I was doing my evening routine last night, and the possibility hit me of seeing with magical eyes, of–if my German works–Wiederzauberung, relative to Entzauberung, which of course is a Max Weber reference.
He said our collective destiny was iron cages. Certainly, the cage production business has been brisk for at least a hundred years (read this book immediately, by the way: https://www.alibris.com/booksearch?mtype=B&title=prisons+we+choose+to+live+inside), but perhaps also for most of human history. We know there was a time people believed in leprechauns widely, but those times also included many abuses, as we would now see it. We want the magic, but not the oppression and actual injustice (the words are so abused they have become nearly useless cliches).
Magic is connection to the Godhead. It is, so I read, a common outcome of the use of psychedelics. At some point, I need to make that trip, but the time is not quite right. My own inner work remains productive, and I want to be relatively intact before I intentionally shatter the rest of me.
But this is what we really want: a sense that life is beautiful.
I bought that movie, by the way, for $3 somewhere, and found it, if I am honest, a bit tedious and derivative. It was an agglomeration of bits held together at the end by emotional manipulation.
But it was a huge hit in Hollywood, precisely because they seek and seek and seek this felt sense that life is beautiful, but never find it. They find experiences by the score, no doubt–experiences that should fill them with something, but which never finally do.
And consider the magic of acting: YOU ARE PAID TO BE SOMEONE ELSE, to occupy another skin, another soul. You get paid to not be you, to escape you, to run, run away, and your hiding gets you awards and recognition, if you do it well enough.
This is not really magic, though: it is skillful fraud. At its best it is a useful fraud, one which induces in the viewer new emotions and insights that lead to renewed magic in their own lives. The magicians all seem to be looking to the West, though, wondering, pining, and finally frustrated and angry. The ocean does not want them, any more than the eye of the needle wants a camel.