Embracing Questions: Is Magic Real?

I'm Megan Hamilton and this is the Embracing Enchantment Podcast. Welcome, welcome. If you are tuning in on the day this is published and you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah, I hope you had a lovely Christmas and I hope you are having a lovely Hanukkah. Today we're going to talk about something that I've been hinting at for a few episodes and it's something that I have

grappled with most of my life. And I think a few years ago, I finally settled on my definitive answer. And I'm curious to know what yours is. And I'm also curious if you have an answer now and whether or not that changes as we go through the course of this episode. So the question is, is magic real?

One of the big barriers, I think, to folks discovering how a spirituality or a sense of magic can enhance so many elements of their lives is this very question. To take what these folks might surmise even further, if magic isn't real, then why bother? You know, people have been asking whether or not God is real for centuries.

And here's my take.

It doesn't matter. It's not the point. So we're going to get into it today. Obviously this is a big topic, but before we do, let's do a, let's pull a card tarot card to set the tone. Think about what we might spend some time on thematically. And if you're listening,

You should know that this episode will be aired on YouTube, even though as I'm recording this, I've already had two holiday celebrations and we're about to embark on two or three more starting tomorrow. So I'm in that middle of like, do I get out of my pajamas today? Do I have to go anywhere today? And I thought, well, maybe for this episode, I'm just going to just have a blank screen.

But then I thought, no, you can put on your new purple eyeliner that you got from Cheekbone Beauty. They did not pay me to say that, but I would gladly take a Cheekbone Beauty.

sponsorship any day. Anyway, so you can't, I don't know if you can really see it, but I'm wearing purple eyeliner. And so on YouTube, you can go and see the actual tarot card as it's pulled or watch me talk and read to you, whatever you want to do. Okay. So what, what card wants to come through?

Eight of Cups reversed.

You might remember actually in previous episodes, I said the wrong card. I apologize for that. I think I said swords. I think I said four of wands when I meant four of swords. did say correct that in the show notes, but if that drove you nuts, just know that it drove me even more nuts. And also it's another good reason to watch on the YouTube channel.

Eight of cups reversed. Again, if you can hear squeaking in the background, that is just my grandparents squeaky old chair that I sit on. Where might we be stopping ourselves from?

greater enlightenment. Actually, you know what? This is going to tie in really well to this episode. Where where might we have a bigger, deeper relationship with ourselves and with our communities and the world as a whole? Where are we stopping ourselves because we don't want to take a risk because we feel comfortable and we don't want to invite discomfort into our lives. Where

Where might we interrogate our fears?

and get really real with ourselves about what they are. P.S. You can check out the episode on shadow work or grab my free shadow work workbook from my website that can help with this.

because

we can and probably should not that we love the word should be striving constantly for better better ways of of living in the world and I mean that's not to say that we don't have periods where we stop and just enjoy and live certainly but I think going into this year of 2025

If we want to try to create a good and kind and just and fair and equitable world, we're probably going to have to get a bit uncomfortable. And that might mean speaking up in times when we haven't before. It might mean interrogating our own internalized systems that support oppression, even support our own oppression. Right. This is the comfort, the devil, you know, where can we

disentangle from this by getting really real with ourselves so that we can take another path forward to something better and not just for us, for everyone.

All right.

Let's get back to it, shall we? This small little question of whether or not magic is real. When I was 17, I was listening to Depeche Mode's Waiting for the Night. If you don't know that song, it's from Violator. It's one of my faves. And I had an out of body experience. I felt like I was leaving my body and floating up into space. I saw stars and planets and I couldn't feel my body anymore. This was where, I mean, I had tried stuff like this a ton.

But I could always feel my body, right? I could feel gravity. I could feel where, you know, my sitting bones connected with the floor, because I always listen to music on my bedroom floor. I think that's part of being a teenager. I'm not sure. But I couldn't. I couldn't feel my body. And I literally felt like I was floating in space. And that was what was different about this time. I wasn't scared.

