Mystic or Magician?

“The Mystic wants to be with God. The Magician wants to do with God.” This quote leapt out at me yesterday when I was listening to Penny Billington on The Druid Podcast.

Even though prayer, meditation, and contemplation are important to me and regular features of my life, I’ve never been attracted to the idea of mysticism. Until yesterday I could not have put the reason into words, but it has everything to do with doing.

I reflect and ponder, retreat and wonder with the intention of coming back, at some point, and doing something with that. I pause to make periods of action more feasible. I’ve never done the contemplative things purely for their own sake.

My life revolves around doing – plenty of people have suggested to me along the way that I probably need to spend more time being.  I like doing, and the more I explore this, the more I find for me, it’s about how I’m doing, and any pressures I’m under. I write and practice various handicrafts, I make music, and food, I walk, and work and colour for Camelot… but I don’t really do spells, and this has generally inclined me to feel that I’m not a magician either.

What is magic? Change. Transformation. Making something where before there was nothing. Changing hearts and minds. Healing. In Druidry, inspiration is called Awen, and understood to be a sacred force, so it would seem reasonable to think that the Druid Magician who wants to Do with God is working with divine inspiration to get stuff done. I found myself wondering, if the inspiration is divine, does the action have to be esoteric for the person to be a magician?

I’m not sure about God – there might well be gods, but I have never had any sense of them speaking to me. I have however often experienced the power of inspiration as a blessing, a lightning bolt of magic hitting the brain at just the right moment. I feel inspiration as a magical process, and I am certainly interested in aligning what I do with what is spiritual, soulful, in tune with the flows of the universe.

I also know what it feels like to ride, for a while, on one of the universe’s waves. To be so in tune with what else is moving that everything comes easily. Everything that’s needed falls into my path, as though other forces were cheerfully helping me on my way. It doesn’t happen all the time, but I’ve experienced it too often to doubt it. When you’re in tune with other things, magic happens.

How we frame our thoughts affects what we do and the outcomes we get. That’s an established tenet of magical thinking. What happens if I re-frame myself as a Druid Magician seeking to Do with God? (Whatever we suppose god to mean). I’ll wrap that unexpected gift of a conceptual cloak around my shoulders, and see what happens.