Explaining Magic to Family, Friends, and Co-Workers
I don’t know about you but I have a lot of family and friends that do not practice magic. Generally speaking we get along great because I follow a few simple rules.
CONSIDER STAYING IN THE CLOSET
Do not confuse someone being put-off, worried, antagonistic, or incredulous towards Sorcery with being intolerant towards your religion. Very few people outside the bible belt care about you being a Pagan or a Witch – its the Witchcraft that they might be more concerned over. And why shouldn’t they be? Maybe you are jinxing them so you get the promotion instead of them. If they put stock into it, its a real thing that influences reality and thus can impact their life. If they don’t put stock in it, then it seems like something that is somewhere between silly superstition and bat-shit crazy.
If you are a Wiccan or Pagan or Druid or whatever and you are out of the closet because you want your religion to be accepted, that is a very different thing than being out of the closet as someone who does rituals that are supposed to have an effect on reality. Unless you are a professional keep that shit to yourself as much as humanly possible. Even after “going pro”, when I still had a day-job I kept it mostly to myself. Once, during a short stint as a Travel Agent, someone who knew me from online tracked me down and showed up at my job asking questions. I stared them right in the face and said: “I’m sorry. You have the wrong person.”
CALL IT ANYTHING OTHER THAN MAGIC OR SORCERY IF YOU CAN
Of course if the occult plays a large role in your life, it will be hard to be in the closet forever. Certainly if you write or work in the field, or take vacations to Pagan festivals and such, it might be preferable to have some kind of explanation for that weird stuff you are into. For anyone not close to you my advice is call it anything other than magic, witchcraft, or sorcery. Spirituality, meditation, shammanism, Buddhism, whatever.
I remember having a conversation at work with a fellow occultist back in the day about Phurba practice. Not the simple stuff, but the actual stabbing of the linga (voodoo doll) and killing (oops… “liberation”…) of the target. Someone overheard us and with a very worried expression asked if we practiced Voodoo or something. I said no, its a Buddhist ritual we were training in. Instantly that frown turned upside down! “Oh the Dalai Lama is so wonderful isn’t he…”. The lesson here is that in polite company hardcore black magic is fine if its Buddhist, but even a ritual for prosperity or protection is evil if its spell or wtchcraft.
POINT OUT THAT EVERYONE DOES IT
Sometimes you just get found out. I spend my summers in Vermont, and when you are living in a town with only 800 residents, its hard to be anonymous. For the first couple years I was able to get away with telling fellow parents that I was a writer on “shamanism, meditation, fringe spirituality”. This satisfied everyone. But one of the Dad’s that I grew closest too googled me and got past this Jason Miller, and this Jason Miller, and this Jason Miller and came across my books and website. The jig was up.
We had a short discussion where I explained that magic is done by almost everyone, it just isn’t called that. Catholics and their novenas, Buddhists and Tantra, Jews and door amulets, etc. The magical is a strain of applied spiritual practice that runs through every tradition I can think of. Indeed it is not having a place for magic that is a modern oddity. Explaining things this way helps normalize what you do and places it in a context that the person can understand.
DON’T TRY TO PROVE MAGIC.
Understand that even if you can easily argue that magic has a long history, and is practiced by most people, even if they dont call it magic – that doesn’t mean that the person you are talking to will believe in it. My advice is to be OK with that. Understand that nothing in that persons life has led them to believe in it, and its kind of silly to expect people to believe in things that they have no reason to believe in. Let them not believe. In this case, the analogy between magical and religious practice is relevant: good people make room for people that have different beliefs than they do. There is no need to prove it.
And you can’t prove it. You can point out results of spells, but they will mostly get dismissed as coincidence. You can point out paranormal phenomena, but unless it is happening right there in front of that person, its not convincing. Respect that persons disbelief in magic and the set of life experiences that has yielded it as much as you demand respect for yours beliefs and experiences.
DROP THE SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE ELITEIST HORSESHIT
Of course techniques of fostering understanding are only important if you have a desire to be understood and considered a normal part of society is only useful if that’s what you want. For a lot of people, being a witch of an occultist is a way to set themselves apart from society. “Being Different” or even “Being Eilte”, becomes the practice even more than actually doing any magic. I have written how ridiculous I find the whole elitist fantasy in the past, but if that’s your bag, then go for it. Wear as many talismans as your neck can carry and point out to everyone how different you are. Extra points if you claim to not be human, but an otherkin, vampire, or whatever. Just don’t whine when people not in your community find you hard to relate to.
WRITE OFF THE ASSHOLES
You are of course going to come across assholes. Maybe they are people that cannot stop making snide comments about it magic and the occult. Maybe they are actively hostile towards you because they are either fundamentalist Christians or aggressive Atheists. Tell them once that you are not interested in the discussion and then ditch them if they can’t let it go. If they say they will pray for you, just say “Thanks, its nice to be prayed for”. Take the pamphlet once. Then tell them that the conversation is over. You either have other things to talk about or you have nothing to talk about.
Which brings me to….
HAVE OTHER THINGS TO TALK ABOUT
There is more to life than the occult. I am always on people about reading books, both fiction and non, that have nothing to do with magic or the occult – but it goes beyond that. If you find that you have nothing to say in a room full of people that are not magicians or witches that is probably a sign that its time to widen your perspectives a little more.
TRY TO NOT LET IT GO LIKE THIS…
OR YOU CAN DO IT THE HARD WAY…
In response to this post Sarah wrote a beautiful response on how rather than taking the easy way out (which this article admittedly does) you can stand up and show how good being a Witch or a Magician can be. She also says some very nice things about me in the article, things I strive to live up to, and hope I can do more often.
