Dreaming and magical thought

In a modern world, most of us, myself included, grew up in a world that either didn't recognize magical things at all, or kept them in a kind of box. Drawn out as you needed them, but kept out of our day to day lives. The key to effective magical practice though, is to let it in. Magic might be the language of symbols, but if you're not looking at that language, the symbols fall flat.

Here's the dilemma though. If you don't know the language, how do you speak or interprete any of it? How do you know when something is important, what makes a symbol have meaning? If we adopt an animist perspective, what gives an object life, because not every rock in a parking lot is alive. In dreams, there's an active co creation that takes place for all these things. In life, that's still true, it just takes longer. Physical matter doesn't move at the speed of thought after all. In fact, that's the trick to understanding dreams. They have their own logic sure, but also, in a dream, things move faster. Or more to the point, in a dream, there isn't anything that isn't important. Consider it, you might travel, or sit, or wait, but those actions are never transitional, they're always important.

The thing is, most of us have spent time in a world that speaks and responds in the same language of symbols. You don't really ask or question the logic in your dreams, you kind of just know it works right? It's not even usually that kind of overblown that fantasy stories can be. You know that there's the key to a door, and you know if you make your sales target, you'll be given the key, you don't know why, nor does it matter. This usually manifests in dreams in the form of the quest, looking for the right thing. You also aren't surprised in a dream when your coffee maker starts negotiating with you. This is dream logic, this is the mindset we need for proper magic.

So, how do we apply that thought? First, and while it's boring, I can't stress it enough. Journals. Dream journals, magical journals, and perhaps even notes on weird dream logic stuff you find throughout the day. Second, find the non human people. Talk to things. Out loud when you won't look too crazy (or if you don't care). Then watch for a response. Maybe you'll feel it directly, but that's not always the way it works. Maybe you'll have to keep a look out.

Altered states do help you find the mindset, so things like meditation. A comment here on substances to aid that. It's true that any kind of substance, especially psychedelics and the like, can help you FIND the mindset, but it's hard to carry back, and you can find it so well it becomes.... difficult. I'm not advising either way, but I would suggest consulting with someone who not only uses them, but uses them for this purpose. It's completely different.

The key, however you get to it, is to put yourself in this dream logic headspace, consider what you would do if this was a dream. When you can do that, then the rest of your magical practice becomes an exercise in building the kind of systems that become second nature in dreams.

Folks used to talk about dreaming as a part of the spirit world. While I think this is true, I think it's even more important to consider dreams as training for your mind. You might consider picking up lucid dreaming techniques, so you can learn your way around the dream logic more deliberately. I actually suggest finding a hand position that becomes both your lucid dreaming trigger AND an altered state trigger, depending on when you're awake or asleep.

I write about this often, the dream state, the symbolic thinking, play as magic. They're all different ways of looking at the same magical mindset, and that kind of click in to the right state of mind is magical in itself.