Spell-Speaker, Wand-Wielder
Archetypes #6: Magical Menfolk
See them pass, the spells in the air, flying out of the big leaves of the grimoire. Potions bubbling in the background through alchemical alembics. Time and space only exist because he conjures them up. Down in a cave, the tide washing in below Tintagel castle, where young Arthur waits. At least, that's the story spun by another old wizard in the moonlight. There's magic in the sounds of the evening. Is he a hollow flute for the energies of creation, or is he the creator? Prospero, image of the playwright on his island? When I see the trance in the eyes of the children I'm telling fairy tales to, I know I'm a Magician. I also know there's another invisible Magician behind me, casting me as his spell.
And it all begins with speech. The mantras and prayers that are spells, agreements with the gods of nature to bring alignment and intention into the world of men. We poets are all already magicians because we recognize there's something special going on with speech. Spells in the grimoire are potential energy; speaking makes them kinetic. The great eternal AUM becomes divided up into the syllables of creation. There is an arcane cartography at work in spells: a sense of beings in each consonant, each vowel, blending in patterns that imitate or elucidate the manner in which creativity unfolds, life unfolds, the universe unfolds, and if we can just say the spells with the right intonation, pace, emotion, we can open doorways in possibility. Beyond time and space, beyond the rationally possible.
You see, Magic is more than "technology we don't yet understand", although there's an aspect of that to it. When psychologists talk knowingly of how explorers' ships could only be seen by the shamans who expected the impossible, we can be wryly amused at the limitations of societies, can wonder what it is we're not seeing. Yet magic also requires, always, leaps of faith, willingness to open to other modes of perception that cannot be accessed immediately. ‘Esoteric’ originally meant the knowledge hidden behind the curtain, only available to the initiates, while the common people and priests got the everyday narrative, Confucian-style. Spiritual truths you can't measure with any kind of -meter. (Useful as those are. The old "atheist" Soviet Union had some pretty cutting edge technological instruments. These worked with energies Siberian shamans know all about, but Harvard, in its truly atheistic ignorance, would deem impossible and thus not worth trying to measure. On the other hand, when learning the technology of the Yoga Sutras, I was told that CIA operatives had been trying to infiltrate and learn the techniques, back in the 70s, for whatever misguided reasons. That Western quest for spiritual shortcuts, no doubt, though in some esoteric Eastern traditions it's said that the ancient yogis had spells so powerful, they blew up cities, and the disruptions of those antediluvian wizards led to our more recent ancestors forgetting and beginning again).
So we're wary, too, of sorcerers, manipulators, warlocks as much as witches. Who's to say you'd use that power wisely and not egotistically? We already had a fair number of magical egotists in the twentieth century, using the new technologies we DO know about. The Dark Arts of Marketing and Advertising, constantly a step ahead in their communication on behalf of the Machine but appearing to be on behalf of Us. First wave feminists were sold cigarettes as a sign of womanly independence, and it all got more complex and clever-clever from there.
Take a breath. There's more to this yet. True Magicians are both deeply creative and humbly acknowledge their lineage. Those Gayatri mantras, repeated 108 magical times, just as they have been for generation after generation. Elegant numbers, of course, figure frequently in the process of magic. As does the number three, rising up as the seer, the seen, the process of seeing; the 3-fold nature of creation, there in the very instant the One pretends there's another.
Who generated the mantra in the first place? Was it a human round the fire, or did the mantra sound in another register and create the human that could sound it in ours? Chickens and eggs perhaps, but all human languages are complex, grammatically complete, rich in texture; none of them consist of cavemen ungrammatical “ughs”. Dr- drinks and drowns and drops. Fl- flirts and flutters and flowers. Cl- clumps and clings into clay. It's almost as though spirit beings gave speech to us fully formed. Almost as though the Magician's first task is to listen to the voice of the cosmos, of the natural world, to hear the song of the grasses and the trees and the winds, the mood of the mud, to detect the work of beings bringing gooseberries to ripen. Then he might know which spell will work, even if he feels a little Foolish trying it out.
Because spells, mantras, prayers, poems, are conversations with the unseen, however we conceive the Mystery. They can't be fully understood like modern science tries. (Modern science which has barely scratched the surface of the unseen forces at work in this Life). We moderns are lacking the mental muscle for this, even as we pump iron. Tibetan Tantric masters set complex Imagination exercises to picture worlds in other dimensions in the richest detail. Then you could truly cast an incantation, with an accompanying visualisation. Just as the seed-being does when it pictures the pollinated flower of the future.
In our iconography of the Magician, wands add the energy of body language to the linguistic magic. Because a wand makes a magician want to move, to act as much as he speaks. To make a contract with the forces in the air, carving a way through, organically connecting to some tree that pulsed with earth energy. Roots, branches, nature's creative genius. Sometimes we feel crazy brandishing them, but that's only because we stand so apart from a world that's told us There's No Such Thing As Magic... When I feel the energy tingling in my fingers, conducting through whatever instrument I'm holding, be it a pen or a trumpet or a glow stick in the dark, I know there's Magic. And I know men need to connect with it, just as much as women do.
And so with a swish the Magician learns to practice other languages which nature knows: conversations in colour, with a paintbrush perhaps; conversations in movement, working in every direction including up into the air; conversations in taste, when combining ingredients into moments on the platter. Conversations in music, arising ceaselessly from that hum when our creative sides tune in, wielding an instrument in the name of making Life's song audible. Physical laws cease to apply when the Magician goes instantaneous and quantum, stepping briefly off the illusion of the Time Plane.
