-- W. B. Yeats
Unison Chalice Lighting
May the light we now kindle
inspire us to use our powers
to heal and not to harm,
to help and not to hinder,
to bless and not to curse,
and to serve in the spirit of love.
Meditation: by the Unitarian Universalist minister Lindsay Bates
Receive, O Mystery, the words of our hearts.
If prayer worked like magic – if I knew the words that would guarantee prayer's power – I know what I would pray:
Let life be always kind to our children.
Let sorrow not touch them.
Let them be free from fear.
Let them never suffer injustice,
nor the persecutions of the righteous.
Let them not know the pain of failure –
of a project, a love, a hope, or a dream.
Let life be to them gentle and joyful and kind.
If I knew the formula, that's what I'd pray.
But prayer isn't magic, and life will be hard. So I pray for our children – with some hope for this prayer:
May their knowledge of sorrow be tempered with joy.
May their fear be well-balanced by courage and strength.
May the sight of injustice spur them to just actions.
May their failures be teachers, that their spirits may grow.
May they be gentle and joyful and kind.
Then their lives will be magic, and life will be good.
So may it be. Blessed be. Amen.
Reading: by Adam Gollner from The Book of Immortality: The Science, Belief, and Magic Behind Living Forever (p. 178)
In history, magic’s origins are inseparable from religious activity. “Magic is no other than the worship of the gods,” explained Plato. The etymology of the word magic goes back to synonyms for “priest” in Proto-Indo-European (magh) and Old Persian (magos). The priestly magi of antiquity were sages and natural philosophers – early scientists.
Both magic and religion have always been predicated on the belief in the existence of other realms or dimensions apart from the empirical. Today, we understand religion as that branch of experience focused on venerating and approaching the beyond, whereas magic aims at controlling it and harnessing its powers for personal and communal use. In the beginning, however, we didn’t distinguish much between worshipping deities (religion) and trying to manipulate them to our ends (magic).
Reading: by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette from King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine (p. 99)
…The magician – the holy man, the witch doctor, the shaman. Whatever his title, his specialty is knowing something that others don’t know. He knows, for instance, the secret movements of the stars, the phases of the moon, the north-south swings of the sun. He knows when to plant and when to harvest, or when the herds will arrive next spring. He can predict the weather. He has knowledge of medicinal herbs and poisons. He understands the hidden dynamics of the human psyche and so can manipulate other human beings, for good or ill. He is the one who can effectively bless and curse. He understands the links between the unseen world of the spirits – the Divine World – and the world of human beings and nature. It is to him that people go with their questions, problems, pains, and diseases of the body and mind. He is confessor and priest. He is the one who can think through the issues that are not obvious to other people. He is a seer and a prophet in the sense not only of predicting the future but also of seeing deeply.
Reading: by Starhawk and Hilary Valentine from The Twelve Wild Swans: A Journey to the Realm of Magic, Healing, and Action (p. xvi, xvii)
All magic arises from [the] basic understanding that everything is interconnected and interdependent… We are part of a larger movement called feminist spirituality, that critiques the patterns of domination embedded in patriarchal religions and reenvisions a spirituality that can liberate women and men… At the core of [our] tradition is the insight that spiritual practice, personal healing, and political activism are the three legs of the cauldron in which wisdom and magic are brewed. If we truly experience all life as interconnected, then we must be concerned with what happens to the rain forests of Brazil and the topsoil in Iowa, to the child suffering in a sweatshop in Asia as well as the homeless child on our city streets. And that concern needs to be expressed not just through prayer and meditation, as powerful as they might be, but through concrete action in the world.
Mystery and Magic
A Sermon Delivered on November 10, 2013
By
The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann
When I was a middle school student in Germany, learning poems by heart was still considered an important aspect of a child’s education. One of the poems I learned – maybe you know it - begins like this:
Hat der alte Hexenmeister / sich doch einmal wegbegeben
Und nun sollen seine Geister /auch nach meinem Willen leben.
