Magical Thinking

(caveat goes here, Bryn’s thoughts, James typing)

The human brain takes in far more information than it can consciously process. Quite a lot of our thinking happens at an unconscious level. Thus, what we experience as intuition or inspiration might well be unconscious bits of our brain processing that extra information. Either way, it’s remarkable stuff. The ability of our brains to make those magical pinging noises and somehow come up with things is pretty wild whether you want to frame it in terms of magic or science. I like both.

I think we make our best judgements when we draw on all the resources. It’s good to think rationally, weighing things up consciously. It’s important to pay attention to gut feelings, and instinctive responses. These are all good and valid sources of information. We can get into trouble if we let the magical thinking take charge when it does not align at all with more rational sources of information. This can lead us into fantasy, ego trips and delusion.

Pagans with our magical worldviews can be more vulnerable to pressure to do magical thinking. Empathy is obviously a good thing, but when it’s a consequence of protective hypervigilance it can be a sign that things are very wrong. If you are required to magically know things(and you’re not doing paid divination) that’s often a sign of bullying. When needful information is withheld, that’s really controlling. Using intuition is good, being forced to magically know things is nightmarish. If it doesn’t feel sane and healthy, then trust those feelings that the situation isn’t ok. Don’t be persuaded that being a bit magical means you have to be magically responsible for things that are beyond your reach.