Magic. The word resonates with meaning. It is both enticing and slightly suspect: we speak of “magical” moments that shimmer with beauty and mystery. And yet we distrust the claims of snake-oil salesmen, “magicians’ and New Age Quacks of various stripes who want to persuade us that they have extraordinary, “supernatural” powers.

What exactly is Magic? If one doesn’t believe in the supernatural, does the notion of magic still make sense?

I think it does. Magic is the suspension of ordinary consciousness. It is a way of seeing and experiencing the world that is special, different, unusual. A “magical” moment is that instant when the scales fall from our eyes and we glimpse the enchanting, luminous beauty of what is here and now. Mystics might call it “revelation” or “epiphany.” Others might use the words “wonder” and “awe” to describe the magical perspective.

The word “magic” derives from the Old English word “magan” which means: to be able, to have power. Magic is linked in the collective mind with power, especially with the power to transform. A magician surprises us by changing an egg in to a rabbit, or by making an object appear out of thin air. What if the most fundamental power of transformation we possess is the power of seeing differently? The world - whatever is out there - remains unchanged, but through magic we experience something new, something that wasn’t there for us before. If, as philosophers and physicists have been suggesting, we can never actually know what is truly, objectively “out there” -- if we can only know and experience our relationship to what exists -- then a shift in that relationship is a shift in what is real. In other words, we can transform “reality” by perceiving it differently.

Magic is a psychological phenomenon. It happens in the eye and in the brain. Art and ritual function as zones in which magical experience can occur. The artist creates a piece of music or a painting or a poem and this creation becomes a kind of sacred space in which the listener/viewer can see the world differently. Similarly, the ritual circle -- in which all join in the co-creation of a sacred event -- invites those present to step outside of ordinary consciousness and experience the world as an enchanted, significant realm, a place of wonder, beauty and transcendence.

Traditional peoples have often used mind-altering substances such as peyote or hallucinogenic mushrooms to help them see differently. Meditation, fasting, chanting, dancing, and participating in rituals are also ways to induce altered mental states, allowing us to let go of our normal habits of consciousness and become open to wonder.

Whatever the form that magical practice takes, I believe that we need magic perhaps as much as we need food, shelter and love. The heart hungers for significance. It hungers for beauty and enchantment. Perhaps magic is what can heal our suffering world, which has for too long been caught up in a materialistic, reductive paradigm which values facts over experience. We need to remember that we are all artists who co-create the great Opus of Existence. We are all mages, who have the power to transform straw into gold…