Magic is real

And we are all doing it — but wrong.

Imagine you could make any circumstance you wish come about just by concentration and willpower. Oh would that be grand — the mere suggestion triggers in most of us images of splendor and fulfilment. But the reality is, while we are indeed living in a magically conjured space, it is not an individual’s dream life each of us enjoys, but a projection from our collective that we live in.

This works reliably in every day life. Once a group of people is utterly convinced of something, this becomes an almost inevitable truth. Innocent example: “there is no free lunch”. If your social group believes this to be true, you will automatically be suspicious of anyone who is, contrary to your group’s belief, indeed offering you lunch without expecting any reciprocity. Over time, this way of thinking will inform how you percieve hospitality.?

Think of the embarassement of being spontaneously invited to someone’s home, who is perceptibly poorer than yourself, and they give you plenty of their best food and drink. You haven’t brought anything as a guest offering, and giving them money would be an insult to their hospitality. You have left your own group’s magical realm and are visiting another. Tread lightly.

Group Magic is a reality we all live in.

To a certain degree, magical projections of individuals also work. Perhaps you know of a very precious person who has to have everything just so, discerning and fragile. These types of projections take vast amounts of energy, and they work better, the fewer people are involved. Once an individual expands their magical projection to larger circles beyond personal involvement, it gets trickier. To get people who are not habituated or conditioned to buy into that individual’s magical projections, they might use demagoguery, promises, bribes, gaslighting, scapegoating and violence, all in order to keep the projection going for larger groups of people.

One of the most excessive and dishonourable projections of recent history was enacted by the German people, starting in the early 20th century. It is a prime example of mass projection and the inescapable reality it creates. The projection started with the poor people, who wanted to believe that they weren’t just rejects on the ash heaps of history, but that they had value, and a bright future. A new kind of revolution: one of order and justice, of cleanliness and purity. A brighter day seemed ahead. Those who belittled the movement soon had to pay their respects, or vanish. The collective projection grew so strong, that even the unspeakable, the Holocaust, could be executed by the Germans, out of dread to lose the projection and plunge back into despair.

Projection Magic is the base of modern nations, which would fall apart into interest groups, egotistical individuals, and tribes, if there weren’t factors at play which bind large groups of people together. One such factor could be a strong national sports team, or writers and historians who unite divergent strands of narrative into a greater whole, or as was the case with Germany, a claim to supremacy.

The contemporary German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk once expressed gratitude for the many journalists who made sure 80 million Germans get to live in a common reality. Journalists have since been fired from access to mass media by capitalism, further exposing factually unsheltered populations to the whims and desires of money, power and their respective pundits.

Individual Magical Projection is energy-intensive and fragile.

Nowadays, we live in split realities, small islands of magic which routinely fall apart and hurt our sense of self, worth, reality, and belonging. You and I may have different reactions when we experience such rifts in our magical projections, but one emotion appears frequently: anger. In that state of mind, you have basically two options: find a scapegoat and battle them for all you wish to (re-)manifest in your life, or retire from group projection, and become a hermit in your own magical projection bubble.

Going the manifestation alone is hard, near impossible.

Starting at just a few followers, the onus and risk of whipping up enough magic to keep the commons alive is hoisted on a single leader figure, who cracks under pressure sooner or later. They will either have a breakdown, or turn to the dark side of power.

How to get out of this predicament? Re-establish journalism? It is not going to happen on a large enough scale. Religion? God beware! Strong leaders?

See, the problem is, we are already favourably eyeing proto-fascism: strong leader, a good demagogue who is on “our” side, and the infidels who can’t fall in step, will be coerced or punished.

What, then, went wrong with collective magic? Why on earth are we projecting a self-destructive image over and over?

We are using an incomplete magical formula, that’s why.

Story is Magic.

The inner structure of story-magic becomes our organisational pattern and our belief system, and there is one structure in play right now which is determining our perception, expectations, and outcomes. This story pattern is called the Hero’s Journey. It permeates our global popular culture like no other concept before it. It is the structure that has to be in place for a film to be made, for a novel to be published, for a sales pitch, even an argument to be made.

