Modern Magic: Reclaiming Your Magical Heritage

By Matthew Krajewski

In Modern Magic: Reclaiming Your Magical Heritage, Matthew Krajewski invites all modern seekers of spiritual truth to explore their own unique magic. Psychic, paranormal, or otherwise magical occurrences are happening to people with increasing frequency, oftentimes at odds with our modern world, and the last refuge people often turn is the crystal shop. The dried herbs, tarot cards, and worldwide spiritual practices stuffed into these stores can be overwhelming, and not without a certain taboo depending on your own religious or spiritual beliefs. Modern Magic offers a new language, new portraits, and new explanations of anything that defies traditional explanation, otherwise known as magic. By incorporating new scientific findings, ancient mystical thought, direct experience, and firsthand accounts Modern Magic can empower anyone to explore, understand, and reclaim their own magical heritage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jul 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781452576664

Matthew Krajewski

Matthew Krajewski graduated from Sarah Lawrence College where he studied writing. He is a modern mystic, incorporating diverse yet modern sensibilities into his work as a shaman and healer. The Golden Sherpa is his second book on spirituality. He also practices biodynamic farming and beekeeping at Tree Bee Microfarm with his fiancé, Chef Ryan Farquhar.

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Copyright © 2013 Matthew Krajewski.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual

well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Disclaimer: This is a book of non-fiction on spirituality. People described for illustrative details have had their real names changed in order to protect their identities.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4525-7665-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-7667-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-7666-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013910996

Balboa Press rev. date: 8/1/2013

Contents

NOTE TO THE READER

INTRODUCTION

MAGICAL HERITAGE

A World Without Magic

Why Is Magic Increasing at This Moment in History?

Why Does the World Need Magic Now?

How Are Science And Spiritualty Connected?

Magical People

Who Are Magical People?

What Is The Scope Of Magic In Average People?

What Are The Different Types Of Magical People?

Dreams

What Have Your Dreams Told You?

Magical Heritage

What Is Magical Heritage?

MODERN MAGICAL PEOPLE

Profiles Of Witches

What Can Modern Witches Do?

How Can Magical People Work Together?

How Are Magical People Connected?

ENERGETIC REALITY

Energy

What Is Spiritual Energy?

What Do Positive And Negative Energy Do?

Where Does God Fit In This Magical Cosmology?

Nature

How Are We Energetically Connected To Nature?

How Can We Understand Our Connection

To The Energy Of Animals?

The Other Side

What Is The Other Side?

Is There Intelligence In This Energy?

Can You Interact With What Lives In The Universal Energy Grid?

What Guides Are On The Other Side?

THE TOOLS OF EXPERIENCE

Your Essential Self

The Tools of Experience

What Are Our Energy Centers?

The Mind

The Heart

What Does It Mean To See Through Your Heart?

Empathy

What Is Evolved Empathy?

The Body

What Is Body Energy?

Cycles

How Can You Use The Tools You Have To Actively Work With Energy Fields?

How Can I Integrate My Energy Fields?

What Is Karma?

SUPERPOWERS

Multisensory Human

What Are The Superpowers Of The Multisensory Human?

Psychic Abilities

What Are Psychic Abilities?

Elementing

What Is Elementing?

How Do You Element?

Mediumship

Divination

Manifestation

Healing

Journeys

The Mind & The Heart

BETWIXT AND BETWEEN: BALANCING ENERGY

Food

Words

Meditation & Mindfulness

Cleansing

Recharging

AFTERWORD

NOTES

For Opus

Wave after wave, each mightier than the last

’Til last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep

And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged

Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Coming of Arthur

NOTE TO THE READER

Is this the book for you?

This book may be for you if you have:

•   Ever been accused of being too sensitive, or ever wondered if your sensitivity was a doorway to a much richer, spiritual life.

•   Engaged in meditation, and found pathways to deeper parts of yourself in your practice.

•   Practiced mindfulness, awareness, and ways to stay present in the now, thus charging your actions with balanced intention.

•   Bent into the mystical poses of yoga practice, finding a deeper purpose as you became one with your breath.

•   Ever seen auras—glowing halos of color around individuals.

•   Experienced psychic abilities, such as hearing another person’s thoughts or sensing someone’s emotions.

•   Ever had an imaginary friend—someone that offered you protection and companionship as a child.

•   Had a psychic or witchy relative with whom you’ve always been particularly close.

•   Seen a ghost, or otherwise experienced the paranormal or unexplained.

•   Sought out the advice of psychics or fortune-tellers, and found their messages to have a bearing of truth.

•   Read tarot cards or read the future with other divination tools.

•   Journeyed in the shamanic tradition, and have met your animal guardians or received messages from the Other Side.

•   Known in your heart of hearts that a dream transported you to another world, where what happened may have been more real than anything you have experienced on Earth.

•   Been at the hearth or altars of voodoo, hoodoo, and Old Craft practitioners.

•   Worked with healers of any kind.

•   Attempted manifestation, and used your mind to create what you wanted in physical reality.

