magical thinking

I’ve learned to resist the illusion of stuckness and to follow my own fascinations. The word fascinate comes from the Latin fascinus, which means “spell” or “witchcraft.” By navigating via my project’s creative heat map, I go to where the fire is. In other words, I follow the path that feels the most alive and mesmerizing to me, even if that means

It’s not always easy to wade into wonder, to merge with mystery. It is tempting to overthink, overcomplicate, to distance, to hedge, to hesitate. But the unknown is the only destination for any maker, and one must pursue it with faith and enchanted abandon.

As Magic Makers, we have the ability to not only communicate with the dead but to prolong their lives through holy acts of memory-keeping. When I cook the same chicken soup that my late great-grandma Fay made, I am increasing the impact she still has in the material realm. She is healing me from across the spectral stovetop with comfort and

But I’ve also found that spending a bit of time getting to know the particularly relentless demons is equally effective, especially if we learn to recognize them and call them by name. I was reminded of this approach by writer and illustrator Yumi Sakugawa. In her book Your Illustrated Guide to Becoming One with the Universe she tells the reader to

It is worthwhile to check in with oneself periodically as one creates. To ask: What is my intention as a maker? What are the intentional energies and elements I feel called to bring to this particular work—or to my creativity overall? The answers may stay consistent throughout a project, or they may shift over time. But by considering our

Language itself has long been considered a magical device, and we see traces of this in some of the very words we use for writing and speech. To spell can mean to form a word out of letters, and a spell can involve a string of words that bring about a wondrous shift in circumstance or perception. Likewise, the word for a magical book known as a

When we write or speak with soul-deep conviction, when we make our declarations with care, when we charge our desires with high voltage and express them with considered language, we are spellcasting.

According to Craig Conley’s delightfully exhaustive book, Magic Words: A Dictionary, the word abracadabra is often traced back to a Hebrew-Aramaic exclamation that translates to “I create through my speech” or “I will create as I speak.”

Conley insists that “if intoned in the proper spirit, any word can be a magic word.” As most of us can attest, how we make sounds matters as much as the meaning of the words we utter.