The Hero is a collective projection of individual nature.

The Hero’s Journey was introduced into the Hollywood Studio System in the early 1980’s, and has since devoured alternative approaches to storytelling. At the same time, it has been supersized and sharpened to represent what is called the “economy of storytelling”. One protagonist is called to a higher purpose, he meets with absurd levels of antagonism, gets anointed, gains superhuman abilities, and saves the day — and most often, the world; and why not, the Universe. Multiverse, while we’re at it.

This structure can be found in almost everything — stories, novels, films, coaching, advertising… it is ubiquitous to a point where it has become its own proof. Because there is no alternative to these stories, they must be true. Sadly, these stories carry the seed of our extinction within them, and we perpetuate them, day after day. Looking and longing for a hero protagonist (bad idea!), expecting to always be “with the good guys”; “the others” accordingly being “the bad guys” (irrational idea!), the dark foreboding that it must get much, much worse before the good will emerge victorious (terrifying idea!).

So, the Hero’s Journey is maybe the last remaining magical formula that holds Western Industrialised realities together, and it is the gospel that the West wishes to hoist upon other cultures as well. It is a fine instrument indeed to perpetuate reckless egotism, competition over cooperation, colonialism, the use of excessive force, and the dismissal of civilian casualties as “collateral damage”.

How come the Hero’s Journey, descended from the lofty realms of myth, proves itself so detrimental to our contemporary interests, namely, cooperation for survival?

The answer is, that the Hero’s Journey is just a fragment of a much longer magical formula. First of all, it is based on the summarised version of several Millenia of recorded human myths, and is therefore powerful and true. But what it describes, is the path that every boy has to take, in order to become a man.

Boys go on Heros’ Journeys and return as men.?

Men keep maturing through service to others.

The whole choreography of facing the antagonist, descent into the underworld, resisting and rejecting the archetypical female, confronting death, being anointed, and returning victorious, is nothing less than the terrifying internal experience of initiation. This happens once in a boy’s lifetime, maybe around 13 years of age, and he emerges as a man.

The second part of this story is much longer, more arduous, and it recounts how the newly minted man returns to his community, how he lays down his imaginary cape, switches his sword for the plough, and how he crafts a life out of service to his people. It is for the most part a very gentle story, of love and growing things, and learning, of settling conflicts, of patience and maturity.

Only those boys who haven’t succeeded in becoming men, will return to the thrill ride of initiation over and over, in a bid to escape responsibility, accountability and finality.

If I should make an educated guess as a story worker and semioticist, I would venture that the coming of age which is the Hero’s Journey shouldn’t represent more than 2% of a man’s life. I find it entirely inappropriate to show older, grown-up men struggling through their initiation for the ump-teenth time. I encourage you to feel compassion for the poor ageing sod who still hasn’t gotten it. Men who externalise the initiatory journey for personal aggrandisement and ego stroking are spiritually poor and potentially dangerous.

The community and its environment are the places where boys prove themselves as men — initiation success!

I would like to see gradual changes made to the story structure in our culture. Until we have accustomed ourselves to observing mature people successfully navigating love and life and climate change day-to-day, as well as related crises, I suggest we start by adding an increasingly longer act four to our usual story fare. An act four which accompanies the fresh initiate into his community, and shows him eating his daily share of humble pie, as he learns how to become useful to his community, both human and environment.

And please! Leave the initiation to the boys, where it belongs!

Post Scriptum: The Hero’s Journey is a male initiatory story. It was distilled from millennia of patriarchal recordings. We have very little knowledge of earlier cultures, which makes it exceedingly difficult guesswork what a female initiation might have looked like. I’ll put my money on periods and moon, but who knows. However, if you have ever wondered why “strong female characters” don’t resonate with you, the reason might be that a woman in a male initiation story is just another dude. With tits and no dick.