Or for those of you whose German is a little rusty, an English translation (by Edwin Zeydel, 1955) goes like this:
That old sorcerer has vanished / And for once has gone away!
Spirits called by him, now banished, / My commands shall soon obey.
The poem is called “The Sorcerer's Apprentice.” Or, literally, “The Apprentice of Magic.” It was written by the great German poet Goethe in 1797. It’s the story of a young apprentice who is too lazy to fetch water for the bath, so he uses his new magical skills to cast a spell on the broom. He commands the broom to pick up the bucket, head down to the river and fill it, rush back and pour the water into the bath. This goes well for a while. But when the bath is full and the apprentice tells the broom to stop, he realizes he forgot the correct magic words. The broom keeps running down to the river, bringing back bucket after bucket. Soon the whole house is flooded and all hell breaks loose. Until finally the master returns home, sees the mess, and using the correct words, brings the madness to an end.
Maybe you’ve seen the Disney movie “Fantasia,” in which this story is set to music and memorably acted out by Mickey Mouse… It’s a cautionary tale.
* * *
When my children were younger, they didn’t learn this story of magic. They learned all about magic reading the Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling, that were finding a mass audience just about when my kids were learning to read. As the books tells it, witches and wizards live all around us. They wave wands, cast spells, and fly on brooms. Mostly, they work their magic discretely, but not always.
Harry Potter is a sad young orphan who lives with his uncaring aunt and uncle, and his cruel cousin. The story begins on his 11th birthday, when he discovers that he himself is actually a wizard with amazing powers. He is invited to explore his hidden gifts and hone his skills at Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. And there a whole new world is revealed to him.
As far as children’s literature is concerned, I thought the books were pretty good. Easy to read. Engaging. A thought-provoking storyline with characters that grapple with important questions. Who am I? What is the purpose of my life? Which path should I follow? How can I find the courage to confront my deepest fears? How can I tell right from wrong, and how do I find the strength to do what’s right, even when doing so is very difficult?
In each of the seven books, Harry is a year older and faces ever more serious challenges involved in growing up. The realities of evil and death, and even racism are sensitively addressed for a young readership.
A few years ago our religious education program offered a Hogwart’s Summer School, that used the framework of the Harry Potter story to explore UU principles, for instance, the worth and dignity of every person; justice, equity and compassion in human relations; and encouragement to spiritual growth. In our summer school, we told our children that any one of us can go to Hogwart’s by using the magic of imagination. “There are magical places around us all the time… if we use our imaginations.” The power of magic is within each of us.
* * *
Now, magic and make-believe is all fine and well for children. But adults know that there is actually no such thing as real magic. Right? Adults, especially rational, scientific minded, mature adults like us don’t believe in magic. Right?
* * *
This reminds me… Do you remember the Philippine faith healers that were in the news years ago? For a while these so-called psychic surgeons made headlines, because they claimed to provide miraculous cures for a wide variety of ailments. The way they did their work, was to lay their patients on a table – not unlike an operating table – and then place their hands on the body part that hurt, or the body region that seemed to be the source of the problems. The healers would somehow detect a diseased mass, or a tumor under the skin, and then physically remove it. But they would do so without the use of scalpels or tools of any sort. They would do it with their bare hands, pressing up the flesh, until blood appeared in what seemed to be an open wound. Then after further probing, they would draw some sort of organic tissue out of the body. Finally they would remove their hands, clean off the area of the assumed incision – and amazingly, the skin had closed, was perfectly restored, as if no surgery at all had taken place.
For a stretch in the 1970s, there were several travel agencies in this country that promoted “psychic surgery tours” to the Philippines. Hundreds of desperate Americans flew to the Philippines, in hopes that they might find a miracle cure for serious illnesses – cancer, heart disease, blood clots, or blindness - which conventional medicine failed to treat successfully.
In the end, though, these faith healers were exposed as charlatans. And the miraculous surgery was revealed to be a simple slight-of-hand trick that could easily be demonstrated by any amateur magician. It involved a cleverly concealed container with a bit of blood, and a bit of animal tissue hidden in the palm of the practitioner. The Western medical establishment concluded it was all a sham. Any cures accomplished were merely product of the placebo effect.
