Picture copyright Taylor Ellwood 2021
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the process of magic and specifically how to develop an awareness of the organic nature of magical work. If tis sounds odd to you, its perhaps because for the most part, magic is not considered to be an organic process, so much as a designed process that in both a practical and spiritual sense is used to achieve specific outcome or results.
“So why Taylor, are you taking a different angle to magical work? What do you even mean when you talk about the organic nature of magical work?”
When I talk about the organic nature of magical work I’m talking about a lived experience with magic, where it becomes more than just a static process of steps (a spell) used to achieve a specific result. Certainly magical acts can be described in that way (I’ve done it myself) and there is some use for exploring magic in that vein. It helps us more readily appreciate the different ways a magical working can be designed and how that design can be used as a blueprint to develop additional workings and processes.
But…
I’ve been reading some very interesting works, including a couple of books on architecture by Christopher Alexander, and a book on Creating by Robert Fritz, and each of these books I’ve been reading has presented me a different outlook on magical work, and life in general, by framing it in a context around how a generative approach can be applied to magic, creativity, and pretty much anything else.
A generative approach is an approach that is not designed, so much as experienced. For example, if I write a book, I go through a process of refinement as I write the book that gradually causes the book to evolve and change. The first draft of the book will not be the end draft of the book. The same understanding can be applied to a magical working that you gradually evolve over time, as you do it again and again. For instance, my work with the Sphere of Art has changed quite a bit since I started the initial work. It is generatively evolving as I change and learn and grow from doing it.
What this has helped me realize about magical work is how much more it can be, especially when we recognize that the magical work can change and evolve even as we do. We create this organic, lived experience that is an interconnection between the magic we work and the life we live.
In Creating (affiliate link), the author makes a point that sometimes people think they need to have an end result defined all at once. He goes onto explain that the initial impression of a result isn’t well defined, and that if anything we need to spend some time just being with it before we can really begin to appreciate what the result is. I think he makes a really good point and I can say from my own experience with my writing, art, and yes magic, that something which is considered and worked through becomes much more effective because you’ve given it the time and space to grow into your awareness, and transform your understanding of the result as well as yourself.
My recent experiences in my life actually demonstrate this further because I have been going through this process of reinventing my life from scratch. I’ve gradually given away or discarded the ideas that don’t fit. I haven’t stayed with the first impressions of results or anything else, because the first impressions, while notable as an inspiration still need something which allows them to fully mature. They need the lived experiences that you bring with you, which enable you to examine your initial inspiration and find where it can be refined and improved on.
If we apply this understanding to magical work, creative activities, and life in general we discover an approach to the way we live our lives that allows us to fully appreciate how to integrate an organic experience into the way we do any of the activities we do. We start to recognize how what we’re doing isn’t static…instead it is an iterative process that gradually improves what is being done, but also refines our identities and states of being through the process.
