Away with the fairies

There’s a hide not far from the canal – private land being developed as a mini nature reserve, with tree planting and a small pond. We regularly see badgers, foxes, rabbits, buzzards and garden birds there, having permission to visit as we please! The badgers are the main attraction, because they generally aren’t easy to spot other places. However, the hide owners tend to put down peanuts to attract them. Last night, there were no nuts. A lone badger of the dozen or so from the set came round to check, and that was the end of the matter. Still, seeing one badger is a joy, and we also had an encounter with a huge, unidentified moth.

We were just getting up to leave when Tom spotted lights amongst the trees. We all saw them – a cluster of small lights that could only be seen from one angle, and that all went off at once. It was nearly dark by then. The nature area does not adjoin any gardens, ruling out fairy lights, solar lights, anything gardenish – there’s a thick hedge and a grass walkway and another hedge between what we could see and the nearest garden.

There were glow bugs in the area, but we haven’t seen any in weeks now. There is a guy who studies moths, we pondered moth traps. Much work went in to looking for a perfectly rational explanation for what all three of us had seen. Increasingly aware that none of us were entirely at ease with the rational explanations, I eventually got round to saying ‘could have been fairies.’

It’s an interesting one for me. I’m a druid and a pagan, I believe in the idea of magic and otherworldliness, but at the same time I pride myself on being a rationally minded creature, willing to consider the evidence as dispassionately as I can. I’ll always look for the banal explanation first, rather than seeing everything in terms of gods, hobgoblins, aliens, Atlanteans etc etc. But there are times when the sense of wonder, the feeling of encountering something numinous is too strong for the rational explanation.

The last time this happened to me I was in Portland with Tom, and we both saw a tiny little whirlwind spinning leaves around. It was so small, so localised, the rest of the air so still that whatever the logical explanation might have been, the sense of seeing something otherworldly was powerful indeed.

Often it’s about the language we use. Thunder and earthquakes have perfectly sensible explanations, we know what they are, and yet at the same time the power of them, and other regular, natural and universally recognised phenomena is breathtaking. Spirit and science do not need to be at odds here. It may be tempting to call things we don’t understand ‘magic’ but there’s no reason not to recognise the known as magical, too. That first rainfall after days of dry heat. A full moon haloed by mist. There’s no reason for the experience of magic to be irrational.

We saw something last night. We don’t know what it was. Any speculation is just that, no version any more evidenced than any other, despite our best efforts. Of course I want to know what I saw, but for me, that knowledge would in no way reduce the feeling of wonder, awe and delight that the moment inspired.

Reflections on Folk Magic

I recently read Stephen Wilson’s The Magical Universe – a book cataloguing evidence of magical practice and belief in mediaeval Europe.  This is not the high, learned magic of people who might self identify as sorcerers, but everyday magic. The sort of magic your typical peasant might be dabbling in. Evidently much of it intertwined with, and leaned upon Christianity. I get the impression that our mediaeval ancestors had no problem doing magic and seeing themselves as Christians. Plenty of magic in fact called on saints, priests, relics, dust from sacred places, holy water, the wafers from communion and so forth. There might well have been pagan roots, but there was a lot of Christianity in the mix too.

What struck me most was this: The entire tome could be summed up by saying that the folk magic of mediaeval Europe was about trying to cajole a hostile world into letting you live, reproduce and keep your offspring alive. This is the magic of survival. I don’t know enough to say just how highly the odds were stacked against life, but the magic described in this book suggests a belief that it was so. Magic is about getting the crops to grow, warding off storms and vermin, tackling disease, finding a mate, keeping children safe from evil influences, cursing and warding off curses, for the greater part.

What do any of us do in face of a hostile reality that is beyond our control? We pray, we ask for help, we try and find some way of getting in control. It’s easy to look back at our history and see the foolishness of superstition, but what about the present? Are we any better, or merely different?

We put so much faith in politics and democracy to give us a bit of control and influence, and yet the same kinds of people, from the same kinds of families tend to be the ones in power, and it’s very, very rare that a change of government makes any significant changes to things for the better. We get bigger, nastier weapons, more compelx systems, not much compassion. Progress is small and slow.

We put our faith in science, too. Our fictions, books and films alike, are full of it. Meteors, aliens, diseases and all the other things that might imperil humanity may threaten us, but worry not, clever boffins will save the day! And so we believe that clever boffins will save us from climate change, from the effects of over consumption, from the diseases we create for ourselves through our modern lifestyles. We expect a pill for every ill, and a device to offset every wrong thing we do. As a consequence, we carry on poisoning ourselves, feeling entirely rational about the idea that science will save us. Is this faith in the power of science any more rational than the belief in the intervention of saints? Might it not be a magic wand by another name? Yes, science can do a great deal, and no doubt will, but it is not a magic cure all, and we are going to have to take responsibility for our own individual and collective fates.

