Magic

Admittedly a loaded word! When you think of magic there invariably comes to mind a whole range of threatening images, especially if you’re serious about practicing your religion. The dictionary defines magic as the power to influence the course of events by access to supernatural or mysterious powers. Some of these powers may be malevolent and others beneficial; usually we associate magic with the former . Even if we tend towards the latter, a certain ambivalence remains mostly due to fear of the unknown and the way we had been raised, religiously, that is. Magic has the greatest effect upon our emotions because they are our first contacts with the outside world. A corresponding example: if we observe occasions when our emotions functioned with respect to religious beliefs, we see that religion takes hold of them in an unparalleled fashion. Furthermore, these beliefs are always inimical to magic, and the two are bound to clash mightily. In both instances we find ourselves in a realm which lies outside the one of normal consciousness and experience, and we are rarely (if ever) adequately equipped to deal with it.

Some of this interaction between magic and religion became manifest through the current popularity of the “Harry Potter” books by J. K. Rowling, several of which have been made into equally popular movies. Although I haven’t read the books nor saw the movies (nor am I so inclined for reasons that will become evident later), I was stuck by the worldwide positive response which points to a basic need societies are reluctant to address. What lies behind this phenomenon is a desire not so much to contact forces of evil but to transform ordinary, humdrum life into something special . Usually the magical way to go about this is by becoming a wizard or witch with the power to effect such a transformation. On the other hand, “Harry Potter” has provoked an almost equally strong reaction from some Christian quarters, much of it negative. Many of us can recall that when young, such clashes never or rarely occurred. They seem to be fairly recent, a polarization of sorts which might have been present several decades ago, but they didn’t raise any red flags. Then again, maybe the more vivid presentation of movies–realistic animation and the rest–has supplanted the use of our imaginations. When we had dealt with ghosts and goblins, the images were fairly primitive by today’s standards. Still they were suggestive enough and left more to each child’s imagination. Another element that seemed to have crept in is a new-found seriousness about life probably due to the pervasive media which daily portrays all sorts of human tragedies. This too is aggravated by a fairly new political correctness which spills over into other areas of human activity such as religion.

I began jotting down thoughts for this essay several weeks prior to Halloween. Not that the magic of this holiday had furnished inspiration, but the season is freighted with a unique atmosphere which easily can get one going on such a topic. During a recent trip to a local shopping mall I was struck by the “cutesyification” of ghosts, witches and the like which adorned so many homes and stores. They all consisted of supernatural images with babyish smiles and facial expressions which have become so much a part of the season. In other words, these images offer just the right mixture to make you tamely afraid. At the same time, their presence clearly lacked anything magical. Next to Christmas, Halloween in the United States is the most popular holiday which is akin to that “Harry Potter” phenomenon revealing an innate desire to transform the ordinary into something extraordinary. No small wonder that merchants begin to stock their shelves with Christmas stuff almost the day after Halloween, as if to make the time between October 31 and December 25 a drawn-out period associated with things magical. This leads to what appears as a distinction between “magic” and “magical.” The former connotes that which is foreboding whereas the latter is broader in scope. That is to say, “magical” embraces anything which evokes wonder and awe and does not necessarily involve malevolent elements. For all intensive purposes, when I speak of “magic” I mean it in the magical sense, one bordering upon or parallel to religious awe. At the same time I don’t prefer to equate “magical” with such awe, for it’s an interesting in-between land which I’ll shortly spell out.

At first it may seem unorthodox to discuss magic in a Christian context which automatically intimates adopting a polemical point of view, and this may make the antennae of some folks go up in alarm. Throughout her history the Church has struggled with various incarnations of magic, if you will, such as gnosticism. Not that both are the same, yet they share a realm outside the scope of traditional Christian teaching. Often they share some superficial orthodox features but only as take-off points where a particular slant on things is pressed to the max and to the neglect of the whole picture.

The shadow tradition of gnosticism has always dogged the Church and serves to highlight a few points which I hope to touch upon at greater length. There’s a marvelous tradition of prayer and spirituality in the Catholic Church which largely goes unexplored and can be overshadowed by more unorthodox elements of one degree or the other. Too often the conjunction of current events and the manner by which the Church presents herself–a relic from the past out of step with today’s world–creates a smoke screen which unfortunately hides her rich treasures. Apart from this obvious point, the perpetual proclamation of the Gospel through the liturgical cycle can give rise to a familiarity which overshadows deeper truths. This is especially true if one is exposed to it on a daily basis over an extended period of time. In other words, there’s the danger of falling into a religious routine...a rut...which can afflict those persons who do religion professionally.

Another element which seems peculiar to our times is that although the Church had been consistently faithful in maintaining her heritage throughout so many centuries, we’re at a point where some, vague indefinable lack appears present. Where to pin-point this lack is another task. It depends upon whom you ask, and the proposed solutions coupled with a general, ill-defined anxiety are as numerous as the folks offering them. Now that we’re almost a half a century out from the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, it becomes easier to see where this indefinable lack is located. It has nothing to do with the familiar litany of woes we associate with the Catholic Church: married priests, ordination of women, abortion and gay rights (interesting to note that most catch-words revolve around sex). More thoughtful persons will conclude that a deeper issue centers around the involvement (rather, lack of it) of the laity, although that’s a subject not relevant to the task at hand.

Even deeper than the above mentioned issues I venture to say that our deficiency consists in an alienation from the West’s classical tradition. I touched upon this in an essay elsewhere on the Home Page, so won’t detail it here. Nevertheless, this hole-in-the-soul manifests itself in ways we haven’t perceived in the more immediate years since VC II. Despite the controversies–all pale when you think of what happened in, for example, the third and fourth centuries, let alone the Reformation–the Church has come through unscathed as far as her basics are concerned. And these basics obviously consist in those bare-bone truths we find in the Apostles’s Creed concerning God, the divinity of Jesus Christ, the sacraments and so forth.

The fifty years of tumult after the Council did have the advantage of clarifying what’s essential to Christian faith from its accidents. Such is one advantage or spin-off from the 1960s. Now we find ourselves well beyond this period and are somehow “stuck” with the truths of faith. I use this inadequate word to express and equally inadequate unease. The Church’s truths have become distilled, almost akin to what happened in the Protestant camp during the Reformation but on a different scale. As with anything distilled, we get the essence of a thing but really can’t appreciate it unless we somehow thin it out (as opposed to watering it down). One symptom of this distillation is the liturgy, a kind of bell-weather of the church’s soul. As a friend who knows these matters much better than me made an interesting remark, namely, that the liturgy has become “too scriptural.” By that he means auxiliary readings, mostly Patristic, have been eliminated. Although we’ve ended up with a core of the Real Stuff, the liturgy somehow remains wanting. People exposed to the liturgy on an occasional basis might not even realize this. However, if you attend the Mass and/or Office on a more frequent basis, my friend’s observation do ring true.

From her beginning the Church has used the culture of Greece and Rome to express herself. This tradition gained momentum and continued through the Dark and Middle Ages, right down to recent memory or the Second Vatican Council. When reflecting upon the upheaval of the 1960s (I’m thinking more specifically of higher education), we see the emergence of an awareness which regarded the value of traditions and cultures other than the Western one. Some of it has been beneficial and some hasn’t. Sone of which had been cast aside were the Classics which involve the languages of Greek and Latin. I clearly recall that anyone majoring in Classics was considered as headed for a dead-end; despite a fuzzy perception that yes, Classics might have a role to play, it’s still remains a dead-end. Pretty hard to get a job with a PhD in Greek now that we’re well into the 21^st century.

To supplement the last paragraph, I am curious if we can find instances where the classical tradition had been a living force. More specifically, where such a vibrancy might be located close to home if not in a contemporary time period. A long-term interest in Henry David Thoreau–his stomping grounds are some forty miles to the east of where I live–made me think a bit more of how he came up with his rich images about nature for which he is justly celebrated. We find them in Walden Pond but his Journal contains an extraordinary abundance which is far more detailed for anyone wanting to delve deeper into Thoreau’s thought. Much of his imagery is built upon allusions associated with Greek and Roman literature, mythology and culture. The same applies to Thoreau’s Transcendental associates such as Emerson, Margaret Fuller (more an exception along with Emily Dickinson) and Theodore Parker, to name just few major players. Classical thought was the common language that bound these widely different personalities together, virtually all of whom were clustered in the Boston area as compared with other parts of the United States. Allusions from the Classics aren’t explicit but implicit, an insight you get only from reading their material. Nowadays I’d say that most of their reliance upon Classical myths, philosophy and history would be lost upon the casual reader.

