The hunger for magic is universal, most people have it in some way or another.
People pray hoping their thoughts will influence reality (or hoping that God will intervene on their behalf, which is kind of the same thing, except that someone else performs the magic).
The Secret (by Rhonda Byrne) was enormously successful - people wanted to hear its message.
It made over 1 million sales soon after the DVD was released, and its primary message is 'what you think creates the world you live in', in other words that your success is dependent on your visualisation of that success.
This is magic.
There isn't much science to back these assertions up.
Yet people believe.
Why is there such a hunger for this message? Possibly because some part of it is true.
It's in our natures as creatives to see more than what is visible.
The more creative you are, the more likely you believe in the possibility of magic, or even use it in your work.
You may not even realise how much magic you use.
Take an architect, for example.
You have a blueprint on the page before you, lines measured out marking the boundaries of a new building.
The architect can see more than the lines, he can see the building in his mind, imagine it, then visualise every facet of the structure.
Then he issues the instructions that cause the material to be shaped in the form he envisaged.
A building is built, and stands completed.
It did not exist before.
He created it.
Just speed the movie up a little, and watch that story again, and the magician will emerge.
Open space, he walks into it, closes his eyes, creates, writes the pattern of his spell on a scroll, and when the dust has settled, poof! There stands a mighty thing, something that was not there before.
Yes there is a physical process that is set into motion by the magical one, there is the laying of bricks and smearing of cement, but this is all driven by seeing something in nothing, making something new.
It's driven by the vision, the magic.
It is not necessary for the architect to extend his hands and make the building materialise for it to be magical.
Time fills in the blanks.
Our world is a creation of imagination.
Someone imagined the lightbulb, the tar road, the chair you're sitting in, the glass you read this story through.
Everything we do, every day, we live in this world of imagination made real.
We talk on cellphones, we email, we come up with grand ideas, we think of justice and culture and art and language, we print books.
Without imagination we'd still be roaming around eating fruit from the trees.
Hell, even the idea of clothing requires imagination, although most of us spend a lot of time imagining the clothing falling off again.
At the heart of it, imagination leads to story.
By reading a story, you get to live new experiences that take you beyond yourself.
You can stride into a raging battle, you can stare down a sorcerer, you can fall in love.
Most important of all, Fantasy writing makes the magic real.
You get immersed in a world where the magic lives and breathes.
In seeing this you develop the part of your mind which can harness this power, the part that accepts that there are mysterious forces beneath the surface of our world.
The faith that believing in something can make it happen, that the magic is there, just beneath the surface, that faith is often all that is needed to make it happen.
We believe, and the world is changed in an instant.
There is no magic? Of course there is! The magic is the stuff we make up.
People pray hoping their thoughts will influence reality (or hoping that God will intervene on their behalf, which is kind of the same thing, except that someone else performs the magic).
The Secret (by Rhonda Byrne) was enormously successful - people wanted to hear its message.
It made over 1 million sales soon after the DVD was released, and its primary message is 'what you think creates the world you live in', in other words that your success is dependent on your visualisation of that success.
This is magic.
There isn't much science to back these assertions up.
Yet people believe.
Why is there such a hunger for this message? Possibly because some part of it is true.
It's in our natures as creatives to see more than what is visible.
The more creative you are, the more likely you believe in the possibility of magic, or even use it in your work.
You may not even realise how much magic you use.
Take an architect, for example.
You have a blueprint on the page before you, lines measured out marking the boundaries of a new building.
The architect can see more than the lines, he can see the building in his mind, imagine it, then visualise every facet of the structure.
Then he issues the instructions that cause the material to be shaped in the form he envisaged.
A building is built, and stands completed.
It did not exist before.
He created it.
Just speed the movie up a little, and watch that story again, and the magician will emerge.
Open space, he walks into it, closes his eyes, creates, writes the pattern of his spell on a scroll, and when the dust has settled, poof! There stands a mighty thing, something that was not there before.
Yes there is a physical process that is set into motion by the magical one, there is the laying of bricks and smearing of cement, but this is all driven by seeing something in nothing, making something new.
It's driven by the vision, the magic.
It is not necessary for the architect to extend his hands and make the building materialise for it to be magical.
Time fills in the blanks.
Our world is a creation of imagination.
Someone imagined the lightbulb, the tar road, the chair you're sitting in, the glass you read this story through.
Everything we do, every day, we live in this world of imagination made real.
We talk on cellphones, we email, we come up with grand ideas, we think of justice and culture and art and language, we print books.
Without imagination we'd still be roaming around eating fruit from the trees.
Hell, even the idea of clothing requires imagination, although most of us spend a lot of time imagining the clothing falling off again.
At the heart of it, imagination leads to story.
By reading a story, you get to live new experiences that take you beyond yourself.
You can stride into a raging battle, you can stare down a sorcerer, you can fall in love.
Most important of all, Fantasy writing makes the magic real.
You get immersed in a world where the magic lives and breathes.
In seeing this you develop the part of your mind which can harness this power, the part that accepts that there are mysterious forces beneath the surface of our world.
The faith that believing in something can make it happen, that the magic is there, just beneath the surface, that faith is often all that is needed to make it happen.
We believe, and the world is changed in an instant.
There is no magic? Of course there is! The magic is the stuff we make up.