We don’t have oracles any more. We have the media, which tells us what is going to be the next ‘must have’ whether we are the right shape, the right style of parent, the right face, whether we want the right things. Is our collective acceptance of the voices that come out of little boxes actually any better founded than believing the words of priestesses deep in a trance? Is it any more useful? Any less manipulative than the worst imaginings we have had about magicians manipulating ignorant, primitive people? The magic words come out of the box and we all run out to buy a new pair of shoes. Most of us don’t listen to religious leaders any more. We don’t go to the wise woman for advice. We listen to TV experts, we read agony aunt columns, we let ourselves be led by people we’ve never met, who know nothing about us. And this makes us more rational than the mediaevals?  We don’t believe in saintly miracles, but we do believe in miracle diets, miracle cleaning products, miracle life saving drugs even though there’s plenty of evidence that none of them are totally reliable.

We still do belief and superstition. We’ve just change the delivery methods and the names of the forces to whose wills we consider ourselves vulnerable. We placate them with offerings of money, and hope they won’t turn on us and destroy our lives.

What is magic?

I’ve been reading with interest ideas about magic on Cat’s Blog and Red’s Blog this week. Red’s really got me thinking about how we square honourable relationship with magic. Now, what is normally called ‘white magic’ could be described as ‘asking for something nice magic’ while going round cursing people would be ‘black magic’ being horribly simplistic for a moment. But take apart ‘white magic’ and what are we doing? Asking for something we haven’t worked for, maybe something we want and can’t have. Nothing comes without consequence, even prayers for healing. If we all lived forever, magically, this world would not be viable. If we use magic to violate the laws of nature and the natural cycles of life and death, how can we square that with the idea of honourable relationship?

If we pray – let’s imagine that’s for a miracle to save a dying person – we are inviting a deity to look over the idea and, from their more enlightened perspective, figure out whether it’s a good idea. Sometimes the answer to prayer is a ‘no’ which is as well. Humans do not make decisions for the best reasons. We never see the bigger picture, it is inevitably beyond us. Driven by fear, hunger, greed, loneliness and all manner of things, we can and do want things we should not have, that aren’t good for us, and that harm others.

The more I think about magical acts that are basically demanding something be different, the less I like them. I don’t work that way myself, I’ve moved away from ideas of spells. Mostly the transformations I seek to achieve are within myself, where, as Red points out, I have every right to make change.

However, a magical perspective of the world has always been intrinsic to my paganism. I believe in the transformative magic of ritual and bard craft. I’m increasingly fascinated by prayer as a concept. I believe in the power of oath and pledges made to the gods. I also believe that magic flows and exists in the world – if I didn’t, there would be precious little point considering the ethics of using it!

I went down to the Severn this morning as the tide was turning. I watched the muddy curve of the river start to refill with water. There were seagulls, and an egret. The reeds were rustling and talking, the wind soft, the air warm. Everything was very alive, me included. The sheer intensity of presence intoxicated me. I sat for some time, just being there, and a thought began to formulate in my mind.

I don’t want the kind of magic that gives me the power to step outside of nature. I don’t want fireballs to zoom from my hands, I don’t want to live forever. I absolutely reject the magic of high fantasy. But when everything is humming with life, there is magic. Everything is full of it, me included. I am recognising what is. What if I understand magic as the means to enter into a dialogue with everything else? Much of ‘everything else’ couldn’t care less how I feel, or what I want. I would have to listen and give at least as much as I asked for things. There would be scope to learn, to deepen understanding. I might not change what is happening, but I might instead learn why it is happening and through that be better able to work in harmony with it.

I think about the people who firewalk, able to do it because they trust that the fire will not harm them. That’s a kind of magic. I think about asking the hills if I can share in their slowness and peace for a little while, or sitting with a tree and listening. That’s magic too. It has the power to transform. We can change each other by mutual consent. I can give, or receive. I can ask for help or guidance. I’m not asking some external force to obey my will or forcing anything to give me what I want. I may be asking for a favour, a kindness, conscious that ‘no’ is an answer that I might be going to hear. I might also hear ‘here is the thing I want in return’. I would also need to be open to the idea that other things could come to me for help in just the same way. The creature in the canal calling out for rescue. The land that wants litter removing. The air that wants to be clean. Sometimes I’m going to have to say no, too.

I think I’ve been trending this way for a while, between the prayer work and the contemplation of relationship, but between Red’s words yesterday, and the river this morning something has come into focus in my head. I have changed, consentingly, to a magic that has been worked upon me from outside. Red’s magic did not require me to change, but it gave me the opportunity to do so, and from here on, that’s the magic I am dedicated to working with.

Reclaiming Magic

In my teens, I had a strong belief in magic. Not so much the spells and wands variety, but the essential, magical nature of reality, the importance of will, the strange complexities of existence. It’s one of the things I’ve lost along the way, and that wasn’t any kind of good or natural ‘growing up’ experience, or a deliberate embracing of another paradigm. Simply, I had my sense of magic stripped from me.

Over a period of years, I was exposed to a number of people with deeply disturbing and psychotic beliefs. People who claimed to be deities, who claimed to have cursed others and caused illness. People who claimed sole responsibility for keeping other people alive, the fate of others dependent on their whims. I also encountered people who claimed to be highly intuitive, but used their claimed intuition as a way to bully. It’s very easy to use the assertion that you have magical powers to control, intimidate and manipulate others. When modern writers criticise ancient cultures, it is often with the very assertion that people claiming magical powers used them to bully the credulous into serving them. It certainly does happen and is both alarming and destructive to encounter.