And trust me when I tell you that it has only been the last couple of years that I've even been able to.

briefly discuss or talk about the idea of ghosts, which might be surprising to some people. When I came back to my body, I didn't know how to place that experience in my understanding. so then I would have several, and it stayed with me. It stayed with me to the point that I actually wrote Martin Gore a letter and he is the person who wrote that song in Depeche mode. And I will

maybe talk about that story another time, but we got a lot of ground to cover and I'm already at minute eight because hi, it's me. I'm the problem. And then I had several other experiences like that in theater school. If you don't know me, I went to theater school where we tried transcendental meditation and all kinds of other ways of exploring essentially creativity through spiritual exercises. Although we didn't really call them that.

And I noticed that after each one, I would feel more creative and have bigger ideas and feel freer to let my mind create without the traps of thinking my ideas were stupid or they wouldn't work, right? Sometimes you'll get this glimmer of a creative idea and you'll go towards it and then your brain's like, that's stupid. Or your ex-boyfriend from five boyfriends ago is gonna think that's stupid. So you better not explore it.

that happens to me in music all the time. It drives me bananas, but I now know how to get past that.

And then I realized this, the point was not whether or not this was real. This transcendental meditation, these out of body experiences, these psychic experiences that I had had before the, you know, the coincidences, the synchronicities, the point was not whether it was real. The point was that whatever it was, whether it was a mental metaphor or an actual spiritual experience, the whole point

was transcendence, elevation out of the status quo, right? Leaving behind what's comfortable. Here's the upright eight of cups. And if you're listening, I'll just describe it real quick. And I'm jumping around. Sorry about that. I'm full of cookies and no sleep. There's eight cups in the foreground, and then there's water and a person taking a journey towards mountains. And there's an eclipse in the sky. They're leaving.

something great, the eight of cups we love, but they're going for something better. And that means inviting the discomfort of the unknown, right? It's meaning being okay with the unknown. It's releasing control. And if this is sounding familiar to you, trust me that most of us go through this idea of feeling like we need to control.

all of the elements in our lives. so elevation out of the status quo, new ways of thinking, of feeling, and of tapping in. And it's also imperative to recognize this, patriarchy has been both pummeling us about the importance of logic and reason and facts for at least a couple of centuries, while also pummeling us with the importance of religion.

Often, specifically, the Christian religion, but mostly the dogma associated with the quote unquote rules. Sitting presidents in the White House, for example, have had psychics, astrologers, and spiritual advisors since the Union was formed. Washington apparently saw a ghost that showed him how the US would unfold. Lincoln was interested in spiritualism, which I talked about in my shadow work episode. Apparently that guy did seances.

Wilson, Roosevelt, and the Reagans used psychics and Nancy Reagan used an astrologer who not only helped her deal with her husband's attempted assassination but also then began to influence a number of presidential decisions. And then, did you know what Nancy Reagan did? She tried to cover up the fact that she did that. She didn't want other people to know that she was using a psychic. This was part of what

got me interested in sharing that I was a tarot reader number of years ago, I would start to notice through social media that so many of the people that I enjoyed following had these tiny little hints in their photos that they also had a spiritual practice. I'd see a random tarot deck on a desk or some crystals by your computer or some kind of, you know,

reference to manifesting or whatever. And I'd be like, wait a minute. Are we all secretly doing this, but none of us are talking about it? What? So why is this important? Because we've all been duped into thinking that witches are evil, that spirituality has to be connected to religion and that facts, logic and rational thinking are the only ways to figure out the world.

but the very same people in power who uphold these tropes are also the ones hiring psychics and astrologers and consulting them with their spiritual leaders to make decisions. So that sounds pretty fishy to me. Don't you think? They're also, most of them, very openly devout Christians, but then they're also using psychics, which we've been led to believe are, you know,

fakes, charlatans, gonna take all your money. And in that case takes probably your taxpayers money.

So maybe I should be explicit here. When I referring to God or witches or magic or spirituality or even synchronicity, for me, it's all the same. It all means the same. If I had to sum it up, it's the chills that run up and down your spine when something happens that you can't immediately understand. And I also want to be very clear that I love science. Medical research is incredible. I am pro-vaccine.