Modern male Magicians are men the media talk of in self-congratulatory tones: devisers of operating systems and ergonomic products, mentally conjuring new markets in their sleep. But actually, we know that Magic is something other than what can be written down simplistically, something to achieve in with high marks at a private school or on a stock exchange. Sure, that might be the visible result, but really the Magician has to play at something else, has to pay dream-attention, knowing he's actually up to something else in his sleep, relating to the Great Game, that his waking self may just have an inkling of. And sure the magician manipulates, like a sculptor with his hands or a puppeteer presenting a play. We add something, find something, reveal something. Transform something. Magic at play. A merry dance, but if we're awake we can smell the other wizards in the circle, know who's Gandalf and who's just Saruman.
He comes, of course, at the Beginning. A moment after the Fool, for the Magician, #1 in the Tarot deck (where the Fool is zero), is genuinely launching the creative act that leads us on, is Speaking the direction, through whichever form of communication. That announcement could ripple as out of control as an unwatched potjie, burning and bubbling; the humble Magician doesn't seek to bring everything about himself, he needs other energies to nurture the shoot, to shine enough sun to coax it into full expression. But he's very, very able to play. A million good ideas a day, tapping into the Source of inspiration, and trusting his gut that the choice he makes now is the right one. Flexibility is an important magical attribute. It leads to healing, which is a vital quality. Sure, modern medicine can work with the individual and wield that warrior scalpel against the body's unwanted enemies: the language of the Warrior is written all over it and sometimes that's necessary. But there's another kind of healing that moves into unfamiliar territory, healing those who are conduits for the culture, conversing with forgotten ghosts and 'causes of dis-ease' that are more than physical or even mental. Some force has coursed through me before now and helped support the healing of loved ones in my life. My conscious calling in of such energy is obviously a Magical act, and I'm convinced it helped. You can't measure it though with your peer reviewed double blind studies.
In tune, perhaps, with the drum. Which is itself a magical instrument, beating with a heartbeat that takes us towards transformative trance, formed, as shamanic cultures will say, from the giveaway gifts of the tree and the herd animal, bound together to bring forth vibrations that penetrate us deeply. I've been in many a circle where I've felt the drum take us collectively towards magic. And then, purple butterflies might appear in a great swarm and dance, unseen in that area for generations, as they did to dancing friends a decade ago. I sincerely believe that nature wants us to cast spells collectively, to work our magic together. To trust in our bigger possibilities. The Magician, actually, has a more-than-shaggy appearance, more than dreadlocks in the dust. He might appear confidently in futuristic satin on the right occasion. Another time he'll wear hempen brown. He calls for the aid of the unseen to guide his rituals. He steps out of the everyday, and bubbles of magic appear. Animals know when it's there: at one traditional local ceremony I participated in, horses in a nearby paddock stood eerily still, until the moment was released.
I guess this is where I cross over from the sweet Western poet's take into the reality of African magic. I have felt the raw forces in this landscape, which have led to much that cannot be rationally explained. And yes, some of it is dark, which is not surprising when you think of what Africa's been through in recent centuries. But it's there, and with enough Warrior, enough Lover, enough humble King, enough innocent Fool, enough owning of the Wild Man, the Magician can grasp this raw African magic, work with the cycles and the energies, listen to his dreams, watch where his dance takes him, speak to his ancestors, sing with gratitude for his lungs, and help make the magic we need, to be able to see way beyond the coming sunrise. Camagu!
It's there, no doubt, in the global North too, if we scratch away the refined layers of urban depression and scepticism. The ancient places where the shamans gathered are waiting to be revitalized. Years ago we wandered in a Scottish stone circle, felt the power zinging through our new rings. Talismans, though for what, we had no words yet. Somehow, as society re-emerged into the light three years ago, I was guided to lead an impossibly ambitious nature-based ritual over three glorious tick-filled days. And when we kept going against all odds, magic undoubtedly happened. Synchronicities appeared, community emerged out of nowhere, and participants' lives were transformed for the better. And I felt the Magician at my side, along with an angel or two.
There are times when I'm really not open to magic, which is then the answer I can't even imagine, rigid in my cycles through the understood ways of evolution. But then the clouds part, and I remember the Magician, and I trust that there is a way through, and the Magician will do a hundred impossible things for me before breakfast. He's capricious: we may know the way the cycle goes; but he stops, suddenly, after only 103 mantras, and instead pulls a rabbit out of a toadstool, which we then can see is exactly what the moment needs.
Magicians can truly create anything, so they have to be concerned with the future. This is the danger, dragging us off to Mars rather than diving deeper into what’s been here all along, and can be connected with in a new way for the first time. Biomimicry sounds like a magician’s futuristic science, although it’s based on direct observation and curiosity, like the best existing scientific ways; surely there are other sciences round the corner. And I intuit that intuition is the trick, the tool, the way through. ‘Feminine intuition’ we know is a thing deeply connected with the energies of the planet, which is why men feared witches far more than wizards perhaps. Men have the capacity too; we need to find ways back to it, so that the magicians are not just ancient mythical greybeards but decisively of the future.
So another trick is remembering spirals are the way that we move forward. When did we pass this point before? And what can we pick up fresh this time around? Men need to follow many of our sisters here: plant our feet on the ground, develop greater access to the wisdom within, and the deep heartfelt magic that can lead to, rather than the brilliance of the screens that pretend at magic. The future depends on it. Expressing detailed visions of better worlds is the best starting point for new stories to be lived. My hope is that we use more of our magic towards manifesting moments of great beauty. Because we can.