I’m going to have to sit a while with the idea of magic as a quality of attention. Not that I think you’re wrong, but because this is a very powerful reframing that will take some adjustment. Awe and magic are already linked in my mind, and a search for “magicalness” is one of my primary goals for 2024 (without really understanding what I meant). Lately, perhaps because I’ve been locked in suburbia for months now, with my only exposure to nature on neighborhood walks, that search has spiraled more into productive magic—how to alter circumstances, instead of using it as a pathway. Maybe the only real progress is in meditation, which always begins with a gratitude for breath and appreciation of how it connects us with the world.
I’m getting too introspective for a comment now, so I’ll just say that there are many good reading recommendations in here which I’ll add to my TBR. The average person is never going to read philosophical texts, though, so how does this kind of grand shift in consciousness come about? Art and stories and song, of course. So I guess what I’m saying is thank you because I think you’ve shown me a new path for my own writing to follow, a core I’ve been feeling a lack of recently. I don’t know yet how it’s going to manifest, but at least I have a starting point.
I hate that I said “average person” up there like I’m not an average person myself.
Magic as quality of attention... I suppose if I was being more accurate I might have said that it's more *what happens* when our quality of attention is transformed, or arrested, by an encounter of wild otherness - with the 'anima mundi'. It's relational, between us and the world. Just now, I stepped outside into bright moonlight, heading down the garden to get my laptop. There was an atmosphere about the woods and valleys, the moonlight, the shadows, the smells, the grasses, the hunting owl... all of it in a cauldron that floods in quietly. But when it comes to words, only the best poetry comes close to expressing the essence of that experience we might call 'magic'. But it's there, and I love it.
I'm pleased you feel a resonance with this. For me, that's enough. Unpredictable things will happen as these ideas take root, especially, as you say, in songs, stories, and other ways in.
Really appreciate your words. It is with hope we begin to see the truth of them as a collective. ❤️
Love this - thanks
I’m going to have to sit a while with the idea of magic as a quality of attention. Not that I think you’re wrong, but because this is a very powerful reframing that will take some adjustment. Awe and magic are already linked in my mind, and a search for “magicalness” is one of my primary goals for 2024 (without really understanding what I meant). Lately, perhaps because I’ve been locked in suburbia for months now, with my only exposure to nature on neighborhood walks, that search has spiraled more into productive magic—how to alter circumstances, instead of using it as a pathway. Maybe the only real progress is in meditation, which always begins with a gratitude for breath and appreciation of how it connects us with the world.
I’m getting too introspective for a comment now, so I’ll just say that there are many good reading recommendations in here which I’ll add to my TBR. The average person is never going to read philosophical texts, though, so how does this kind of grand shift in consciousness come about? Art and stories and song, of course. So I guess what I’m saying is thank you because I think you’ve shown me a new path for my own writing to follow, a core I’ve been feeling a lack of recently. I don’t know yet how it’s going to manifest, but at least I have a starting point.
I hate that I said “average person” up there like I’m not an average person myself.
Stace, thanks for sharing some thoughts.
Magic as quality of attention... I suppose if I was being more accurate I might have said that it's more *what happens* when our quality of attention is transformed, or arrested, by an encounter of wild otherness - with the 'anima mundi'. It's relational, between us and the world. Just now, I stepped outside into bright moonlight, heading down the garden to get my laptop. There was an atmosphere about the woods and valleys, the moonlight, the shadows, the smells, the grasses, the hunting owl... all of it in a cauldron that floods in quietly. But when it comes to words, only the best poetry comes close to expressing the essence of that experience we might call 'magic'. But it's there, and I love it.
I'm pleased you feel a resonance with this. For me, that's enough. Unpredictable things will happen as these ideas take root, especially, as you say, in songs, stories, and other ways in.
May your writing find its way.