Magic is on my mind. I’m a fantasy writer, so I deal in the pretend—but what is magic and where did the idea of magic come from? How did something that does not exist come to play such a huge culture role and dominate an entire literary genre?
My approach to seeking the origins of magic was very personal. I’ve observed my own children, mulled over recent psychology reading, and even looked into the workings of my own mind in search of the roots of the magic that informs the imaginative fantasy literature I love to read and write. What that personal search unearthed was this: that magic is founded on the very nature of our human minds.
What is magic?
The most useful definition I found came from the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary.
Magic is the secret power of appearing to make impossible things happen by saying special words or doing special things.
The Oxford definition links magic and power. Unlike other definitions which focus on the supernatural, this definition gets right to the heart of what magic is: impossible. Magic subverts our understanding of cause and effect. Clapping our hands should not bring a creature back to life. Pronouncing the word “Alohomora” should not open a door. Yet magic connects these seemingly unrelated causes and effects to confer just such powers.
Why would human brains believe—or hope or dream—that anyone could make impossible things happen? The answer is written in psychology. The answer is magical thinking.
What is magical thinking?
I first came across the idea of magical thinking while doing some psychology reading aimed at easing my lingering germophobia after COVID. I consider myself a very rational and practical person outside the worlds of my imagination. Recognizing areas of my psyche where magical thinking had taken root was not only fascinating, but contained the promise of healing from fears and worries I was eager to shake off.
In psychology, magical thinking means believing:
that thoughts, emotions, beliefs, or rituals can change the material world in nonscientific ways.
The study of magical thinking was pioneered by Freud and Piaget (see my earlier post on Piaget’s work in children’s cognitive development). Magical thinking is an essential concept in both adult and developmental child psychology.
Over the past month, I’ve kept my eyes open for magical thinking both in myself and my kiddos, both of whom are still under the age when Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory expects magical thinking to hold more sway.
Here are some of the places I’ve observed magical thinking.
Spell casting
I’m barely hanging on to the jogging stroller as my youngest son and I hurtle down a forest hill on the trail. My freshly minted four-year-old whips out a stick with a ball on the end of it—a toy he’s constructed himself out of parts of his big brother’s fort building kit and named his “Ice King Stick.” He thrusts the hand-made scepter high in the air. Later, draws circles in the air with his “Ice King Stick”. As he does, he talks and sings to himself. My four-year-old’s spontaneous play perfectly replicates the fundamentals of spell casting in my favorite fantasy magic systems.
Magic Wands
To me, my kiddo’s Ice King stick looks a lot like a magic wand.
Just as a sword is both the focus and extension of a warrior’s might, a wand focuses and extends of a wizard’s power. Wand lore plays a crucial role in Harry Potter lore. Whether it’s Gandalf casting light with his staff, the White Witch petrifying forest folk with her wand, or Merlin using his wand to shape shift, magic wands are core to magic.
Magic Circles
When it comes to witches and calling spirits, the first thing any spell caster worth their salt will do is create a circle. Chalk, charcoal, salt, sand, flower petals, sulfur, iron filings, bone dust, blood. Circles create sacred spaces. Their rotational symmetry can be used to protect from evil spirits, or to shelter a spell caster while they speak magic words combine special ingredients to make magic.
Magic Words
Around our house the “magic word” is please. As my kiddos learned to talk, their confidence blossomed with their ability to make a request and receive what they wanted. If saying “please” gets you a lollipop and a secret password logs you onto Amazon, it’s not a big stretch of the imagination to believe our spoken and written words can do our bidding, from opening doors to summoning magical creatures.
Magic Potions
Nothing delights my six-year-old son more than mixing every ingredient he can get his hands on in a big cup. Mixing and pouring is a sensory delight for young kids, and so is pretending. My son’s food-coloring and seltzer water creations become magical toothpaste you can just swish in your mouth to clean your teeth. His mud cakes, infused with pebbles, wood chips, and random berries, are transformed by his imagination into delectable confections. The distance between his concoctions and Professor Snape’s potions class is very small, indeed.
Contracts, ritual gifts, and food
“Eat two more green beans and you can have dessert.”
~Me, at the dinner table.
I make some variation of this agreement pretty much every time we sit to eat. Is it any wonder that food and gifts are such an important part of our cultural rituals and our folklore?
A bowl of milk for the brownies, the origin of trick-or-treat from offering goodies to appease evil spirits, the peril of eating fairy food, the Lotus-Eaters. Ingesting food is a sacred act, taking something outside ourselves into our bodies. It’s why family dinners are so important. The act of eating is so powerful in our minds that it’s a prime candidate for magical thinking. So is the act of gift-giving.
After his birthday, my son could tell me exactly who had given him each of his wondrous new toys. Gift-giving is an important ritual ideal for projecting onto magic. The magic slippers given to Cinderella by her fairy godmother. The Gifts of Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings. The magic porridge pot that never empties. Pandora’s box. Apollo’s lyre. Gifts and magic go way back.
Avoidance and Contamination
“Mommy!” My youngest speaks through a mouthful of crackers as we jog down the trail. “Don’t step on the cracks! Don’t get the stroller wheel on the yellow line!”
Yep. I remember my elementary school days walking home from school: don’t step on the cracks or you’ll break your mother’s back.
There’s no real connection between stepping on a sidewalk crack and calamity of any kind. This is pure magical thinking, linking a cause and effect that follow nowhere but in our imagination.
This is an area of magical thinking I never outgrew. Whether it’s wearing a special necklace to ward off receiving bad news, washing my hands far longer than necessary, or avoiding wearing red and black together (colors I was wearing the morning I learned a childhood friend had been killed), I routinely perform nonsensical rituals to to avoid unwanted consequences.
Avoidance is closely related in my magical thinking to contamination. I wash my hands after changing a poopy diaper. On the way, I touch the door handle and the faucet handle. When I’m done, are the door handle and the faucet now contaminated? Shouldn’t I go back and wash them, as well? It took me years after the pandemic to touch mail without rushing to wash my hands—long after it was proven the real risk of infection was in proximity to a coughing person, not handling objects.
The Evil Eye, fear of the number thirteen, black cats and bad luck. Once we relate one item to another—mail and COVID, cats and bad luck, a childish ill wish actually coming to pass—it’s incredibly difficult to root them out of our minds. But it can be done—and that’s where the real-life magic comes in.
Real Magic
My exploration of the psychological origins of magic in my kids and in my own mind, together with the myths, legends, and magical stories I know so well, helped me better understand the nuts and bolts of how magic works. I better appreciate the magical stories I love, and it’s an invaluable tool for someone in the business of developing new magic systems.
Uncovering magical thinking is also incredibly useful in handling worry and anxiety. It’s a connection I never expected—and the unexpected connections in life are the closest thing to real-life magic I know. Though not the entire answer to letting go of unnecessary worry, uncovering magical thinking was a first step in the process for me. Some of my worries are linked by actual cause and effect; some are merely magical thinking. Day by day, I’m pruning those magical thinking concerns away.