Magic... The Critical Element

Listening to an audio presentation from The Gnostic Society entitled “Harry Potter and the Roots of True Magic” -- Dr. Stephan Hoeller, in his strong accent (German?) is talking about the Harry Potter books with reference to other mythological themes -- the Authurian legends, Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings tales, C. S. Lewis’s Narnia series, just to name a few. He talks about Carl Jung and about the fairy story. Now -- for some reflections on this topic:

The fairy story, mythology, the tales of the hero -- our contemporary disillusionment with things related to magic -- the tendency of contemporary literature towards realism (meaning, what seems to me, a dark and depressing type of realism...what I’ve sometimes believed seems to be an aversion to hope and happy endings). The question -- How do we (how do I) recover the proper perspective of magic -- of the fairy story, of myth, of religious literature, of wonder and fantasy? This, it seems to me, is the most important task in which I could engage whatever humble talents I may have as a writer and thinker.

I can see things in my head. I can feel things deeply. There are images and imaginations that sometimes bring tears to my eyes and set my neck tingling with goose bumps. Sometimes the magic spills over into my reality. That is what I want somehow to bring to life and deliver to the world. The reference to Harry Potter continually comes to mind, because those books have meant so much to me in finding my way back into a world of magic. The things I want -- need -- to write about explore a world of magic even more deeply astounding and real than the world of Harry Potter. I must bravely and confidently step foot into that land of magic and wonder, and danger, and tell about it.

When I was a boy, I used to dream of living in a house nestled between the Munsters and the Addams family. There is a delightful creepiness about these characters, and I wanted to be at the center of it. This too is part of the magic I want to capture. The magic of houses and landscapes and weird, yet loveable, characters. Often, the most truly detestable characters in the episodes of these TV shows are the “normal” characters who just don’t get it -- who are frightened and judgmental, and who jump to the wrong conclusions. Another character I just thought of who fits this pattern is Casper the Friendly Ghost. Poor Casper just wants to be a friend and to have friends. He is a genuinely loving spirit who cares about people and animals, yet they are horrified by him. They mistake his character and his intentions. I’ve often wondered about the nature of the boy to whom this disembodied spirit belongs. It must have been an exemplary child. This type of character must have a significant place in my fantasy world.

Some important themes -- there is good and evil, and often there is an unclear distinction about which is which. Evil comes in disguise, but no disguise is ever completely adequate. Good also comes veiled, but not in deliberate disguise. Instead Good comes shrouded in the misunderstanding and fears of those who don’t recognize it. There is also the fact that there is no truly perfectly noble character. The good character comes flawed, but it is the Good that always triumphs, sometimes in spite of imperfection, sometimes because of it.
Love in all its healing and redemptive power, and in the sadness of loss, must also find a home here in my world. Friendship and courage, rising above fears and weaknesses -- these too are part. And redemption -- oh, how wonderful and critical this is.

Lists of Wonder!

I love making lists – lists of words to learn (in English and Spanish), lists of books to read, lists of names of people from my past, list of just about everything. Lists are important, because they give a sort of order, and they help us to remember, and sometimes they even help us examine our random thoughts and analyze our unconscious resources. Here’s a list that I wrote in my journal a couple of years ago, and just reading over the list elicits so many feelings and thoughts. See how many, if any, you know and love:

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dinosaurs, flying saucers, time travel, little green men, faeries, elves, munchkins, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Neverland, dragons, wizards, unicorns, flying pirate ships – the fairy tales of the brothers Graham, Hans Christian Andersen, Andrew Lang – folktales from people and cultures around the world – King Arthur,




Sherlock Holmes, Narnia, middle Earth, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the Bermuda triangle, Atlantis, Shangri-La – the mythologies of Greece, Rome, the Norse people – the religious visions of the Orient – the dreams of the philosophers – Gilgamesh, the Vedas, The Song of Hiawatha, angels and demons, ghosts and goblins, anthropomorphism, the wonders of art and architecture – all wonder!

Famous Monsters of Filmland, Ray Bradbury, Vincent Price, Ray Harryhausen, Forrest J. Ackerman,

comic books, Walt Disney, Looney Tunes, Popeye the Sailor Man, science fiction, Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Stephen King, Peter Straub, A Thousand and One Arabian Nights, haunted houses, Bullwinkle and Rocky, Brigadoon, Somewhere in Time, Ben-Hur, Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits,

Lost in Space (one of my all-time favorites), Get Smart, My Favorite Martian, Gustav Holtz’s The Planets, superheroes, the Sunday funny papers, Pogo, Deputy Dawg, UFO, Starman, Back to the Future, Edgar Allan Poe, space music and New Age music – more to come, I’m sure…

Wonder!

A number of years ago, some friends of mine (along with a few folks that I didn’t know) started up a small-circulation magazine called Wonder. I was hooked from the first copy I got, but as things in publishing usually go, the magazine was not a smashing success, and the labor of love proved too much labor for the available love, and Wonder went the way of most start-up periodicals. It was sad to me, because the premise of the magazine’s origin is one that should be spread far and wide – the sense of wonder that is all around us. That magazine focused on literature and movies, but I personally extend wonder to every field of inquiry – nature, science, mathematics, work, etc.

At one time or another in my life I’ve had formal training in psychology, theology, and electricity and electronics. But on my own, I’ve studied a far wider range of topics. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had an insatiable hunger for learning something new all the time, and an intense fascination with the magic that is constantly present in the world. In my years of junior high and high school, I was a mediocre student, just doing enough to get by, because the standard curriculum and the means of transferring it just did not appeal to me. It wasn’t that I was a lazy student – I was constantly studying. Dictionaries and encyclopedias formed a world that was a second home to me. There were new worlds to which I could always travel, and travel I did...oftentimes without even having to leave the living room couch.

But the wonder was not only to be found in books, I also wandered the woods near my house, taking in with my eyes and my soul every tree, every shadow, every breeze, like a starving man taking in food. Then when I was in the eighth grade, I chose for a 4-H project to grow tomato plants from seed, and this led to a deep love of growing things. For years afterward, I studied everything I could get my hands on about plants and flowers. I collected cuttings from several of my elderly aunts and great-aunts who has splendid begonias, sultanas, and a lovely red and purple variegated plant they called goose gizzard. I ordered seed of all sorts and got on the W. Altee Burpee and Parks mailing lists. I subscribed to Flower and Garden and Horticulture magazines. The whole world of living things seemed to call out to me.

I didn't take on hobbies; I took on passions. Through the years I've become fascinated by airplanes, paper maché sculpting, crocheting, old time radio shows, stamp collecting, the theater, classical music... and the list goes on. Some of the passions have fallen by the wayside, and others have remained to this day. But the sense of wonder has been continuous.

Being bored was rarely a problem for me when I was a child, and it still isn’t. Everything offers fascination of one sort or another, whether intellectual or spiritual – and after all, aren’t those two pillars of the same building. I have lain upon the ground and watched ants traveling along dragging bits of leaves or cookie crumbs, I’ve marveled over a couple of square feet of soil as tiny flower seeds germinated and began searching for sunlight, I’ve ravished the night sky with my eyes absorbing from a billion stars the light that began its journey billions of years ago.

Books, music, magazines, movies, the theater, the science lab, the inventor’s workshop, the artist’s studio… and on and on it goes, this marvelous path of wonder that waits at the tips of our toes for us to step onto it. Like the Yellow Brick Road led to the magical Emerald City of Oz, so lies the road of wonder before each of us. All we have to do is take a step, then another, then another, then…