the 3 most painful struggles of magical people + what to do about them

When in doubt, use crystals

In my several years of working with magical people ... I've noticed we tend to wrestle with similar problems. 

I figured I'd take some time to speak to those today, in case any of you regular readers could use a pep talk.

1. Getting obsessed with unrequited love

Magical folk generally dig embracing elaborate mythologies, interpreting obscure symbols, performing divinations, and dwelling on past-life memories stirred up in dreams. 

Is healthy, requited love especially inviting to such occupations?

No, not really. It's far too crowded with normal gross human stuff like actual relating and intimacy. 

But being obsessed with an unrequited love... now that provides ample opportunities for all such favorite activities! 

I've spent plenty of hours fantasizing about people who wanted nothing to do with me, meditating on our synastry charts, pulling Tarot cards and pondering the hidden meaning of something that they said to me that one time. 

And I’ve known dozens of other magical people who’ve done the same.

If you've ever uttered the words "Twin Flame," you've likely swum in these murky waters.

(Fun yet unpopular fact: the whole notion of "Twin Flames" comes out of a part of Plato's Symposium that's narrated by Aristophanes, a comedian famous for his plays that involved people fucking donkeys…

… in other words, Twin Flames, in their original context, were seen as a bit of a crude joke). 

So, if this is something you struggle with - know that it's a natural side-effect of being an intuitive and imaginative person.

You're not alone, or especially unique in doing this. 

In fact, as a hobby it's very absorbing and pretty much top-notch. 

Downside is: it tends to keep you from being open to gross human stuff like actual relating and intimacy. 

The only remedy I know for this affliction when it's acute is to go full-throttle in one's pursuit of the unrequited love object. 

In other words, don't be quiet, don't be shy - sing it from the roof-tops. Take out advertisements in the newspapers. 

The resultant cold sting of humiliation is likely to wake you up out of your trance. 

With this cold sting is likely to come a greater willingness to open oneself...

.... to the hard work of being in real, reciprocal relationships with people who are notidealized fantasies.

2. Creating identities around victimhood 

The seams of history do burst with foul injustices of all sorts, and injustices against magic people and witches abound.

Even aside from historical travesties, plenty of magical people experienced abuse in their childhoods.

I certainly did, and pretty much every magical person I know (except a lucky handful) also did. 

It's very important to recognize, grieve, get angry about, and seek healing for one's hurts. And to know that the healing process can be long. 

That's one thing. 

It's a whole other thing to dwell on one's hurts constantly, to feel perpetually resentful towards the world, to feel owed, to see betrayers everywhere, and to cling to a whole identity built around being-more-oppressed-or-abused-than-thou.

Simply put, the first mode is magically efficacious and the second is not. I know this from first-hand experience. 

In other words, the first route will lead to things in your life getting way better while the second will just perpetuate the same stinky state of affairs, while also managing to attract around you a whole set of friends and lovers who also see themselves as victims....

... and alas, people who see themselves primarily as victims tend to feel totally justified in harming others, sooooo, there's that.

In other words, there's a certain kind of exultant righteousness in identifying as a victim, tenderly caressing one's proud list of wounds.

You get to rail against all the perpetrators out there indefinitely, and there sure are millions of them to rail against.

But. 

That exultant righteousness is then all you get. 

It's maybe not fair... but it is just true that you get happenings that mean more of the same meaning that you ascribe to your life's events. 

Why? because magic and synchronicity work on an engine of meaning. 

This is why forgiveness is such a magically powerful practice:

... it changes the whole context of meaning in which you see yourself and your life's events - and when your context of meaning changes, the kind of synchronicities that show up for you change.

3. Getting hung up on cultural purity

I'm just gonna say it: magic, ritual, plant medicines - are the heritage of all humans, not just those who happen to be genetically connected to a surviving lineage of teachers.

The term "cultural appropriation" came into being to describe the very rude practice of places like the British Museum who hauled off sacred, rare artifacts of other cultures in order to put them on display in London as trophies.

... in other words, the term "cultural appropriation" originally described literal acts of appropriation, as in - the actual stealing of physical stuff, such that it could no longer be used by the cultural that created it. 

No question - that kind of stealing is unacceptable.

But now people use "cultural appropriation" rather loosely to brand anyone who borrows spiritual inspiration from another cultural as an evil racist appropriator....

... as if respectfully burning some sage ranked at the same level of wrongness as stealing someone's marble sarcophagus. 

Yet... it just - doesn't. 

I once had someone angrily accuse me of "cultural appropriation" because I recommend Buddhist practices like Metta Meditation in my courses, and I'm not Asian.

Here's the thing though: I did take formal Bodhisattva vows, and the Lama who gave them to me didn't seem to give a hoot about my non-Asianness, as I'm pretty sure Gautama Buddha wouldn't either.

I understand the romantic longing for ancient traditions to remain intact and untouched by "outsiders"... but here's the thing... 

... in this age of the internet and globalization, that longing is massively, preposterously impossible.

Also, there's tons of people of many kinds of heritage - including European heritage - who have no access to "authentic" indigenous traditions that they're genetically connected to...

... because those traditions were wholly wiped out millennia ago by the Roman invasions and Christian crusades. 

As far as I can tell, that makes these magical people (including those of European descent) just as much the survivors of imperialism and colonialism as anyone else. 

Simply because the colonizing massacre your tribe suffered happened in 300 C.E. in Gaul instead of 1600 in North America doesn't mean it didn't happen and that the reverberations of that painful interruption aren't still active. 

Those folks whose ancestral magical lineages were wholly wiped out by Roman and Christian invasions, myself included, are essentially spiritual refugees - which means since we don't have access to a lineage...

... we have to humbly borrow inspiration and seek teaching from other, more in-tact traditions and historical sources.

And that's okay. It's really, really okay. 

Also, news flash: magic didn't end in the past. 

It's flowing and evolving and making itself known imaginatively in fully fresh ways, in new revelations - right here, right now, always. 

All of which is to say: embracing the cosmopolitan flux of ideas and methods from around the world as they percolate on the internet and provoke a fresh Renaissance in magic is a beautiful thing...

... and as long as that embracing of ideas is done with gratitude and respect, there's no need to get uptight about it. 

So take a deep breath and relax. 

Magic is for humans.