•   Heard the whisper of all divine life in the rustling of the forest branches, the crash of the ocean waves, and the wide expanse of the glittering night sky.

•   Chosen to go green, finding sustainable and ecofriendly ways to alter your life and work toward living in harmony with all beings.

•   Felt or sensed something you couldn’t explain, but knew in your heart what you were sensing was truth.

•   Ever sought the truth, making you a seeker guided by your own internal spiritual compass to find answers that resonate with your heart and soul.

If you have experienced any of these things, if you have studied any of these things, if you are curious about any of these things—then this is the book for you.

I experienced, studied, and was curious about all these magical aspects of life, topics that have always been considered taboo and generally unworthy of serious investigation. I grew up surrounded by Eastern and New Age thought in the San Francisco Bay area, and found myself venturing into crystal shops at a young age, always seeking answers about myself and this world.

For the last eight years, I have worked in the technology sector of Silicon Valley. Being in such an analytical, data-driven industry prompted me to explore the other side of reality, to search for a richer existence. In early 2012 I sought out a past-life regression therapist, and got much more than a glimpse of my past lives. A singular vision—one that even the therapist could not explain—prompted me to take a journey to try and understand what I had experienced. I was drawn to the world of intuition. I turned inward and informed my journey with a disparate collection of books and studies that might help explain the magic in me and in the world.

What I sought—and what I found—was that all magical practices are connected. This connection is actually very simple, natural, and user-friendly. By coming to understand magic and spirituality in a new way, I found not only what magic is, but why magic exists at all. I looked past the familiar tropes of angels, tarot cards, and yoga poses. I found that an underlying energy connects all magical practices. This connection is what I wish to share with you.

What I endeavor to do here is explain the foundation of magic: how to work with it, how to understand it, how to explore it, and how to reclaim your own magical heritage. Modern Magic: Reclaiming Your Magical Heritage demystifies the New Age, the mystical, and the spiritual and reveals how to access your own magic simply and how to apply it—with practical purpose—in your everyday life.

Since there has never been a book on this exact topic, I found that the text itself needed to comprise an eclectic mix of materials. Some ideas require scholarly or scientific explanation. Others are almost anecdotal in nature, couched in everyday circumstances, and even draw on pop culture references. Still others draw on diverse spiritual traditions and were informed by my own private, mystical path. Weaving together a master story on magic has required many threads, and I encourage you to follow where each bright thread of this tapestry leads—after all, in a magical worldview, everything is connected.

Your journey merely starts with reading this book—it continues with your own unique voyage toward reclaiming your magical heritage. I’m merely setting the stage so you can move confidently. I introduce you to what modern magic is, and why it is, too. I hope to give you the tools to find your magic so the wind may always be at your back on your own spiritual path.

Come with me and let’s journey deep into the crystal shop, past the glass cases, essential oils, candles, and go behind the veil to the Other Side, where true magic is waiting for you. The crystal shop is the last outpost in our modern world where spiritual seekers can find tools and practices to discover their true selves. Crystals and psychic abilities can seem esoteric and at odds with our rational, technological world. This book will be your guide to understanding most anything you could come across in the crystal shop, but in a modern and rational way.

You may be young, or you may be older; you may be well versed in the spiritual traditions of the world, or you may be seeking magic for the first time. Whoever you are, I welcome you to the path of reclaiming your own magical heritage.

INTRODUCTION

[The psychic’s] experience is rare and not universal, and men have developed no complete vocabulary to describe experiences not common to the majority of mankind, and this is especially true of psychical experiences.¹

Walter Yeeling Evans-Wentz wrote those words more than a century ago while studying Celtic beliefs in faery folk, but his words still bear truth now, in the twenty-first century. A global civilization is emerging, interconnected with technology that would baffle Evans himself. Scientific explanations for material reality have now become our collective standard operating program. When paranormal, mystical, or psychical experiences happen, especially today, we have no language to explain them—to ourselves or each other. Such experiences defy the laws of science and thereby elude common terminology.

Especially when such experiences happen in our own personal moments of awareness—between traffic jams and Facebook updates, say—they rarely register as important or deserving of attention. Sure, we are comfortable as a culture with yoga and meditation, but what happens when a moment of true awareness opens the door to something larger, letting us glimpse the energy that pokes through from energetic reality in the form of a ghost, an ability to read people’s thoughts, or a powerful vision of angels? We often ask ourselves Did that really just happen? and, like a dream, the feeling fades, clunking us back into our everyday world. Why even talk about something so ephemeral?

I had experienced paranormal, mystical, and psychical experiences my entire life, and largely chose to ignore these occurrences. Even with my somewhat—albeit undefined—idea of God and an occasional practice of mindfulness, though, the idea of something happening on another plane just didn’t fit in with my overall world view. I, like most modern people, believed unexplained phenomena were just stuff invented by crazies. Such topics were almost universally taboo in the religious, scientific, and scholarly spheres where I was comfortable. The frequency of these incidents began to increase dramatically in 2012, however, so I could not ignore them any longer. What I’ve experienced firsthand—and witnessed others experience on an almost routine basis—I can only call magic. It defies any traditional explanation.

