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Canis Major Dwarf: A New Closest Galaxy

“Magic is a way of living. If one has done one’s best to steer the chariot, and one then notices that a greater other is actually steering it, then magical operation takes place. One cannot say what the effect of magic will be, since no one can know it in advance because the magical is the lawless, which occurs without rules and by chance, so to speak. But the condition is that one totally accepts it and does not reject it, in order to transfer everything to the growth of the tree.” ― C.G. Jung, The Red Book: Liber Novus

Le Bateleur/The Magician Talon Abraxas

The Magician in Jung’s Red Book

Philemon from Carl Jung’s Red Book

In the Red Book, Jung dedicates a chapter to the Magician. He meets Philemon, his inner Wise Old Man and Magician. When Jung talks to him about what magic is, Philemon replies that magic happens to be precisely everything that eludes comprehension. One cannot understand magic. One can only understand what accords with reason. Magic accords with unreason, which one cannot understand. Jung writes:

“The practice of magic consists in making what is not understood understandable in an incomprehensible manner.” - Carl Jung, The Red Book

Magic will never be lost to humanity, since it is reborn with each and every one of us. We need magic to be able to receive or invoke the messenger and the communication of the incomprehensible. We must accept that the world comprises reason and unreason, and that magic remains a mystery, until one attains gnosis. Then one might say, as Jung did when asked if he believed in God, “I don’t need to believe, I know.”

Jung writes:

“This magical power allows itself to be neither taught nor learned. Either one has it or does not have it. Now I know your final mystery: you are a lover. You have succeeded in uniting what has been sundered, that is, binding together the Above and Below. Have we not known this for a long time? Yes, we knew it, no, we did not know it. It has always been this way, and yet it has never been thus… Why did I have to wander such long roads before I came to Philemon, if he was going to teach me what has been common knowledge for ages? Alas, we have known everything since time immemorial and yet we will never know it until it has been accomplished. Who exhausts the mystery of love?” - Carl Jung, Red Book