Monthly Archives: July 2009

The Call of Magic—Samantha’s Lead

SamHipsIf you could read my mind
you’d know what you already know
but keep forgetting . . .
That there’s no real space
between my thoughts and yours.
You’d know that what you get
is what you choose to see,
that every catch is just a spell we’ve cast,
a conjured lure just waiting for a bite.
We’d both realize
that we can quickly be
wherever we might want to go.
We could travel to the enigmatic moon
or maybe just, Japan.
We could saunter down the street
or to another time
and we could change our look
as easily as we’re pleased.
It’s no real trick to make it so.
It’s just a few efficient lines,
perhaps a snap of focused fingers
or a subtle twitching of the nose . . .

As Harry Potter and friends cast their spell again on box offices across the globe it seems a fitting time to wonder about the call of magic.  Millions of kids and kids at heart are turning to the page and the silver screen for a visit to a world where the impossible is possible, where children are wise and powerful, where innocence prevails and the purity of love and honor ultimately overcome even the darkest evil.

My favorite games as a child were those I made up out of myths or fairy tales or fantasy.  My inner landscape was part Bullfinch’s Mythology, part Marvel Comics, but in it I was always gorgeous and powerful—and magical.  Even as an adult, my fascination with a magical life never left me.  Eventually it led me to explore spiritual paths and traditions such as Buddhism, Jewish and Christian mysticism, and Wicca and other alternative spiritual practices that openly embraced magic and mysticism. 

I wondered how to make it all fit somehow into my evolving frame of reference.  How could a former fundamentalist Christian reconcile or even make sense of an innate, persistent impulse to life a magical life?  How could someone like me find his way to being a mystic or even a witch in the world I inhabited?

Harry and Ron and Hermione weren’t around when I was a kid, but there was no shortage of magical role models.  The one who made the first and best impression and who has remained a sentimental favorite was Samantha, the beautiful, sensible, selfless sorceress in the 1960s sitcom “Bewitched”.

Television banalities and laugh tracks aside, Samantha seemed to me to live at that sought-after intersection between the magical and the material or mundane mortal worlds. She had the power to create any life for herself that she wanted, but she chose a seemingly ordinary life as a suburban housewife because she recognized some greater opportunity for love and compassion available to her. 

The mortals around her were often unaware of how her presence benefited them, and yet she found frequent occasions to enlighten and to assist them, to bring magic into the lives of the people whose paths crossed hers.  She was as tolerant of her often self-centered, greedy, clueless mortal neighbors as she was of her eccentric, judgmental, flamboyantly mischievous relatives, and she never seemed to condemn any of them for what they didn’t understand.

Of course, Samantha’s finger-snapping, nose-twitching brand of magic bears little resemblance to contemporary spells or ritual in terms of style or substance.  Pagan purists will quickly point out the gulf between movie or TV magic and the theory and practice of modern spellcraft.  Even less informed critics might accuse Samantha of turning her back on her birthright, of ‘dumbing down’ her life and relegating herself to a seemingly subservient role far beneath what she was capable of living. 

But she was a witch who seemed supremely aware of her options, confident about what she was doing and clear about her reasons for doing it.  One thing that seemed to set this sorceress apart, was that she recognized the potential for magic in the most ordinary of circumstances, and she served as a pivotal, graceful reminder to everyone around her of the power of love to transform lives, and of the magic of believing. 

What’s more, she did all this with a sly sense of humor, never relinquishing her prerogative to twitch up a solution or a surprise, and never losing the twinkle in her eye that suggested she understood the value of not taking it all too seriously.  An unlikely or silly icon?  Perhaps, but she has remained for me a simple and entertaining example of the possibility of walking between worlds, of offering one’s gifts directly from the heart, and of having fun in the process. 

With or without the special effects, it doesn’t get much more magical than that.

ASK THE SHOWER TEAM: What Is My Life’s Purpose?

