Magic and the Transrational

Last updated on: August 19, 2015 at 5:01 am by Rev. Catharine Clarenbach

Magic and the Transrational 2015-08-19T05:01:49+00:00 Rev. Catharine Clarenbach

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For too long, those of us with skeptical temperaments have contented ourselves with a false distinction, namely that anything not susceptible to rational proof is by definition irrational. What we tend to overlook is that beyond the rational and irrational lies a transrational realm. The rational realm includes everything that can be ascertained as fact, the irrational everything that can be disproved according to the same criteria; distinct from both, the transrational realm arches beyond the scope of our analytical capacity to parse the creation. (Rev. Forrest Church)

I am looking for employment. After some time laid up from a significant health crisis, I need to get back to work. My family needs the income, and beyond that, I need the people, the stimulation, the structure of the day-to-day.

So I am using the activities of the job-seeker: Looking, applying, preparing, interviewing. And I am using the techniques of the Pagan, the Witch, and the magic-user: Divination, energy clearing, energy building, magical focus, and prayer. These latter abilities are the skills of the transrational.

Rev. Church’s quotation about the transrational speaks directly to the experience of many Pagan UUs. It speaks both to Pagan identity—engaging mysticism and openness to inexplicable spiritual experience—and to connection with Unitarian Universalism—a tradition embracing humanism, agnosticism, and spiritual skepticism.

The “transrational” is a space in between spaces. A space between what is knowable and unknowable, provable and unprovable. It is a borderland, a land spiritual people have inhabited for millennia. It is the land of magic.

There are things one can control in this life—things one can materially affect through action. In my job search, I may look in appropriate places or not look at all, apply or not apply, interview or not, etc.

There are things out of my control. In my search, the jobs available, the others applying, the hidden needs and prejudices of interviewers—all these are beyond the scope of my material control.

The Effective Use of Magic

Magic, the defining skillset of the Pagan pries/tess, Witch, or other magic user, comes into play in the in-between. In the twilight vision of the magic user, the borderlands between the controllable and the uncontrollable become clear.

For example, divination (Tarot, runes, coconut-throwing, etc.) is invaluable in situations like mine. Divination has spoken to the
questions, “Where do I need to focus?” or “What am I failing to perceive?” The in-between space of divination gives answers that improve the effectiveness of our actions in the realm of the controllable.

Grounding, centering, energy clearing and other breath-carried magical techniques also live in the borderlands. They affect our felt experience of ourselves. Not only that, but they affect us in way we cannot easily perceive. These techniques powerfully and subtly shift how we move through the material world and interact with others. These borderland breathing meditations shift both what we can control, as well as what we cannot. In my job search, I have done energy-clearing and grounding work to make myself more perceptive, more prepared, and more open to what I need to do, say, or look for.

Drumming, dancing, chanting and singing songs of power are also skills of liminal spaces. They, like the energy exercises, shift our being in the world and affect the world around us. We may not perceive the larger changes, but we trust that they are there, and we experience their echoes subconsciously. Sound carries and is energy and energy changes the world. Culture after culture recognizes the power of the drum, the power of the sacred song. I sing as part of my regular practice and especially before nerve-wracking events like job interviews. The breath, the sound, the energy—they all make subtle changes in accordance with Will.

The Deepest Magic

Prayer—by which I mean focus on the connection between what is desired (or Willed) and the Universal desire (or Will)—is deep, deep magic. Prayer helps me align with the Divine, with the River of power and energy that are our birthright. Getting into the center of that River helps me move along seemingly effortlessly even as I exercise other magical and material skills and abilities. I move into the Center, and in so moving, affect everything around me. The Mystery, the Flow, the River—this Universal Will carries me along, even and especially over the rocks that appear in my way, if only I will give myself over to it.

Giving over to Universal Will is not to say I have given up my own. It is attending to my own highest, most deeply rooted Self. For me, it is relaxing into the embrace of the Goddess, becoming lost in the gaze of the God, dancing with the Pansexual Shapeshifter, falling into the great unknown of the Divine Who Is Neither Male nor Female. For me, it is learning over and over that I don’t have to swim upstream. For me, it is deep magic, and the purpose of all my techniques. Naturally, your mileage may vary.

These metaphors, these ways of knowing, are how I enter into mystery. Skeptics of any stripe may enter into mystery through contemplation of the universe in its complex gorgeousness. “Forms most beautiful,” is how Darwin called the manifestations of life on earth.

We don’t know how all these contemplations affect us and so affect the people, animals, plants, and systems with whom we live. But we know they do; they affect everything. Just as Pagan energy work of many kinds shifts the magic worker and her environment, so do the skeptic’s meditations on the mysteries of consciousness, life, choice, and personal will.

I don’t yet know when or whether I will attain the employment I desire. But I know I will use every technique at my disposal. Whether acting in the material world, contemplating its beautiful complexity, reading cards, or raising voice in prayer, I will move through all worlds I can inhabit.

The in-between skills, the techniques of the Witch or the mage, these are the ways to move in between spaces, the borderlands of thought and spirit, where mysterious change happens. These are the places where magic works best. This is the twilight land where Mystery meets Material and consciousness is changed at will.

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