Last month I showed the Lord of the Rings trilogy to my eight year olds. I realized then that The Return of the King turns 20 this year. I remember the day I saw it in the theater.
After I realized that time had sucker-punched me in the lower back again, I meditated on the movies and found myself on a Tolkien kick.
If you only know him as a “fiction author” or Lord help you a “fantasy writer”, you have no idea.
Tolkien was as intellectually sophisticated as it gets. He knew medieval history and languages inside and out. The world-building in stories was in no small part due to his close circle of equally adept writer friends, including C. S. Lewis (himself no slouch in literature and philosophy).
There’s seriously fascinating back-story behind the creation of Middle-earth.
What I never did realize until lately is how much of a part magic and occultism played in that story. Tolkien was a good Catholic and never said much about that angle. But Lewis and fellow Inkling Charles Williams were steeped in the alt-history of occultism by way of Romanticism.
That’s a topic for another day. What might be relevant to you is just how much “magical practice” was involved in their creative process.
They used different “mental skills” to train their imaginations when writing. Which is not too different from occult writer Dion Fortune, who once said that magic is the art and science of causing change in consciousness in accordance with will.
I don’t know if I can promise magic, much less Tolkien-like creativity (which may as well be magical).
But I can tell you that there’s much to gain from learning how to use your will to cause changes in consciousness.
Magic or no, it’s a skill like any other. Like any skill, you can practice it, improve it, refine it, and sharpen it like steel to cut a dragon’s hide.
If you’d like help learning how to do that, I’m opening up a few 1:1 coaching spots for just that purpose, for readers of my email list.
I tell you up front: It’s not cheap, it’s not for tire-kickers, and I am NOT offering workout programs or fitness coaching (although I can give you some guidance in that area). Frankly if you want to hire me to give you a workout, you’ve missed the real opportunity.
This is right for people who are feeling stuck in a personal, professional, or business-related situation.
If you’d like deep insight, an outsider’s perspective, regular reassurance and accountability, and life-transforming ideas, you might be who I’m looking for.
Matt Perryman