The very principles of magic and witchcraft rest on the concept of both and. And if this is new to you, here's what it is. Two things that seem to be opposite can both be true at the same time. In fact, if you've ever worked with me and we've done tarot work together, you'll notice that both and comes up a lot. It's baked into the hero's journey. It's believed to be the path to enlightenment and I personally think helps us divest

from dogmatic thinking that all of us are guilty of at various points in our lives, including doctors, scientists, researchers, as well as, and I'm going to touch on this too, spiritual leaders, psychic mediums, and astrologers. There are bad actors in every field. Rigidity and dogma exists in all of the places, rational or spiritual, and it's very important to be able to recognize it to protect yourself.

from folks like this. Today we're going to hear from a few listeners who have stories that don't exactly add up in terms of logic and reason. And I'll be sharing some stories of my own. But before I share some of my wilder stories from this year, because let me tell you.

This year has been one of the most challenging that I can remember. Most of it personal journey, although a lot of stuff has happened in and around the people in my life. And I've had moments where I was in...

deep fear. And there's lots of reasons for this. But I mean, sleepless nights. I mean, if you're into tarot, nine of swords moments, just not really knowing what the right decision was. And really, really, really, really not feeling comfortable in what was happening in my life.

And that led me down this incredible spiritual path, which, you know, talk about in a minute, but it also means that I wouldn't trade this year for anything despite at all.

And as I say, like as I've said in many other places, please know that I recognize that I'm not in a war zone, that there's a lot of privilege associated with my life. And also our experiences and pain and fear are not winning the Pain and Fear Olympics.

So I honor and value what I've gone through this year and contextualize it in relationship to the world. But I will tell you this, I know for a fact that...

my spiritual practices are what got me through. some therapy. I've got one of the best therapists I think probably the world has ever seen. So before I share some of my wilder stories because this deepening of my spiritual practice also came with some extraordinary moments that cannot be explained by logic and reason. And I have not shared these publicly. So you get

You get dibs on, I mean, my friends know and the people really close to me know, but it's tough to share this stuff because again, there's a stigma attached. And what's funny about it is again, we're going back to these presidents using psychic mediums in the White House, Abraham Lincoln having seances. So we're gonna just, we're gonna embrace our life experiences and talk about them. And if folks,

Don't want to get on board? See ya. Wouldn't want to be ya. I'm going to share quotes from four people who I've learned a great deal from, whether working directly with them or learning from them in books. And these four people are, and this is around the ideas of magic and spirituality and rationality and research. Jessica Doerr, Mitch Horowitz, Pam Grossman,

and Elizabeth Gilbert. So when I first started getting into tarot again, more seriously, probably seven or eight years ago now, I was following Jessica door and she is she's a tarot reader, but also her background is in self help publishing. She was an editor or she worked at a publisher and also

She is a social worker and has education. I just can't remember what her degree is right now, but she has education in mental health. So she's, you know, she's, she's walking the talk and her work with Tarot focused on sort of living the

you know, life as a human, like the journey of living and enhancing it with magic, but also with all of these concepts related to psychology and psychotherapy and mental health. And I was like, what? This is fascinating because it's then tarot becomes not just, you know, like a sort of hinting at themes that you might be thinking about in your life or

when your next boyfriend's going to come around. But instead, how can I use these tools to think about myself more deeply and connect with myself on a rich level, which helps me also connect to other people because we are learning more and more that this idea that we've had about individualism is actually self-destructing and we need community. We need to live in community with other people. And for many of us,

You know, that's difficult if we've cultivated this sense of hyper individuality or not accepting help from others, having to do it all our own. we are divesting from so many different ways of thinking. So Jessica Dorr talks in her book, Tarot for Change, which is an incredible book.

She talks about Carl Jung a lot and I'm also a fan of his concepts, though I am getting more more critical of some of his...

some of the people he associated with, let's just say back in the day. And there may be a day when I don't want to talk about him anymore because of his history, but for now I'm still learning. And this is, you know, this is what happens as we learn more and more. I'm not a person who can.

separate the art from the artist. Once I know that somebody's like an absolute terrible person, I can't, I don't enjoy their art anymore.

