In 1995, Hermetic Press published what ended up being a controversial book, Magic and Meaning. I don’t believe it was intended to be controversial by either the publisher nor the authors, Eugene Burger and Robert E. Neale. It was an extension of conversations that the authors had during their time together at the Mystery School gatherings – which was also controversial.
Some thought that the authors felt that magic lacked meaning or that meaning meant story based presentations or that it needed to be in what was thought of as being the Bizarre movement. None of this was true. For one thing, the authors were exploring questions about magic, its history and origin, and the state of contemporary magic. While they shared some educational experiences, they didn’t always agree. It was the exploration and questioning that mattered.
The first essay by Eugene Burger, Conservations, is a record of a conversation between Eugene and another magician. During the back and forth, Eugene discusses why contemporary magic was as it was and, in my opinion, still is today. He talks about how we’ve been conditioned to think about magic in similar and predictable patterns.
…because of this tremendously powerful conditioning that has been going on for about a hundred years or so. This conditioning tells us that a magician or conjuror is a person who presents his tricks (and the word “trick” is also part of this conditioning) while speaking entirely ridiculous sorts of sometimes-humorous “lines” or “patter.” We have been conditioned to treat our conjuring as if it needed a background of so-called jokes, as if conjuring were itself trivial, insignificant, silly, not important, all of it. This is the type of magician most of us watched as children and, like good little monkeys, I am afraid that this is what we ourselves imitate. We are the ones who accept the conditioning, the pattern, somebody else’s image of what—and especially who—the magician is. We become the pattern.
Eugene Burger, Conversations, Magic and Meaning, 1995
Eugene goes onto say
…it takes a great deal of energy to look at this conditioning, to examine it, find out about it, find out how we learned it and what it means, what it gives us and what it denies us, and find out how it can be ended. Most do not have the needed energy for this. I would add that this energy isn’t necessarily to be seen as something unworldly or metaphysical. The energy I am talking about is interest: a deep and vital interest in our conjuring and what it shall be. When I
Eugene Burger, Conversations, Magic and Meaning, 1995
was in school and forced to read boring books, I often would fall asleep while reading them. But if I were reading a book that really interested me, I would have the energy to read all night. Interest is energy.
As in many of his essays and lectures, Eugene is asking us to think about our magic, our approach to magic, our belief in magic, and the value we place on it. Since first meeting Eugene in 1984 and studying his books, I struggled with his questions. Will I ever get to where I want to be in my magic? Probably not but it’s the journey that’s important.
I pushed my soul in a deep dark hole and then I followed it in
“Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)”, Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, Written by Mickey Newbury, 1967
I watched myself crawlin’ out as I was a-crawlin’ in
I got up so tight I couldn’t unwind
I saw so much I broke my mind
I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in
