What is Magic?

Notes across the pond.

I suspect we all have a life quest, or maybe I should say a life question. This question is the foundation toward which our roots are always seeking. Some of us are exploring acceptance, others personal power, still others, the intricacies of family. There are countless questions at the core of our humanity.

My particular question, the one I have approached from a myriad of angles since I was quite young, falls into the “what’s the meaning of life” category. When I was small, this seemed like a god-question. But as I’ve rumbled through the years, it’s morphed into something else: a quest for connection, the spark of which I call magic.

Spoiler alert: If you’re searching this post for the meaning of life, I’m going to disappoint. But what I can provide—what I love providing— is conversation. So I reached out to

Laura Pashby

, author of a gorgeous book called Little Stories of Your Life and an equally gorgeous Substack, Small Stories with Laura Pashby.

My idea was for us to use our Substacks to exchange a series of postcards—a written conversation—about magic and meaning. We began the exchange on Laura’s Substack last month and you can read that first post here.

We will be taking turns, publishing a postcard and response, one month here, the next there (so you might want to head over and subscribe).

We are calling our collaboration Notes across the Pond since Laura lives in some wonderfully foggy place in the U.K. and I am across the Atlantic in the fairy coves of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Let’s begin with Laura’s last postcard…

Dear Maia,

I too find magic in the mist, in fact I’m certain this particular kind of magic is one of the reasons for my ongoing obsession with fog. I wanted to write back to you about what magic is, but it’s not a question I feel ready to answer yet. I’m edging my way in, grateful to have you to guide me. I don’t know what magic is, but since we began talking, I’ve been more alert to magic, and I think I have a sense of how it feels.

This summer, I felt magic when I sat on the beach with my smallest, our pockets full of seaglass shards, and a seal emerged from smooth, light-slicked water, just metres away. I felt magic when my brother’s dog—the softest, sweetest sheepadoodle—came padding into my bedroom at midnight to find me, because fog had fallen over the lake and he heard my brother say that I would want to see it. I felt magic when we lit a candle for a precious baby’s first birthday, gathering around him to sing the birthday song—a celebration and a blessing.

In those instants, I felt the fizzing of joy and the softness of peace. I became aware of the richness of the earth and our smallness in the face of it (despite the ways in which we continue to damage the necessary balance). I felt enlivened and connected. Perhaps I should have paid closer attention to the embroidered badge that fell off my denim jacket in the taxi back from the airport (I hope it has found a new home where it was needed). It’s a quote from The Secret Garden, the same words that still hang on my kitchen wall: ‘the magic is in you’, it says.

More soon,

Laura xx

PS: Here is the fog over the lake, which fell at midnight and stayed until breakfast, when I took this photograph.

Dear Laura,

For the past month I’ve been thinking about your note, hoarding magic moments to pull from my pockets: the border collie that led my retreat group unerringly through the treacherous bit of a hike in Ireland; the answer to a question found on a Perugina chocolate wrapper half buried in my back garden. I’ve thought about the podcast I wanted to tell you about, the one I listened to after the one about fascia.

And then I awoke a few days back to a WhatsApp from my sister in Israel:

We are fine.

It’s never good when she needs to message we are fine. I tapped the icon for The New York Times: Hamas had invaded Israel. Israel was promising to rain down destruction in return.

My pockets suddenly felt full of nothing more substantial than fluff. In the face of war, what is the point of this thing we call magic? Can a Palestinian mother feed her baby with it? Will a line of salt across a threshold keep out a man with a machine gun? Is the sister of my niece’s friend, who was kidnapped and taken to Gaza, going to do a spell to secure her release?

This is not the first time I’ve pondered how privileged we are to be able to believe. To feel like the intentions we set have a chance of coming into fullness. To be able to claim some sense of self-sovereignty in this wild and untamed world.

As these thoughts were rolling through my mind, a realization crystallized: I was calling two very different types of things magic. The first type of magic was serendipitous and mysterious, it was made up of moments that led to a frisson of connection and the sense of being a part of the larger pattern of life. My role in this first type of magic was that of the delighted observer. The second type of magic moved me from observing to attempting to create: it was when I used intentions and rituals to try to put my imprint on the world. This second type of magic is a more difficult dance because when I put my intentions into the world, they are mixed into a giant cauldron of other people’s intentions and desires, all vying to come to fruition.

A myriad of other thoughts and more subtle distinctions flowed from this, more than I can write in this already overlong postcard.

But the important thing is this: the first kind of magic? It exists everywhere, all the time. It is not afraid of war, and kidnappings, and the ugly underbelly of the human race.

Thinking that made me look up a book I remember from my childhood, I Never Saw Another Butterfly. It’s a collection of drawings and poems by children in the Terezin Concentration Camp.

But I have found what I love here.

The dandelions call to me

And the white chestnut branches in the court.

-Pavel Friedmann

I needed this reminder that the fluff in my pockets was dandelion seeds ready to be blown to wishes. I needed to remember that we can find magic even in the most dire of circumstances. And that magic can find us, even when we’ve lost hope.

xx Maia

P.S. This is a photo from my trip to Scotland which was magical in so many, many ways

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In other news…

The Everyday Magic Perpetual Journal and kit released while I was away! I have a video of it here if you want to see the insides then you *could* add it to your holiday gift list for all your witchy/spiritual friends (I mean, I would!).

October’s schedule has been jam packed! Here’s where you can hang out with me:

• Amityville, NY (& Online!): Amityville Apothecary, Oct. 14. Click for info.

• Charlotte, NC: ticketed brunch and reading at a private home, October 22. ONLY 2 SPOTS LEFT. Click for info.

A recommended read:

Jo Hanlon-Moores

wrote a searing and soaring response to September’s reflection. If you are seeking lyricism, affirmation, and a deep pool of wisdom, give this one a read…. and then read her other writing. She hooked me originally with this piece.

Oh, and don’t forget: I’ll be doing a 3 day Witch Camp for paid subscribers in early November. Want in?