Magic and Media: or, be careful what you wish for!Font Size Print Emailby Jaq D Hawkins.It has long been my observation that the world of magic(k) attracts a lot of creative people. Writers, artists, musicians and all sorts of creatives have a similar openness to pattern that is necessary for the successful attunement to the patterns of magic.It is not surprising then, that a magician's involvement in an aspect of popular media can work quite naturally within the same rules and parameters that one might work with in an act of magic. When the magician chooses to use magic, to in some way cause an effect within the world of media, the possibilities for a smooth and successful operation can be far too easy.But magic comes with a price, especially magic that seems to be too easy. And media is a world where obsession may be necessary to gain the desired result. A marriage of the two can easily result in the magician becoming part of an all-encompassing world that takes over his or her life, as my own foray into this realm has shown me.As a writer, I have spent many years heeding the standard advice given to all writers: Write what you know. Writing about magic brings a certain satisfaction that can only come from expressing one's deepest thoughts and experiences in a medium where others might share in those experiences and even learn from them, in many ways becoming part of the author's inner world in a remote manner. But the reason I became an occult writer was originally because I wanted to be a writer, as young as age fourteen, and it just happened to be the subject I know best. Many of my early writings that the world has never seen were in fact fiction.Ironically, it would be fiction that took me into a new realm of magic, where everything I had learned from my years of magical study would be required to maintain a hold in the roller coaster world of media.In early 2005, I had finished the last book of my Sprits of the Elements series and had begun work on Women of Power, which I had hoped would have much to say to other female magicians. The series had taken over my writing for several years, I had made no attempt to write fiction for more than a decade. I had no thoughts at that time of returning to my favoured world of fantasy fiction as a writer any time soon.I had also become mildly involved with Pagan activism in response to an election overseas that promised to be detrimental to the general health of the world, as the influence of the US and its presidency has an effect on many nations outside of its own. But my foray into activism had shown me another world of small factions, where people were as divisive as the super powers themselves and too few were willing to work together towards a common goal.In the sort of musings one indulges in while walking home from the supermarket, I was contemplating the progression of events in the world around me and how things should be, when suddenly a single line of dialogue went through my head. We are not like you. We have no need to have power over our own kind. Or imagine that we do.Within that line was an entire attitude, a philosophy that thought outside of political structures, and saw into the imaginary hierarchies that allow such social structures to exist by consent of all who participate in supporting these artificial hierarchies. It was a statement of a true Anarchist.But in the real world, such groups of Anarchists are few and relatively small. There were no nations of Anarchists that would make this argument against another nation. My writer's mind slipped into the alternate world of fantasy where I have found much recreation in the imaginary worlds of other writers, and found an alternate reality of its own. The speaker became a goblin, speaking to a human who could not possibly grasp the concept of non-hierarchy, and the first glimpse into the world of Dance of the Goblins was born.A scene began building around the dialogue; a human captive, not in any real danger but among goblins who tormented him for trespassing into their world. An old wise one among the goblins speaking the words. A world outside, to which he would be returned, more dialogue as the goblins played with him, and a way to make him forget where he had been and how to get there for the protection of the goblins.By the time I got home and furiously typed out the first chapter, the goblins had become the innocent Shamanic people who lived underground living in a peaceful world of Anarchy that works, based on a society I had experienced that organises squat parties on a large scale in London. Their spirituality was found in ecstatic dance, hence the title Dance of the Goblins. Soon this would tie in with a tribal lifestyle that included storytelling as their means of education and entertainment, which also ties in with the Dance. And the humans, were as humans had always been. Too quick to try to destroy that which they don't understand or can't control. In my fantasy story, the goblins were the good guys.In four months I had a completed novel and notes for two sequels. I hadn't just written a novel, I had created a world. The creative side of me is well-balanced with the practical (I'm ambi-dextrous), I could not help but see that this creation had extensive commercial viability. Sequels, films, conferences where people dress up as the characters, the works.Best of all, I had managed to write about magic