Mundane Before Magickal

I would be lying if I said that I practice every day. To be honest, these past few months were filled with sporadic moments of intense spell work, and then the rest of the time, my mind was too busy with just life. Sometimes I need to remind myself that magick doesn’t necessary require traditional paths, and this whole New Age Occultism, regardless of its reputation, really is on to something.

Firstly, what is magick? Everybody seems to have their own definitions of it. But there’s no denying that it exists. To evolutionists like Tylor and Frazer, magick is just an irrational way of thinking. To sociologists like Durkheim, magick is an individualist irreligious way of functioning in society. To Mauss, a traditional collectivist fact. However, my favourite anthropological definition lies in Malinowski, where he argues that it is rather mundane and practical. In this sense, we can merge the oppositions of mundanity and magick into one, and magick can help to support every day tasks, for the core of the practice is to ground oneself in the uncontrollable world—to relieve anxiety; as boring as it sounds.

A wise witch once told me that the key of practicing is not to do spells every day. Sure, spells are fun, but they also take a lot of energy, research, and focus. And personally as a full time student, I just don’t always have time for that. But when I do, it’s always fun.

Try this exercise. Take three deep breaths, each breath is the body sustaining itself. Each breath is where your nose and mouth inhale the life giving oxygen, provided by all the flora around you. Move your neck. Notice your own presence and sit with it. How do you feel? Maybe a little magickal?

Next time you take a walk, take a mental note of the plants and animals around you. Do you remember its correspondences? It’s okay if you don’t. If you do this, you may notice that a ton of the natural elements hold correspondences that you don’t know yet. Isn’t it amazing how much more there is to learn?

The next time you are being creative, you may find yourself imagining what it is that you want to make. Your ability to create things, grow and learn new skills, is all so magickal. Now, this may seem mundane and it is. But your life source bleeds into every single aspect of your life. And everything is conditioned to suit your own needs. If it is not, then change it. Whether it be through witchcraft, or not.

I wanna end this short entry by quoting Sabina Magliocco, a fellow witch and Anthropologist at UBC. Her take on New Age spirituality, is that it is “a set of techniques for altering consciousness and bringing about personal transformation […] sparking change at the individual level with personal enlightenment and self-realization” (Magliocco 2015). If you took the time to do these simple tasks I just mentioned, you may feel that you got to know your body, your mind, and your environment just a little better.

Cheers!

Lia