This observation about the Transcendentalists is even more important, for they flourished not long after the American Revolution and before the Civil War, a crucial period when culture in the United States was attempting to establish its own legitimacy as far as literature goes. These people are significant on a personal level because as I said above, they are dyed-in-the-wool New Englanders and all flourished close to where I now live and had grown up (my mother and her two sisters learned to swim in Walden Pond). Thus they offer an exceedingly rich treasure house from which to draw. Getting back to Thoreau...somewhere in the Journal he describes a shrub-oak in late autumn or early winter, long after most trees had shed their leaves. They are common around here and are noted for retaining their leaves even through a harsh winter season. Thoreau sees the leaves rustling in the cold wind and observes that the shrub-oak leaves remind him of Greek soldiers brandishing their leather shields before the Battle of Thermopylae. You’d be pretty hard pressed to find a contemporary author so familiar with such classical allusions and applying them to his immediate surroundings.

If you ever wanted imagery that evokes a sense of magic as I wish to present it in this essay, here it is. Since I have constant access to the same physical environment from which Thoreau drew his images, no small wonder that it offers richer material compared with any “Harry Potter” book or movie. Precisely for this reason do the Transcendentalists afford a good template on which we can model or re-establish a lived expression of the classical tradition. Not that we have to buy into them hook, line and sinker but at least appreciate their reliance upon classical studies.

One of the best ways of getting insight into how we can dispose ourselves to see the magical workings of nature is by cultivating a sense of solitude or by deliberately standing apart from the normal flow of society. This appears daunting at first but is more within our reach than first imagined. It applies to both city dwellers and rural folk alike. Despite their disparate ways, they have more in common than you’d think; often opposites are like this, so let’s examine this situation a bit. Both rural and urban living offer a straight-forward type of solitude. Although the former is natural and the latter is man-made, both allow the individual to forget him or herself, the real goal of solitude. No matter for our purposes whether its in the woods or on a crowded street. On the other hand, the suburban environment–where the majority of Americans find themselves–is in an odd position, neither fish nor fowl. For some reason or other it militates against the cultivation of solitude. The same applies to the familiar malls or shopping centers. Generally speaking they are located in suburban areas and convey a certain blandness. When in a mall, it makes no difference whether you’re in San Francisco, Dallas or Detroit. This colorless landscape grates on the nerves, even more so than being in the midst of a urban ambiance. I think there’s a low-grade quality of aggravation which has something to do with it not unlike the “muzac” you hear in such places. The two extremes of rural and urban living seem to re-enforce an awareness that in suburbia you’re never quite alone nor pressed by crowds...a gray zone, if you will. Suburban living is thus diluted and grates on the minds of more thoughtful people. For example, it is here that those cute Halloween decorations I already noted are found in abundance.

When I speak of solitude I don’t necessarily mean the physical kind, although that’s a good take-off point to foster magic in one’s daily life. Being alone opens you up to both inner and outer dimensions which hitherto had gone unexplored. I think a modern person would ask someone inclined to being alone something like, “What do you actually do all day?” One on hand it’s a valid question and on the other, it smacks of a certain intrusion. Actually you don’t “do” anything. Should a person suddenly hit upon someone in solitude, nothing new or extraordinary would be found. Most likely our solitude-loving friend would be just hanging around in one way or another; he or she would be either sitting in a chair, standing or walking outside, nothing more. Yes, the externals are essentially colorless.

On a deeper level the person “just hanging around” has turned attention away from normal attractions and is attentive to another dimension of reality with his or her entire body, soul and spirit. As I just noted, the external manifestations of this are unremarkable and offer nothing much to observe. If we behold this person in a crowd, he or she fits right in. However, bets are on that most people in the crowd are pre-occupied with one thing or another. This has always fascinated observers of society. You go out and about...anywhere, for the matter...and see people functioning normally. Then you imagine what might be going on in their minds and try out your curiosity by asking a friend or acquaintance about what’s going in his or her life right now. This insight can be extended to other people which leads to the conclusion that everyone is pretty much in the same boat. We all know this from experience; the flow of things disguises hidden trials, almost as though they didn’t exist. On the other hand, our anonymous friend who’s cultivating solitude fits right in perfectly. Anyone can practice this, for being out in society necessitates moving right along with everyone else whether in traffic, walking down a street or boarding a bus.

It is precisely these mundane experiences that provide the matrix for an appreciation of the magical. If we examine ourselves, such perceptions happen quickly...on the run..and are immune to attempts at classification. They frequently hearken back to childhood experiences marked by a similar character. For example, we might be aware of rain pattering on the window pane of a bus in a peculiar way. It immediately evokes a long-lost experience when for the first time we had boarded a bus en route to school. Then again, the temporal gap–even if it’s quite substantial–suddenly disappears, and the two experiences become one. Almost always these fleeting perceptions occur when we’re alone as opposed to being in a social environment . They are so common that we barely give them further thought. Perhaps we should examine them more closely and see if the experience (not exactly the precise historical contexts) can be re-captured and made more consistent in our lives. What would happen if we could? Is it really worth our efforts to do this, and what would be the result? As I just noted, the fleeting nature of these perceptions make them hard to nail down with any precision. At the same time we have a wistful longing to effect such a state of mind. Possibly the greatest threat to such a mysterious process is despite its appeal, we’re away of mundane affairs waiting out there to pounce upon us.

Society has a peculiar way of making us conform to its standards in ways which escape our attention even if we protest against them mightily. Say you’re trying to dispose yourself to solitude, of being at home with yourself, while sitting alone in your house or apartment. Even if you have a quiet environment, there’s a vague, almost nagging sense that you’re not doing what everyone else is doing at the moment. We’re all familiar with the heightened sense of aloneness over the weekend and even more so, during special holidays. People are scurrying about here and there en route to various social gatherings. Since everyone seems to be doing it, why shouldn’t I? This is probably the biggest obstacle to cultivating solitude and therefore awareness of the magical, an obstacle more formidable than we’d like to admit. Once you come to grips with this impulse to be with people and apprehend its futility, you can move more easily into real solitude instead of sitting there all by yourself.

At this juncture we can take a lesson from many elderly people either living alone or in nursing homes. They have a peculiar way of recalling minute details from the distant past while forgetting more recent ones. And this doesn’t include loss of memory or other handicaps. We find these folks almost intolerably boring, and they usually behave in similar fashion among their peers. Holding down a conversation is formidable in that they faithfully reproduce distant experiences right down to the last detail...not entirely unlike the replication of a CD. No matter how many times the original is produced, each and every copy retains precise fidelity to the original. There’s nothing remarkable about replication, an idea we could extend to other human endeavors but won’t here. Then again, I wonder if this phenomenon will be peculiar to older folks in the not too distant future. “Baby boomers” and subsequent generations don’t seem geared to such replication, although it’s too early to tell. Somehow I think they’ll be different (not necessarily more insightful), but a way distinct from their predecessors. Perhaps exposure to technological devices and means of communication right from their birth has something to do with it. Also, they are considerably higher educated than their even their parents. At the same time, this exposure doesn’t necessarily include a sensitivity for things magical as we’re describing the term here.

The real building blocks for apprehending magic about us don’t consist in human relationships. Anyone who has difficulty engaging in them can take courage, although this isn’t an endorsement of failed relationships or of those people who have turned their backs on society. We’re in neutral territory here, so no need to worry about one’s failures. The building blocks of which I speak are more fundamental than any human interaction and frequently turn up in a realm we don’t expect to find them. However, they have been represented traditionally through that ancient division of reality into four elements: earth, air, fire and water. We don’t find anything personal there, just hardcore impersonal matter, the raw ingredients for everything else...and keep in mind that human relationships evolved much later. At the same time this rawness is terrifying because we feel exposed after being cuddled and warmed by the protective barriers of interpersonal relationships which society had raised. Clearly we are in the presence of something we don’t understand; hence it’s only natural to fear such elemental manifestations. Yet there is a way to handle them. Ancient societies have tended to represent the four elements in terms of a square and thus erect a boundary which separates that which is threatening from what we familiar with. A square’s four sides serve as orientation points as well–north, south, east and west—designated places in which we can situate ourselves. If it weren’t for these cardinal points we’d feel adrift in the world and at nature’s mercy.