So that's another complicated concept that we will explore another day. But for now in her book, she says, Jung also contributed ideas about the therapeutic value of synchronicity, which we talked about with Amy Miranda in a previous episode, which he defined as a meaningful coincidence of external and internal events that are not connected by any discernible cause and effect.

relationship. So that's going back to the ideas of logic and reason. An example of synchronicity is when you suddenly think of a friend you haven't seen in years only to receive a call from that person soon after, right? Most of us have had experiences like that. Such a thing could be bare coincidence, but to the person inclined toward meaning making, which you know, I am, it can also hint at a connection between the external and internal.

dimensions that generally appear as separate and distinct from one another. So if we look a little bit further into Carl Jung's idea of the collective unconscious, which is that we're all connected unconsciously, right? Big themes come and we all seem to be thinking about something similar and we think, how is this possible? Well, according to Jung,

There's this collective unconscious that we can all tap into that feeds our ideas and our thinking. And I'm to put this book down so there'll be a bit of a thump.

If that's the case, well, that really is not easily explained by our regular ways of looking at the world of our regular ways of using science. Right.

So Mitch Horowitz is somebody who I've enjoyed reading for quite some time. I think I learned about him on Jericho Mandibur's podcast, Beyond Belief. And that's a great episode if it's still there. I read and practiced his, so this is the book called The Miracle Club, How Thoughts Become Reality. And he has an exercise in here.

that I followed and it's for manifestation. And Mitch is really interesting because he

He explores the paranormal from the concepts that we almost usually use for science and shows where sometimes science can be limiting in terms of actually uncovering the truth because of the rigidity of some of the form. And you know what? That could be.

25 podcast episodes, but we're just going to have to sort of keep rolling with the ideas that we're looking at today. And Mitch here is talking about visualizing. Visualizations occupy a central place in new thought, which is sort of this new spirituality, sort of new age thinking, but it's more based in conceptualizing.

as well as feeling because a lot of new age stuff is sort of more feeling but new thought involves again using regular concepts of trying to understand the world or irregular methods but tweaking them so that they can include the paranormal and you know the metaphysical.

So visualizations occupy a central place in new thought and relate closely to affirmations. As noted above, the idea is to picture and feel what you wish to possess or achieve. If you want to look at matters from a strictly psychological perspective, I believe that a mental picture, like an affirmation, focuses the mind on an aim and tends to make you more aware of people, ideas, correspondences, and possibilities that bring you closer to your goal.

Such practices may also over time redirect neural pathways to facilitate certain physical or motor aptitudes, particularly if you are an athlete, dancer, musician, or designer. You've probably noticed times when a focused thought or image, perhaps in the form of a deeply held conviction or burning question, seemed to bring you in proximity to people and situations related to what you are concentrating on.

And I'll venture that you can think of episodes when a person object or desired circumstance just quote unquote showed up. I suggest that this may not be simply because you are more aware of relevant circumstances or that you are willfully seizing upon confirmations of a pre-existing idea, a phenomenon researchers call confirmation bias. As with the events observed in in,

the Gansfield experiments. So that's something he talks about earlier in the book. You may be conveying your images in a mind to mind fashion, reaching out to those who can offer assistance or information. Right? So, similar to the idea of the collective unconscious. This means of transmission. This means of transmission might hinge upon greater or lesser degrees of ESP, a subject with serious implications for new thoughts. So Mitch.

Horowitz in this book and in lots of books takes this, you know, we there's lots of lots of empirical and circumstantial evidence that we have as humans that when we think about something, we see it more, right?

And there's lots of theories about that that he goes into. And he's saying, I'm going to take it even further that you might be projecting that out through your brain, collective unconscious, into the collective unconscious or folks around you. And it implants in their brain.

and you might say to yourself right now, that's bonkers. And then I encourage you to read the rest of Mitch's book.

Because is it? And you might say, yes, it is. And I'll say, okay, well,

perhaps that's where logic and reason end for you. And you don't want to have a relationship to spirituality or magic or, you know, whatever is beyond and you don't have to, but if you're still here, I have a feeling you have some questions, right? So let's take a look at Pam Grossman who is a

Her podcast is called The Witch Wave and she wrote this incredible book. She's a witch called Waking The Witch. And if you've never read it, is Pam Grossman's right? They're all my best friends. Just kidding. They are not. I wish. She so eloquently describes the history of witches. And I would say is a very big part of how I

came to understand what witches actually are versus what we were sold that they were.

