Making MEANING with MAGIC [May's BIG, HUGE, AMAZING Downloadable pack included!]
Hi everyone! Welcome to Witchcraft & Metaphysics! If you’re new here, please check out this About Page to find out more. Every month I release a themed, downloadable pack filled with activities, rituals, prompts and more, all to help us enhance our relationships with Magic. The theme for this month’s pack is Making MEANING with MAGIC. The download is at the end of the post. Enjoy! My work depends entirely on subscribers, so please sign up. If you can afford to upgrade to paid, please do…this is my sole source of income and I want to keep creating for you. My heartfelt gratitude goes out to those already subscribed. Let’s keep building this amazing community of magic together!
(In case you’ve missed any, you can find all of the downloadable packs here.)
“Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her own life.” —Viktor Frankl
Meaning seems like a really big deal, but what is it exactly? The standard definition is that meaning is the sense and significance of something. I actually like this definition. But I would expand it a little to say: meaning is the sense and significance of something, and includes the symbolic level of experience.
I learned from Caroline Myss about the three levels of experience, which are the literal, inner, and symbolic levels. We progress through these three levels in a journey from outer to inner and back to outer again. It’s not a process that’s ever really finished, nor is it a hierarchy. We move through these levels in waves, depending on many factors, like how we’re feeling and what’s going on in the world. I find this to be a beautiful framework of understanding and it goes like this:
The literal level is our external physical reality. Here we are outwardly focused and experience things in a very personal, literal way.
Then there is the inner level. When we’ve been in a literal situation long enough, something prompts us to shift our attention. Rather than just enduring and reacting, we get to a point where we tell ourselves, “Okay, enough of this. It’s not working. I HAVE to start looking at this differently.” So we turn inward and think about how we’re going to respond. Here we claim our power of choice.
Then, finally, once we’re solid in our power of choice, we move to the symbolic level. At this level, we can turn our focus again to the outside world, only now we see it with symbolic sight. We see the underlying patterns, the interconnectedness and significance of things. Here we can see that nothing is independent of context. It is at the symbolic level that we consciously discover meaning.
I believe that somewhere, deep within each of us, we’re hardwired to understand this, even if it’s on an unconscious level. We inherently know when something is meaningful to us. We can feel it on a soul level.
One problem that I keep seeing, however, is that we’ve come to entangle meaning and purpose. Instead of seeking to discover the sense, significance and underlying symbolism of ourselves or a situation, we have a tendency to want to know its purpose first.
Purpose is more action-oriented than meaning. It’s more about doing. When we’re asking about the purpose of something, really what we’re asking is: what is it achieving? Focusing on this first can lead to unnecessary pressures and a lack of fulfillment.
Meaning, on the other hand, is the underlying impulse. One way of looking at it is to say that meaning is the cause and purpose is the effect. Or another way, is to say that the purpose of anything is to bring about meaning.
So, then, how do we find meaning?
In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl writes that there are three primary ways through which we discover meaning: through work or creating; through love; and through suffering.
Now I would add a fourth: THROUGH MAGIC!
Actually, we can add Magic to work, love, and suffering too if we wish.
In short, our relationship with Magic is the perfect avenue for discovering meaning in our lives.
The structure I decided to use for this month’s downloadable pack is based on the way I view the tarot court cards. (See my Easy Peasy Overview of the Tarot Court Cards here.)
Week one is the level of the Page, the one who goes deep into the question of: what is meaningful to me?
Week two is the level of the Knight, the one who goes out to find meaning in the world around them.
Week three is the level of the Queen, the one who turns inward to find the connection between meaning and intention.
Week four is the level of the King, the one who provides meaning to others.
I believe that meaning is a very fluid thing. It’s a wholly subjective and relational experience. It’s dependent upon context. And, so, ultimately we learn to discover meaning in every new moment. The practices and rituals this month are designed to help us cultivate a habit of discovering meaning.
As always, if you have any questions or comments, please leave them below, send me a DM, or reply to this email. I can’t wait to explore Meaning and Magic with you! 🤗✨
(In case you’ve missed any, you can find all of the downloadable packs here.)
Oh, again, Jenna, can‘t believe it, simply incredible, the synchronicity. If I ask you to go read my latest post, Choose your journey…, would you do me the favour? it‘s a multi-post post, in that 3 short texts, published separately, are interconnected on the theme of Connection, each short piece about connection to the outside world, then to the self, then to the transcendent and back to the world. A 4th piece does the meta reflection. What you are writing about meaning versus purpose, you have no idea just how relevant it is now, 6 am, awake since 3 am with thoughts over something… i think I‘ll DM you, even if not sure with what “purpose”…
Meaning is not the same as purpose! Boom! Fantastic share, thank you so much Jenna, I nodded along every single sentence 😍