9–9–20: I’m writing on a day so dark that it feels like the end of the world is looming, if not already begun. It’s ten o’clock in the morning, and the sky is orange as sunset, but with a more malevolent glow. A few weeks ago, I evacuated when fire threatened my land and home in three different directions. Today, I am grateful that the fire does not directly menace me, but the smoke from fires to the north has blotted out the sun. My solar batteries are barely charging, but while they hold out, I want to speak to some of the lessons of fire. Fire is a great, if harsh teacher, and in this time of great challenges, we learn them or perish.
Lesson Number One: Reality is real.
An actual, objective reality exists outside of our thoughts, feelings, hopes and desires, and we can’t just wish it away.
You wouldn’t think this would be a lesson we’d need to learn on a mass scale, as it seems so obvious as to be barely worth stating. But alas, we live in an age in which this most basic understanding of life has been under assault.
There is a certain wing of new age thought that has chipped away at this for decades, twisting deep spiritual teachings into the appealing but wrong-headed idea that ‘we create our own reality.’ As someone who has spoken out for our human need for spiritual connection and direction, who has talked about magic and championed intuition, I feel a responsibility to be clear about this. The definition I’ve always used for magic is Dion Fortune’s “the art of changing…