I remember how fascinated I was by the unfolding coverage of all of this. First the amazing claims of the psychic surgeons, and the testimonials of those who had been healed. And then the disappointment when it all turned out to be yet another scam.
But what I remember best is a brief interview on TV with one of the Philippine healers. He readily admitted that his technique was closer to that of a stage magician than a surgeon. Nevertheless he still considered himself an authentic and successful healer. The performance with blood and imaginary incision, he explained, was something he did only for his Western visitors. His Philippine patients from surrounding villages didn’t need those magic tricks. He could heal them simply with a laying on of hands.
The term “placebo affect” implies fakery and foolishness. But isn’t it also an acknowledgment that there are powers of healing accessible to each of us, powers we don’t understand? And even though they are mysterious, they are sometimes undeniably effective.
A placebo isn’t real medicine, we say dismissively . It sometimes works simply because the patient believes it will…
Think about what that says about the power of our beliefs.
* * *
Adam Gollner makes the case that what distinguishes religion from magic today, is that religion worships the mysterious, transcendent forces at the heart of existence. Magic, on the other hand, wants to harness and control these forces for personal use. In earlier days, we didn’t make this distinction. Both dimensions were combined in magical practice.
Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette say that in some ways the practice of magic gave birth to the modern sciences. Alchemy, for instance, the ancient effort to turn lowly metals into gold, or to create an elixir of life, was the forerunner of modern chemistry and physics.
They write, “It is interesting to realize that our modern science, like the work of the ancient magicians, is also divided into two aspects. The first, “theoretical science,” is the knowing aspect of the Magician energy. The second, “applied science,” is the technological aspect of the Magician energy, the applied knowledge of how to contain and channel power.”
As they see it, we are currently living in the age of the Magician, because this is a technological age. This is the age of the Magician, because we share the Magician’s materialist wish to have power over nature. The greatest challenge we face today is to learn to wield our powers wisely and maturely.
Mature men and women know that when we seek to control the powers of nature, we often invariably exploit them. Mature people know that we have the power to effectively bless and curse. We have the power to manipulate the human psyche and the vast resources of the natural world, for good or ill.
Mature magicians know that everything is interconnected and interdependent. This is the same insight that guides the work of Starhawk and Hilary Valentine. They call themselves pagans, because they practice an earth-based spirituality rooted in respect for nature. They call themselves witches, because they trace their practice to Goddess traditions of ancient Europe and the Middle East. They identify with the victims of Witch persecutions throughout history, and challenge the negative stereotypes associated with the word Witch. And they call themselves feminists, because they believe that “neither women or men can be truly free until unequal power relations between genders are broken down.” Their analysis of power “extends to the relations between races, classes, between humans and the earth.” They see “all forms of domination as interconnected and destructive.”
For them, magical practice is not so much about controlling or changing the world, but rather about changing themselves. They write, “Magic has been defined as the art of changing consciousness at will. When we create a sacred space – which includes grounding, purifying, casting a circle and invoking the elements – we are intentionally entering an altered consciousness.” (p. 11)
This altered consciousness allows us realize how our lives are often lived shortsightedly and superficially. When we create a sacred space, our vision widens and our understanding deepens. And we can discern the path we need to follow in order to gain greater wisdom and maturity.
Each of us has the capacity to watch the movement of the stars and the phases of the moon. Each of us has insight into the hidden dynamics of the human psyche. Each of us knows there are links between the unseen world, and the world we see. The more we know, the more we know we don’t know. This is the beginning of all wisdom and maturity: the awareness that we are surrounded by mystery, we are suffused with magic.
We have the power to bless or to curse, to heal or to harm, to help or to hinder.
May the time we share in this sacred space inspire us to choose wisely.
May we be diligent apprentices,
and may each of us in our own way strive to become masters
in practicing the magic of love.
Amen.
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