In this article I want to discuss something that you do not see discussed a lot and that is the practice of magic in the context of the primal movement, the primal health movement or the ancestral movement.
There is a lot of talk about nutrition, physical training protocols, circadian rhythm enhancement, connecting with nature and tuning in that general overall way, that somewhat recreates or attunes us to some of the realities that our ancestors lived with. Of course, these elements are the bedrock of how our ancestors lived and it can teach us a lot about how we can tune into that connection and how we can live our lives better today.
HOWEVER, THERE IS AN ELEMENT THAT IS OFTEN NOT DISCUSSED AND THAT IS THE ‘WORLD VIEW’ OF HOW THESE PEOPLE ACTUALLY PERCEIVED THEIR ROLE IN NATURE AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO EVERYTHING ELSE THERE IS.
Funny enough, the big driver of what urging us to this search for a connection to our ancestral roots, has been science, anthropology and the study of how these people lived from an archaeological and anthropological perspective. So when we discuss the notion of actually practicing magic and how they perceived magic, we run into a bit of difficulty because in many ways, science in its current iteration, is somewhat against the notion that magic can even possibly be real.
The current state of science is one where we have a very limited view of cosmology and even so of physics. We don’t really understand how things work and the idea that we do know how they work is really just an illusion, one that feels really good to us because it makes us feel like the unknown and the wild is not really a factor anymore.
THESE DAYS I FIND THAT AMUSING BECAUSE A RECONNECTION TO OUR ANCESTRAL AND PRIMAL ROOTS HAS TO DO WITH A RECONNECTION TO THE WILDERNESS, TO THE UNKNOWNS OF REALITY. TO THE UNCONTROLLABLE, TO THE UNPREDICTABLE. YET, AT THE SAME TIME, WE WANT TO INTERACT WITH THIS REALITY IN ANY FASHION THAT IS PREDICTABLE, CONTROLLABLE AND KNOWABLE.
What I am going to do is simply present a context and present the human being in relationship to this context and how we as a species are wired in so many ways to actually practice magic. So it is my opinion that there is actually something called a magical instinct. An instinctual drive towards a form of symbolic thinking that leads us into arenas as magic and then we can leverage those pillars of how magic is actually performed, the pillars of ritual, in order to enhance our lives. In order to heal some of the sicknesses that we have gotten from a society that is disconnected from it’s primal and ancestral nature.
I am going to present 3 ideas for you to work with, play with and experiment on.
1. Our ancestors have been practicing magic for at least 50,000 years.
There are definitely records that go back and show us certain types of burial rites and stacking of skulls and certain rituals being performed around death. We don’t necessarily understand the exact context of these rituals but we know that some notion of spirit and some notion of a ritual or a ceremony or objects holding significance, or holding power has been around for a very very long time.
WE ALSO KNOW THAT MOST OF THE CULTURES THAT HAVE EXISTED BEFORE US HAVE A NOTION OF AN ANIMISTIC UNIVERSE. A UNIVERSE THAT IS ALIVE, WHERE EVERYTHING IS IN BUILT WITH CONSCIOUSNESS AND EVERYTHING HAS A SPIRIT. TO THE ANCIENT WORLDS, SPIRITS WERE EVERYWHERE AND EVERYTHING HAS A SPIRIT AND THERE WERE SPIRITS OF ALL DIFFERENT IDEAS.
We had spirits of war, spirits of love, spirits of intellect, spirits of communication, spirits of land, the air, the underworld, spirits of elements. All these things were considered a reality. Now, we can change that word into something that we can understand better today, such as consciousness perhaps.
Nonetheless, what we are talking about is that everything was built with a sort of power. They weren’t in this dead universe, as some sort of ghost riding a meat suit that was not interacting, where the essence, the spirit and soul of what you are was sequestered and locked away.No, it was engaged and in constant communication with the soul and the spirit of everything else around it.
