Why Bernie Sanders is a Powerful Wizard

The Magic and Metaphysics of the 2020 Election (Part 1)

Magic and metaphysics are not topics typically broached in politically oriented conversations, Marianne Williamson’s attempts notwithstanding. But these are the kinds of things I wish we were willing to talk about more.

I made an offhand comment the other day on social media about how Bernie Sanders was the most powerful wizard in the election, other than Trump. I said it in all seriousness. What did I mean by that?

It might be helpful to begin with defining my terms. What I’m talking about when I use the word wizard, or witch, magician, or sorcerer, is someone who apprehends the malleable nature of reality and shapes it according to their will or desire.

One of the most obvious (and least debatable, from the point of scientific materialism) examples of wizardry in politics is someone who uses the power of language informed by psychology to shape people’s perceptions. Republicans have long employed the services of a sorcerer named Fred Luntz who has created language and conceptual framing specifically constructed to target people’s emotions and polarize them against certain policies.

For instance, the “estate tax” became the “death tax.” The first brings to mind Thurston Howell III having to fork over some dough in order to receive his inheritance, while the second conjures up visions of poor farmers pleading “Please, Pa, please don’t die. We’ll be forced to pay your death tax, and after the crops failed this year, we’ll be bankrupt…” The estate tax was repealed in 2001, though eventually reinstated.

“But that’s just basic psychology and sociology!”, I’m sure some of you are protesting right now. And you’re right, it is. But it’s also rooted in the fundamental though poorly understood truth that what we call reality, that is, the material world of solid form, is a product of consciousness and not the other way around.

This is not to deny the essential value of material reality nor is it to deny that materiality in turn helps to shape consciousness. You may have created your children by giving birth to them, but nobody would deny that they also shape you, the parent, in profound ways.

One of the primary channels of influence between consciousness and matter is through language. This is why the Filidh of the ancient Celts, a kind of Druid that is often translated as Bard, were more than just poets and songwriters in our conventional sense. They were considered visionaries who were able to see what was possible and help manifest it through their poems and songs.

This is not just a pretty metaphor. There is real, effective, spiritual and metaphysical wisdom for how to create change and manifest reality that has been understood since ancient times and across cultures, and my aim in writing this is to make the case that those of us who care about creating real change in the material world would do well to pay attention to it.

I believe, based on the criteria I’ve laid out, that Bernie Sanders is the most powerful wizard running for the democratic nomination. That does not mean that he is fully conscious of the way he’s utilizing his spiritual and metaphysical power, nor does it mean that he will prevail to win the nomination and/or the presidential election.

Here are my four reasons why Bernie Sanders is a powerful, though somewhat accidental, wizard:

He understands the power of conceptual framing to shift reality

Bernie did not invent the frame of the 1% vs the 99%. But when it burst onto the scene in the early 2010’s through the Occupy Wall Street movement, he saw the potential it had to shift the public perception of what was politically achievable.

For decades, the Democratic party had been yielding ground to conservative corporate interests, allowing them to shape opinion around redistributive programs like progressive taxation and public welfare initiatives like Medicare and Social Security by capitalizing on U.S. antagonism with the Soviet Union and labeling them socialism.

Despite the fact that our supposedly freedom loving allies in Western Europe had social welfare programs that were far more redistributive and comprehensive, right-wing corporate interests have been allowed to run rampant and gut these programs. I could continue on the topics of worker and consumer protections, social commons, the environment…but you get the idea.

The point is that for decades, the Democratic party has accepted this state of affairs, allowing Republicans to define the terms of the debate and therefore “reality.” Sanders saw the opportunity to redefine these terms, helping us to see how corporate plutocrats have hoarded resources and deprived everyday people to the point where ideas like single payer health care, student debt relief and free college tuition are becoming broadly acceptable. He’s even managed to reclaim and demystify the word socialist.

