If that's magic, so are you
When I was a kid, I learned about the magic of the first star. I was told, as many kids are, that wishing on the first star that appears in the sky (after a reciting the well-known nursery rhyme) would inevitably result in my dreams coming true.
Across cultures we have several promises that can be made through old wives’ tales, family traditions, and superstitions, many of which involve an invocation that either welcomes luck or encourages misfortune.
I like the idea of inciting the fulfillment of a desire through some sort of ritual. I believe our aspirations should be celebrated and nurtured, and I think its noble to be honest about what we want. I enjoy the idea of magic, manifestation, luck, and superstition, or even this sense of a benevolent universe that is working in our favour. But I think it’s in many ways easier to count on something supernatural when we believe that the outcome is also hard to believe.
I want to look at this connection but first, I want to make it clear that I am not aiming to dismiss these instruments for fostering intent nor do I wish to condemn them to mean delusion or non-reality. Instead, I am hoping to untangle the connection between fulfilling aspirations and the way we perceive wishes when tied to magic, divination, prayer, and spirituality.
The defining line is characterized both by language and intent. The language we use to describe something “I wish…”, “I pray…” is using both the pronoun I, which emphasizes the initial subject as the self and the verbs which indirectly push whatever follows to some non-object, a higher being, a star etc. The key to these sentences is that there is no identifiable second subject, they simply go out without a recipient.
Maybe we can’t identify who or what these sentences are aimed at. Maybe we send out our wishes and they are then boomeranged back to us. Either way, these third-party influences are rarely mentioned and are only present as an invisible subject in these types of sentences. If they are not present even in the mind of the speaker, it is because the wish is perceivably unattainable, and we send it out to ricochet off the boundaries of our perceived reality.
In some ways, this takes the onus off the self, placing the outcome at the whim of whatever has the power to perform what is necessary, because it certainly couldn’t be us. This, I believe, is implied in these types of sentences, or at least they are most of the time. This is the part I want to explore. Primarily because it has several assumptions through language alone, but also because the repercussions of these assumptions have a connection to theme-building.
Theme-building is what I call the psychological process of developing psychic umbrella themes which catalyze and connect other belief systems and thought patterns. My primary example would be self-worth, but it could apply to any larger themes that present themselves in someone’s psychic development. To be clear, I’m not qualified to speak on psychology or invent terminology for its discipline, and I’m also not sure if there is already a term for this, so grain of salt.
But for the sake of my reflection and this essay, we’ll go with theme-building, and we’ll look to things like self-worth to examine the beliefs we hold about ourselves and our world.
It was Maggie Smith who wrote “In the absence of faith I resort to magical thinking.”. When we start to believe in magic, spirituality, or religion, it’s because we believe that the limitations of profane life can be transcended by an exceptional force. We can detect this ability to overcome the barriers that are set in the largely agreed upon world and distinguish this facet as otherworldly or supernatural, yet malleable and to some degree, accessible through intent.
So, when we look to prayer, divination, or really any other wish-making tool, we must first maintain that we are relying on something not universally agreed upon, nor is it necessarily perceivable. Again, this is not discrediting these things, but instead reminding us of the power of our own faith in adopting these instruments.
When we combine this imperceptible otherworldly aspect with the awareness of worldly limitations, we begin to use these instruments to overcome the obstacles that we view as beyond our scope, or beyond the scope of our immediate capabilities. Divination of any kind is interesting in that it involves our intervention. We are an integral part of the process in prayer, wish-making, or whatever method you adopt yourself. This is not passive at all, but rather active as it attempts to formulate an outcome.
But when we fail to unite our active abilities with our spiritual attempts, we begin to fall victim to wish-making. If we sit and we pray, beg our gods or whoever to relieve us, or change our lives without any actual attempt made by ourselves, I believe it’s making a few assumptions. First, its wholly discrediting the active role you play in your own experience. By this I intend to suggest that all active powers are being used to direct energy outwards, without attempting to energize or encourage the self to reach the intended goal. In short, it's giving your power away willingly, and it will deplete you. Additionally, it’s assuming that whatever it is we long for is near impossible and cannot be done solely with the tools made available to us in the profane realm. Again, depleting.
These are important assumptions in that they close doors to both our sense of self-capacity and capability, and our accessibility to our wants and needs. In some ways, through language and otherwise, we distance ourselves by making them untouchable without divine aid.
So, what happens instead if we assume differently? If we assume that through the gift of a loving universe, we have all the tools necessary to get what we need?
I don’t want to pretend that the world is available to anyone that tries. I am not a sucker to the myth of meritocracy or the long-held ruse that is the American dream, and I refuse to contribute to the belief that we are entirely accountable for our outcome. Instead, what I am trying to suggest is that our ability to experience joy, fulfillment, presence, these are well within our corporal framework and can be accessed at any time.
When it comes to wish fulfilment, I cannot guarantee to you that anything will happen or that your dreams will come true, but rather I can suggest that it is far more likely that your connection to the outcome will fulfill the wish than simply holding the wish itself.
This means when we use spiritual tools, they mustn’t be use in isolated efforts and can only be effective when combined with the assumption that our desired outcomes are possible. I hope this makes sense.
If we go back to the self-worth piece, I worry that our dependency on prayer and divination is a way to encourage the belief that we are incapable otherwise. I see this in the spiritual community all the time, where we look to horoscopes or tarot to tell us what we want to hear, rather than developing the skills to listen for ourselves. If we spend our nights longing for change and we rely entirely on the intervention of divinity to accomplish it, we push ourselves in no direction at all. We simply wait passively, while pushing our active energy out into the ether.
Again, not saying that these tools are not useful, I often rely on divination to reflect and to listen to the universe around me. What I am saying is that desire without active force is simply resistance, and frankly, it’s going to make you miserable.
The worst part, in my opinion, is that this becomes a habit reinforced by its own misfortune. We pray without action, we have no results, and it must be because we aren’t capable or deserving or it’s not meant for us. So, we give up without having made it beyond the dream itself.
This is to say that in service of healthy theme-building, one must reframe wishing into a mode of self-development rooted in compassion, integrity, and accountability. These are not paradoxical themes but are rather methods of maintaining balance in our process of ‘forward’ movement. We cannot assume that god(s) or the universe will do all of the work, nor can we assume that what we do shapes the outcome entirely. We need to make space to surprise ourselves and to be surprised by the external world.
Without assuming what you wish is possible, we have already decided it won’t happen. Perhaps with this mindset, we ignore opportunities because they don’t align with our perceptions. We look for confirmation of our truths and we find them. What if we can affirm the potentials for our desired outcome? What if we lived in a way that nurtured the possibility of what we might otherwise view as impossible?
In short, wanting is active, but it does not work alone. We must have faith in ourselves, as much as we do our tools for wish fulfilment. We must assume that what we work towards is working towards us. This is no simple task, as we will need to lean on this belief when we fail, or when we hit roadblocks and grow tired. We work with ourselves not against, remember that.
I will not pretend that everyone gets what they want or what they deserve all the time, and I do not believe that these outcomes are at the fault of any individual in particular (but when in doubt, blame billionaires). The only thing you can lose is what has already been lost behind the door that you’ve closed in your mind. There is no extra grief in trying.
Believe in magic, prayer, perform rituals, but allow these modes to transcend divine space, and believe in your capacity to cocreate your experiences. Allow the impossible to be possible. The mind is limitless if you allow it.