Exposed to this kind of behaviour and attitude, I became increasingly unwilling to think about anything in magical terms. Rational causality became ever more important to me. I felt a strong need to defend myself from what I was experiencing by becoming ever more conventionally rational. Magic became the word for experiencing the numinous or feeling a sense of wonder, but the idea of spells or deliberate will working I rejected. And oddly enough, that sense of the numinous, of the magical within life and nature, also began to diminish within me. I became, quite literally, disenchanted.

It is absolutely vital to maintain an understanding of reality that allows you, me, to functionally engage with others in viable and meaningful ways. However, humans are not wholly rational creatures. All things that we do begin in thought, will and imagination. We all have experiences we can’t explain, and the further reaches of science are so full of complexity and strangeness that getting my head round them is endlessly challenging, and much of the time, it might as well be magic. So often historically, ‘magic’ has been the word we’ve used for things we had no other explanations for. Letting that sense of wonder and possibility back in does not mean letting go of sanity or reason.

I am setting out to rediscover my sense of wonder, to rebuild my trust in the world and my ability to perceive it as a place that is not openly hostile to me, and that is rich with beauty and goodness, even amongst the pain and challenges. It is my intention to actively seek my own re-enchantment. The belief of my youth was just what naturally occurred to me. I didn’t put much work into it, so while it had an inherently innocent quality, it was also somewhat unformed, untested. To set out deliberately to rebuild in myself a sense of wonder and magic, is not going to give me back what I’ve had stripped from me. What happens, if this works, is bound to be different. I have no idea what to expect. Gone are the days when my sense of the future was keen and I trusted to my intuition.

I am choosing to step out into the darkness, with only intent to guide me. I want my magic back. I want my sense of magical possibility back, and my trust in both myself and the wider world. I want the rich, unconscious dreaming life I once had, and also I want those things I do not yet know about, that will be part of this journey. I’ll be blogging what happens alongside the other issues I tend to tackle here, and as ever, will be glad of anything anyone feels moved to share along the way.

Magic, fiction and paganism

Often in fiction, magic exists as a plot device, and alternative to science and a means to get things done. Sometimes, the mechanics are laid bare. Fictional magic often lacks mystery. Spell casting wizards whose magic is reliable if they say and do the right things are commonplace in fantasy. Psychic powers and magical attributes are usually well defined, predictable, reliable, and (to borrow from Red Dwarf) other words ending in ‘ible’.

As a pagan, my whole idea of magic is completely at odds with this. For me, the very essence of magic is mystery and wonder. I don’t perceive magic as an alternative to science either. I see them in far more complex relationship. That which we do not understand, is magic. That which we have an explanation for, is science, in terms of how humans deal with things. But science can engender wonder and a sense of the miraculous.

Brendan Myers defines magic as that which inspires awe (my books are in storage, I can’t do references!) I think this is a great place to start. The fireworks and thunderclaps of fantasy magic are no different from any other pyrotechnics. They inspire excitement perhaps, but not any sense of wonder.

In fiction, magic just isn’t magical very often.

The desire to explain, to pin down and regulate seems to be on the increase. We confuse understanding, with pinning a thing to a board. To understand a butterfly is to see it in flight, watch how it sits on a flower, to marvel at its colour. Pinning it to a board will help you define and quantify it, but destroys the butterfly. All the mechanical explanations in the world cannot really give you understanding of any complex thing. There is a world of difference between theory and practice, between figures and insight, between taking a thing apart and understanding how it works.

There are some authors who offer wonderful expressions of magic – Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, Charles De Lint, Robert Holdstock, Jonathan Carroll, Terry Pratchett with his witches. There’s the whole genre of magical realism, inspired by pre-colonial ways of knowing the world – I’m not a huge fan of Salaman Rushdie, but he’s a fine example. Isabelle Allende is a personal favourite.

These are authors who write experiential magic, and who embrace the numinous. Magic is not, for them, a tidy and coherent system that works like a science or a technology. Magic is wild and wonderful, unruly and full of mystery. It does not explain itself. It will not sit down and tell you where it came from, how it works, and what you can and can’t do with it. Instead, it is the magic that transforms lives and brings inspiration.

There are a lot of people out there who perceive stage magic, fantasy magic, as the aspiration of actual pagans. They imagine that we want to be Harry Potter. They watch impossible, crazy things and understand that magic is impossible and unreal and not available to them. So much magic in fiction is actually taking away from people the idea that magic exists, by turning it into high fantasy. I’ve yet to meet anyone who does Harry Potter style magic (I assume no one would admit it if they could), but if this vision of what magic means defines it in the public conscious, most people will understand it is not for them, and that only crazy people would seek for it.

Remystifying magic, re-enchanting it and bringing it back into a spiritual and meaningful context, would be an epic task. But not impossible. It’s just such a nuisance that Hollywood pyrotechnic pseudo-science goes round calling itself magic, when it’s about as unmagical as you can get.