She says, very fact that so many of us can now joyfully speak the witch's name aloud is a glorious thing, but we must remember the many thousands of people who have had their lives threatened or taken in her name as well. And this continues around the world to this day. To call oneself a witch with pride, whether ironically or with full-throated sincerity, is a marker of great

privilege. Though it's never an entirely safe thing to do, those of us who use this moniker in public are very fortunate to feel able to take the risk.

And this touches on this idea that any of this stuff needs to be hidden and secret. You would think that if you are the president of the United States.

you could probably with that position of power, be able to fully be yourself and say, yeah, I'm using a psychic medium because that person is helping me figure out X, Y, Z. But instead, it's secret, it's hidden. And this is because of years of brainwashing, years of power and control.

within the realms of religion, within the realms of spirituality, trying to

control people in order to, you know, probably in many cases have a society that was functional, but using brute force and trying very desperately to

put people into roles that created an outcome that you as the leader or the leaders would feel comfortable with that also puts you ahead probably in terms of comfort and wealth.

And we've now we're watching the result of all of this, right? It's all crumbling.

The past five years have just felt like a big old what in the world is happening constantly. And yet.

If we think this is all there is.

Perhaps that's gonna stop us from creatively thinking of solutions to get out of this and come up with something new that works for everybody. I got a bit lofty there. I hope you're able to follow along with me. Finally, I wanna look at.

Elizabeth Gilbert's book, Big Magic. I really love this book and every time I tap into Elizabeth Gilbert, she seems like an ethereal being to me, just like this lovely...

person who fully lives their beliefs and values. And so, you know, at the beginning of the book, the question is, what is creativity? And the answer is the relationship between a human being and the mysteries of inspiration.

throwback to what I was talking about in theater school, right? We did all of these sort of spiritual exercises that were meant to take us outside of our normal and rigid way of seeing the world and being able to transcend that, whether it was actually happening or just a mental metaphor in our minds, because we were changing our brains in the process. We were changing our concept of what is possible. And that's what we need to do.

to change up not only our individual worlds, but our collective global community.

status quo ain't working anymore. Possibly never did. Okay. So

She starts off the chapter. This is Elizabeth Gilbert again, how ideas work. I should explain at this point that I've spent my entire life in devotion to creativity and along the way I've developed a set of beliefs about how it works and how to work with it. That is entirely and unapologetically based upon magical thinking.

And when I refer to magic here, I mean it literally, like in the Hogwarts sense, I am referring to the supernatural, the mystical, the inexplicable, the surreal, the divine, the transcendent, the other worldly, because the truth is, I believe that creativity is a force of enchantment, not entirely human in its origins. I am aware that this is not an especially modern,

or rational way of seeing things, it is decidedly unscientific. Just the other day, I heard a respected neurologist say in an interview, the creative process may seem magical, but it is not magic. And she says, with all due respect, I disagree. I believe the creative process is both magical and magic because here is what I choose to believe about how creativity functions.

I believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied energetic life form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us, albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse to be made manifest.

And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human's efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual. So.

We have all of these sort of, let's just call them magical concepts. And then we've got the folks that can explain the magic through our regular ways of understanding the world, right? Neurological pathways, the biases that our brains produce. So the more we think about something in particular, the more we're going to see it. And then you've got the people that take it a little bit further, right?

Then you've got the Mitch Horowitz saying, I actually believe that this idea that you have is coming out of your brain and into the brain of the other person over there. And then you've got Elizabeth Gilbert saying, I believe that ideas are literally floating all around us and choosing to enter human brains. And then that human creates or manifests that idea into reality.

And then I go back to my original question, well, what is it? And the answer is, it doesn't matter. What works for you?

I started to think recently about how I got through this year.

January was filled with lot of challenges.

And that continued in February and then March and then April and then even May. April I turned 50 on the solar eclipse and that lead up to my 50th birthday was definitely not how I had anticipated it was going to go. This

I'm going to share some of my weird stories from this year because not only did they lead me to developing new offers and my coaching practice. So I'm a speaking coach. If you're new around here, like combining coaching with tarot and including a number of spiritual modality experts to give workshops and my small business program. And I'll link to all of this in the show notes. If you're curious about working with me, but they also all led to this podcast existing.

But before we look at my stuff, let's just listen to a couple of listeners who wanted to share their stories.