'Wisdom' and Other Words To Live By From a Wet-Behind-The Ears Oracle

'Wisdom' and Other Words To Live By From a Wet-Behind-The Ears Oracle

Q: “What is my life’s purpose and in what direction should I look for a career that fulfills that purpose?”

 A: These questions speak to your uncertainty and your current lack of clarity, and to the disappointment you are feeling about the way that things have gone for you lately. Nevertheless, we see and hear the current conditions of your experience, the breakdown of much if not all that you have built . . . and with all due love and respect, we say “Good for you!” “Bravo!” And while it may sound strange or even cold to respond in such a way to your obvious discomfort with current conditions . . . we want you to understand that the reason we applaud where you are is, in part, because of the powerful desire that is being launched from you under these current conditions. Powerful desire is being born here and where there is powerful desire there is powerful life force being summoned forth.

The current of your life is flowing swiftly—more swiftly all the time, even if you cannot necessarily see that right this minute. That current is carrying you in the direction of new or newly clarified dreams and desires. In the midst of this rubble or this ruin or this loss that you are experiencing, there are new ideas coming forth, a new light dawning that is pointing you more than ever in the direction of what your heart desires most.

When you find yourself in such a place of loss or letdown, looking around and noticing all that has fallen away . . . there is such freedom available to you if only you can see it. There is such possibility swirling all around you, such a delicious flow of energy and such a powerful calling to you if only you will hear it. You can go anywhere from here. You can do whatever it is that you decide your heart is calling you to do. Anything is possible and very little is now in your way. There is truly an open horizon before you and all that you are ‘meant’ to do is to pick the point on that horizon that shines brightest to you and begin to move toward it.

You ask—as many do—questions about your life purpose or questions about what kind of connection , what kind of love or partnership, has been determined or ordained for you. And we say, please reframe the question, because asking it the way that you are asking implies that someone other than you has the final say about any of that.

What we want you to understand and to embrace and to celebrate is YOUR power to decide those answers for yourself. We want you to really feel how much power you have right here and now to determine the course of your own life—simply by becoming as clear as possible about what it is that you really really really want. Instead of asking, “What career will most fuilfill my life purpose?” Ask instead, “what kind of work would truly set me on fire? What kind of work would I so love to do that I would long for every sunrise so that I could get started again?” Instead of asking, “Will love ever find e or am I ‘meant’ to be alone,” ask yourself what it is and why it is that you want to share your joyous life experience with another. What is it you want to offer someone? Why does it matter to you that someone be there sharing your journey and participating in your expansion and unfolding with you?

We want you so much to understand what a powerful creator of your own experience you really are, even thought you may feel right now as though you are at the mercy of forces that are beyond your control.

The fact is, nothing that has come to you, nothing that has ‘happened to’ you has or could come about unless it were somehow a response to what you have been offering in terms of what you think and how you feel.

So begin to focus now, during this blessed and richly fertile time in your life, on your desires. Feel them as clearly and purely as possible. Be as sure as you can be what it is that you REALLY want and begin to give you attention to it. Live it. Breathe it. Sing it. Dance it. Dream it. Write it. Paint it. Expect it!

You are, in fact, at one of the most pivotal and powerful places you can be right now . . . standing in you’re here and now, with almost nothing to lose and with everything to gain. All you have to do is decide what your gains will look like—and the only criteria for that is what pleases you. Trust your own connection to Source, trust the You that you really are to continue to offer guidance to you—as You have been all through these recent times—toward all that your heart is calling you to. See and celebrate the fact that you have turned toward You, and that nothing and no one can stand in your way now but you.

Follow Your own lead, day by day, dream by dream, thought by thought . . . and just watch how beautifully and perfectly you rise from these apparent ashes, ready to receive the life that YOU meant for you to live.

Affirmation:

I am seeing Me so much more clearly every day and loving what I’m living, loving who I’m being, loving all this joy that I’m creating.

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