7 Reminders of Everyday Magick for When You Are Feeling Stuck
It’s happened to most Pagans and witches I know. There comes a point in time when we temporarily feel disconnected from our own magick and/or the magick that exists within the universe.
Sometimes it happens when we are in the early stages of our spiritual path. At other times, personal trauma, challenges, or even fear may impact our ability to access the wild, untamed power within ourselves and within nature. This can be further exacerbated by the naysayers who scoff at the thought of magick existing and rely only on what can be easily seen with their own eyes.
In the cases of disconnection that I have experienced or have witnessed friends experience, the magick always eventually comes back to us. But the interim in which it seems hard to access can be frustrating, even painful.
Yet, one thing I have learned is that magick exists whether we believe in it or not. That is the part of the magick of magick! I have found that when I am feeling out of touch with the power inherent in myself and my surroundings, a reminder of the ways in which magick is always present has helped to reassure me and to eventually lead me out of my feelings of being stuck.
Below are 7 reminders of powerful magick and untapped possibilities that exist within our world.
In The Shadows: Life and Transformation
Life, in and of itself, is quite a magickal miracle and one that occurs in stages often unseen by the human eye. A seed is planted in the ground where we can’t see. For weeks or even months it may appear that nothing is happening and yet, one day, we see a tiny plant start to sprout from the ground.
A similar process is true of human life; we have no way of knowing the exact moment when conception occurs. A seed is planted and growth occurs within the darkness of the womb for nine months before the child is born. A caterpillar’s transformation into a butterfly happens within the silence of the cocoon, hidden from human eyes. If all of these miracles can happen in the dark where we cannot see, then surely it is possible that there is growth and transformation occurring even in the midst of what may seem like our own times of stagnancy and darkness.
Energy’s Impact on Water
In 2011, Dr. Masuru Emoto published his book The Hidden Messages in Water. In this book, Dr. Emoto shares his discovery that crystals formed in frozen water could be altered based on the thoughts or energy directed towards them.
Water that was exposed to loving, positive words or energy formed crystals that were complex, colorful, whole, and aesthetically pleasing whereas water that was polluted or exposed to negative thoughts or energies formed fragmented, incomplete crystals with dull colors. As much as 60% of the human body is comprised of water. If our thoughts, words, and feelings can impact the molecules of water in a glass, just imagine how thoughts, words, and energies can impact our own bodies and our physical and mental health!
The Power of Words
So much of what we do, think and feel revolves in some way around words. Words have the power to persuade, to heal, to help, to hinder and to hurt. The Bards of old knew this, and were often esteemed and powerful advisors to Kings and others with great influence. Politicians use words to build alliances and/or sow discord and division.
It is through the spoken and written word that we pass ancestral knowledge and traditions down from generation to generation. We use stories as teaching tools, and words are chosen carefully when writing spells. Fortunately, most of us have the ability to access this power at any moment. When we consciously choose to use the power of words to speak our truth, amazing things can happen.
Dreams and Prophecy
Have you ever had a gut feeling that later turned out to be true? A dream that provided you with information you couldn’t possibly have known? Perhaps you have had a knowing that you simply couldn’t explain. While we may try to reason with ourselves or rationalize these experiences, the reality is that in most cases, there is magick underfoot.
The story of the blue bowl of Glastonbury is just one of many examples of the magick of prophecy and dreams. In the late 1800s, a gentleman by the name of Dr. Goodchild of Bath, England, had a vision that he was to purchase a blue bowl and bury the bowl at Bride’s Mound in Glastonbury, England. Putting his faith in his intuition, Dr. Goodchild purchased the bowl and buried it in the location identified in his vision.
The bowl remained buried in the Earth at Bride’s Mound without the knowledge of anyone but Dr. Goodchild himself. In 1906, Wellesley Tudor Pole became convinced as a result of a vivid dream that he needed to move to Glastonbury. He believed that he would find a sacred object there, but that he would need the help of three maidens. Pole moved to Glastonbury and with the help of his sister, Kitty, and two other young women, he found the blue bowl that Dr. Goodchild had buried.
While there are certainly valid examples of con artists who have falsely claimed to have psychic ability in order to benefit financially, there have been too many verified stories of prophetic dreams, visions, intuition and other psychic phenomenon that make it difficult to disregard that this type of magick does, indeed, exist in our world.