This vital area set off by a square is crucial for getting started with magic. We know from experience that certain places are endowed with special significance either for good or ill: the dark space under our bed, a lonely road or a special beach we frequented during summer vacations. Memories of these places abide with us long after we’ve grown up. They can either delight or haunt us, depending upon our earlier responses. Then as adults we come across similar places which automatically bring us back to them, virtually nullifying all the rational scientific-like knowledge we’ve accumulated over the years. Thus space–in terms of the above defined limitation of north, south, east and west–is the prime ingredient for evoking magic. Each one of these cardinal directions, in turn, elicit more refined perceptions. East is where the sun rises. West is where it sets. South is associated with heat, and north with cold. It seems that the first two points are more loaded than the second two, for that is the sun’s path which varies–goes northward and southward–depending upon the season.

I don’t think you can become aware of this over-arching pattern of the four cardinal directions while with people, that is, socially speaking. You have to get out and be by yourself and do it for an extended period of time in order to discover what’s really going on. We could call this a skill, one not entirely unlike learning a language. By contrast, the unexamined familiarity with our natural language presupposes a lot of how we perceive the world. It directly involves interaction with folks who share the same language, for all languages are social by nature. Let’s say that one day we board a jet and disembark in a foreign land where English isn’t spoken (admittedly, fairly rare nowadays). Even if we’re have some knowledge of the local language, comprehension of what the natives are saying demands something more than offered by familiarity with grammar and literature. It isn’t the particular language that concerns me; rather, it’s the mode of attention demanded of us in this foreign land. One’s whole attention is geared to pick up the slightest nuance, even if we can’t fully grasp what’s being said. A way to handle this is to pay attention to so-called body language which we all share. You can get a grasp on how people feel by their expressions and gestures, an insight not far removed from the magical way of perceiving reality.

So let’s apply this “language attentiveness” to a perception of things magical more properly. The common, everyday world might be called our native tongue, unquestioned and taken for granted. Then we hit upon some folks in the local supermarket communicating among themselves in another language. They go through the same motions as we English speakers so. Should we eavesdrop on their conversation as they make gestures towards various types of cereals on the shelf, we’re fascinated by the process going on before our eyes. We too are standing there trying to decide between Quaker Oates and Corn Flakes. Yes, the same mundane stuff sitting on the shelf; makes no difference whether the consumer is an English or Icelandic speaker. However, the language used to discuss the assortment of cereals is very different. To those of us with no comprehension of Icelandic the human drama unfolding before our eyes is fascinating, in a word, magical.

Perhaps we could apply this linguistic approach to the raw data of nature sitting out there all around us. Nowadays the “language” which cuts across the spoken ones is science. Take, for example, a lovely sunset which grabs our full attention. Despite its grandeur, I believe most of us are conditioned to assess the view in terms of science even if we’re not conscious of it. Here the sunset translates into light bouncing off the grass, the earth’s rotation around the sun, the trees and their components as well as the process of photo-synthesis which slows down with the sun’s setting. Not that we look at a view and analyze it in these stark terms, but certainly we’re culturally predisposed to see this stuff in such a manner. Even if we’re captivated by the sunset and acknowledge our predilection for perceiving it in quasi-romantic terms, I believe we secretly say to ourselves, “After all, it’s simply a jumble of molecules and atoms configured in this particular way” (or whatever). Such a view is a type of material transcendence, but we’d be better off calling it a process of abstraction, of drawing-out our perceptions according to a world view which happens to be dominant today. Probably this intrusive scientific standpoint does much to disguise beauty–making it go unnoticed–and requires someone to point it out. Even when it is, many people will acknowledge beauty and move on to something “more important.”

But magic is more than beauty. While magic can embrace beauty, it also can take the scientific data underlying it–those abstractions which interpret the lovely view before us–and play with it. In other words, magic is freer and less subject to manipulation when compared with our perceptions of beauty. Magic can equally appreciate a lovely object and enhance it by bringing in diverse insights from our experience. Maybe this is part of the fascination behind those magic wands we read about. They can transform a frog into a princess and visa versa. We could say this refined definition is similarly a process of abstraction, but that can smack of opting to ignore the sunset in front of our eyes for something else (something “higher”) to which this sight supposedly points. A valid point yet more akin with the scientific mentality. Not that this alternate view occupies some vague middle ground between hard scientific facts and abstraction, but it has a methodology all its own which we can pass without examining. In many ways those among us who are inclined to things religious fall into this trap. We often overlook the fact that we can indeed appreciate the scientific nature of things right along with transcendent reality in accord with our religious beliefs. Perhaps scientists and theologians have more in common here than we think. The problem is focusing attention upon the unappreciated middle ground or where hard facts and perceptions of beauty collide. If we did, perhaps dualistic views of reality which are so characteristic of modern society would not have taken such a strong grip upon our lives.

Common to both science and religion, the material reality staring us in the face is ordinarily cast as inferior to higher levels. For the former, principles lying behind matter are what count. For the latter, physical reality is a pointer to God which makes some adherents of this viewpoint intimate that it has no real value. Among both is a hierarchical world view where matter forms the bottom rung and God and/or governing principles occupy the top. Valid enough, but those intermediate rungs remain problematic by reason of being neither fully above nor fully below. The two poles of up and down can give rise to being unduly conscious as to where we stand; someone is always better (higher)or worse (lower) than us. Here we have an almost competitive slant to things spiritual which distorts the notion of hierarchy even more. All this becomes more problematic when applied to ecclesiastical hierarchy, but that’s another story.

Okay, so the benefit of perceiving things magically teaches us to cast aside our hangups about relating with people and shifts attention upon the raw building blocks of our world, matter in all its glorious unrefined state. At the same time our culture puts a premium upon human relationships. It says (directly or indirectly) that anyone not engaged in a meaningful relationship makes him or her an odd duck. Despite this accent upon sociability, we’re all familiar with the lonely man-in-the-crowd syndrome, an almost archetypal way of describing the modern human condition. This is only the tip of our innate solitude. I mean it close to the literal sense of Job who says somewhere, “Naked I came into the world and naked I shall depart from it.” Such solitude abides with us all the day long almost as a companion, only it’s perceived as an unwanted guest. So why not use this built-in solitude...play with it, if you will, and not bemoan our fate?

One way of approaching this dilemma is by being attentive to natural sounds about us, that is, by mentally sorting them out from all those man-made ones which are so pervasive. I choose sound as the prime method of grabbing our attention. It seems that the other senses are too complex for our this process, so by narrowing them down to one...and one that requires the least effort...we get a better handle upon the necessary filtering-out process. If you’re in a crowded city, it may be difficult (if not impossible) to locate a chirping bird or the like, so maybe the sense of touch may be a better approach. By touch I mean something like the feel of wind on your face or a quick glance at the sky among buildings. I prefer sight as the last resort even though it’s popularly considered our highest sense faculty: too much complexity which degenerates into distraction. Although sound appears the best way in, I don’t preclude sight nor the other senses. The main thing is finding one that does the trick. I mean this literally, for the perception of things magical is a mental trick we employ for attaining that mysterious in-between world of science and transcendence. Yet it’s deeper than a mere trick or technique; it is that which is most human in us. The stuff at our disposal is, as noted above, raw matter unencumbered by human relationships. It might be better to say that this realm is the foundation for establishing real relationships, but that’s a task we have to put off for now. Might as well stick with the rudiments.

Let’s examine the sense of hearing more closely. First of all, it’s basic to all religious traditions. One only has to recall the famous Shemah of Judaism, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is the one Lord.” Israel is later rebuked by the Lord for “having ears but not to listen,” a theme taken up by Jesus with his contemporaries. Interesting to observe that the singularity of hearing we just posited is allied with the divinity of the Lord, as though one flows into the other and visa versa. All this is well and fine, but in this essay I prefer to concentrate upon the non-scientific/non-religious sphere wherein magic has its natural home. When we happen to hear the wind blowing around–no matter whether through trees or skyscrapers–it’s the natural phenomenon we’re after. It has no relationships nor demands, just out there for the taking. We can’t pin down the wind nor assign a guilt trip to it as we’d do when confronted with another person. Paying closer attention to the wind somehow lifts us from pre-occupation with ourselves, liberates us from distracting claims, and makes us as transparent as the wind itself. Wind is pervasive in the sense that it’s found everywhere yet can’t be traced. The same applies to other natural sounds whether a bird, squirrel or flow of water. Not only do we become aware of them but their succession which has a life of its own.

