What do we mean when we say a
place is magical?
Magical is something different
from beautiful or majestic. It may include awesome, in the proper sense, stimulating
respectful wonder of greater powers and new dimensions of time and space. A
place that speaks to us of elemental forces, of presence, manifested in the luminous
fabric of air, in effects on tree, rock and water especially, because magic is
a transformative power and a skill of nature.
A magical place reflects back to
us a sense of this potential, of the latent energy in the earth and the atmosphere. It
is dynamic. Here speaks the long past, an age when nature was not only enough,
it was all. Old energies die hard and in our world so often swift and
superficial, we crave connection with those fundamentals of existence, the
essence of life, things frequently obscured from us by heavy material and
emotional trappings of modern life. They are zoetic and thrumming in magical
places.
In these places, layers of being
can merge and intermingle: spirits from all strata of existence, above, below
and on the surface of the earth. Time is a circular continuity, drawing us into
its aeonic embrace. We deeply long for this replenishment.
Magical places can also be a
reflection of human endeavour: the site of megaliths, medieval ruins or modern
structures can stir the power, through their harmony with the landscape, the
shape of their expression, the open welcome they extend to otherness. They are
aspirational symbols of connection.
The acknowledgement of a magical place is
beyond Romanticism. It reaches out for a limpid simplicity buried deep beneath
cultural layers that can enrich but also obscure. In a magical place we feel
purer, inspired and elevated by a thrill of attachment.
A magical place is so intrinsically,
and regardless of the personal baggage we bring along. Sad or happy, cynical or
curious, we do not effect the magic. It comes not from us. But at last we look not from
outside, but standing within, drawn through an invisible portal into space
shared. We are ourselves in a new way. Alive.
