Mundane Things Which Are Intensely Magical
We don't need to re-enchant the world, we only need to rediscover its enchantment...
Hollywood ruined magic for so many of us. Not only has mainstream cinema completely failed to depict any semblance of authentic magic, but worse, the Dr. Strange-style special effects cheapen the mysterious nature of magic and leave modern practitioners predisposed to disappointment when their rituals fail to deliver a tangible super-natural experience.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m regularly amazed at how magical the world is, and how effective magic is at causing change to occur in it, and this is precisely my point. The so-called “mundane” world is intensely magical, when viewed through an animist lens.
Humans have no claim to the numinous, we merely access it, and there are many beautiful, magical, and seemingly impossible things which exist in it. Science insists that it can explain all of these wonders but critical analysis quickly reveals cracks in this edifice of the modern materialist worldview. When you let yourself see the magic in the world it causes reality to shift (for you), re-enchanting your experience of it. Taking the time to appreciate the absurdity and impossibility of life is both healing and mind-expanding. Taking time to observe the intricate interweavings of its diverse persons and lifeways creates coherence.
There is power in recognition -in recognizing the magical nature of Nature, the cosmos, etc. This awareness brings you into better relationship with it and makes its enchantment more apparent to you.
To that end, I’m going to share a few of my favorite “mundane” things which are actually intensely magical…
Growing A Plant From Seed
Despite the zero-sum universe described by materialist-rationalism, which ultimately yields scarcity, the natural world functions on a fundamental premise of abundance. Nowhere is this more evident than in the power of a tiny seed to grow a grand old tree or a single blueberry to generate a field of bushes. Nature’s abundance is exponential.
Wild flowers will fill a field naturally over time. After hitching a ride on the wind, or through the gastrointestinal tract of a bird or other animal, Nature brings their genetic material to fertile ground and -like magic- flowers appear. In each flower are dozens (or hundreds) of copies of their genetic material (seeds) loaded and ready for convenient transportation to arrive. In a few seasons, a single flower can populate a landscape.
Bearing witness to the lifecycle of a plant, from seed to seedling to flower to fruit to seed once again, brings us into relationship with that plant as an individual, as a species (its genetic material), and as a spirit (through proximity and observation). And it demonstrates clearly that Nature desires to produce abundance; as each seed bears the potential within it to fill a field, a forest, or your garden, indefinitely. What’s more magical than creating exponential abundance?