Magic

A lot of the material covered in the course is open to interpretation. It is possible to read the stories as being magical or mythical, but another way to see it is explained by the rational and mundane. Some parts of the stories are out and out impossible like the existence of Grendel, but even the stories that can be read without the myth or magic, like Young Goodman Brown, things still stand out as strange. A big part of the interpretation is if the reader wants to believe in magic. It is a little Peter-Panian (made up a word) to say it is only magical if you believe it is magical, but that is what it comes down to.

Life for some people is simpler without magic. It is difficult for them to wrap their heads around anything different from what they know of the world today. They heard of all the hoaxes, learned all of the magician’s tricks, and there is nothing that can’t be attributed to a cause. As science advances, the mysteries are less and less, which may be a factor in why the belief in magic radically declining.

All the magical stories have to come from somewhere though. There must be some experiences that people cannot satisfactorily explain through the mundane, so they turn to magic to explain. People bend the realm of possibility and speculate what if could happen, what if it did? There are traditions where myth and magic is commonplace. Some people may not think the story actually happened but it is still a part of their tradition.

Magic doesn’t have to be as grand as sparks flying from a wand, or shouting gibberish. There is subtlety in magic. There is magic in the mundane. There is magic in someone calling you when you were thinking about them; there is magic in finding the perfect shade of blue to match the outdated curtains; there is magic in getting along with people. Some may call it probability or good luck or chemistry. But what’s life without a little magic. A little unbalance can make things more exciting.

Perhaps for someone who is willing to accept that there exists miracles at work in the universe, magic isn’t such a stretch of the imagination. This primarily covers people who subscribe to a religion. These people have a tradition that tells them of historical events that defied natural laws. They have a tradition that tells them that miracles happened and to not believe would be heretical. Are miracles and magic not the same thing but with different names?

Maybe since a miracle is associated with the divine where magic is a man-made construction it is more believable. The divine is supposed to be all powerful whereas people are not supposed to be. It is understandable for people to reject a man with the ability to bend the natural laws if they do not believe man is all powerful. It is also understandable for someone to reject the notion of the divine bending the natural laws if they do not believe in the divine.  Since there is no proof one way or the other, it all boils down to what you want to believe, and perhaps there is magic in that.