Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Lost

Dear Saint Anthony, please come around. Something's lost and it can't be found.

You know what flummoxes me? The above isn't some cutesy saying, or nursery rhyme, or mnemonic device... it's a prayer. You're supposed to concentrate on the object you can't seem to find, and recite this chant. Then a miracle happens. Saint Anthony, aloft on wings of joy and enlightenment, will descend from heaven just to point you to your car keys.

I tried it once, when I was a kid. I lost my class ring, and knowing that was an offense punishable by death, I prayed to Saint Anthony. Lo, and behold, I found it shortly thereafter.

Turns out it was slightly to the side of where I always put it when I went to bed. All I had to do was...think...about...

HEY!

WAIT A MINUTE!

That wasn't Saint Anthony on his miracle wings of finding! That was me! I concentrated. I thought about it. I figured it out. I slowed down and thought methodically about the possibilities.

My suggestion to you is this:

Don't rely on magic. Don't rely on incantations. Think. Use your brain. Weigh what is possible, what is probable, and what is provable.

You'll find you are the magic. You can do anything if you don't chain yourself to superstition for the sake of tradition.

You'll find a lot of shit that would otherwise be lost.

3 comments:

  1. You're so very kind and helpful!

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  2. It was shortly after I began practicing witchcraft that I came to the realization that prayer, incantations, and other forms of ritual psychodrama are all just tools to reach a heightened state of awareness. Alpha State they call it in hypnotism, psychology, and neurology, in reference to the Alpha Brain Waves. Just make sure you stop before you hit Gamma. That way lies madness. I know that from experience, mwahaha. Our brains are truly miraculous things. We only make conscious use of a small fraction of our field of awareness. The rest gets logged in that creepy mysterious place we call the subconscious or unconscious. Alpha State takes the subconscious and makes it not so subby, hehe, bringing all that unused perceptual information to the forefront of our conscious mind. I still use some of the old incantations and ritual trappings, guided meditations, and so on sometimes because they work with my established neural pathways, but most of the time all I need is a reminder that "the magic is in me". So hey, whatever works. As I'm fond of saying in my own writing, it's not important -how- you get there, it's just important -that- you get there.

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  3. Though I was born and partially raised Catholic, I don't recall ever hearing of this prayer, except through my best friend. He's a life-long Catholic, lapsed for most of his time. Still, he uses that prayer, which I initially scoffed at when he told me about it. However, he pointed out that every time he's used it, it's worked.
    So the next time I was looking for something important, I asked him to say that prayer for me. Worked. Every time I lose something important, I ask him to "put in a fix for me" and he does. And every time I find what I was looking for.

    Am I suggesting anything in particular with this story? No, not really. Do I think that by having Mark say the prayer for me, the Christian-Judeo god gets right on the case and comes up with my mysteriously missing matter? No.

    But I feel better having him say the prayer for me. I could have learned the prayer by now and just say it for myself, but he believes in it, he has faith, and I believe that matters. So I ask him to say it for me, and I always know, when he's said the prayer, that I will find what I'm looking for.

    Now, this may come of as poppycock, or cockypop. But there is some scientific backing for prayer (as crazy as the suggestion may sound) - In medical science, there is something known as the placebo effect. Essentially this is an observed phenomenon from which we have learned many things about ourselves.

    In religion, the lack of answers to our prayers (at least about 50% on that) leads many to wonder if God is hearing their prayers. Religion assures us that he is, but sometimes the answer is no. Catchy, and good for some, but not all. So we are left with a definite concern that God might not be listening. But the important thing is that we are, and even if God isn't listening, our prayers are not wasted, any more than meditation is wasted. Considering that prayer is considered by many to be a form of mediation, and meditation is noted for the way it relieves stress, among other healthy things, we can't even really look at prayer as a necessarily bad thing.

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