No matter how well the two opposites–our scientific or religious mind–examine phenomena, they elude our grasp. Every once and a while one of these sounds may suddenly evoke a childhood memory and brings us back to a happier time . Not that something pleasant happened to pounce upon us, but a happy past event somehow made us more in tune with the world. On occasion these experiences fall under the label of deja-vu or even of a former life which can be designated conveniently as a previous incarnation. Apart from their suddenness, rarely do we give such experiences further thought; we accept them in an unexamined fashion and move on...that is, unless we’re inclined to superstition. Here superstition parallels science in that it examines the experience yet reads in things that really don’t belong there. The perception of things magical may border on superstition, a subtle parallel though both are dissimilar. However, to the trained eye magic elicits something more which can be sustained for longer periods of time or long enough to make it re-occur more often. In this way the experiences sink more permanently into our memory which then conditions us for the future.

The ultimate goal is to make these gestures at evoking magic a way of life, a Weltanschauung. A note of caution. We can’t force a perception of things magical just like we can’t directly imitate those foreign speakers on whom we had eavesdropped in the store discussing the difference between Quaker Oats and Corn Flakes. While we can admire their fluency and naturalness of speech, we have to start off small...take baby steps...on a long and sometimes painful road to fluency. No small wonder that the realm of magic popularly understood involves an extended apprenticeship in such arcane practices as chants, incantations, curses and spells. They are attempts to control events through human speech, a tendency as old as the human race. Speech is related to hearing which as noted above is the primary way religious communication works. It’s almost as though the human tendency to speak wants to outdo or precede that of hearing, and as we know, that can get us into trouble.

At the same time gestures at learning the new language of magic produce results right off the bat. Just recall our pride at having mastered even a few words or phrases of the language those foreign speakers in the supermarket were using. It expands our view of things and whets our appetite for learning more. Trying to get a better handle on this phenomenon is a mental way of crouching with the intent to pounce, not unlike a cat stalking a mouse. Most of the time is spent in solitude and stillness, watching and waiting. The actual acquisition or seizure of prey is lightning fast, almost incidental; once the mouse is caught, the game is over. Thus in a sense hunting is usually a solitary pursuit. If done in a group, the hunters must agree that they will be attuned to each other and their surroundings by maintaining full attentiveness. Silence is the norm they find essential for their task. Any communication is done mostly through gestures or signs, not entirely unlike magic.

Say that we’ve recalled a past experience which had opened up a door to a world previously unknown to us. This unknown world isn’t far-off but close by, albeit hidden and unrevealed. Suddenly a sound, sight, taste or whatever jumps out at us, makes an indelible impression and vanishes as quickly as it had arrived. Still, our minds had remained sufficiently alert for the experience to have registered. Usually the agent effecting this registration is trivial, almost banal, which adds to the mystery of this whole process. In other words, such an agent isn’t magic in the popular sense of the term though can appear so if it remains unexamined. Objectively speaking, we aren’t talking about strictly isolated events, for everything occurs about us continuously and makes up the warp and woof of existence. Their intensity–let’s call it reality in the all inclusive sense–precludes us from seeing the whole picture. We have to start somewhere or pick out a single thread and trace it back to its source. Hence the necessity of singling out one of our senses as hearing. As noted above, hearing is abstract enough in that it allows us to be selective as to what grabs our attention while filtering out unwanted noises.

I like this idea of a particular sense faculty latching on to a “thread” of reality and tracing it backwards. It bridges the distinction between a scientific mentality we all share to one degree or another and transcendence, the opposite side of the spectrum. Here we have that hierarchical structure noted earlier. Also our “thread” evokes a sense of mystery, of not knowing where we’re going; attention is focused on the thread itself which hopefully leads us to our destination. While following our proverbial thread backwards we leave the world of science...hardcore reality...yet haven’t yet attained the peg to which it is attached (let’s call it transcendence). This is not unlike leaving an open field and entering the dark woods to see where this thread leads.

While reading a book on Emily Dickinson, the famous reclusive poetess of Amherst (quite close to where I live), I came across a quote I may have seen elsewhere: like Henry David Thoreau, Dickinson lived the way she did because she had “certain private affairs to transact.” Both these contemporaries were certainly renowned for their writing, but their unconventional manner of life sticks out even more. It makes us wanting to come back to them probably because they’ve hit upon something we haven’t yet discovered. They never divulge their secret, for that would be forfeiting their “private affairs” . In the context of this essay, these people are akin to those magical threads enabling us to follow back to the source of their inspiration which is common to us all.

One of the greatest obstacles to seeing magic around us is the attitude we directly or indirectly pick up from the people with whom we associate whether they be relatives, friends, co-workers or even casual acquaintances. Even with the best of intentions, they tend to create a banal atmosphere which militates against magic. People don’t do this intentionally but contribute to a general climate where everything is leveled to a degree of stifling banality and blandness. The environment to which they contribute is so pervasive that we have a tough time even being aware of it, for we live right in it much as fish in the ocean. Thus the task before us is waking up to the situation at hand and then taking action to disassociate ourselves from it. Even this desire is as common as the banal atmosphere in which we live. It remains weak enough not to fully attack head on. After all, we’re stuck in a society where people struggle to make their relationships more meaningful. The desire to escape is misdirected by an attempt to increase the frequency of relationships, not by minimizing them. Actually the right action consists in withdrawal, yet many are powerless to actually do it. Thus the two poles of human relationships and a desire to escape them conspire to keep us entrapped.

During Vespers one evening which commemorated monks and nuns of the Benedictine Order we had the lovely hymn whose second refrain begins with “They set out places set apart to contemplate the promised land.” These words–like so many in the liturgy–elicit something akin to that magical atmosphere we’re discussing. It involves the following items: the intent of actually setting out special “places,” that is, spots which are remote from the normal human haunts. Then follows “contemplation” which in the context of this little essay involves not only the conventional ideas associated with prayer but that magical way of viewing reality. Finally we have the “promised land” or the object of contemplation, of seeing things in a magical way. It’s fun to draw a correspondence between the yet-as-to-be-fulfilled object (promised land) with the places set apart or the context of here and now existence. Obviously the bridge is contemplation but contemplation under the gaze of a magical eye.

It might be helpful to give some concrete examples of how magic might be carried out within a monastic context, for that is the one with which I’m most familiar. Besides, what can be learnt there has applications elsewhere. We can start by the simple observation that magic seems to have close affiliation with the night. This is the time when people are asleep and the world is at rest. Things normally outside our awareness emerge and assume a life of their own. No need to get into the popular images here, for we’re all familiar with them. Even with the onset of twilight you feel that you’re about to enter a time and space very different from the mundane one . Objects such as buildings, trees and of course the sky change dramatically, sometimes assuming a sinister cast. Even sounds assume a completely different character as we know from the creaking of floors and wind against the house. However, there’s more to it than that. Night is a time of shadows and artificial light (of course, apart from the stars and moon). They shed just enough light to illumine objects; due to their stability lights act as sentries until the dawn. Then there are special types of lights, namely, those which blink on the distant horizon. Their blinking imparts a life-like quality or sentries standing guard and protecting our territory.

More specific to our monastery are the wide-open spaces offered by the cloister garth (180' x 90'), replete with 8' x 8' windows offering expansive views towards the south and west . All these windows are Romanesque as opposed to Gothic. Their semi-circular forms give just the right medium for bringing the great outdoors inside. As for Gothic windows, they seem to be “too religious” and not sufficiently up for the job of conveying this sense of magic. Romanesque windows (at least in our cloister) are semi-circular and somehow feel more natural. It should be noted that the other two cardinal directions are blocked by the church, scriptorium, chapter room and sacristy yet all open out onto the cloister itself. Just as well because the land slopes off both in a southward and westward direction. It is here that we can see the horizon most clearly, in some spots some fifteen miles or more. Furthermore, New England the sun sets more southerly and westerly for a good bulk of the year. Such is the physical layout of the monastery. As noted towards the beginning of this essay, getting a firm grasp on one’s geographical position vis-a-vis north, south, east and west is crucial for setting the stage to perceive reality in magical fashion. People can’t always do this, but the monastery offers an unparalleled layout for such an endeavor.