So, if you are actually seeking a connection to the ancestors and to our primal reality as a species on this planet, I ask you to consider the fact that if you think that our ancestors were just superstitious savages and that we somehow now know better and have disproved everything that they have believed for a very long time; I want you to question how much like your ancestors you really want to be or how much perspective you want to have in the realm of how they actually lived.
When I am discussing magic, I don’t necessarily mean the fantastical ideas that we come across from Hollywood, which has really warped the notion of what magic can really be.
BUT THINK ABOUT IT AS A STRUCTURE, A WAY OF RELATING, A WAY OF CRAFTING A PROCESS AND THAT PROCESS IS RITUAL OR CEREMONY WITH THE INTENTION OF GETTING SOMETHING DONE.
So it could be absolutely anything, you could set up a ritual or ceremony in order to shift unconscious patterns, in order to connect with certain types of archetypes or invoke certain types of qualities inside of you. Human beings are hard wired for symbolic thinking and pattern recognition. Now, those things can be seen as some sort of flaw but they are actually a feature not a bug.
Because the ability to think symbolically, to have one thing represent another thing does seem to be a unique quality of humans.
OUR ABILITY TO SET INTENTION, AWARENESS, HAVE VISION AND TO IMAGINE WHAT WE WANT AND THEN GO OUT INTO THE WORLD TO CREATE IT, COULD ALSO BE THOUGHT OF AS A TYPE OF MAGIC.
Why can we do that? While we can explain some of the mechanics of it through certain types of fields of study like psychology or neurology, that still doesn’t lead to the why or even really the how at the level of deep intention and will.
You can simply direct your consciousness to be a creator. That sort of thing is part of the magic, so regardless of what magic means to you or how you might want to apply it after reading this article or even just to begin to explore it, my advice here is just to step out of what you think magic actually is.
STEP OUTSIDE THE HOLLYWOOD IDEAS.
Step outside the Hollywood ideas of what magic are and really question what this is and how you can maybe benefit from having certain types of ceremony or ritual in your life in a way that is easy for you or at least doable for you at first. Explore with it, have fun with it and check it out, it is something that our ancestors have been doing for a very very long time.
There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that in some way or another, at some level, certain types of magic absolutely work and I can claim that from own experience. See what that sort of thinking offers you in terms of value. It is better to think about this, not as whether it is “real” but whether it adds value to your life, whether it makes your life more interesting and fun. So go ahead and consider that.
The second thing that I would like to ask you to consider is a question and that is:
2. If you have disbelief of magic, where does that disbelief actually come from?
I had to encounter this and test this myself as I started doing daily offerings to various classes of consciousness or spirits, on a daily basis. I would be there giving a candle, water or incense and suddenly, the thoughts would come into place of:
“THIS ISN’T REAL”
“HOW COULD THIS POSSIBLY BE THE CASE”
“ARE JUST FULL OF CRAP”
“THIS IS ALL SHIT”
All these sorts of thoughts have come through my mind and then at various times, I would have the opposite, and have these really deep meaningful Gnostic awareness’s, connections and becoming in imbued with certain types of knowledge of how the universe actually works…. interspaced with disbelief.
So it was a very touchy process for me at first. Part of what I had to question is where does this disbelief actually come from.
IS IT FROM YOU? IS IT FROM YOUR DIRECT EXPERIENCE OF HAVING TESTED, EXPLORED AND DOVE INTO THESE FIELDS AND SEEN WHAT YOU GOT BACK?
In all likelihood, you probably haven’t done that and where these beliefs come from are pretty much from a post renaissance era about how the world works and how it is supposed to work and what people have told you is real and what is not real.
How much of this have you actually explored on your own? How much of this science have you deeply explored? What types of psychic phenomenon have you actually explored? How many people have you spoken to that actually practice magic, which are out of your circle, of reinforcing your ideas? How many of these people have you engaged with to tell you whether or not they have had certain types of experiences, which cannot be explained by a mere coincidence?
Have you really looked into it or have you accepted this idea that was created hundreds and hundreds of years ago by people you will never know and probably couldn’t give a shit less about you. Here you are living your life and having a certain belief structure that you didn’t create and that didn’t come from you.
