The Origins of Magic

What is magic? Is it in dungeons, dragons and sorcery? Is it found only between the pages of your favorite fairytale, or wielded solely by the moonlit gods of legend and lore? Or perhaps it’s simply a term created by weary mothers long ago to answer the endless string of what-ifs her child continually assaulted her with, designed to whisk away the questions of the unexplained.

If you ask a young child, they might tell you it’s in the halls of a famed school of witchcraft and wizardry. Ask again, and you might find an elderly woman who will insist it’s in the potions and elixirs that keep her looking youthful. Try once more, and you’ll find a young professional, swearing it’s in the nuances of their craft.

If you are equally as dissatisfied with the answers you have unearthed from these sources, then I shall confide in you a secret…Magic is universal. It’s in the very air we breathe. It’s in the composition of a soul, the bubbling laughter of a young babe, in essence, magic is light. Even smaller than the atoms and quarks, the miniscule entities that embrace each other to create the very world we inhabit, are particles of light.

Little do they know, when we ask them to define magic, when they’re whispering of the fabled corridors, the real magic is in the glow of a child’s eyes as they dream in wonder. It’s in the determined drive of an entrepreneur as they defy the odds of success, the conviction of the elderly impressing their wisdom on the young. Light begets light, and in our perpetuation, we remarkably find ourselves making the magic we’ve too often been told only exists in foreign planes. But to what end?

Well, my dear. It is not so much the origins of magic that should concern you, but the magic of your own origins. What will you let define you? What magic will you make?