Another crucial element associated with the night is that a fairly sizeable chunk of our monastic schedule takes place during this time (We rise at 3.15 am and go to bed at 8 pm). That is to say, apart from late spring and summer we experience more darkness than light while carrying out our liturgical duties: Vigils, Lauds, Vesper and Compline. That’s the temporal side or liturgical time-scheme; the monastery’s physical situation is the other one. Both fit together seamlessly to set the stage for seeing things magically provided you’re disposed for it.

Most of the time the cloisters are dark. Not totally, of course, for we have night lights strategically placed here and there. When the moon is out, the red marble floors glisten brightly and reflect the Romanesque arches in so many intriguing ways. This combination of natural and artificial lighting is essential for evoking just the right atmosphere for magic. Actually, you’d be hard pressed to find anything like it anywhere else, an observation made by many visitors. When you take up a position in the north cloister, for example, and can get a clear view of the other three cloisters, you see that the night lights offer what I believe is the perfect combination of illumination and concealment. Then along comes a monk barely perceptible in the cloister. The night lights illuminates his figure made all the more mysterious by the monastic cowl, a completely white garment made impressive due to its long sleeves and hood. When the monk has his hood up, then we’re really into something special! Should I seek the identity of this monk, the atmosphere would be spoiled; better to leave him anonymous. Such is the value of the amorphous character of night. For an example of this “night vision” I include a photograph taken in the south cloister which attempts to convey some of this mystery:

On the other hand, should I return during the day to the very spot from which I had viewed that monk–lovely as it is–and saw another monk walking by, the atmosphere would be completely different, almost unrecognizable. Other magical insights might present themselves, but they would not be of the same character; actually, the presence of daylight considerably diminishes the possibility of perceiving them. In this way you can contrast the two modes of perception, magic and conventional. I believe in the long run both merge, but most of us haven’t gotten that far yet .

In addition to the natural moonlight and night lights within the cloisters several communication towers are visible on the distant southwest horizon. There are three I can pick out with ease, all blinking at regular intervals. When coming down the “night stairs” around 3 am prior to Vigils, they are the first things I look for, sentries who have stood guard while I and the other monks had been asleep. Should they be invisible, that’s okay, for I know their presence on that horizon is assured. Even more intriguing is a flourescent light on the western horizon. While the red blinking lights are visible throughout the year, you can only view the flourescent one when the leaves have fallen, that is, from October through mid May. Even then you have to look closely and from certain spots in the west cloister due to the branches. Although I’m familiar with that area (New Braintree and Oakham), I’ve been torn, if you will, between wanting to find its actual location and not to do so. If I did locate it, the mystery would vanish. The light would turn out to be just another flourescent street light or more likely, one by a farmhouse. I recall Thoreau’s injunction somewhere in his Journal when he cautions the reader not to tread on the western horizon or where the sun sets. To go there would spoil the mystery. I heard that Thoreau had such reverence for the western direction that he’d never set out that way for his walks but almost always return home from the west. Because I too have had an fascination with the west since my childhood, I append an excerpt of approximately ten pages from Thoreau’s Journal at the end of this document where he touches upon this particular theme.

These observation concerning magic are simply one way of presenting an important though little appreciated gap in our lives, one which is hard to put our fingers on. As noted several times during this essay, sociologically we’re caught between a scientific world view yet remain anchored in a religious one, even if the latter has devolved into a cultural-social phenomenon (observance of holidays and the like). At the same time monasticism is, as you’d expect, imbued with religion. Actually it has a two-fold character: spirituality and religion; here religion is commonly taken as being representative by rituals or the more external forms of monastic life. The latter is what immediately strikes a visitor as, for example, the chanting of the Divine Office in church. You open the door to the side chapel for the first time, and its majesty can’t but propel you into an ethereal realm. Spirituality and religion aren’t contradictory but complementary. Nevertheless, monks can find going through the externals day after day, week after month, year after year, a challenge in that they’re “at it” constantly. Familiarity with scriptural reading during the liturgy can become so intimate (in the sense that some readings are virtually memorized) that they loose their impact.

On the other hand, monks are blessed with the leisure to practice spirituality either together with like-minded men or individually in the privacy of one’s cell. While the particulars of each monk’s orientation can differ widely–an integral aspect of the Benedictine tradition you don’t see at first but discover should you follow the life–the bulk of it centers around Scripture and the Church Fathers. To complicate matters more (though pleasantly so), these two grand streams have other rivulets which may include history, psychology, culture and so forth. They all flow back into each other and mingle, thereby offering the monk a surprisingly varied fountain of tradition from which to draw.

It may be of value to single out a verse from Scripture which presents an all-inclusive “definition” of magic in the sense we’ve been discussing. Thus from a multitude of them let’s focus upon a verse from Ephesians: “and to make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things” [3.9]. The first word that hits you is “mystery” or mysterion in Greek which means something formerly unknown but now has become revealed. It’s connected with “plan” or oikonomia, a rather comprehensive word fundamentally meaning “management of a household.” It thus conveys a sense of intimacy, of nothing foreign to our experience. Okay, so we have this “household-management” laid out with respect to some previously unknown which is now manifest. Keep in mind that it was “hidden for ages.” Not simply out of sight but hidden “in God” who, really, is pretty much out of sight anyway. Such a layout St. Paul puts out there ready to go but needs a spirit blown into it in order “to make all men see.” The Greek word “see” isn’t the ordinary one but photizo, “to give light to.” More specifically, such impartation of light directly concerns the “plan” (oikonomia), that familiar household management, if you will, as opposed to something exoteric and beyond our experience.

During the course of his life, a monk is privileged to be exposed to an incredible variety of religious ideas, spirituality and culture which becomes that fertile field in which a magical outlook on life can spring. Despite its monolithic appearance, monasticism is more varied than at first glance, a way of life many people would give an arm and a leg if they had but an inkling of its treasures. Like the Transcendentalists noted earlier, a monk has quite a few educational resources available to him, ammunition with which he can easily make analogies between concrete experience and a tradition some two thousand years old. At the same time, monks have not been immune to the same societal pressures, albeit in a mitigated form, or those years when the West’s classical tradition was jettisoned. Younger men from that culture entered the monastery who had little or no clue of monastic, let alone church, teaching and all the rest.

Regardless, the monastery affords all the equipment needed to see things in a magical way. There still remain obstacles or occupational hazards as you’d find in any way of life. Chief among them is following the daily schedule in a literal sort of way. Keep in mind that the monastery is designed to distribute the work load evenly, thereby allowing each monk ample time to pursue the goals of this life. It frees you up in ways not known in the world by setting forth an orderly schedule which regulates details from dawn to dusk. This all-embracing pattern isn’t monolithic as it appears to a casual observer, one of the first things a newcomer discovers. Since we humans are creatures of habit, it’s convenient to follow a schedule that’s already in place, better, has been tried and true for centuries. Not entirely unlike a security blanket. A monk can follow this schedule for a goodly portion of his life, yet there’s a hard-to-define need awaiting transformation. As with everyone else on this planet, a monk is affected by that above-mentioned hiatus between the scientific and religious worlds. In the monastic context there is, as you’d expect, a disposition to prefer the spiritual over the material. Monks do live a beautiful life in a beautiful place and do it well yet can lack an appreciation of beauty, partly due to the regularity of each day. There’s no real problem with this, and many a monk down the years has become sanctified. By “beauty” I mean in the all-encompassing ancient Greek sense which gives form to matter. Still, that mysterious in-between land is easily overlooked, the place where magic has its native home.

In the last analysis magic seems to be a gift. Some people have and others don’t (monks included). If they do have it, they might prefer to keep it quiet either out of fear of being misunderstood or ridiculed. Perhaps that’s why magic in the popular way of viewing it has always been practiced in secret, out of sight the bounds of normal society, and its practioneers preferred remote places. From there it was an easy step to devolve into what we associate as the occult, etc. The secretive component to magic leads to another observation. It comes to almost always in solitude. As for monks, they have more access to leisure than people in society and thereby are open to fields of interest despite being enclosed. At the same time, their schedule can be chopped up with intervals of time as opposed to having large blocks of it. Even the leisure you associate with monasteries can be marked by busyness. Despite this, a monk can employ his wonderful exposure to so many aspects of religion and culture to perceive the magic operating in his midst. This may be akin to play, an activity we associate with children. However, once children grow up, play is jettisoned for serious, adult stuff. Maybe this is where the regularity of monastic life can be a hidden asset. It allows them to remain as children throughout their careers.

