To quote Bladerunner, "How can it not know what it is?"

I had lived a healthy portion of my life before I started to self identify as heathen. In my youth, my friends and I were aware of paganism and actually referred to ourselves as heathen, feeling some affinity to the norse gods. However, as I left my teens behind, I began to consider myself more of a nihilist than anything. Famously engaging in good natured competition with a fellow nihilist as to who believed in less while out one night in Grimsby. I won by virtue of the fact that the guy believed in believing in nothing, while I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Such sophistry appealed to me back then, I guess.

But, in my early thirties, the quest for romance took me to Sweden. I moved in with my then-girlfriend in Boras, Sweden. It was only fated to last a year, but that was a year that taught me a lot about myself. During that time, we made a trip together to some woodland, just outside of Svaneholm. It was there that I had my spiritual awakening. A feeling of awe overcame me and felt in some ways divine. It was the first time I felt divinity to be something outside of (but connected to) myself. It was also connected to the land around me at that time and linked me and the land to my ancestors and, what I later came to refer to as wights.

That didn't exactly set me on a new path, but it caused me to think more deeply about the path I was already on and how it could be considered to be a pagan one - and, more specifically, a norse heathen path.

Now, I find myself still on that path - and travelling as often as I can to Sweden where the landscape is as awe-inspiring as ever. The train from Stockholm to Kiruna, for example, took me and my (English) wife through some amazing countryside. Forests, mountains and lakes all call to mind faerie tales, sagas and myths that have been knocking around in my brain since my childhood.

Magic(k) - That tricky little beggar...

I have to start this post by admitting that I am not a believer in magic as most people (or, at least, most neopagans) see it.

Most dictionary definitions of magic tend to involve referencing 'the supernatural' and that itself is described as being something that operates outside of nature.  That is where my problem lies.  For me, if something exists, it exists within nature.  Mankind is a part of the natural world and claims from some pagans that somehow, by living in a city and creating machines man has all but severed his attachment to the rest of nature just don't make sense to me.

If that is the case, why is an apartment block considered 'not natural' and yet a termite mound is?  Why is a man using a machine unnatural and yet a chimp or even a bird using a stick perfectly okay by Mother Nature?

So, to get back to the topic of magic.  Rather than believing in mystical mumbo-jumbo and arcane knowledge, I tend to find my magic firmly enshrouded within the natural order.  Now I could get all twee and start singing about how caterpillars metamorphosing into butterflies is magical.  But, frankly, I doubt I could keep the bile down long enough to sing the first few bars.  Instead, I choose to see anyone who makes a significant change in the world around them through the application of their will as a magical event.

To provide a topical example, a person who loses an arm or a leg but, through self discipline and training (and the exertion of their will) goes on to win gold at the paralympics - that could be considered, by me, to be a form of magic.

That is but one of a myriad of examples I could give, but the point is that, in my opinion, magic doesn't have to be conjured from the ether.  It is all around us and pervades everything - it is just a change in attitude and outlook that allows it to be seen.

Now let this muggle get back to work...