He does this largely through repetition of key words and phrases like “corporate welfare,” “Medicare for all,” and “the 1 percent.” By consistently repeating these phrases over and over again, like mantras or spells, they lodge themselves into people’s brains and begin to reshape their understanding.

Incidentally, this is exactly what advertisers do with their jingles and catchphrases. That’s how they induce us to buy a lot of things we don’t really need or want.

He practices devotion

Much has been made of Bernie’s supposed inflexibility. But what some people see as rigidity can also be understood as fidelity, integrity, and devotion. By all accounts, Sanders has dedicated his life to fighting for justice and equality and has consistently shared the same message over and over again: Corporations and moneyed interests are hurting the average person and taking our share of wealth for themselves. It is only by coming together to fight for healthcare, education, a clean environment, and better wages for everyone that we can defeat them.

Though Bernie is Jewish, he admits that he is not particularly religious. If he has any spirituality, it is a firm belief in the idea that all people are inherently valuable and that we have to care for one another.

To consistently and passionately pursue a single idea, value, or belief; to give it your time, energy, and labor, is to give it power. Ideas have their own consciousness, or spirit, just as surely as we do.

In her inspirational book on creativity, Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert shares the story of an idea she had for a novel. She worked on it for a bit, then set it on the back burner. Around the same time, she met the novelist Ann Patchett, whom she greatly admired. They shared a meaningful connection, and when they parted, Gilbert gave Patchett a kiss on the cheek.

A year later, Patchett released a novel with very specific and similar details to the one Gilbert had been kicking around in her head. They had never discussed the premise for the novel, and had not been in touch in that intervening year. But Gilbert came to understand that when she kissed Ann Patchett, that spirit that was longing to be expressed in the form of a book was transmitted. Patchett was able to give it the devotion and commitment that Gilbert could not, allowing it to manifest as a novel.

Sanders’ 40-plus years of devotion to the idea of equality and working together to create a better world has infused that idea with power and allowed it to spread and inspire more devotion, thereby making it even more powerful.

There’s a reason religions and other traditional forms of spirituality such as indigenous belief systems emphasize consistent practices like prayer, meditation, and offerings. It’s a way of infusing the spirits and the ideals they represent with power, allowing them to grow and ultimately manifest in the material world.

He uses glamour magic

I know what you’re thinking: Bernie Sanders is the antithesis of glamour. He wears boxy, poorly-tailored suits. His hair always looks like it needs a good combing. His shoulders are a bit hunched, giving him a somewhat Lurch-like posture, and when he speaks, he waves his arms in the air like a giant bird of prey ready to swoop down and devour the entrails of billionaires.

Glamour magic is often defined as the ability to create an illusion of something that is not real, and that’s certainly one way it can be used. You can use makeup and clothing to create the illusion that you are younger or older or have more defined features and a slimmer waist than you really do.

But I define it as the ability to consciously project certain qualities into your appearance and energy field, or aura, that allows other people to clearly perceive them. While you can absolutely do this purely by drawing the desired energy into your auric field, if you’ve cultivated that ability, most people use physical sartorial means or a mixture of both.

When a woman dresses in bold colors and precise silhouettes, she projects an aura of confidence and power. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is a great example of this, with her bright red lipstick, perfectly contoured makeup, and jewel-toned, fitted suits and dresses.

You don’t have to bow to conventional notions of what is attractive or beautiful to do this. Punk rockers in the 70’s and 80’s wore ripped-up clothes, metal-spiked leather, and shaved their hair or dyed it shocking neon colors to signify their outsider status and rebellion against societal norms. They saw the values of conventionality and respectability as ideological weapons wielded by the conservative government to provide cover for its economic oppression of the poor and working class. The shocking novelty of the punk aesthetic created a powerful allure, or glamour, that allowed the music and subculture, along with its subversive politics, to spread.

Shamans and healers in traditional cultures may use special masks, animal skins, or other ceremonial attire to help channel certain energies and project them outward. Priests and priestesses may have special robes and vestments they use to weave their glamour.