When engaged in a playful activity, little or no attention is directed to how, when, where or why. You simply do it. It’s pretty hard to pin down the nature of play even though much has been written on it. Play requires getting along with a certain ignorance but an ignorance akin to the Socratic sense which I’ve dealt with elsewhere on this home page. This emphasis upon ignorance is paradoxical because intimately linked with it is knowledge of the recollective type wherein consists our true nature. Obviously we acquire knowledge in the aggressive sense of employing our minds to know and then utilize the world. While most of our attention is focused on this, there remains an unexplored side which has nothing to do with externals. It pretty much sits there within us, and we’re at a loss as how to comprehend it. Because we’re vaguely aware of this veiled something, it can sometimes haunt us. Should we overcome our timidity and follow the advice of more experienced people, we find to our delight that we’ve always been at home. The problem is understanding the term “recollection” better. The Greek term is anamnesis and suggests a going-back-into (ana-) our recollective faculty which is much better than the word “memory.” Here we are confronted with a world where gestures into (ana-) the past are required or those places which had already informed us and continue to inform us. Plato would explain all this in some of his non-Socratic Dialogues as forms, a higher reality, in which physical objects participate due to their inferior nature. Some may not agree with this, but the basic insight is sound. Memory-as-anamnesis is a backwards gesture...a gesture backwards in that it goes opposite to the one we may for acquiring knowledge...and inserts us into a more comprehensive reality but us not as inferior beings.

Socrates applies his acquired or recognized ignorance out in the field, that is, when dealing with people who presumably have knowledge about all sorts of things, notably, human behavior. He questions such folks as to where and how they got it and sets out to frustrate them with their inbuilt ignorance. At this point they have a choice. Either to accept their native ignorance and get back to anamnesis or continue on with their supposed knowledge. This dialectic between ignorance and knowledge is just one part of the story. The other part is that once we’ve grown accustomed to our ignorance (the only thing we can do effectively is to ask questions) we’re more open to perceive the state of our souls. This is where knowledge as anamnesis comes into play. By recalling our true nature we discover that we have (or always had) everything that’s needed for life. A lot of people are naturally disinclined to take this route because it seems akin to death, better, a living death.

Practically speaking, if we’ve become more adept at Socratic ignorance (which automatically leads to anamnesis), we get insight into features of reality and experience that hitherto were beyond our grasp. You can see where this is going, namely, to the manner in which a magical viewpoint operates. The features which hitherto remained unexplored hover between that distinction made above: between science (hardcore reality) and religion (transcendent reality). Magic is a kind of mediator between the two. I certainly wouldn’t equate magic with Plato’s forms or posit it as a kind of anti-form. It might be better to say that a whole, wide world of ambiguity exists out there which will always remain such to the scrutiny of both science and religion.

A good way to polish off this brief essay (with the intent of continuing the matter in another one) is by saying that the ambiguity of perceiving reality or in a magical way leads towards the physical side of things. For example, take a person who has cultivated ignorance in the Socratic sense. Regardless of how ignorant he or she happens to be, there remains the hardcore nature of physical reality which bumps into you constantly. The same applies to a person who is “not ignorant” and thinks he or she is endowed with knowledge unbeknownst to everyone else. The only difference is that the former is fully aware of reality’s predominance, that it hits you right in the face, whereas the latter prefers to theorize about it. This can reach to such an extreme that hardcore reality is theorized out of existence.

Should you stick with physical reality–recall the ancient division of four physical elements which includes the four points of the compass–you gradually realize that despite their hardness, they do have a unique flexibility which defy our attempts at theorizing them away. That is, we can shift attention on one of them such as listening to the wind. Like the other three elements, the wind is completely impersonal, free from how we feel at any given moment. If so inclined, you can move on to another sense, that of touch (wind in your face) and so forth. The wind’s reality smacks you in the face with or without your awareness, only now we’ve decided to pay attention to this smacking without putting any reflection upon it.

Because wind is the least tangible of the senses, it might be a good place to start. After some practice this intangibility can be extended to touch, hearing and finally to sight. Even the slightest exposure or attention to the wind without imposing our usual reflections (they go on in our head anyway) makes us say something like yes, we experience it all the time but haven’t a clue as to what it is and this despite all the scientific data in the world. It should be noted that poets use the four elements to describe various states of human emotions. While completely valid, in this essay we’re more focused upon the impersonality of the elements, not what they can signify in human fashion.

The continuous bombardment of physical reality–its endless round of coming into and fading from existence–can leave us confused as to what is really going on. We may call this confusion a type of aporia...perplexity...which Socrates loved to instill into his listeners. Since this influx comes from “stuff out there,” it is truly natural but not exactly so. Aporia moves us into a realm of wonderment which baffles us and primes us to perceive it as magic or in terms I prefer, to perceive it magically minus ignorance (not the Socratic variety but the human one) which loves to invent all sorts theories about it. This inclination parallels yet differs from the above-mentioned predilection to use nature for representing various states of the human condition. The newly hit upon magical realm is inhabited with inanimate objects, people, animals and fanciful creations of our imagination which aren’t the same as the four elements when they are employed to represent our emotions and thoughts. As I said towards the beginning of this essay, the four elements require space. The quality of space is vital for the elements to take shape, and a prime example is sitting in the north monastic cloister watching monks glide by silently in the darkness.

I have offered a more refined definition of magic situated within the Christian-monastic context and attempted to sketch out a few ways we can cultivate this special presence of mind. Certainly magic doesn’t share more exalted levels of contemplation or higher planes of our relationship with God and our fellow human beings. It’s attractiveness is by reason of being a neutral ground into which we with all our failings and various levels of development can freely enter and play. All this can be accomplished without fear or recrimination. Magic seems blessedly devoid of constraints or requirements we normally associate with initiation. Because magic stands midway between gross impersonal matter and the highest impersonal levels of contemplation , it’s a good a starting point as any. You could say that magic is in accord with the spirit of play with which we are all familiar. Actually, the best part about magic is its universal appeal and if understood and practiced well, can be a sound stepping-stone on our road to a deeper relationship with God.

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Feast of St. John Damascus, 4 December 2003

References to Sunset and the West in the Journal of Henry David Thoreau

1837

October 29, p.7: How often have they (native Indians) stood on this very spot, at this very hour, when the sun was sinking behind yonder woods and gilding with his last rays upon the waters of the Musketaquid, and pondered the day=s success and the morrow=s prospects, or communed with the spirit of their fathers gone before them to the land of shades!

November 9, p.9: And now that it is evening, a few clouds in the mild atmosphere rest upon the mountains, more stand still than move in the heavens, and immediately after sunset the chirping of crickets begins to increase; then feels once more at home in the world, and not as an alien,Ban exile.

1838

August 29, p.55: How strangely sounds of revelry strike the ear from over cultivated fields by the woodside, while the sun is declining in the west. It is a world we had not known before. We listen and are capable of no mean act of thought. We tread on Olympus and participate in the councils of the gods.

1839

August 31, p.88: In the twilight so elastic is the air that the sky seems to tinkle [sic] over farmhouse and wood. Scrambling up the bank of our terra incognita we fall on huckleberries, which have slowly ripened here, husbanding the juices which the months have distilled, for our peculiar use this night.

1840

February 11, p.118: Falsehoods that glare and dazzle are sloped toward us, reflecting full in our faces even the light of the sun. Wait till sunset, or go round them, and the falsity will be apparent.

June 15, p.140: It would be well if we saw ourselves as in perspective always, impressed with distant outline on the sky, side by side with the shrubs on the river=s brim. So let our life stand to heaven as some fair, sunlit tree against the western horizon, and by sunrise be planted on some eastern hill to glisten in the first rays of the dawn.

June 24, pp. 151-2: Though the sun set a quarter of an hour ago, his rays are still visible, darting half-way to the zenith. That glowing morrow in the west flashes on me like a faint presentiment of morning when I am falling asleep. A dull mist comes rolling from the west, as it if were the dust which day has raised...The landscape, by its patient resting there, teaches me that all good remains with him that waiteth, and that I shall sooner over take the dawn by remaining here, than by hurrying over the hills of the west.

June 24, p.152: Red, then, is Day=s color; at least it is the color of his heel. He is >stepping westward.= We only notice him when he comes and when he goes.

June 30, p.155: In this fresh evening each blade and leaf looks as if it had been dipped in an icy liquid greenness. Let eyes that ache come here and look,Bthe sight will be a sovereign eyewater,Bor else wait and bathe them in the dark.