All right, so.

on April 1st.

I had a huge epiphany in the morning. When I say I'd been on the struggle bus, I hadn't been sleeping well. I was really worried. I was financially worried. A lot of things went down this year that were incredibly frustrating and challenging. My ideas were stolen.

And it's happened a few times since actually, which felt like a big betrayal. One of the programs that I regularly run within the course of two or three days, every single person had to drop out because of financial reasons, which meant that I was out about, let's say, 40 % of my income for the year.

I was really stressed and struggling pretty hard. On April 1st, I woke up and I won't give you all the details. Maybe I will another day for some of these, but I woke up and I had this huge epiphany. It's like, how am I say woke up? I'd probably been asleep for about half an hour. was five in the morning. My husband had already left for work and I...

I just had this huge epiphany and I had to start writing it down to myself and it was based on something.

an email that I had received from a woman that I follow who's a spiritual leader and she's, she's quite well known. I'm not going to say names just in case. I don't really know how this goes, but anyway,

It was transformative for me, this realization, this epiphany. And as a result of it, I knew I had to do something called a cord cutting ceremony. And if you don't know what that is, just pause and go and look it up. For me, I don't do the physical cord cutting ceremony with the rope and the candles. I actually just do the spiritual one. And so I imagine this difficult spiritual connection to another person that I don't want to have control over me any longer.

and I just imagined myself severing it. That's it. So I did that and then I went about my day and a bunch of other weird stuff happened. Again, I'm already into 42 minutes.

And I wrote this person and I just said, thank you so much for this email, this newsletter you sent today. It sparked this huge epiphany for me and you know, this cord cutting ceremony. And what about my day?

A bunch of other weird things happen. And then, you know, that evening I thought to myself, I just really need to stretch. So I did a full body stretch. Now my hair was up in a bun. I've got a lot of big hair, right? My hair was up in a bun. I had a low cut shirt on and I stood up from my stretch. looked over at my computer and saw

that the person I had written to to say thank you for this email had written me back, which was very unusual. This is a person with a huge following.

and all of a sudden I heard a snap and the rope chain.

from which I wore my pentacle necklace had snapped on my neck. I heard the snap. It would not have been attached to anything. It couldn't have been attached to clothing or hair because my hair was up.

And sure enough, I looked down and it had just split in two.

So that was one incident. In May, around May, I started to find four leaf clovers everywhere, sometimes upwards of eight a day. That's not unusual. We tend to get them in our backyard. I'm sure it's a genetic thing in terms of like the reseeding and whatever, but it's still unusual.

Then I would find them also like in the park or like walking the dog. And I would say, I mean, I'm looking right up here. I saved, I saved them all. Sometimes I use them for spells and stuff, but I would say I found upwards of 50 to 60 easily. If not actually, actually that's probably quite low. Anyway, I found a lot. A friend of mine was having a surgery and she asked us all to light a candle.

And so I did, and it was a long white candle, but I lit it and I thought to myself, shoot, I should have picked another candle. Like we were to light it, light the candle when her surgery was to begin, just to sort of, you know, hold space for her having a successful surgery. And I thought to myself, darn it, I should have picked a smaller candle, cause I knew the surgery was maybe like an hour. And,

you when you're doing spell craft or candle work, you sort of want the candle to go out of its own accord. And that is, you know, that seals the deal. And so that so we say so mode it be so it is, you know, the equivalent, guess, to amen. And I thought, well, you know, the point of this is to have the candle burning. And I'm doing I'm working away and I look up, I hear something funny and I look up

And this candle has lit again. I can't even explain it in the middle of the candle. There are now currently two places that are burning on the candle. One is the top like normal. And this is just a white dollar store candle, one of those emergency dollar store candles. This, it has also relit itself in the middle of the candle and

A flame is coming up through the middle.

I can't, I'm telling you this now and I'm thinking, if I was listening to me, how would I take this in? I don't know. You can take this in however you want. The candle then goes out of its own accord.

I think to myself, well, wouldn't that be pretty wild if the candle goes out when the surgery is done? So I think, I'm just going to make a note of that.

