It was Aleister Crowley, or Grant Morrison, or Robert Anton Wilson, who talked about becoming a Magician, and the first thing you have to do, is start thinking like a Magician.
And it was Roald Dahl who pointed out that those who don’t believe in magic, will never find it.
That one came from a big, textured, red, brick of a book my brothers and I were given as kids, A Roald Dahl Treasury, full of stories and excerpts and poems, not all of them from his children’s books.
There was a boy who left civilization on the back of a giant sea turtle and never came back. Over the years, sailors would see him, swimming and sunning, but he never answered their calls. Just the boy, and the ocean, and the sky, and the turtle.
As a kid, I thought there was something I was missing, so the story stayed with me. Now, I understand the missing piece wasn’t in the story. The story’s made of shadows on the cave wall.
G K Chesterton talked about the magical moment we remember that the grass is green, and he talked about George Macdonald’s writing, and Macdonald’s ability to see the halo that was around everything.
I want to see the halos too, and I want to take the moments that sing, and I want to remember them, and I want to share them.