July 3, p.159: We will have a dawn, and noon, and serene sunset in ourselves...What we call the gross atmosphere of evening is the accumulated deed of the day, which absorbs the rays of beauty, and shows more richly than the naked promise of the dawn. By earnest toil in the heat of the noon, let us get ready a rich western blaze against the evening of our lives.

July 11, p.167: Let us not wait any longer, but step down from the mountains on to the plain of earth. Let our delay be like the sun=s, when he lingers on the dividing line of day and night a brief space when the world is grateful for his light. We will make such haste as the morning and such delay as the evening.

1841

February 27, p. 225: I am attired for the future so, as the sun setting presumes all men at leisure and in contemplative mood,Band am thankful that it is thus presented blank and indistinct. It still o=ertops my hope.

February 28, p. 226: I hear a man blowing a horn this still evening, and it sounds like the plaint of nature in these times. In this, which I refer to some man, there is something greater than any man. It is as if the earth spoke. It adds a great remoteness to the horizon, and its very distance is grand, as when one draws back the head to speak. That which I now hear in the west seems like an invitation to the east. It runs round the earth as a whisper gallery. It is the spirit of the West calling to then spirit of the East, or else it is the rattling of some team lagging in Day=s train. Coming to me through the darkness and silence, all things great seem transpiring there. It is friendly as a distant hermit=s taper. When it is trilled or undulates, the heavens are crumpled into time, and successive waves flow across them.

April 15, p. 252: When I hear a robin sing at sunset, I cannot help contrasting the equanimity of Nature with the bustle and impatience of man.

July 10 to 11, p. 265: A slight sound at evening lifts me up by the ears, and makes life seem inexpressibly serene and grand. It may be in Uranus, or it may be in the shutter. It is the original sound of which all literature is but the echo. It makes all fear superfluous. Bravery comes from further than the sources of fear.

August 18, p. 273: If I were awakened from a deep sleep, I should know which side the meridian the sun might be by the chirping of the crickets. Night has already insidiously set her foot in the valley in many places, where the shadows of the shrubs and fences begin to darken the landscape. There is a deeper shading in the colors of the afternoon landscape. Perhaps the forenoon is brighter than the afternoon, not only because of the greater transparency of the atmosphere then, but because we naturally look most into the west,Bas we look forward into the day,Band so in the forenoon see the sunny side of things, but in the afternoon the shadow of every tree.

December 29, p. 301: ...or when the setting sun slants across the pastures, and the cows low to my inward ear and only enhance the stillness, and the eve is as the dawn, a beginning hour and not a final one, as if it would never have done, with its clear western amber inciting men to lives of as limpid purity. Then do other parts of may day=s work shine than I had thought at noon, for I discover the real purport of my toil, as, when the husbandman has reached the end of the furrow and looks back, he can best tell where the pressed earth shines most.

1845-1846

August 23, p. 385: Toward evening, as the world waxes darker, I am permitted to see the woodchuck stealing across my path, and tempted to seize and devour it. The wildest, most desolate scenes are strangely familiar to me.

March 26 (1846), p.400: A serene summer evening sky seemed darkly reflected in the pond, though the clear sky was nowhere visible overhead. It was no longer the end of a season, but the beginning.

Also: Trees seemed all at once to be fitly grouped, to sustain new relations to men and to one another. There was somewhat cosmical in the arrangement of nature. O the evening robin, at the close of a New England day! If I could ever find the twig he sits upon! Where does the minstrel really roost?

February 22 (no year), p.435: Many a day spent on the hilltops waiting for the sky to fall, that I might catch something, though I never caught much, only a little, manna-wise, that would dissolve again in the sun.

1837-1847

Undated, p. 443: Consider the phenomena of morn, or eve, and you will say that Nature has perfected herself by an eternity of practice,Bevening stealing over the fields, the stars coming to bathe in retired waters, the shadows of the trees creeping farther and farther into the meadows, and a myriad of phenomena beside.

Undated, p. 446: In whatever moment we awake to life, as now I this evening, after walking along the bank and hearing the same evening sounds that were heard of yore, it seems to have slumbered just below the surface, as in the spring the new verdure which covers the fields has never retreated far from the winter.

Undated, p. 447: All actions and objects and events lose their distinct importance in this hour, in the brightness of the vision, as, when sometimes the pure light that attends the setting sun falls on the trees and houses, the light itself is the phenomenon, and no single object is so distinct to our admiration as the light itself.

Undated, p. 449: It [purple finch] has the crimson hues of the October evenings, and its plumage still shines as it had caught and preserved some of their tints (beams?). We know it chiefly as a traveler. It reminds me of many things I had forgotten. Many a serene evening lies snugly packed under its wing.

1850

May 12, p. 12: I have heard my brother playing on his flute at evening half a mile off through the houses of the village, every note with perfect distinctness. It seemed a more beautiful communication with me than the sending up of a rocket would have been.

No date, p. 26: The horizon is very extensive as it is, and if the top were cleared so that you could get the western view, it would be one of the most extensive seen from any hill in the county. The most imposing horizons are those which are seen from tops of hills rising out of a river valley.

July 16, p. 51: There was a glorious lurid sunset to-night, accompanied with many sombre clouds, and when I looked into the west with my head turned, the grass had the same fresh green, and the distant herbage and foliage in the horizon the same dark blue, and the clouds and sky the same bright colors beautifully mingled and dissolving into one another, that I have seen in pictures of tropical landscapes and skies. Pale saffron skies with faint fishes of rosy clouds dissolving in them. A blood-stained sky. I regretted that I had an impatient companion. What shall we make of the fact that you have only to stand on your head a moment to be enchanted with the beauty of the landscape?

September 19, p. 74: The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man=s house.

September 19, p. 76: Looking through a stately pine grove, I saw the western sun falling in golden streams through its aisles. Its west side, opposite to me, was all lit up with golden light; but what was I to it? Such sights reminded me of houses which we never inhabit,Bthat commonly I am not at home in the world. I see somewhat fairer than I enjoy or possess.

November 11, p. 94: We had a remarkable sunset to-night. I was walking in the meadow, the source of Nut Meadow Brook. We walked in so pure and bright a light, so softly and serenely bright, I thought I had never bathed in such a golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it. The west side of every wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary of Elysium.

November 21, p. 106-7: Some distant angle in the sun where a lofty and dense white pine wood, with mingled gray and green, meets a hill covered with shrub oaks, affects me singularly, re-inspiring me with all the dreams of my youth. It is a place far away, yet actual and where we have been. I saw the sun falling on a distant white pine wood whose gray and moss-covered stems were visible amid the green, in an angle where this forest abutted on a hill covered with shrub oaks. It was like looking into dreamland. It is one of the avenues to my future. Certain coincidences like this are accompanied by a certain flash as of hazy lightning, flooding all the world suddenly with a tremulous serene light which is difficult to see long at a time.

November 21, p. 108: Every sunset inspires me with the desire to go to a West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down.

November 25, p. 112: When I got up so high on the side of the Cliff the sun was setting like an Indian-summer sun. There was a purple tint in the horizon. It was warm on the face of the rocks, and I could have sat till the sun disappeared, to dream there. It was a mild sunset such as is to be attended to. Just as the sun shines into us warmly and serenely, our Creator breathes on us and re-creates us.

November 29, p. 119: The pines standing in the ocean of mist, seen from the Cliffs, are trees in every stage of transition from the actual to the imaginary...You are reminded of your dreams. Life looks like a dream. You are prepared to see visions. And now, just before sundown, the night wind blows up more mist through the valley, thickening the veil which already hung over the trees, and the gloom of night gathers early and rapidly around. Birds lose their way.

December 17, p. 126: I noticed when the snow first came that the days were very sensibly lengthened by the light being reflected from the snow. Any work which required light could be pursued about half an hour longer. So that we may well pray that the ground may not be laid bare by a thaw in these short winter days.

December 24, p. 129: In walking across the Great Meadows to-day on the snow-crust, I noticed that the fine, dry snow which was blown over the surface of the frozen field, when I [looked] westward over it or toward the sun, looked precisely like steam curling up from its surface, as sometimes from a wet root when the sun comes out after a rain.

