Many years ago, when Otis was squishy and new, just a few months old, I decided to write a thing that I’d noticed others were doing; free online challenges.
It was called Ignite Your Shine, and while I don’t remember what plumped the full ten days, I do remember the first day introduced the concept of magic, and alongside it, I recommended participants listened to Olivia Newton-John’s Magic for vibes and an anchor.
Magic has long been something I’ve played with. Not magick, ritualised and Crowley-steeped, but magic. Sparkles. Brightness. Levity.
When I was a child I was locked in a church and the town thought I’d been kidnapped. How I got there was by following a vision that to this day I know was real and true and external to my imagination.
But apparently, nobody else saw it. Magic, methinks.
And then there’s the floaty fluffy fizzy feelings I get when something dances like magic inside me. Like when I’m going on a holiday or watching my kids do something extraordinarily new. I like to file these under magic, too.
It’s a wonder and a blessing. It feels both beyond me and of me, simultaneously.
What fascinates me about Ignite Your Shine, was that, to this day, I still feel sparked when I remember it. It gives me the flurry of purpose and like, I’m doing something different here, something that matters.
But if we dare to excavate what happened to Ignite Your Shine, something else pans into view. Flanking the magic, is fear.
Ignite Your Shine was supposed to be a 30 day challenge. It was a little stretch from the very clinical and vanilla nutrition work I’d been doing. I had no idea of who it was for or what it was going to do, but it felt so fun. So refreshing. So (ahem) JUICY!
This was 2015 when Facebook was fecund and percolating.
And, while I was probably somewhat aware of my own saboteur in the moment, it is only now that I am tethering myself to the same source of Magic, that I realise what was afoot.
Injecting magic into public space, and perhaps even moreso, online, where I couldn't read the room energetically or observe body language behind a rejection or sense the motivations for someone to actually (oh god) say yes.
I became gripped with fear and denounced my own capabilities, swiftly abandoning the project.
There’s so much wrapped up in being a steward of magic, personally, culturally, genetically et al.
I’m starting to understand the mechanics of magic in reverse now. I’ve been really leaning in deep the past few months as the hard-grind seems to be evaporating itself of options for me, and magic appears a legitimate pathway.
Now that I’m not trying to understand how to make it work, it’s showing me how it works. And how previous iterations failed.
Note #1: People don’t like Magic.
This is a bitter pill to swallow, and I’m not entirely sure why yet. But I know there’s some of us pegasus sparkle fairies that really dig magic, that dig the obscure and the incandescent and technicolor idea factories. But most people don’t. And that’ OK. But so much of my life became protective of that part of me, dampening and dulling it so that others wouldn’t call me a weirdo (much of my adolescence and early adult years), or so they wouldn’t sink into this strange expression which I believe now may be a surrogate sibling of shame, or inadequacy. When they are almost like ‘if humans have access to that by manouevering ever-so-slightly from the tribe, then I will also be expected to do that and that terrifies me because the tribe is how I survive’.
Note #2: People don’t like being magic.
This one is much more self-directed, and should be an addendum to the last sentence, in the last point. It can be lonely. Especially as a young one learning that my brain is a rioting, paisley-adorned, swing-party of fabulosity that others tell me they take LSD to achieve. By having this brain, for such a time, it meant that I’m not like the tribe. In Australia, particularly, that can be terrifying (Australian culture is very much ‘all in it together’ and growing up in a small country town where I was like ‘but what if we could do OTHER STUFF???... ahem, no Nelle, we don’t.)
Note #3: People don’t like becoming more magic.
Dovetailing from the last point, Once one accepts they are magic, it almost becomes impossible to avoid becoming more magic. This is something I’m currently aroused by; surrendering identity, collecting a new one. If you see my gifts, then that becomes a standard. If that becomes a standard, I’ll have to be better. And yet I have absolutely no idea what ‘better’ means when I’m dealing with magical shit being bounced into my brain from an unknown source at mostly the wildest and inopportune times.
Note #4: Magic and Clever make poor bedfellows.
This is the hardest one I’ve had to accept. There’s so many layers to this (as would be expected with all poor bedfellows), but perhaps the most annoying is Clever’s territorial pissings upon any of Magic’s ideas. Clever, in this day and age, has become somewhat deified and Magic is merely cute and lucky. I’ve noticed in detail my advancements to over-engineer any idea Magic brings to the table. From every angle, Clever tends to complicate and dilute the beauty offered by magic. And part of my Brain (the dopamine, perhaps) enjoys this. But the reality skews toward a ‘increase your data storage’ emails from google docs, rather than Magic just getting out there into the world.
I believe further investigation is indeed required.
Ignite Your Shine is almost a perfect contrast: a much earlier experiment that now appears to have been reaching toward the same source, but with considerably more self-consciousness. JUICY!, meanwhile, seems to be unfolding much more naturally.
I’d love to know whether you’ve experienced something similar with Magic (or indeed with Clever, whom I’m beginning to suspect is one of Magic’s more persistent gatekeepers).