MAKING A MAGICIAN
Crowning the Witch King
It’s worth giving some explanation on what I mean by that Name, who gave it to me, and how I’ve come to understand it over the last few years. I also have no intention of playing my hand here. There will be omissions and transparently vague statements. That said, nothing I’ll share in this series will be made up or falsified. It’s my story and I’ll tell it how I’d like.
I don’t remember a time “before” magic. The supernatural has always been a very real and upfront part of the world, enough so that it wasn’t until I’d started to get older that I realized my perspective was a bit different from others’. What I heard praying in Church or when talking to the trees was unlike what they experienced. Nothing I felt quite matched the cartoons or storybooks either: no hallucinations or breaks from reality. Even now, photorealistic manifestations are fairly rare. What I “see” and “hear” are more like senses for which no verb exists, perceptions unique or hushed I guess. When my brain puts together the information my soul gathers, I ‘feel’ it more than anything else. It is sensory input distinct from other sensations, from intuition, and from my predictive mind as well: it is truly a “sixth sense” in that way.
In middle school, I met another boy on the bus who seemed to have a little awareness about him as well. As boys of that age do, we quickly became rivals and friends. Unlike our peers racing bikes or playing soccer, we spent our evenings on the early internet finding Enochian tables and attempting to scry with water. Our progress was haphazard and our interests diverged as we got older: where I think he wanted confirmation of something greater, I was hungry for an understanding of its mechanisms. A mutual acquaintance came from an openly witchy family and professed abilities far beyond anything we could muster. Don’t know what happened to her, but I’m hardly surprised there were others dabbling in the dark arts.
At times, magic has played different roles in life. It gives direction sometimes, forcing my hand or pushing me into a black hole of destiny. Other times it gives agency, allowing me to defy the likely and bring forward the impossible. Sometimes it’s a forgotten tool on the shelf and others, it’s a way of making sense of the universe. If you ask me to define it, I will give you a thousand Names but there is no One Name that can capture the depth of the word. Magick, Magyk, and all the other various ways we Ye Olde English our way into distinctions have their value, but at this point in my life, I have given up on trying to meaningfully define the concept, practice, and powers of magic in any one way. Instead, I have embraced mystery – shadow as it is for me – as the crucible of magic.
There are secrets and hidden things because what is Known is Known.
Whether or not my relatives share my view of reality or not is hard to say. There’s certainly a mystical quality to a few family members, stories of premonitions and dreams filled with visions of the future. I didn’t learn most of them until I was much older and spoke openly about my own. Most family secrets are rather grim. Ours were Grimm stories. My sisters have shared little bits and pieces of their own innate oddities. The middle predictably denies it all but knows the family secret and how to use it when she wants. The youngest is your stereotypical wild spirit, Stevie Nicks kind of witchcraft. Our baby sister shows signs of it too, a little young yet to have a solid shape but well-aware of which crystals are special and which ones are just pretty. My brothers are an odd mix: one seems a bit more on the mortal side than not while the other has signs of sparkling as bright as big brother.
Chance encounters with spooky people has been a running theme throughout life. Started a little cult in middle school and had a good half of our grade praying to me for success in school and romance. Guidance counselors got involved but ultimately, even some of the staff started buying in. I learned very early that just the smallest bit of magic wrapped in power-control dynamics was enough to bend people to my will. I also learned the consequences of playing God, how easily it is to hurt the very fragile thing that is a human heart. Hope is a deadly drug. My high school English teacher practiced magic herself as a young girl and spotted me rather quickly, conventional school president looks didn’t fool her. She’d been burned but offered a sounding board for a reality I thought few adults would acknowledge: she taught me how to think critically and sharpen my words into arguments.
College only blew open the network of oddballs, a large campus along one of the largest rivers in North America tends to bring magical folks together. From falling in love with Thelemites to burning bridges by terrifying friends with party tricks, I found myself in over my head. Catching my breath took a few years but who can call themselves a Magician who has not passed through the Abyss at least a time or two? I learned magics from different cultures and practices, absorbing any and everything anyone would share. I studied worldviews and esoteric thought, specializing in the science of symbols and reality. I could use magic and science to effect great change: and I did.
Rather than teachers, the Strange folk of the world were friends now. Magics gathered from around the world to an archipelago rich in raw power, churning waves and bellowing volcanos feeding the spirit and soul. Witches from South Africa, Peru, Jamaica, the UK, Germany, Israel, and Australia all fast-friends with one from the midwestern heart of the US. Weaves of earthen magic, the medicines of mountain jungles far away and unfamiliar wrapped themselves around one friend like the finest silken dress. Where my magics were burning stars illuminating the way, hers were delicate arts spun with purpose and practiced techniques. Another whose body was half Theirs and half hers, a truly Mercurial victim of her own willingness to be undone and remade. Among them all, I found two souls who mirrored mine and had brought from across the world another I already knew did.
There, where the Gods of Japan touched down on Earth, where the Imperial family began, where sunlight enriches the air, where Perfect Love and Perfect Trust existed – there I earned my Name, forged a Crown, and founded a Kingdom.
It’s been a few years since and the little boy who heard the forest tell him he’d be king someday was right to trust them.