1851

January 5, p. 138: I felt my spirits rise when I had got off the road into the open fields, and the sky had a new appearance. I stepped along more buoyantly. There was a warm sunset over the wooded valleys, a yellowish tinge on the pines. Reddish dun-colored clouds like dusky flames stood over it. And then streaks of blue sky were seen here and there. The life, the joy, that is in blue sky after a storm! There is no account of the blue sky in history.

January 10, p. 140: There was a remarkable sunset; a mother-of-pearl sky seen over the Price farm; some small clouds, as well as the edges of large ones, most brilliantly painted with mother-of-pearl tints through and through. I never saw the like before. Who can foretell the sunset,Bwhat it will be?

February 27, p. 170: Westward is heaven, or rather heavenward is the west. The way to heaven is from east to west round the earth. The sun leads and shows it. The stars, too, light it.

June 14, p. 254: A serene evening, the sun going down behind clouds, a few white or slightly shaded piles of clouds floating in the eastern sky, but a broad, clear, mellow cope left for the moon to rise into. An evening for poets to describe....All nature is in an expectant attitude.

June 14, p. 257: How moderate, deliberate, is Nature! How gradually the shades of night gather and deepen, giving man ample leisure to bid farewell today, conclude his day=s affairs, and prepare for slumber! The twilight seems out of proportion to the length of the day. Perchance it saves our eyes.

June 14, p. 258: The moon is accumulating yellow light and triumphing over the clouds, but still the west is suffused here and there with a slight red tinge, marking the path of the day. Though inexperienced ones might call it night, it is not yet. Dark, heavy clouds lie along the western horizon, exhibiting the forms of animals and men, while the moon is behind a cloud.

July 5, p. 283: As we come over Hubbard=s Bridge between 5 and 6 P.M., the sun getting low, a cool wind blowing up the valley, we sit awhile on the rails which are destined for the new railing. The light on the Indian hill is very soft and glorious, giving the idea of the most wonderful fertility. The most barren hills are gilded like waving grain-fields. What a paradise to sail by! The cliffs and woods up the stream are nearer and have more shadow and actuality about them. This retired bridge is a favorite spot with me. I have witnessed many a fair sunset from it.

July 6, p. 284: Ah! But that first faint tinge of moonlight on the gap! (Seen some time ago)Ba silvery light from the east before day had departed in the west. What an immeasurable interval there is between the first tinge of moonlight which we detect, lighting with mysterious, silvery, poetic light the western slopes, like a paler grass, and the last wave of daylight on the eastern slopes! It is wonderful how our senses ever span so vast an interval, how from being aware of the one we become aware of the other. And now the night wind blows,Bfrom where? What gave it birth? It suggests an interval equal to that between the most distant periods recorded in history. The silver age is not more distant from the golden than moonlight is from sunlight. I am looking into the west, where the red clouds still indicate the course of departing day. I turn and see the silent, spiritual, contemplative moonlight shedding the softest imaginable light on the western slopes of the hills, as if, after a thousand years of polishing, their surfaces were just beginning to be bright,Ba pale whitish lustre.

July 9, p. 295: Coming out of town,Bwillingly as usual,Bwhen I saw that reach of Charles River just above the depot, the fair, still water this cloudy evening suggesting the way to eternal peace and beauty, whence it flows, the placid, lake-like fresh water, so unlike the salt brine, affected me not a little...What can be more impressive than to look up a noble river just at evening,Bone, perchance, which you have never explored,Band behold its placid waters, reflecting the woods and sky, lapsing inaudibly toward the ocean; to behold as a lake, but know it as a river, tempting the beholder to explore it and his own destiny at once?

July 21, p. 322: The undersides of the leaves, exposed by the breeze, give a light bluish tinge to the woods as I look down on them. Looking at the woods west of this hill, there is a grateful dark shade under their eastern sides, where they meet the meadows, their cool night side,Ba triangular segment of night, to which the sun has set. The mountains look like waves on a blue ocean tossed up by a stiff gale.

August 5, pp. 370-1: Moon half full. I sit beside Hubbard=s Grove. A few level red bars above the horizon; a dark, irregular bank beneath them, with a streak of red sky below, on the horizon=s edge. This will describe many a sunset...The air is still. I hear the voices of loud-talking boys in the early twilight, it must be a mile off. The swallows go over with a watery twittering.

August 31, pp. 435-6: There was a quiet beauty in the landscape at that hour (half an hour before sunset, Tupelo Cliff) which my senses were prepared to appreciate. The sun going down on the west side, that hand being already in shadow for the most part, but his rays lighting up the water and the willows and pads even more than before...The trivialness of the day is past. The greater stillness, the serenity of the air, its coolness and transparency, the mistiness being condensed, are favorable to thought. (The pensive eve.). The coolness of evening comes to condense the haze of noon and make the air transparent and the outline of objects firm and distinct, and chaste (chaste eve); even as I am made more vigorous by my bath, am more continent of thought. After bathing, even at noonday, a man realizes a morning or evening life. The evening is such a bath for both mind and body. When I have walked all day in vain under the torrid sun, and the world has been all trivial,Bas well field and wood as highway,Bthen at eve the sun goes down westward, and the wind goes down with it, and the dews begin to purify the air and make it transparent, and the lakes and rivers acquire a glassy stillness, reflecting the skies, the reflex of the day. I too am at the top of my condition for perceiving beauty.

August 31, p. 438: What unanimity between the water and the sky!Bone only a little denser element than the other. The grossest part of heaven. Think of a mirror on so large a scale! Standing on distant hills, you see the heavens reflected, the evening sky, in some low lake or river in the valley, as perfectly as in any mirror they could be. Does it not prove how intimate heaven is with earth?

(Continued, new paragraph) We commonly sacrifice to supper this serene and sacred hour. Our customs turn the hour of sunset to a trivial time, as at the meeting of two roads, one coming from the noon, the other heading to the night. It might be [well] if our repasts were taken out-of-doors, in view of the sunset and the rising stars.

(Continued, new paragraph) The air of the valleys at this hour is the distilled essence of all those fragrances which during the day have been filling and have been dispersed in the atmosphere. The fine fragrances, perchance, which have floated in the upper atmospheres have settled to these low vales!

September 7, p. 473-4: I hear no larks sing as in the spring, nor robins; only a few distressed notes from the robin. In Hubbard=s grain-field beyond the brook, now the sun is down. The air is very still. There is a fine sound of crickets, not loud. The woods and single trees are heavier masses in the landscape than in the spring. Night as more allies. The heavy shadows of woods and trees are remarkable now...The sky is singularly marked this evening. There are bars or rays of nebulous light springing from the western horizon where the sun has disappeared, and alternating with beautiful blue rays, more blue by far than any other portion of the sky. These continue to diverge till they have reached the middle, and then converge to the eastern horizon, making a symmetrical figure like the divisions of a muksmelon, not very bright, yet distinct, though growing less and less bright toward the east. It was a quite remarkable phenomenon encompassing the heavens, as if you were to behold the divisions of a muksmelon thus alternately colored from within it. A proper vision, a colored mist. The most beautiful thing in nature is the sun reflected from a tearful cloud. These while and blue ribs embraced the earth. The two outer blues much the brightest and matching one another.

September 8, p. 484: The eastern horizon is now grown dun-colored, showing where the advanced guard of the night are already skirmishing with the vanguard of the sun, a lurid light tinging the atmosphere there, while a dark-columned cloud hangs immanent over the broad portal, untouched by the glare. Some bird flies over, making a noise like the barking of a puppy. It is yet so dark that I have dropped my pencil and cannot find it.

September 24, p. 14: Returning over the causeway from Flint=s Pond the over evening (22d), just at sunset, I observed that while the west was of a bright golden color under a bank of clouds,Bthe sun just setting,Band not a tinge of red was yet visible there, there was a distinct purple tinge in the nearer atmosphere, that Annursnack Hill, seen through it, had an exceedingly rich empurpled look. It is rare that we perceive this pruple tint in the air, telling of the juice of the wild grape and poke-berries. The empurpled hills! Methinks I have only noticed this in cooler weather.

September 27, p. 28: The shadow deepens down the woody hills and is most distinctly dark where they meet the meadow line. Now the sun in the west is coming out and lights up the river a mile off, so that it shines with a white light like a burnished silver mirror. The poplar tree seems quite important to the scene. The pastures are so dry that the cows have been turned on to the meadow, but they gradually desert it, all feeding one way. The patches of sunlight on the meadow look luridly yellow, as if flames were traversing it.

September 30, p. 37: T