Magical Activism
By Ariel Gatoga
Something I’ve noticed is that when we are doing magic for the betterment of the world, we can often miss an opportunity to use our own connection to the world as a magical tool. For instance, I was working with a group of people who were doing magic to heal the environment. When I asked them what each of their own carbon footprints were, they were unable to tell me, and surprisingly none of them wanted to go through the trouble to find out. Another time I was working with a lady who was wanting help to do magic to address a conflict in the Middle East. I told her that her magical spell involved her stopping all gossiping for an entire week. I never heard back from her again. My point is that our most potent magical acts come about when, in addition to the candles and rituals, we include our own microcosmic examples of that which we want to see in the world. It’s always easy to see that there are problems in the world “out there,” but as soon as we are confronted with the idea that we have a personal connection to the problem, we often look the other way, rather than realizing that this connection is our power source.
The entire concept of sympathetic magic is that of the microcosm influencing the macrocosm. That which happens to the poppet, happens to the individual. Therefore, when we choose an issue to take action on, if we aren’t willing to take action in our own lives, in a radically meaningful way, then we missing a huge opportunity to have a powerful impact on the matter, magically. Are we looking for an end to racism? Then it’s time to use our own lives as a catalyst for that change. Where is the prejudice living in us? If we are so naive to think that we have none, than perhaps we aren’t mature enough to tackle such a sophisticated magical operation. Are we trying to effect a healing in the environment? If so, then a major part of our magic needs to be centered on our own interaction with the environment. Where are we polluting? I am acquainted with some people who are very proud of the fact that they are very “green” in their lifestyles, but they are also very toxic and abrasive to people they encounter. If they were interested, they could find a way to reduce their psychic pollution as part of a magical operation, and thus influence the whole very deeply.
There are horrible social injustices happening all the time. So horrible, in fact, that it’s easy to see the perpetrators of such heinous crimes as being part of “the other.” The risk of looking at “the other” as being the sole problem, is that we are often tempted to see them as having all the power and viewing ourselves as being left with nothing to do except complain and pray for a miracle. That kind of self image is the opposite of magical. A magical person finds a way to take responsibility for the situation in order to step into a position of power — the power to change — and then makes conscious choices about their responsibility which cause a ripple effect of good which can’t be stopped.
Many of us are fairly well versed in the the “trappings,” or symbols, of magic. When building a spell, ritual or operation, we use those symbols to speak to our deep minds. Our deep minds are connected to the minds of anyone and everyone in the entire universe throughout all time and space. Yet, when we also “put feet to our spells,” by taking action in our own lives within the realm of that which we want to effect change, we become the poppet of a sympathetic magical operation. We can find an infinite amount of opportunity to effect change within our own worlds through ourselves; as a part of a larger magical operation, this change can have a dramatic effect on the larger macrocosm.