In between everyday events, like commuting to work and dinner with friends, I’ve witnessed:

•   Communion with departed loved ones, who articulated what they learned once on the Other Side.

•   Profound energy healings that draw on experiences in the womb or during previous lives. The recipients have been forever changed—their very energy signatures shift radically, bringing immediate, positive change into their lives in the days and weeks that follow.

•   A modern oracle reading the future with a full deck of tarot cards, spreading them across the floor and speaking about months and years into the future…and quite accurately.

•   Powerful magical manifestations that affect material reality, from people visualizing gifts of energy that help others generally to magical people who draw on their gifts to satisfy very real personal needs—like money or new homes.

These impressions of magical reality represent just a small sliver of the stories and abilities I want to share with you. Remember, these occurrences happened in homes not unlike your own. This magic does not require incantations or a ritual space; it is ever-present and all around us. Magic has always been considered taboo for good reason: experiencing magic completely contradicts traditional explanations of reality.

When I started to experience this mysterious energy often enough, I naturally began to wonder how it all might be connected. I realized this questioning reminded me of ancient mystics, who were looking for ultimate truth. I had been raised in a Christian household; grew up in Silicon Valley, where Eastern traditions like Buddhism were prevalent; dabbled with Wicca in my teen years; and explored Kabbalah and its foundational work, the Zohar, in early adulthood. Most recently I have been drawn to a path of Celtic shamanism and journeying to the Other Side to interact with spirit guides. I have always been a healthy reader, but this quest to discover a reasonable connection between disparate magical experiences spurred me on to read whatever I could find that might help me make sense of magic. My research led me to believe that we need a new language, one that makes sense to the modern world and will hopefully facilitate a new conversation about magic.

I also wondered why I was experiencing these magical events. I looked outward, devoting time to for research and study, but found that I also had to turn inward to understand magic. It is so glaringly simple, that I almost missed it myself. I’m sensitive.

Being sensitive is more than just being emotional. In a magical understanding of the word, it means having a predisposition toward interacting with other energy fields. It is through working with other energy fields that what we call magic actually happens: we work with the mind energy fields of others through psychic abilities, interact with the energy of departed souls through mediumship, and reach toward enlightenment with heart energy in mysticism. My own heart energy led me into a relationship with the heart energy of the Earth. This was accomplished through shamanic journeying. Shamans have led people, helping them communicate with the guides living within the energy field of our planet, for centuries. I only came to understand what would usually be seen as an esoteric spiritual experience when I learned about a recent scientific discovery: we produce huge energy fields from our hearts, the shape of which is nearly identical to the energy field of our planet.

Legitimizing energetic reality—and perhaps the previously unexplainable—starts with sensitivity. Sensitive people can make others aware of how to feel subtle energy, communicate about their own experiences, and then lead them on a journey to try to understand it. Sensitive people tend to be introverts, and many may naturally shy away from sharing; they look inward at their own subjective experiences instead. I knew that I had to share what I found—the true magic of energy and the possibility of reclaiming our magical heritage. One day we may be able to demonstrate how all magical occurrences and as-yet-unexplained phenomena happen scientifically, for it is the crucial word, energy, that links the scientific and the spiritual.

Sir Isaac Newton’s view of the universe—which claimed every physical observation could eventually be reduced to the laws of mechanics—laid the modern foundation of scientific thought in the late seventeenth century, and ever since scientists have defined us as isolated bits of matter. Consciousness is deemed to be a mere accident of electrical impulses and chemical reactions, disconnected from all other bodies. We are taught to observe by looking in from the outside.

Over the last century—upending everything we thought we knew about the universe—scientific findings, particularly in quantum physics and bioenergetics, started echoing spiritual teachings. We are, in fact, energy. Everything is energy. A vast spider web of energy connects everything, and perhaps within this energy lies intelligence and a different plane of reality. Quite frankly, it’s hard not to imagine Yoda of Star Wars speaking about the force. The mythology George Lucas articulated in visual form is an easy model to use in thinking about how science and spirituality are now converging. This is what sensitive people are already attuned to—we feel these types of energies. What I hope to convey is that we all have the ability to experience them. They’re the foundation of our entire reality.

While magical experiences are subjective and personal, it is by sharing these experiences that we can help others to understand the energetic universe and learn about the true nature of ourselves and reality. We are a connected reality of energy. It is an unnerving concept. Even Einstein acknowledged that all energy was interconnected, that particles could continue to influence each other long after they were separated—though since he did not have tools that could help him explain it satisfactorily at the time, he disparagingly deemed it spooky.² He believed that eventually quantum mechanics would explain the phenomena—it now has. It is thanks to the spiritual clowns that sang on that we have any semblance of language to describe how our own energy aligns with the energy ever-present and all around us. This emerging scientific worldview relates well to the very foundations of human spiritual experience. Energy, however you look at it, is a carefully placed life preserver—it’s up to us