The Innate Queerness of Magic, Part I
Today, I want to invite you down a deep rabbit hole with the question:
What is Magic?
Is it the magician on stage pulling the rabbit out of a hat while we, the sensible folk in the audience, titter and clap at being entertained by these deceptive sleights of hand?
Or is that just one of the ol’ rascal White Rabbit’s many ruses, designed to separate the Alices from the not-Alices?
Well, if you have a sneaky suspicion that you might be an Alice, and that there’s something to all this magic stuff that hasn’t got a whole lot to do with bunnies in hats and sleights of hand, follow me…
So: What is Magic?
1. Magic is the art and practice of making meaning
2. Magic is the art and practice of creating, recognising and enthusiastically taking part in the synchronicities that flow out of the loci of meaning that you’ve created.
A synchronicity in this context is the resonant relationship between a subjective (inner) event or field of meaning and an objective (outer) event.
Otherwise put: like the poet-bard that it is, the Universe - which you are inextricably, holographically entwined with - is always rhyming with itself.
Today, we’re going to take a swift trip through Magic as the art and practice of making meaning.
We’ll come back to synchronicity in Part II soon; however, I encourage you to explore deeper into what synchronicity is if this is the first time you’ve heard of it...and let me know what it reveals to you.
Magic as the Art + Practice of Making Meaning
The ancient Greeks conceived of making meaning in the world through the primordial Logos.
And the world, the play-dance of energy and matter that is sensational, phenomenal experience in our subjective body-minds and out there in objective reality is Eros.
The Hindu Tantric lineage of magic saw this as the interplay between Shiva + Shakti.
(Don't worry- that's all the esoteric-philosophical stuff I'm slinging at you today...)
Magic then, is the art and practice of taking responsibility for the meanings we assign to the phenomena of our lives and of the world.
Another way of looking at this is in the words of the wise and astute Quabalistic scholar and magus, Lon Milo DuQuette:
"Magic is indeed all in your head. But your head is a lot bigger than you think it is."
(We’ll be revisiting this quote often as a working hypothesis of magic and alchemy in future missives).
This understanding of magic is also known as the Hermeneutic Responsibility - the study and practice of making meaning.
The Hermeneutic Responsibility involves a brave leap into weaving our own meanings about who we are, and what the events in our lives mean - instead of taking the meanings force-fed to us from dominant coloniser-patriarchal culture and society, from the dogma of scientific materialism, and even from our families and friends as true for us.
The Hermeneutic Responsibility is named after Hermes, the Greek god and archetype of Logos (meaning), magic + alchemy and commerce. He/They are best invoked at literal and metaphorical crossroads.
These words, by the adamantly uncoerced existential philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre hit the spot:
"We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of what others have made of us."
Entering into this strange wonderland can feel deeply scary and stomach-churningly queer. It is also the basis of the magical and decolonised mindset because it’s a committed refusal to participate in the rigid binaries of meaning and limiting potential doled out to us.
One of the abiding legacies of colonisation is the cutting off of indigenous story or mythos - collectively, culturally, ecologically, spiritually and individually.
Colonisation is a de-magic-ing of our innate, multi-dimensional, non-binary, queerness of meaning. It is, quite literally, demeaning.
Magic - through the tantric-alchemy of re-storying ourselves, is a potent route into inner/outer decolonisation, into re-membering one’s native, indigenous meaning(s).
This is the magical mindset, the mythic mindset, and the Indigenous mindset - and this is what I teach.
It takes a goodly amount of courage to embark on this path. Life definitely feels safer when we just unconsciously take on the ready-made meanings and narratives given to us. We don’t risk disapproval, rejection, persecution - all of which are deeply painful death/rebirth experiences for the ego. Magic is innately queer because in order to wield it, we have to dive into the deep, strange and marvellous rabbit holes of our multi-dimensional imaginations and take responsibility for reclaiming our own meanings.
And then, synchronicity follows.
A Quick Dip into Meaning Making
What are the unconscious patterns of inherited meaning that keep repeating themselves in your life? And are you curious about creating your own?
Grab your journal or a piece of paper, and quickly, without thinking about it, make a list of all the meanings you would like to experience in your life. Make sure to include some of the more taboo, scary, even corny things your wild soul is curious about. You don’t need to limit yourself to just the nice, good, socially acceptable things.
For instance - women/femmes find it especially hard to admit to wielding Power as a field of resonant meaning in their lives. And with good reason- women in unapologetic possession of their power are bullied and demeaned relentlessly.
It’s time to flip that narrative. Because the current meaning of what Power is - as a corrupting, malignant force has been fed to us by the patriarchal-coloniser. Imagine what the world could be if internal and external structures of Power could be re-imagined and reclaimed?
Once you have your list, take one particularly “impossible” meaning and see how it feels in your body when you imagine yourself experiencing and embodying that.
I would love, love, love to know how you get on!