Toward Ecosophy

For a good fraction of the last four years I've been posting things here on my Dreamwidth journal talking about the problems with the political magic being practiced in America these days. Most of that discussion has been focused on the soi-disant Magic Resistance, because they did me -- and of course their opponents as well -- the favor of publishing their ritual workings in detail so that those could be analyzed for flaws.

Still, one of the things I've pointed out repeatedly applies to both sides. Effective political magic focuses on blessing and strengthening, not cursing and destroying. Dion Fortune, in her War Letters, made this point with great force: 

"I received a letter from a French correspondent last week, urging that we should use our knowledge and power to make personal attacks on the leaders of the German nation, in order to confuse their minds and even destroy their lives; but this would be quite the wrong way to work. Nothing and nobody is altogether evil, therefore it is never justifiable to try and destroy any person or thing by direct [magical] action, but only to open a channel whereby spiritual forces are brought to bear on the problem. [...] Hate is an evil thing in itself, whatever its provocation, and to call it righteous indignation does little to improve it. 

"Our work is a work of healing, and no hate must come of it. We look to see a regenerated Germany rise up in strength and greatness as well as goodwill and peace.  On this great earth of ours there is room for all if they will only co-operate. All the time we are working for a successful issue of the war, we must look forward to a happy peace of constructive comradeship. This thought should conclude every meditation." (The Magical Battle of Britain, pp. 10-11)

Yes, I know it's fashionable to dismiss such reflections as namby-pamby, goody-two-shoes, pie-in-the-sky nonsense, but two points are worth making in this context. The first is to point out which side won the Second World War. The Nazi Party had its own organization of occultists, the Ahnenerbe, working rituals at the SS center at Wewelsburg while Fortune and other British occultists were working theirs, and all you have to do is see how the war went to figure out which side consistently made the right choices at the right moments, and which side consistently tripped over their own jackboots. 

The second point I'd bring up is the outcome of the 2020 US election. That can be summed up quite simply: both sides lost. The Democrats hoped (and the Magic Resistance did workings) for a blue wave, the Republicans hoped (and alt-right magicians did workings) for a red wave, and neither side got what they wanted.  Liberal pundits such as Politico's Jake Sherman are calling the results a disaster for the Democrats, but it certainly wasn't a triumph for the Republicans. What's more, whoever ends up being inaugurated as president in January, once the smoke and dust of lawsuits settles, will have no mandate and will be considered illegitimate by half the population of the United States. 

My guess is that what happened is that the Magic Resistance, with a few loudmouthed exceptions, got a clue from their previous failures and kept their workings secret so that they couldn't be monkeywrenched by the other side; the mages of the alt-right, of course, never had that problem; both did workings that focused on making the other guy lose rather than bringing positive spiritual energies to bear on their own side and on the United States -- and both sides got their wish. Now, for at least two years, we've got a Congress in stalemate, a crippled presidency, and an angry, troubled, bitterly divided nation to deal with. No, this isn't what I expected, and I'm in good company there -- apparently nobody predicted the outcome we got. That's one of the reasons why I think mishandled magic might have been involved. 

In the longer term, of course, victory will come to whichever side figures out that the cheap pleasures of hating the other side aren't worth the cost to their cause and their country, and can genuinely and with whole hearts turn their energies to healing the chasms that divide this country just now. It's possible, of course, that neither side will do so -- in which case both sides will keep on losing in every sense that matters.