“The domain of the Strange, the Marvelous and the Fantastic, a domain scorned by people of certain inclinations. Here is the freed image, dazzling and beautiful, with a beauty that could not be more unexpected and overwhelming. Here are the poet, the painter, and the artist, presiding over the metamorphoses and the inversions of the world under the sign of hallucinations and madness.” - Suzanne Césaire, Tropiques (1941) ¹

My magical practice is influenced by all the tools I have mentioned before like embodiment practices, deep listening, and art, but also takes heavy inspiration from the black surrealists writers and thinkers like Suzanne Césaire and Aimé Césaire. Although magic isn’t specifically/explicitly mentioned, Suzanne Césaire’s call to embrace the domain of the Strange, the Marvelous, and the Fantastic to me feels like a movement toward embracing the magical forces all around us.

Magic can have many meanings, but the definition of magic that I use here is defined by Aleister Crowley, English occultist and magician, as the “art and science of causing change in accordance with the will.” Here we can think of will as an engagement of intentionality. This definition of magic has been an important way to help ground this conversation so as not to get lost in all the misconceptions or ideas that magic is something inaccessible or only for people with “superior” powers.

We all are capable of causing change and many of us have been doing magic for quite some time such as breathing exercises, working with plants, meditation, wishing on a shooting star, carrying lucky objects, prayer, worshipping and honoring the moon or the sun, sex, sharing our stories with others, community work, activism, re-naming ourselves, re-claiming our bodies, engaging in decolonial practices, burning incense, carrying crystals around, making altars, paying attention to our dreams, using essential oils, engaging in tarot, allowing ourselves to be moved by each other, by art, and by music. But what if that work became more intentional and we became more confident in our powers?

We are called to create our own realities, to question and evaluate what is presented to us, and to understand the limitations of any system that we chose to abide by or use.

To believe in magic is to believe in change and to believe in the power of changing yourself and your environment and effectively the collective as it is all connected.

Another thing that feels necessary to mention, is that magic has always existed and is functioning in ways that are also extremely harmful. During the violent forced shift toward capitalism in Europe and in the Americas, a big portion of that technology was eradicating forms of magic and beings that connected us to each other, us to the land, and us to other-than-human beings. Land, gender, race, and many other ways of being became further enclosed, sequestered off into containers to more easily allow for them to be control. Alongside this was the shift from the collective to the individual and toward a very-limited form of “science” and not to mention, witch hunts, a violent and murderous attack on women, femmes, poor people, disabled people, sex workers, and black and indigenous folks. The purpose of this violence was to initiate a new world order and I believe a big part of restructuring the world was using magic, albeit a harmful one. What is a border? What is money? What is whiteness? What is the gender binary? These are all things that exist simply because of belief, simply because the current consensus reality includes a collection of beliefs that say that these things are both real and necessary. This way of living by adhering to these ideeologiees was not always the case but strong holdedly inspired by magic and its ability to create change.

It is clear to me that magic works and even those who may not call themselves magicians or witches know that too. Magic had to be eradicated from the masses because a belief in magic is a belief in change, is a belief in creating a new version of the world, is a belief in our own powers, and for many of us it is a belief that we can actually have what we need without buying into capitalism and all its attachments.

Embracing magic has opened me up to the receiving of many gifts including the knowledge of the longue durée and deep time. Being intimate with deep time is, being intimidate with non-linear time. It is a commitment to not feeling “stuck” in forced western linear time that makes me feel powerless but rather an understanding that the energy from when we were algae floating atop the ocean still carries us forward today.

Many of us who exist with the glitch are also doing the work of creating other worlds where we no longer have to abide by the rules nor exist amongst colonialism and capitalism. For many of us, these new worlds already exist and we exist simultaneously in them. Perhaps there are answers if we go further and fully incorporate the multiverse and non-linearity into our lives. And although it can be jarring to be simultaneously in a world where capitalism and its effect currently exists and worlds outside of that where it does not. Magic demands that we do not forcibly adhere to binaries but come to recognize why these binaries and this violence exist, with the understanding that things can and do change.

"Our surrealism will supply this rising people with a punch from its very depths. Our surrealism will enable us to finally transcend the sordid dichotomies of the present: white/Blacks, Europeans/Africans, civilized/savages – at last rediscovering the magic power of the Mahoulis, drawn directly from living sources. Colonial idiocy will be purfied in the welder’s blue flame. We shall recover our value as metal, our cutting edge of steel, our unprecedented communions.” - Suzanne Césaire, Surrealism and Us (1943) ²