I waited until that person had indicated to all of us that they were out of surgery and everything was successful. gave a little bit of time and I said, you know, it's bananas. I told the candle story and I said, and it went out at this time and she wrote back and she said, that's funny. That's when my surgery was over.

And I said, I know. I don't know how I know.

but I do.

So another thing, this the trigger warning, this is violence and I won't get into it too much. But something happened to me in June of this year. I was out for a walk with my best friend Sunday afternoon. Nor like public area. And essentially we were attacked by a man with a hammer at one point and he was absolutely.

not out of reality. I don't know if it was drugs or mental health or both, whatever. He was screaming in my face with this hammer at me. I thought I was about to get pummeled by a hammer. Like I really, he was not listening to reason. He, he, he wasn't even seeing me. I don't know if you've ever experienced that where somebody's screaming at you and you can tell that they're what they're seeing is not the same thing that you're seeing. And, um,

I don't know what I said, but all of sudden he turned for me. Now, unfortunately he did hit my best friend. She's fine. She's had, she had x-rays. I mean, we're fine in like, you know, physically unharmed, guess. But it's not something we're going to ever forget. But I remember thinking to myself, not.

I can't believe this is happening in this terrible year I've already had, but my God, I think I just escaped death. And that might sound bananas to you, but I was not sure that I was going to make it out of this situation. And so about a week later, I'm walking the dog. I'm thinking about the situation. I think to myself,

about all the four leaf clovers that I found in May and how I hadn't found one in a while. And then I thought to myself,

I wonder if that was it. Like I had built up all this luck and that's why we got out of there. Okay. That's just a thought you have sometimes, right? And then I looked down, I immediately see a four leaf clover. I'm not in my backyard. I'm not in a place where I generally see four leaf clovers. It was up higher than all the grass, all the other clovers there, just almost as though it was like, here's a sign.

So I picked that up and I've saved it obviously. then.

I'll just tell this one other one and we'll keep moving forward. I have been connecting with ancestors and it's been really interesting. I've been enjoying it quite a bit and I'm going to tell you two stories in response to this. So one is I actually I think that's going to come up later. Just just let me let me instead I'm going to tell you the story of

So we understand that we are supposed to be able to ask for signs if we need confirmation that we are actually connecting that there's, know, if you're into spiritualism, which is where you believe that there are spirits of, you know, people in our lives who have passed on that we can connect to. If you believe in that, then the idea is that you are allowed to ask for signs when you need a sign or when you want to sign. And my understanding is for the most part,

all of these entities, they really are our love and light sort of beyond the earthly realm. And not only that, sort of really just want to help people. And that was told to me and I really love it. So I'm sticking with it because as I mentioned earlier, the very idea of ghosts or spirits for decades of my life had me in absolute panic.

If I would even think about it, I might not sleep for a week and I'm not even being, I'm not making that up.

I was out on a dog walk. It was probably 530 or six, quite dark out. I was in the park. And I said that I would like a sign from this person that I had recently found in my family tree who turned out to be so interesting. And.

I'm at the park and I hear this rush that sounded like the street salter. When the street, you live in places where it snows, then you might have these big trucks that go along the street and they either push snow or they put salt on the ground. But anyway, they make loud noises. And so I could hear this and it was sort of drizzling, but like not much.

I could hear this and I was thinking to myself like, are these, what are the solters doing out right now? And then it kept going and going this noise and it was loud. And I suddenly thought, what the, what is happening? And I turned to look towards the road where you would expect, and I'm probably at least 200 meters from the road. Like again, I'm up in the park with the dog and I see

How could I describe it? It looked like a fog, but it was noisy. And all of sudden I realized it was a hailstorm and it was coming right at us. I watched it come towards me. This very powerful, very loud hailstorm. The dog did not like it very much. I put my hand out like it.

if I had been particularly worried, you know, I would have gone under a tree or something, but it had, it began the moment I asked for a sign and you get this like, I mean, talk about a weird experience in nature that, you know, I guess is explicable, but also that's really coincidental. So I've had so many experiences like this, this year that

that just made me go, I just don't think I can deny this anymore. As much as I would like to believe that, you know, what we see is what we get. I think that I have to commit to the fact that I don't actually believe that. So we also have to be careful because folks can have these clairvoyant gifts, but they can also be manipulative.