without making the mistake I have seen too many occult writers make when trying to write fiction; trying too hard to teach magic through the story. I made no attempt to teach, but only threw some magician characters in to see what they did. They quickly took over, and became the ruling class. The story of how this came about is one of the more amusing points in the book, and not something I'll give away to those who may enjoy reading it in context.But first the story had to get published. My publishers for my occult books didn't do fiction. My knowledge of the writing business suggested that the best move would be to find an agent. My attempts to do so however, were unusually obstructive. As a magician, I'm familiar with the patterns that happen when something is meant to, or not meant to happen. It as not a matter of rejections so much as every agent in Britain saying they didn't do genre fiction and refusing to read it. Considering how many popular fantasy authors use agents, it was unusual.But I had a certainty that the story, and the series, was meant to blossom. It was time to move back into the world of magic to work out how.I began to contemplate a spell for finding the right agent or publisher when a chance comment on an internet forum brought Ganesha to my attention. I don't always work with deity forms in magic, in fact very seldom, although I've had some spectacular results with Egyptian deities. At the time, I had never been drawn to Hindu deities at all. But Ganesha seemed ideal. God of obstacles and overcoming them among other things, relatively benign as a contemplative and peaceful god. Of course what I didn't know at the time was that he is also a trickster god.I planned a ritual and began looking for a small Ganesha icon. I had bought an incense burner as a gift for someone a year before that would be ideal, so I went to the same shop to get another one as it was usual stock. They didn't have one. The city where I live has several shops that would be likely to carry a similar item, and I scoured them all. No Ganesha was to be found, in any form. Even the more unlikely gift shops were checked, with no result.Then, after popping into a local small grocer to pick up a few things before going home, my eye fell on an overpriced lapidary shop that I would normally avoid. I had been in there before, and knew they had a cabinet with carved stone animals. Immediately, I knew he would be there.I went into the shop, browsed perfunctorily for a few moments and made my way to the cabinet in the back. I'm short sighted and have always had trouble with the refraction of glass, so I had to look very carefully among the clutter of small colourful animal carvings to look for my Ganesha. I started at the bottom shelf, knowing with more and more growing certainty that I needed to look closely because he was there somewhere.I worked my way up slowly, contemplating the cost in the back of my mind as I was rather skint at that moment and the gemstone carvings were far more expensive than I had intended to manage when I had left the house that morning. As I worked my way up the shelves, I saw that prices for the small animals averaged 40 - 60 which was going to be a hardship, but I had a credit card. Just as I reached the top shelf, I realised that a stone icon was going to be ideal, and I would find a way to deal with the cost.Magicians will recognise the process of what happened next. As my eye wandered to the top and last shelf, the exact phrase that went through my mind was, Whatever it costs, I'll pay it. At that moment, my eye fell on him. Five inches high, beautiful sparkly Adventurine stone carved into a perfect sitting Ganesha. 175.I almost hesitated. This was well beyond what I could afford, even on the credit card. But I had said it, and the timing was unmistakeable. I bought the statue. Of course the next day, I received some money in the post that I had forgotten I was expecting to receive sooner or later, and that made up for it. It's always the next dayI performed the spell that night. During the operation, I received a very strong feeling that I should forget about the agents and go for a small publisher. As it was a Friday night, I decided that I would enjoy my weekend and start looking for such a publisher on Monday. Besides, I had a social engagement on Saturday evening. What did I just say about the next day?To make a long story short, I went to my social engagement on Saturday and `happened to' sit across a table from someone that I hadn't met before. He was a new publisher, looking for manuscripts. A chance comment about having just finished this novel led to a conversation that resulted in him publishing my book. But the story is far from finished there. It also happened that he had gone to college with a well-known celebrity who I had envisioned playing a major role in the film version. A series of coincidences was just beginning.I still don't remember the exact wording I used in my spell with Ganesha, but there was something about getting the story out there. In part 2 of this story, I will tell how this series of unlikely connections led to an occult writer transforming into a film producer, and having her life completely taken over by a world she never imagined stepping into before, a world where fantasy, reality and magic all intertwine in a creative twist of fate. Originally published in abracademia No2