I started leaning into magick about the time America seemed to be collapsing, from my point of view.
This sounds like hyperbole, but in my case it did feel that way. Feels that way, as of this writing. In case you’re trying to orient and place me on the spectrum, I believe in helping others, the social safety net, learning from the past, holding everyone accountable, protecting children from predation, accessible quality healthcare for all, and defending the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.
To be honest, I’ve come to appreciate the idea that the America I grew up with, served, and loved probably never really existed, at least not for anyone not white-male-Christian. As I’ve become more aghast at what I see, as it feels the ideas of real checks-and-balances are falling away, the hypocrisy, sociopathy, and cognitive dissonance on the right, the inept nepotistic synchophancy of some on the left… my heart is breaking.
The more I read, the more I come to understand that so much of the reality I swim in (in America) is constructed to extract value from me, reward docility, rile my rage at The Other, and keep me in line.
So, fuck all that.
And here's the thing: once you really let yourself see that the story you've been handed is a story, authored, maintained, sold to you by people with something to gain, you can't unsee it. It doesn't stay contained to CNN and Fox and whatever's happening in Washington. It bleeds into everything you thought was just "how things are." Which, it turns out, is also where magick starts.
Not as an escape from that realization, but as the next logical step past it: if reality is more constructed and more negotiable than I was (mostly) raised to believe, then the question stops being "how do I cope with this" and becomes "what else can be authored, and by whom, and how?”
I’ve always been a bit in touch with things magical and preternatural; I’ve always been more sensitive to “different energies,” and had more than a few “unexplainable” experiences. Despite growing up developing a rational outlook based on skepticism and the scientific method, I haven’t embraced scientism; instead I’ve seen things around me materialism and physicalism could not explain, and I’ve dived deep on these topics. Also I grew up with a fairly rigorous Catholicism, which might surprise you in that it’s solid preparation for further work on a magickal path.
Now, with the collapse of my old world view, instead of welcome Jesus into my heart I’ve gone in a different direction. I’ve (re)opened a door to something larger than myself, something I can draw solace and power and stability from. Something those I despise would dismiss - or possibly revile or tremble at the notion of - which suits me fine.
I'm working to understand how reality really works, and thrive with that understanding and practice. Dive deep, learn to work with power and art, and better place myself in the grand scheme of things than it feels my society might.
Call it my version of not exactly welcoming Jesus into my heart. I've opened a different door instead, one that doesn't ask me to wait for someone else to fix what's broken, or to numb myself until it stops hurting. It asks me to get to work. That's what this blog is: the record of that work, as honestly as I can write it.
