Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Pagan
The Zen Pagan: The Quiet Side of Magic

The Zen Pagan: The Quiet Side of Magic

Last updated on: July 18, 2014 at 1:35 pm by Tom Swiss

The Zen Pagan: The Quiet Side of Magic 2014-07-18T13:35:24+00:00 Tom Swiss

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I started composing this episode of “The Zen Pagan” at Wisteria on the day we affectionately call “All ‘T’aint’s Day” — ‘t’aint the SubGenius “X Day” festival that ended yesterday, and ‘t’ain’t Starwood yet. This lull between festivals (see our prior episode about festivals as religious pilgrimage) is a delightfully quiet interlude. There are still things to do; I can walk down the road and visit other camps, or take a e swimming hole, or I can pull out my guitar or one of the instruments that I have no idea how to play and mess around musically for a while. But sometimes I find myself just sitting, looking at nothing in particular, listening to the trees moving in the wind and the birds chirping, alone with my thoughts.

Many people apparently hate that idea. Just before I left Baltimore I happened to read about a new study by psychologists at the University of Virginia and Harvard, which found that people were so adverse to being alone in a room for a little while (six to fifteen minutes) with nothing to do but think or daydream that some would rather give themselves painful electrical shocks than do nothing for that time.

Lead researcher Timothy Wilson said “Those of us who enjoy some down time to just think likely find the results of this study surprising – I certainly do – but our study participants consistently demonstrated that they would rather have something to do than to have nothing other than their thoughts for even a fairly brief period of time.”

Contemplation is not something that we value much. It’s common to blame new technology, social media and text messaging and the like, for exacerbating this, but this research found similar behavior in different age groups and suggests the these always-on connections fill a pre-existing desire rather than creating a new one. Of course a study on living subjects can’t tell us how things were a century ago, but the trend seems to go back a good long way. Thoreau’s contemporaries thought him quite odd when he went off to live in the woods alone.

The Kamakura Daibutsu (“Big Buddha”)

Buddhism, of course, takes a rather opposite tack; “right meditation” is part of the “Eightfold Path,” and so as a Zen guy (in my own fashion) I’m down with that. (Though Buddhism also recognizes that meditation is a hard thing — I think it was the Zen teacher Brad Warner who noted that it’s so hard that we build huge statues to the Buddha, whose main claim to fame was being good at sitting still.) But I’ve also been thinking about the problem in a more Pagan/magical context lately, something I’ve come to call “the quiet side of magic”.

Magic, Uncle Aleister tells us, is “the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.” Change! Will! Every intentional act, Crowley says, is a magical act! Very active, yang terms here. From paleolithic tribal sympathetic magic to the medieval magician conjuring spirits to do his will to the witch’s healing charm, magic is about getting shit done. Right?

Or is there a yin side as well? A receptive side, more about listening and contemplating? Dion Fortune refines Crowley’s definition and says that magic is about changing consciousness at will, a more internal transformation. We can go back to the ancient Greeks and the Oracle at Delphi’s advice, “Know Thyself”. And further back to paleolithic tribal societies, the shaman’s eye turns to an inner realm during a vision quest; while one may meet various spirits and powers in that other realm, they are aspects of ourselves, and it is a contemplative and introspective process.

I was fortunate here at Starwood to attend a workshop by Jeff “Magnus” McBride, famous both as a stage magician and for his understanding of ritual, where he spoke about an archetypal model of the development of a magician. He talked about how a performer evolves from the yang, externally-active Trickster and Sorcerer to the more yin, internally-active Oracle and Sage. The huge active spectacle of a David Copperfield is the Sorcerer in action, while David Blaine frozen, still and unmoving in the middle of Times Square, is an example of the Oracle, turning inward.

The wizard Ged in Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea novels might be a fine fictional example of the path of the contemplative magician. Where Harry Potter and Gandalf fight to overcome lords of evil who seek to rule the world, A Wizard of Earthsea sees Ged moving from a Trickster who defends his village by summoning fog to confuse invading soldiers, to a Sorcerer (in McBride’s labeling) who summons powerful spirits on a dare…and then turns to a journey inward as Oracle as he struggles against a personal shadow. He emerges from his trials not merely a fighter with supernatural powers but truly a wizard, a wise one, who plays the Sage, the adviser and councilor, to the protagonists of the next two novels.

If you have not yet read the Earthsea novels, do so, you’re in for a treat. You should ignore the TV miniseries that was made of them a few years ago, which was disavowed by Le Guin. But perhaps that part of the issue here — Gandalf’s Balrog-wresting or Potter fighting Death Eaters makes for more spectacle on the screen than Ged’s quest for self-knowledge. It’s harder (not impossible, but harder) to make a blockbuster movie or popular novel about personal discovery. So we have to jazz those stories up. We turn Ged into an action hero in the TV adaptation, and we put miracle stories into the biography of the saints and sages.

It’s just harder to talk about internal transformation… as Lao Tzu told us thousands of years ago, the Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao. And so we use metaphors of action in the physical world to point the way. But when we forget the metaphor, when we forget that the real story isn’t Gandalf’s spells but Frodo and Sam’s determination and loyalty, that what ultimately made Harry Potter a hero wasn’t his skill with a wand but the willingness to sacrifice himself to protect his friends, then we lose the substance.

It seems to me that to be a great magician is to be able to sit quietly when it is time to sit, and to be able to act boldly when it is time to act; to be able to listen and to speak, to see and to do — and to know when the time is right for each.

The Zen Pagan is published monthly. Subscribe via RSS or e-mail!

Previous Post

July 17, 2014

Queer of Swords: Redaction for XXXX and XXXXXXX

Next Post

July 20, 2014 What’s New on Patheos Pagan (July 2014)

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A Lakeside Hearth Adventures in Wortcunning Alone In Her Presence Arts, Crafts & Cooking Birthing Hereditary Witchcraft Book of Blackbirds Book Reviews Born-Again Witch Cauldron, Sword, Spear, & Stone Cermony and Liturgy Columns Community Dandelion Seeds Dear Jasmine Druid Thoughts Editor's Picks Everyday Pagan Family & Household Practice Family Traditions Full Frontal Magic Gateway Goddess Guest Articles Happily Heathen Health and Wellness Hearth of Hellenism Heathen Woman Hills of the Horizon History Holidays Horse Goddesses Interfaith Interviews Irish-American Witchcraft Jewish Witch Lamp & Labyrinth Letters from Midgard Literature, Media, Film, Music Loop of Brighid Love, Sex & Relationships Magic or Magick Making Light Naturalistic Traditions Nature News Outside The Circle Pantheisticon Politics Prayers, Poems, Blessings & Stories Queer Femme Mystic Queer of Swords Recipes Ritual and Practice Science and Research Seekers and Guides Seeking the Grail Socially Responsible Magic Spear of Athena Star Made Witch Syncretic Electric Technology The Blooming Staff The Busy Witch The Cartomancer The Crow's Nest The Dance of Pagan Recovery The Hearth of Hellenism The Lady's Quill The Other Side of the Hedge The Path of She The Rantin' Raven The Witches Next Door The Zen Pagan Theology, Ethics, Philosophy Tree City Witch Urban Earthwitch Wayfaring Woman Witch on Fire Wyrd Words

Select a Month January 2026 March 2025 December 2024 June 2024 April 2024 March 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 August 2023 July 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

How many chapters are in Proverbs?

Select your answer to see how you score.

50 22 31 27