They can ignore science, research and medicine altogether. And I want to tell you about an experience that I had along these lines. And it's not, it's not super fun to talk about. But so I had connected with this person who's a psychic medium and really enjoyed being connected to them. And

They asked if we could exchange readings. So I was to do a tarot reading for them and they were to do one for me. And they are also like a psychic medium. So they speak to spirits.

And in the middle of their reading for me, they asked me a question about whether or not somebody who is in my family is taking a drug. And I said, yes. And again, I'm not going to say who, just, you know, keep it just keeping everybody's privacy protected. And they said. You got to get them off of that.

It's not good. It's really bad for them. And I said, what? And they said, yeah, they should not be taking that.

And friends,

when I tell you that the red flag immediately went up.

I since learned that this person, you know...

has other views on science, is against vaccination, et cetera, et And you know what? I sort of don't care what you do in your own life, in your own bubble, but I think it's intensely inappropriate.

to tell somebody, to tell somebody that they love, that they should not be taking a life-saving drug.

when you're not a doctor. you know, I think, and do I think that this person is not a psychic medium? No, I think they are. I think that what's happened is that either they're unable to see, because there's certain side effects to this drug that are crappy for sure, right? And so perhaps they tuned into that and felt the crappy side effects and thought,

that that meant they shouldn't be taking them or

that they believe themselves to be.

better equipped to talk about medical advice than a doctor. I don't believe that there's not bad actors in medicine either, but you've got to be careful because people will get you in vulnerable places, right? You're talking about somebody you love. You don't want them to get sicker.

and to say something to that nature. So we have to be careful because there are either folks who are

who have the gifts but haven't tapped into them well enough to be able to be discerning in what they say and what they don't say, or that think they are literally God, right? To me, that felt like playing God. And I was like, this is unbelievably ridiculous and a huge red flag. So you have to be careful.

Okay, so wrapping up, because this is much longer than the 35 minutes I expected it was going to be. Research shows us that what we choose to focus on is what we end up seeing the most, right? We talked about that. Mitch talks about that. Research also shows us that we can change our behavior, our thought patterns and ergo our beliefs. We just have to want to. Research also shows us that hope helps us keep working toward change.

If we believe change is possible, i.e. hope, then we'll keep pushing forward. So if we know all of this and we also know that having a spiritual practice is a strong element of good mental health and vitality, along with other mental health supports like psychotherapy and drugs, and we can find strong evidence that supports the ways that religion and tradition have been used as tools of oppression,

then perhaps figuring out your own brand of spiritual practice, inviting magic into your life and embracing enchantment. Hello, that's why we're here or why I'm here. Our tools of the rebellion. Do I personally think magic is real? Most of the time I do. I can't help but think it would be pretty coincidental for me to be using a pendulum, understanding that it's being guided by my great grandmother.

who leads me to a box of old stuff and a specific piece of memoir from my grandmother that explains that her mother, the great grandmother in question, was an elocutionist, i.e. a public speaker, i.e. what I do. So the other day I'm using a pendulum. I understand that it's my great grandmother. She basically tells me to go to this box. I go to the box. I read this piece of paper that my grandmother had written on that says that she had been an elocutionist.

Nobody knew that. asked my family. Nobody had known that. How did she lead me very specifically to that actual letter in a box of probably 60 letters? I don't know, but it's pretty weird. How can I explain the chain snapping on my neck, the candle burning in two places, the hailstorm and the literal hundreds of other signs? And as our previous guest, Amy Miranda calls them breadcrumbs or synchronicities for me.

When I believe that they're magic, then life looks very different. I start to believe that anything is possible and when I believe that, my creative brain goes full throttle towards how I can be a better person and contribute to a better world. So now I ask you, what do you think? Is magic real? Does it matter?

You can find all the information and takeaways from today's episode in the show notes or at embracing enchantment dot com. Subscribe and follow wherever you get your podcasts and we'd love for you to leave a review. You can also leave a voice note at embracing enchantment dot com and we might feature it in a future episode. You're going to want to make sure you're subscribed because we have some exciting episodes coming up about tarot and witches.

and you can catch up on previous episodes where we talk about astrology, human design, shadow work, and so much more. Until then, here's to building an enchanted life. Thanks for being here.