I was apprehensive about going in the shop. The coyote jaw ceremonial knives and graveyard dirt listed online seemed, shall we say, intense. But when my friend and I actually passed through the purple doorway, the smell of burning herbs was so good that I immediately relaxed. Little dishes of crystals and packs of tarot cards sat on shelves; more crystals hung on strings, glowing in the afternoon light. The owner greeted us pleasantly, and upstairs, someone was getting a psychic reading.
I fetched up in front of a hutch that held intriguing jars of herbs and a dish with finely burned detritus in it. This was the spell bar, the owner told us. She had learned to do spells from a very renowned spell-working person in Salem, so she knew what she was doing. She would craft spells for us for a certain price.
In a total 180 from my previous skepticism, I turned to my friend in excitement. We could have spells done for our top-secret creative projects into which we were both pouring our hearts and souls! What a great idea!
“Mmm,” said my friend.
Okay, I thought, it was maybe a little silly, but I still wanted to do it. The shop smelled good and felt good and I felt like a spell from the owner might be effective, and I would like my project to, you know, actually work out and become something.
But it was also kind of expensive, and did I actually need a spell?
We left the shop and climbed some steps and looked out over the town and I said to my friend, “Okay, talk me out of buying a spell.”
“It’s expensive,” she said. (Noted.) “And what if we’re not really meant to complete these projects? What if they’re here for now, but it’s better for us to move in a different direction, and doing a spell is just imposing our will on the universe when it wouldn’t serve our highest good, and then we’d just have more crap to work through?”
(Or at least that’s whatever she said translated to in my head.)
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “That’s right. I am so not into manifestation.”
In the words of the inimitable Tosha Silver, God is not a slot machine. Yet it’s so tempting to think that the divine will deliver whatever we want if we just ask the right way or put together the right vision board. So many people love to promise that we can have it all—a deep spiritual connection and a 6 figure income! Congrats, folks, you don’t have to live in a cave in the desert to connect with the divine anymore!
Many of these people also talk a lot about surrender and remind us that letting go of our own agendas can let the divine in. They remind us that “surrender” is an active process in which we take action yet release the results.
We long to control our lives. That is, of course, why manifestation is so popular. “I manifested XYZ!” we chant when things work out really well.
The problem is, of course, that sometimes things don’t work out. To paraphrase the late great Ron Roth, sometimes God says no. You can pray all you want and strive all you want, but sometimes, it’s just not the time for whatever it is you’re longing for. It’s not that you did something wrong. It’s not that you have so much negative gunk clouding your psyche that you did something to yourself.
This insistence on the human agenda has seeped into the world of story creation, too. Novelists are urged to give their characters agency. Nothing should “just happen” to the character, a knowledgeable reader will scold. We want to read about people who drive their own decisions and create their own destinies!
Of course, if we just float along and let life happen to us, that probably won’t make for a very fulfilling life, nor will it make for a compelling read. Yet the relentless focus on individual action means we lose track of the fact that we humans live in community. A community of other humans, a community with nature, a community with the biology of our bodies.
Life is a strange balance of, yes, taking action, but also of things that “just happen.” Acts of god, moments of serendipity, choices borne from community. Perhaps these are things that occur to teach us something, or maybe in the cosmic view, we for some reason signed up to experience them before being born into this lifetime.
We must be able to flow with life, and also to leap when required. To accept what comes, and also diligently work toward our dreams.
As far as my current project goes, I did not buy a spell that day. I continue to walk the balance—sometimes with more success than other times!—of showing up for my work, whether I’m “inspired” or not, opening to receive what’s ready to meet me that day, and then putting pen to paper—or fingers to keyboard.
FUN FACT: Stopping for a Spell is also the name of a Diana Wynne Jones short story collection! I try to get my DWJ references in where I can. :)
I’ve come to understand that we can strive to accomplish this or that and mistake our successes with control over our lives. Our failures are harder to fold into our stories at first. Looking back we might start to see the disappointments and “failures” as necessary and valuable.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and insights, Callie!