Magic is a toolset for navigating our world.

Magic means many things to many people. It’s been viewed as the roots of religion, a form of alternative spirituality, and a way for people to try to get what they want and need in a life that sometimes doesn’t seem interested in providing those things. It is all of these things and more. A wide-ranging and, at times, contradictory collection of worldviews, beliefs, practices, methodologies, and cosmologies. It is one of the oldest aspects of human experience and one of the primary things that define us as human.

Magic is a tool for connecting to the spiritual realms, those non-material, harder-to-grasp, and difficult-to-quantify parts of ourselves and the world. As an animist, I experience the world as alive, conscious, and agentic. It is also filled with other beings, often called spirits, who are conscious and agentic as well. We share this place with them.

Magic can help us access parts of reality that have seemingly become closed to us in the modern age. The presence and persistence of the dead are ancestral currents that strongly influence our day-to-day lives as individuals and as a species. The varieties of non-human spirits range from spirits of the land on up to the gods and goddesses. The have persisted in holding their places against all odds in the imagination and devotional practices of many. Beings of the Underworld, the more cosmic or stellar world, and those of the oceans, streams, mountains, and forests all persist. We are surrounded by, enmeshed with these spiritual powers and beings. Up until relatively recent times, this wasn’t even a question. It was simply known to be how things were. Now, largely cut off from this lived experience, we can develop a kind of spiritual sickness at both personal and mass levels.

My work is eclectic, and I don’t consider myself religious (I don’t consider myself a pagan, polytheist, or theist of any kind, for example). However, I’m interested in a life that acknowledges and interacts with spirit and the Spirits. I’ve written three books on magic, there is more information on those below. My next book will be published in 2025.

Most of my public engagement happens within my Patreon, where I make video responses to questions from readers, host regular gatherings via Zoom, and do my best to share what I have learned. I’m still learning. There is an attached Discord server that has grown into a strongly supportive space for those exploring this kind of work. The link is in the site menu or click here.