So do not abandon mechanistic thinking, just allow a new member into the family. Magic will be bullied by its older siblings, but will survive and enrich their lives with challenge. For they are far too comfortable in their victory.
We began with an errant office copier—but it could have been anything.
Have you not seen cars personified? In a street near mine there is one with a veritable beach of shells, pebbles and driftwood glued across the expanse of black plastic above the dashboard. I doubt if this is consciously done in the name of magic, as it is more likely to be considered as ‘folk art’—the permitted ghetto for feelings in our society. If the motive inclines toward self-expression and inner need, then art is indicated, but if the motive inclines towards outer purpose then magic is a truer dwelling. As a magical act it might soothe the driver, affirm the owner’s rebel status, express a loving relationship with the car and its role in the priesthood of Mercury. It might even be a response to malfunction when the driver is in too much of a hurry.
Nor is it just machines that can come alive in this fashion. Try talking to your plants as you tend the garden, as many a beekeeper talks to the hives. I have enjoyed the most sublime intellectual and philosophical discussions with my cats—who prove even better listeners than the average Oxbridge scholar, and far more patient for they show greater restraint in not interrupting to put forward their own theories. The fundamental thesis of this very chapter has already been rehearsed before a small cactus on my desk—prickly company at the best of times and yet respectfully silenced on this occasion by the force of my conviction.
Everything comes alive when you trade soul substance in this way instead of hoarding it. For I am not just advocating that we see soul in external objects but also in patterns of manifestation.
Was it the office copier that misbehaved? Or was it the car, the traffic lights or your children who played up when you were most pre-occupied? Or... maybe... they all behave in this way?
If everything seems to conspire to trip your progress whenever anything important is trying to happen, then recognise the guiding presence behind it all, for you are being plagued by a demon. Name it, honour it, reach out to it and the adventure begins.
Or dismiss it all as “coincidence” and you will remain forever safe—as a prisoner is safe in the familiarity of his cell.
So who is this demon that forever seeks to forestall your progress? Why has it attached itself to you and who profits from its machinations?
Prepare to be surprised by the answers, for the relationship between people and other demons is not mechanical in essence but complex. You may not want the constant drag on progress but consider: what would be the alternative? If everything worked out and you became an overnight success, would you love your new state, or would it prove so terrifying that you would prefer the old familiar feeling of failure? A demon can serve at the same time as it persecutes, and therein lies its true power.
In this last example I have apparently replaced a family of souls—a car, a copier, the traffic lights, the children—with a single demon. But the method is not reduction so much as multiplication, for any cluster of phenomena can be unfolded into a far larger number of interrelationships every one of which can form a demonic pattern. Like layers of an onion, not only has the world come alive, but it has revealed depth upon depth of layers of life and meaning.
Behold! I invited you to give away a little of your soul consciousness, to project it into the environment, and you have reaped a whole universe of meaning and meta-meaning!
Has any demonic pact of fable ever delivered so faithfully and so richly?
PART TWO
PERSONAL DEMONS
CHAPTER THREE
HOW SHOULD I ADDRESS DEMONS?
The last example of the previous chapter expanded the field of enquiry dramatically, and introduced a new problem.
Until then, I seemed to be simply advocating talking to something—car, copier, cat, plant or whatever. Though revolutionary in concept, as I explained, it is hardly revolutionary in practice because it comes so naturally. Many more people talk to objects than would admit it—”Hurry up, you silly thing!” says the secretary as she stands fretting by the office printer.
But when I suggest talking to a complex comprising discrete phenomena—like a run of bad luck— and naming it a demon, then we are moving up a gear. How the hell does one talk to a run of bad luck? Let us begin with an illustration.
ILLUSTRATION – A YOUNG MAN WITH A PROBLEM
A bright young man has just left Oxford with a good degree and track record for enterprising extra curricular activities, and he needs to get a job.
He’s got used to a Summer vacation, so puts off thinking about the problem until September. Then he thinks about it.
After a couple of weeks thinking he discusses it with someone who suggests looking in the Guardian job adverts. So he buys the paper every day and studies the ads.
The jobs all sound so boring that he does not reply to any of them. After three weeks he hears that several of his old friends are being interviewed for jobs and panic sets in. He studies the next Guardian very thoroughly and decides that one of the jobs doesn’t sound too awful and might be worth considering. So he considers it for a week or two, discusses it with friends and family, looks up the company’s website and imagines what it would be like working there. In the third week he prepares a very careful application letter in great detail, re-wring it several times to get it perfect, then keeping it and re-reading it for a few more days before sending it off.
He is told that the position has already been filled. This precipitates a mild depression and it is a week before he looks at adverts again, and now they look as dull as ever but he makes a couple of desultory applications, trying now to sound as dull as the positions advertised. Then a fellow graduate who has just got his first job on a mouth-watering initial salary tells him he has nothing to worry about “I only got this job after I’d applied for hundreds of posts—you’ve got to keep applying—ten, twenty letters a day!”
This launches a period of frantic activity and hundreds of applications. After a few weeks he gets his first positive response, but cannot now find the advert among the mountains of old clippings, cannot remember anything about the company nor why he applied. He could look for a website, but his computer is on the blink after all that frantic work, so a few days pass and he feels a bit stupid and decides it is too late to respond, so tears up the letter. This has, however encouraged him to go on applying in a more positive spirit.
Mother is getting worried for him as he is spending more and more time brooding in his room, and suggests he ought to ask Uncle Ronald—a very successful businessman, but one whom our hero considers to be a ghastly prat—so he does nothing about it until mother invites Uncle to dinner. Uncle Ronald fixes an interview with a senior director, but the interview is a disaster because the man seems like just another ghastly prat and our hero responds by going moody. He doesn’t get the job and Uncle Ronald is embarrassed, but Mother is very sympathetic.
Stop, gentle reader, at this point and answer this simple question: will you come to the rescue and offer this bright young man a job?
Really? Why not? He’s had rotten luck and surely deserves a break!
The first thing to demonstrate is that one’s demons can be much more easily detected by other people. The answer I am hoping for is that you would not give him a job