IT IS EASY TO CONFUSE THE THINGS THAT WE PICK UP FROM OTHER PEOPLE AS THINGS THAT COME FROM US, BUT TO REALLY QUESTION THE CORE OF WHERE YOUR KNOWLEDGE COMES FROM, THEN TO REALLY GO AGAINST SOME OF YOUR IDEAS AND CHALLENGE YOURSELF TO SEE WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS…. THAT IS AN AWESOME THING TO DO.
When you consider the book of human history, and accept the reality, that many humans have believed in things that at this stage and time we can call “magical”.
CONSIDER THE FACT THAT IT HAS FALLEN OUT OF FAVOR FOR JUST A COUPLE OF HUNDRED YEARS BECAUSE OF THE IDEAS OF A SINGLE CULTURE AND CIVILIZATION, MOSTLY WESTERN CULTURE AND WESTERN CIVILIZATION.
Consider that you haven’t probably really deeply explored this issue and yet, you live your life because of it. I ask you, I invite you, to really examine the core and the root of your disbelief.
The final element that I would like to consider is something that I mentioned in the initial part of this video and that is:
3. Do you actually consider the thousands upon thousands of generations before us of humans, were just superstitious savages that didn’t know any better?
That suddenly, we have been able to correct their flawed thinking and worldview?
Because if you do think that, I would also like you to consider that you may have some elitist and very privileged perspectives on the world. Human beings survived on this planet for a very very long time.
THEY TRAVELED ACROSS THE WORLD IN BOATS OR ON FOOT TO PRETTY MUCH MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO BE HERE. THEY WERE ABLE TO DO THINGS THAT WE CANNOT EVEN IMAGINE AT THE MOMENT.
Suddenly now, we think we have the owner’s manual on the way the universe works because we can use calculators and computers. Most of us for example don’t even know how those pieces of technology work and yet, at some level, we consider ourselves more capable and more evolved than these people because of that fact, because we can use technology.
WE ARE TALKING ABOUT PEOPLE WHO ARE HEALTHIER, HAPPIER, WHO HAD MORE MEANING, WHO HAD MORE CONNECTION, WHO WERE WAY MORE TUNED INTO THE ENVIRONMENT. WHO AT MANY LEVELS HAD WAY MORE SKILLS, PRACTICAL SKILLS, THAN WE DO AND WE THINK THAT WE KNOW BETTER BECAUSE A COUPLE OF PEOPLE, WAY BACK WHEN, CREATED IDEAS THAT THEN PROPAGATED AND CAME INTO YOUR WORLD VIEW RIGHT NOW.
I am not saying that we are necessarily wrong or that they were necessarily right.
All I am saying is consider those variables and also, really ask yourself if that is really what you think. Is that is what really seems plausible, that all these people were really and completely deluded? Or that maybe, perhaps, they knew something that we have simply lost or they were able to relate to the world in a way that was more functional for a human being, than the way the materialistic scientist relates to the world now.
None of this is to discount the value of science, because all these elements, all the aspects of perception that we were discussing; magic, science, reason, rationality… they are just maps. They are ways for us to make sense of an incredible complexity that we don’t really understand.
SO, SOME MAPS CAN DEFINITELY OVERLAP, SOME MAPS CAN DEFINITELY CROSS OVER AND I THINK THERE IS ROOM FOR THAT TO HAPPEN WITH CERTAIN TYPES OF MAGICAL PRACTICES AND SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT.
If at a practical level, you are able to practice certain types of magic, then at a practical level, you are able to get certain types of value, certain types of connection and certain types of worldview. They are more similar to what our ancestors experienced, compared to what the current person is experiencing now, even if it comes down simply to the power of your volition, of your will, of your intention and of your awareness.
With those things considered, I would invite you to look into how you are able to incorporate magical and/or ritualistic and ceremonial ideas and concepts into your thinking and perhaps into your practice to see if it benefits you or if you get some value from it.