements - earth, water, air and fire.

This is magic of finding sacred geometry - the golden ratio - in everything from the pattern Venus' orbit makes to the spacial arrangement of leaves on a plant or petals on a flower to the proportions of a Nautilus shell.

Phyllotaxy, or the spatial arrangements of leaves on a plant or petals on a flower, which follows the golden ratio.

We can access the magic of nature by living in harmony with nature and flowing with the natural order of day and night, new moon and full moon, and summer and winter.

The magic of nature also makes available to us the healing power found in plants and even in the food we eat.

The magic of nature is the magic of the Divine Feminine, the Great Goddess - the magic of Mother Nature. It is the magic of shamans, witches and wise women.

"The wise woman, or witch, had a host of remedies which had been tested in years of use. Many of the herbal remedies developed by witches still have their place in modern pharmacology. They had pain-killers, digestive aids and anti-inflammatory agents. They used ergot for the pain of labor at a time when the Church held that pain in labor was the Lord’s just punishment for Eve’s original sin. Ergot derivatives are the principal drugs used today to hasten labor and aid in the recovery from childbirth. Belladonna – still used today as an anti-spasmodic – was used by the witch-healers to inhibit uterine contractions when miscarriage threatened. Digitalis, still an important drug in treating heart ailments, is said to have been discovered by an English witch."

"The witch-healer’s methods were as great a threat (to the Catholic Church, if not the Protestant) as her results, for the witch was an empiricist: She relied on her senses rather than on faith or doctrine, she believed in trial and error, cause and effect. Her attitude was not religiously passive, but actively inquiring. She trusted her ability to find ways to deal with disease, pregnancy and childbirth – whether through medications or charms. In short, her magic was the science of her time."

~Barbara Ehrenreich, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers

The magic of nature, throughout the ages in many cultures, was passed down from generation to generation by women. During times of persecution, much of this magic was forced underground. Keepers of this type of wisdom and magic met torturous deaths. In this way, fear destroyed the sacred bonds and loyalties between women, as mothers, daughters, sisters and friends turned on one another in hopes of saving themselves. We can still see the lasting effects of this traumatic time in history today.

Yet today, we can also still find this magic around us in many forms - in the naturopath, in the herbalist, and even in the self-proclaimed kitchen witch.

These days, we may have to seek out this magic, this wisdom of nature, that before would've been handed down to us.

We may need to rediscover this knowledge and take it upon ourselves to share it with others.

We may need to look into the past to gain something of immense importance for the present and future. There is a magic of the future - it is the magic of technology. But along the way we have lost the magic of the past - the magic of nature and the magic of the goddess and the magic of mythology. We have become disconnected - from nature, from each other, and from ourselves. Because of this, we suffer. We suffer from stress, anxiety, depression, diabetes and heart disease. We suffer loneliness and the absence of that connection that we had when we were tribes and villages. We suffer from a life separated from nature - an unnatural life - a life disconnected from sunrise and sunset, a life disconnected from the waxing and waning of the moon and tides, a life disconnected from the ground it exists on and the things that live and grow there. Our food comes from the supermarket, our water comes from the faucet, our value comes from a paycheck, our entertainment comes from a television. We die of suicide. We die of the inability to taste the sweetness in life. We die of broken hearts.

What we believe is important. In order to access our true power, in order to access magic, we must accept responsibility for our creativity and consciously choose our beliefs based on what we are for. We must choose our beliefs to support what we wish to experience and what we wish to see in this world. If we want to experience the magic of this world, we must choose to believe in magic.

Only when we believe in magic will we find it.