the heart in magick practice

I’ve been a magic-seeker since I was a child running through the woods and getting pricked on the heel in a fairy ring (true story) and, like a twig underfoot, it seemed that as I grew older the threads of connection between my heart and my magic snapped in two.

the study, bringing the heart back to magick practice

after leaving organized religion in my early 20s, I became stereotypically agnostic and godless, drawn instead into partnered relationship as the thing upon which my heart could sup and draw nourishment. but woe to the young woman unaware of her queerness attempting to live off the love of emotionally unavailable men. & throw in a healthy dose of the devout and it’s a recipe for disaster.

the thing they don’t tell you about Hildegard von Bingen or any of those ecstatic visionaries is that the adoration of the Beloved when seen through physical eyes and felt through the physical heart becomes infatuation with a side of malnourishment. this is a sensation of longing much deeper and the known through already having the taste of it: longing and union are one and the same. you can’t crave what you haven’t tasted. but when you don’t understand the flavor of the Divine, the logical thing to do is to crave what you imagine it to taste like and the infatuation of a crush seems to fit the bill.

so we go through that process, think we’ve sated our appetites, and either lose our avarice for the Divine or lose the heart in magick practice. either way, this sort of worldly confuses has filled books with knowledge without heart and heart without knowing.

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I’d like to be clearer of what I speak.

the intellect has no place in spirit-based work except to come under service of the will. you can’t reason your way into heaven, so to speak, though I know so many who have tried on both sides of the fence. (the fact that there are even sides or a fence is a clear indication of still missing the mark.) but most magical texts widely consumed today try to wrangle the mind into understanding, not realizing the mind, in a way, must be subverted.

so you get koans. and symbols. and texts like revelation that are so misunderstood simply because they are not meant to be.

but the cold absence of even intellect draws us closer to the void of understanding, perhaps, but not back to our hearts. until one, in being worked on by these things—koans, symbols, myths—becomes transformed. you literally become the heart of it, the beating lifeblood of this understanding—not through knowledge, but through the felt sense of wonder, and, I would argue, a deep sense of belonging.

that’s what magic gives me when I rest in it: belonging. and that fills my heart. because my spirit drops so firmly into my beingness that my heart is just overflowing. it resides there.

you see? our spirit lives in our hearts; but this spirit is kept in separation by the intellect, by the ego. when the facade of separation drops—really drops,—the spirit lands in the heart like a drop of water into a pond and it just fills it.

magick is actually FULL of heart because it is full of spirit—our spirit,—but we’ve sanitized it with intellect and haven’t seen yet the rainbow array of hearted spirit or spirited heart that suddenly bursts into our inner vision when intellect falls away and all that is left is that singular feeling.

awakening. knowledge & conversation. enlightenment. whatever you want to call it, it feels like heart-home. but like heart-home that is spirit-come-home relief-made-real. I’ve never cried like I did the moment I felt kinship with the angels. the moment the term angel no longer mattered. the moment I no longer matter and yet mattered more than anything in the world. when the spirit comes home, the self is made whole in a way that defies definition and worldly striving becomes, well, silly. so you apply yourself back to routine, back to work, and you wonder how you take the spirit along—wait, no, you wonder how you take your mind along. like a tamagotchi. either way, it is very confusing. but presence helps. just letting your spirit saturate in the chop wood, carry waterness of it all.

I still struggle with it, though—not the heart part, but the human part. being neurodivergent makes it weirder, but also easier? hmm.

I will say, looking for heart in magick—looking for anything, really—it just brings you back to yourself. and that really is the magick of it, the ouroboros of it.

you’re the heart, my friend. it’s actually the one thing you have to bring to your practice: the one requirement! bring a home for your spirit, for your HGA. you have to bring it along all the way and that makes it vulnerable, but so necessary. where else do you expect to host these beings of spirit?

so bring it! don’t leave your heart out of magic, because believe me, you’re not going to find it there. you’re only going to find it within.