Girl seeks magic

[phoenix]

At present, I don't consider myself a member of any religion. Nor do I adhere to any creed or belief system, or practice rituals of any kind other than the most secular. I don't on a daily basis acknowledge anything but the mechanically true and objective (aside from the quirks of my own mind, which I think of as irrationality breaking through).

And I'm not happy this way. I want to believe. Or no, not even that. When I was a child or a teenager, I could hold the rational and the magical in my mind both at once. Mythology and folklore and magic were part of my thinking, in my wishes, a nourishing dream of the world that didn't block out the real world. Neither hardenedly sceptical nor believing in everything: there was a world of the imagination and there was consensus reality, and both of them were true. Different ways, different purposes. When I cast a circle or a spell, I changed. I have no concern as to whether it changed the world because that wasn't what was important. It was true within, to the part of me that flourishes with magic and gods, and true with people to whom this makes sense.

This is hard to talk about. There are a couple of people close to me who are atheist or similar, and who may look down on me for seeking spirituality. (What a silly reason.) Besides, I don't know if I can get to my symbolic side, or if it's firmly shut down now. (Well, nothing ventured...)

I think I can. Time to try.

Comments

[zarhooie]

I am episcopalian with heavy UU leaning, so I'm probably not the best person to talk to, but I am a religion major so that's got to count for something. Ping me if you need someone to chat at.

[xb95]

There will be no looking down from this direction, even if I can't begin to understand. But I wish you luck on your search.

[rho]

I have a lot that I want to say in response to this and to its comments (both here and on LJ) but very limited energy, so for now, I'll just say the most important bits here, and save the rest for an entry that may or may not ever be written.

Depending on what you end up believing, I may think you're wrong. I may even think you're foolish. But I think that most people do things that are wrong and foolish from time to time (some people even think my purple shoes are brown!). I know I certainly do. And besides that, there's one of my favourite maxims: if it's stupid but it works then it's not stupid.

A sense of wonder is a rare and precious thing, and I think it's right for everyone to try to find theirs wherever they can. For me, I can experience awe and wonder thinking about scientific phenomena or looking at mathematical equations. I wish everyone got as much joy as I do from this, but they don't, and it would be petty of me to try to deny people wonder from whatever source they may seek.

So yes. Go. Do whatever it takes to make you happy, and while I may disagree with you strongly over the form it takes and may possibly even argue with you about it, my overriding emotion won't be looking down on you but pride that you took the initiative to do what makes you happy, and gladness if it works.

[juliet]

There are ways of looking at the spiritual/mystical that fit in with the scientific/rational. Humans work well with symbols and with ritual, and it's possible to construct the symbolic and ritual and magic within a framework that doesn't conflict with the mechanically/objectively true. Which sounds a lot like what you used to do as a teenager, really. (You can always change yourself; and that does have effects going outwards.)

(Which is not to say that you have to go that way; you may be happier seeking something that *doesn't* entirely fit with the scientific. Plenty of working physicists also have a God-concept, for example.)

FWIW this is stuff I continue to work around/with myself: I'm fairly hardcore atheist/materialist, but I find certain sorts of symbolism very powerful, and I do think that it's possible to choose the ways in which you interact with the external universe, and that that can have very real effects. I may operate that from a symbolic standpoint, but I can construct a rationale from a more objective one :)

[denise]

I was raised Catholic, flirted with neopaganism for a while, wandered through atheism, and slowly came back to religion as an adult the more I realized that I believed that there was something, even if not the same kind of something that most major religions have hit upon. (If pressed to give a religion these days, I will generally say "theist with Jewish Buddhist tendencies".)

I think that the solution to finding what you believe in is finding out what others believe in, and seeing what resonates most with you. That's what worked for me, at least...