Music: The Universal Language
Much like words, music has the power to touch us to our very core. Music can stimulate a wide variety of emotions and can transport us back in time as memories are evoked by melodies from the past. Music is increasingly being viewed as a therapeutic tool for kids and adults alike. Music therapy has been found to be beneficial for adults with Alzheimer’s and dementia. According to the Mayo Clinic, despite the debilitating damage done by Alzheimer’s to one’s memory, key brain areas linked to musical memory are relatively undamaged by the disease.
Research has shown that music also helps with reduced anxiety and discomfort related to surgery, restoring lost speech, reducing side effects of chemotherapy and radiation, reducing depression, and decreasing pain perception and the need for pain medication. Music can stimulate creativity and has long been an integral part of many religions and spiritual paths. The next time you are feeling particularly stuck, pick up a drum, sing a chant to the deities you worship, or simply listen to a moving piece of music and notice how it impacts the way that you feel.
The Untapped Magick of Our Brains
Many years ago when my grandmother had cancer, I read a series of books by Dr. Bernie Siegel. One of the pieces of information that has stuck with me to this day has to do with studies of patients with multiple personality disorder and how powerful our mind truly is.
Studies have found that patients with multiple personality disorders can exhibit different diseases and physical symptoms that show up in one personality but not the other. For example, some personalities may need glasses or have diabetes but when another personality takes over for whom these health issues do not fit into their reality or personality, these symptoms disappear. The individual who just needed glasses to read a few minutes ago can now see just fine.
Most strikingly, Dr. Siegel references a patient with multiple personality disorder who had a personality that had cigarette burns on their skin. The cigarette burns were quite visible; yet, when another of the patient’s personalities took over, the cigarette burns were no longer visible.
Furthermore, Dr Siegel cites a study in England wherein a group of men were administered saline and told it was chemotherapy. 30% of the men lost their hair! Dr. Siegel shares all of this information in an effort to demonstrate that our brain is capable of far more than we realize and that our perception and beliefs can play a considerable role in what happens in our bodies.
I believe that our brains – and therefore we as individuals – are far more powerful and capable than we realize, we simply haven’t fully tapped into that power yet. This is not to say that medical conditions are not real or that healing is simply a matter of positive thinking. I know from personal experience that this is not the case, at least not for most people.
However, if we look at this information from a broader perspective and we accept the definition of magick to be “the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will”, we can see from the above examples that the ability to affect magick in some way, shape or form exists within all of us, whether or not we “feel” it in any particular moment.
Shiny things!
When people think of “new age” or “woo”, most invariably think of crystals. Those pretty, shiny rocks formed by the Earth that have inherent powers and the ability to help us create magick. It has not been uncommon in my experience for non-pagan folks to think I am a bit off of my rocker when I talk about crystals and the ways in which they are magickal. Yet, science obviously agrees with me as the unsuspecting human likely uses crystals in some way on a daily basis, perhaps without even realizing it.
Crystals are used in a variety of electronic equipment including watches, radios, clocks, televisions, electronic games, and computers. Anyone who has a cell phone is benefitting from a crystal’s abilities, as is anyone who uses a GPS. Quartz crystal in particular is used for its electrical properties, heat resistance and ability to vibrate at precise, stable frequencies.
Quartz crystals are excellent tools for transmitting radio and television signals. If a simple crystal can be used to help us talk to our friends, see a picture come through on a screen or help us find directions to our destination, then who says it can’t be used for decreasing anxiety or healing a headache?
There are many more examples that I could share that demonstrate that magick is within us and around us, even when we can’t feel it or see it. Sometimes when we are stuck, the very act of trying so hard to get unstuck can make us feel further disconnected. Sometimes, we just need to let things flow, take their course, and have faith that things are happening even though it may seem that our power is barren and our lives are in a stagnant phase.
So the next time you are feeling this way, I hope the examples listed above will provide some reassurance. Relax, hold a crystal or two in your hand, make or listen to music and speak some positive words over a glass of water before drinking it. If the weather is nice, you might even want to submerge your hands in the earth and do a bit of gardening to see that roots and therefore life exist and are often solidly entrenched deep in the darkness where we can’t easily see them. No matter how stuck you are feeling, know that your magick and your connection to the divine will eventually come back to you.
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