Sanders’ crusty persona, inexpensive suits, and overall lack of polish help to convey his deep authenticity and willingness to eschew aesthetic standards that help to divide people based on class and income. This has become a powerful part of his appeal, to the extent that a stylized silhouette of his untamed hair and glasses has been used in campaign iconography.

He understands the power of polarity

Has there been a political figure on the left in recent memory that has ignited such strong feelings of attraction and revulsion as Bernie Sanders? He inspires deeply passionate and committed crowds of followers. He also inspires an equally passionate opposition from the establishment center and center-left.

This speaks to a foundational principle of creation: duality. In order for something to manifest on the material plane, it must be framed in the terms of two opposite poles, i.e., this and not this, for and against, black and white. It’s no coincidence that modern computer programs are based in a binary coding system. Binary arithmetic was developed by a 17th-century German mathematician, Gottfried Leibniz, who was inspired by the I Ching, a mystical Chinese divinatory text rooted in the concepts of Yin and Yang.

Here’s an example to help you understand this: When you look at a black and white picture printed in a newspaper, you can see that it’s not really just black and white. There are various shades of grey that help to give shape to the image you are viewing. But if you look at it a bit closer, maybe with a magnifying glass, you’ll see that all those various shades of grey are actually composed of tiny little dots of black and white.

Now just as a black and white photograph doesn’t fully capture what it’s representing, the dual nature of materiality doesn’t fully hold the greater reality of spirit. Which is why every binary, whether it’s male and female, good and evil, or democrat and republican ultimately fails us (and why computerized simulacrums often seem so uncanny).

That’s why in many spiritual and mystical circles, you’ll hear people talk about the idea of non-duality or non-dual consciousness. It’s the perceptive capacity that emerges in meditative and other non-ordinary states of consciousness that allow a person to see past the duality to the underlying complexity and unity of all that is. It allows them to see how truly limited the binary code of existence is. And yet we still seem to need this duality to create any kind of structure and form.

On a practical level, we have a way to understand duality that allows things to spill out of rigid binary constructs, and that is polarity — the idea that there is a spectrum between two opposites, just as grey exists along a spectrum between black and white, and that energy can move between these two poles.

In politics, in order to pass legislation that effects real change, you have to frame any one issue in terms of opposites and try to get more people on your side of the polarity to tip the balance toward your preferred outcome. You can selectively frame issues to increase the likelihood that the polarity of public opinion tips in your favor (see, we’re back to conceptual framing again).

So pro-abortion and anti-abortion become pro-choice and anti-choice or pro-life and anti-life depending on where you fall. 1% and 99%, or billionaires and workers if you’re advocating for economic redistribution, as Bernie does. Winners and losers, hard workers and freeloaders if you’re batting for the other team.

You can often tell how powerful a message is by how strongly people react either for or against it. The tension and strain of these oppositional forces can be very uncomfortable, and many politicians (and voters) try to avoid that discomfort by moving the poles closer together, like two teams in a tug-of war contest moving toward one another and letting the rope go slack.

The trouble is, when you have one side holding firm, or even pushing the pole out further, the other side has to move toward you in order to release the tension. This end result is that usually the person, or group of people that has the capacity to withstand the most tension ends up running the show. This is arguably what the right has been doing for the past 30 or 40 years.

Sanders, by obstinately pushing in the other direction, is redefining the bounds of the spectrum, and therefore what is manifestly possible. He’s bending reality to his will.

That’s not to say that this kind of polarization doesn’t have its limitations. I will go into this much deeper in what will likely be the third of a planned three-part series.

In the end, while I do believe Bernie Sanders is a powerful wizard, he is not without flaws, and I do not know that his power will be great enough to overcome the status quo of the Democratic party, much less the country. The truth is that there is another wizard more powerful than Bernie Sanders, and that is Donald Trump. More about him in my next installment.