The Return of Magick
Image source: Grow Your Own Security System Lol!! It’s an Impaler Bush.
When I was a child I would spend hours by myself outside in our yard.
Age 4 and I would toddle outside in the mist or sun and just look and poke and dig and smell... and see.
The first leaf bud poking out of the Red Barberry bush was a miracle.
Wait... Red Barberry?
...who the hell plants Red Barberry??!!
It's like telling your neighbour you hate them so much you put up a 'fuck you' fence of knives.
“I hope I poke your toddler full of holes.”
The thorns on that puppy would LITERALLY poke out a kids eye - IF you didn't die from eating the berries first.
(Except the berries are edible - they just taste terrible. My mom said everything on bushes was poisonous - just to stop us from trying ANY berry out in the wild. Probably the best way, really.)
I would share my cheese sandwiches with the birds and squirrels - and I would leave out crumbled cookies and water for the stray fly or moth that would occasionally get trapped in the house.
I felt welcome... and somehow known by nature. I was aware that all the creatures knew I was there... and if I was quiet and patient - I would become aware of much more going on than was first noticeable.
Sometimes I spied hidden nests and little families of baby birds or squirrels. Once I sat long enough to see a rabbit... but that didn't happen very often suburban Scarborough.
One day I was witness to a ruckus - there was a threat approaching. Everyone was on high alert and calling out to one another... The birds swooping and the squirrels chittering, even the insect whirring - and then our neighbour's cat Snowball squeezed under the fence into our backyard.
What I realized - was that they no longer reacted to me in the same way.
My presence was no longer a threat.
Clover mite - related to ticks… yaaaaaay.
I think it was scale
When I was 7 I had one of those 'whoa' moments you have while growing up.
I was watching a tiny red spider (which was actually a clover mite), crawling along my arm.
I watched as it navigated my arm hairs like trees.
I laughed a little as the thought of this creature was in the forest of my hairs and I wondered did it realize that it was on a human being?
Then I wondered how could it know?
How could it know that I - who was for a moment, the clover mite's whole entire world, was actually a small, small piece of a much bigger Earth... and I was walking on the Earth like the clover mite walked upon my arm... was the Earth part of a much being organism?
There is no way of knowing.
There is no way of knowing whether the Earth is just a particle in an atom of an infinitesimally larger organism - just like the cells in my body have no way of knowing that they exist within a larger organism...
This thought bounced back and forth between micro to macro again and again with a sense of awe and magnificence that created in me, a belief in the magic of life - sitting between the scale of micro and macro.
If science and math will let go of the idea of the "objective observer" and write the observer INTO the equation, we will have a solution that connects the quantum to the macro world.
“As an aside - I also think this will solve the TOE problem ”
The magic I felt as a child was one of being in flow and connection with the whole thing - the micro AND the macro worlds... and the feeling that I was known and loved by both worlds.
The magic was being and feeling connected, and knowing that it was all okay... not just okay, but that everything was possible - there is literally nothing that is kept from us unless we keep it from ourselves.
It was a profound childhood learning, and one that I've forgotten several times on my life path.
Adolescence... obviously - gone - but the magic returned in full force around 21.
Mystical experiences and academic learnings. But I lost it again.
This past decade. Although filled with magical moments - the reminder and fullness of magical promise was gone from my life.
Work drudgery and fulfilling adult responsibilities - I allowed the magic to slip from importance and turned my attention to worship something else.
Of course this magic is divine presence.
You know of course that's what this is.
Magic is the presence of divinity in the world.
Less Harry Potter - more Charlotte's Web.
It's experiencing the divine presence in all things. The Beloved Presence.
I've slipped in the past from worshipping the divine - to worshipping other things. Work. Career. House. Car. Relationship.
All these are the work of the divine and are in my life because of Beloved Presence.
I'd forgotten.
I'm reminded again... and it's okay. There is no god but God.
Enter the Crone (Cailleach)
I'm entering the phase of the crone in my life and it seems fitting that the reminder of divine magic would return at this time.
(I'm also fascinated that after a decade of dying my hair some sort of purple, I am growing it out - because I want to see the grey. Crone indeed.)
The return of Magic has ushered in a new age 3 times in my life - maiden, mother, crone. (Root, Heart, Crown)
The archetypes are not by accident... but that's another story.
I've been sent on a whole new quest for knowledge and understanding.
There is a coming together of all my great loves into one path that I wonder how I could have missed it all this time.
It seems foolish. But we were doing other things.
Now is the time for this.
I'll show you when it's ready.
What is your magic on Earth? How did you find it? How does it make you feel?
Have you lost touch with your Magic? What's necessary to make it live again in your life?
Learn more about the Cailleach
The ancestors are the old gods. They have a lot to say.
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