On Fireballs, the Eucharist, and Dormant Creation

1. From Merlin to Gandalf

A huge part of our culture revolves around magic. The image of a wise and mighty sorcerer never goes out of fashion. What do we find in it that saints or scientists cannot offer?

Obviously, it’s wielding magic. But what is magic, really? The ability to cast fireballs? Technically, it is possible in reality if you build a kind of modified flamethrower… but we lose interest at once. That’s just not the same.

So, what draws us is that mages need no contraptions – they can conjure things by sheer will alone?

Yes, precisely. In the end, magic is when an idea acts upon the matter and changes it, i.e. when an idea has material power. Every depiction or account of magic in literature, history or culture fits into this definition.

We humans crave it deeply. Most of our dreams, when traced to their logical end, are about this: for matter not to be inert, but sensitive, responsive to thoughts, wishes, even emotions.

2. Theatre of Impotence

However, reality is dull. Forget fireballs – we cannot even move the lightest feather by an act of will. What a strange paradox: the whole power of our glorious mind is, in a way, weaker than a mere puff or sneeze.

If you have ever witnessed occult or pagan rituals, not in games or films, but in real life – you probably know that watching them always brings this nagging, desolate feeling of impotence.

The more fervently a practitioner tries, the more clearly we see that it is nothing but a theatre. Yet simultaneously we desperately wish to believe it will work: because, again, we long for magic.

All those lesser and greater “banishing rituals”, seen from the sidelines, look pathetic rather than imposing. A “mage” twitches back and forth, exclaiming strange words and dusty names that bear no power, and you can only cringe. But you also feel compassion. After all, they are trying so hard; it’s not their fault they are not heard.

Oh, how we wish that someone, something did hear them. We long for a miracle so much that sometimes we even gaslight ourselves into believing it happened, while knowing, in truth, that it did not.

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Trying to grasp at least a bit of fairy dust and make the world more enchanted, some tread dark paths. First among them are narcotic drugs: they ensnare with physiological addiction, but they captivate precisely by their ability to shake the confines of banality.

But it is more than that. Take schizophrenia, an illness characterized by blurring the boundary between imagination and reality. People are usually unhappy with it and seek treatment, for its hallucinations are unruly.

However, it was historically called morbus sacer, “the sacred illness”, and not without reason. There are people in the modern world who attempt, through tulpamancy or reality shifting, to induce, in effect, a controlled form of schizophrenia.

Alas, the price is self-destruction. More on this in separate articles.

3. Instrumental Magic

Yet we are not entirely without options. An idea may not be able to act upon matter directly, but it can do so through a medium.

In all deeds of homo faber (the “producing human”) lies this mediated magic: a design begets the instrument, which then acts upon matter.

The immaterial idea of a house becomes a blueprint, which in turn becomes a solid, tangible building. You, dear reader, are most likely looking at a screen right now. It is also the fruit of this very magic, the sum of ingenuity from millions of people across centuries.

This is magic by proxy: slow, laborious, but undeniably real.

Another example of mediated magic is art. It can affect us profoundly, evoking elation, rapture, grief. Thus, ideas can produce material effects not only on the soul, but also on our bodies. This is why we love art and speak of its power: it is able to overcome the inertia of the universe and reveal something greater to us.

Some will say art is “merely an illusion”. But this neither undermines nor cancels the sincerity of our response. It may be mirage, yet it shows us precisely what we yearn for.

One more example is ideology or propaganda, where ideas can move people to travel, build, or even kill. There is magic in that too, and not always malignant: many great things were created by people who held strong beliefs or convictions.

Our generation abhors any mention of ideology, because over the last two centuries it was too often twisted for evil. But abusu usus non tollitur – misuse does not abolish proper use. Moreover, this very fact underlines the power of ideas: they can even override our nature.

Perhaps sleep is the state closest to magic. Dreams are effectively maps of our inner symbolic world. Things and scenes within them obey dream logic, driven by desires and associations, far less rigid than the laws of the waking world.

Still, the matter of dreams cannot escape its realm, and even within it, our control is limited. This can be remedied through lucid dreaming. There you can experience evoking spells and the like – of course with no effect in reality, but the sensations are authentic.

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Jesus Christ could transfigure matter, raise the dead, calm elements. In that sense he was, by analogy, the only true Mage in history. He needed no rituals or tools, his word alone sufficed. This was effortless for him, for he is the Logos, the eternal Word through which all things came to be.

We can touch his magic in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, where he daily continues to transfigure bread and wine into his own Flesh and Blood. This is the purest and most real magic available to us.

4. Magic to Come

So why do we humans yearn for magic so fiercely and chase it everywhere? After all, we’ve somehow built the civilization without it, and even invented ways to simulate it.

I believe it is because magic belongs to our nature; we cannot stop probing its absence, like a tongue forever returning to a missing tooth. We sense a hollow where something should be.

Creation must be alive; the world must respond to wishes. When we direct our will at a feather, it should stir – and the fact that it does not screams that something is wrong. The current stubborn inertia of matter, which demands wrestling and prodding to squeeze out at least something, is abnormal.

We are all mages, but imprisoned in some vast anti-magical cage.

This serves as practical proof of the doctrine of original sin: we instinctively know that the universe lies submerged in an unhealthy torpor.

The pristine world was different: it was attuned, responsive, but we lost it. In the age to come, it will return to its original glory, and even transcend it, when God remakes heaven and earth. Then, spirit and matter will sing in perfect harmony once more.

Nature and matter as a whole will obey – or better, joyfully respond – to ideas. Creation will mirror the spirit. Since neither it nor we will harbor evil any longer, it will never descend into schizophrenic nightmare. Instead, it will remain an infinite sandbox, brimming with endless possibilities for the joy of eternal life.

So, in Paradise we will be able to cast fireballs. But far more important is that we will perceive the spiritual world: both indirectly, through Creation now transparent to it, and directly.

That means we will see God face to face, since God is the supreme Idea, the one that not only creates reality but is Reality itself. God is living Existence, so the blessed vision of Him will be the most powerful and magnificent magic.

May the Almighty and merciful Lord help us all safely reach Heaven and Him. Amen.