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Astrological Magic is Medicine for Materialism
The world is magical, so all of us in fact grew up in a magical world. However, many if not most of us in the so-called West were not raised with or within a magical worldview. We did not necessarily have the experience of growing up in a magical world.
Being deprived of ways of seeing and experiencing the world as magic leaves so many of us feeling hollow, hopeless, and afraid. Many of us come to spiritual and magical practice as a balm to these experiences.
In this post, we provide a brief sketch of the historical-intellectual background that contributes to disconnection from the magical world, before turning to some thoughts on how astrological magic—and astrological talismans in particular—provide a kind of medicine, even a cure, for the disconnection wrought by anti-magical worldviews.
Materialism and Disenchantment
During and after the Renaissance in Europe, the rise of natural science and the quest for objective knowledge fostered a powerful ideology called naturalism or materialism. The “natural” in “naturalism” relies on a very restricted idea of nature. The name materialism better captures the underlying idea: that the world is nothing but a collection of inanimate matter bouncing around in the void.
Whether implicitly or purposefully, the worldview of materialism devalues and marginalizes non-scientific ways of experiencing and knowing the world around us and ourselves. The sociologist Max Weber named the experience of mechanization and objectification following in materialism’s wake disenchantment, an alienating loss of felt meaning, mystery, and magic. Disenchantment also refers to the cultural trend of portraying spiritual and religious pursuits as backward, ignorant, or fraudulent because they fall outside of the materialistic viewpoint.
Disenchantment is not a passive process, but often an active and violent effort to stamp out and extinguish religious and magical beliefs under the forward march of science and technology, often disguising—sometimes in plain sight—ideologies of extractive and racist colonialism and white supremacy and misogyny. Many academics, for example, deride practitioners of divination and astrology as “unlettered and credulous” or “charlatans.” Essential cultural stories the world-over featuring what looks like magic are deemed as only “myths” ready to be explained away as metaphor or archetype.
Within the mental health disciplines, psychologists label these practices “magical thinking” and associate them with backwards, immature thinking or outright mental illness. Doing so portrays disenchantment and enchantment not as two competing worldviews, but as right and wrong, good and bad. Scientific authorities tell us that belief in materialism is the natural outcome of normal development, and that enchanted beliefs are merely ignorance, cognitive bias, or insanity.
This ideology consistently and violently ignores the ways that magical thinking is historically embedded, socially constituted, and culturally situated. Perhaps in later posts we can more fully explore these ideas and the damage they cause. For now, what can we do about it?
Reclaiming the Birthright of Enchantment
It takes work to swim upstream against the cultural forces that try to squeeze the magic out of the world and out of our minds. Uprooting the deeply instilled messages that magic is bogus, dangerous, and wrong can take years. Finding relationships and communities able to provide genuine support and nourishment for coming into our natural birthright is not always easy.
Above, we spoke about worldviews. Christopher Warnock, the elder statesman of astrological magic, focuses a great deal on worldview: the implicit, often unconscious assumptions and fixed ideas we have about reality. Worldviews are important, and understanding and shifting our assumptions about the world is a crucial task.
Ideas are rarely enough, however. We need embodied magical experiences—and not just one or two, here or there, once in a while on the full moon. Even when we have our first taste of magic, or we have our first initiatory experience, we can still easily fall back into the assumptions of materialism. Decades of programming teaching us that spiritual experiences exist far away in foreign lands—or that we need to gingerly and cautiously prepare ourselves for magic over many years before we are ready—are not always easy to overcome.
We need to wade into and become soaked by the rivers of mystery. We need magic we can touch. We need to live alongside magic every day.
We founded Idola Stellarum with the aim of helping people find their way into this experience. Through helping people come into relationship with living stones and living spirits, our purpose is not just to sell talismans, but to help people transform themselves and their lives. In our view, astrological talismans can provide powerful medicine for the disconnection wrought by materialistic worldviews.
Astrological Talismans as Medicine for Materialism
Historically, astrological talismans were used as goal-oriented magic and as medicine. The medieval grimoire Picatrix, for example, speaks of talismans to “increase riches and honor,” to “receive good and be liked by everyone,” or to “evade infirmities and fear.” Marsilio Ficino was more interested in talismans that “savor not so much of magic as of medicine” and lists various talismans “against disease,” “to confirm health,” “against fevers,” and so forth.
In modern times, astrological talismans are just as good as they ever were for helping us accomplish our goals and work toward our ambitions. Talismans are and always have been practical magic.
But our world is very different from the world of the Picatrix. Back then, people more commonly took for granted that they lived in a magical world. If mundane factors stood in their way, magic was one avenue among many for solving their problems, was avenue in fact regarded as mundane in itself. They could be secure in the fact that there were spirits, angels, and gods out there to be called upon, even if it wasn’t always certain how to call upon them or that they would answer.
Today, many of us have to earn that magical worldview, let alone to normalize it for ourselves. Disconnected from relationship to the divine, severed from spirits, we must not only rehabilitate a deep sense that magic is real, but also fight back the cultural forces that try to strip this sense from us.
Astrological talismans provide an almost ideal avenue for renewing our connection to a magical worldview—not just in idea, but in lived experience. Like any form of practical magic, talismans can show us that magic is real. More than that, though, as living, sentient spirits who inhabit physical objects, astrological talismans span the gap between the divine and our day-to-day life.
Devotional work with gods, spirits, and celestial intelligences can put us in relation with the divine, but apart from powerful, initiatory experiences, can leave us feeling distant and separated unless we harbor a here-and-now sense of the magical in our daily lives. Having a spirit living on your hand or hanging from your neck can literally and swiftly change your life, your worldview, your embodied sense of magic—change your whole world.
Coming into relationship with astrological talismanic spirits can help usher you into the inspirited world of magic. When magic becomes as certain as a stone, it’s not just an idea, something special and mysterious, a far-off experience that you may wish for, but a normal and everyday part of life. Through our relationship with astrological talismans, we can move toward inhabiting the world as immanent divinity, rather than imagining that magical experiences are rare and difficult to achieve.
The Living Fruits of Deep & Consequential Magic
Astrological talismans show rather than tell. They bring us into a relationship to magic that is not theoretical, not occasional, not there-and-then but here-and-now.
When we say that astrological talismans are the living fruits of deep and consequential magic, this is only barely a metaphor. Just as with a piece of fruit, like a lush red apple or a vibrant orange tangerine, when we hold a talisman in our hands, magic becomes tangible.
This was expressed beautifully by Seleta, who acquired one of our Venus in Pisces talismans from our first collection of astromagical talismanic jewelry, Sanctuary:
“I attuned to this beautiful Venutian talisman and have been wearing it for a few weeks. When we meet each other on days we are together, it evokes joy and wonder. It animates a remembered feeling when believing in magic was not such an act of will but an embodied truth. The way I was certain that beloved toys had a life of their own when I was not around. It was not something I questioned: it just was. My relationship with it has brought a sense of ease into my spiritual practices, a sparkle.”
—Seleta, testimonial for Idola Stellarum’s Venus in Pisces Ancestral Agape talisman
This testimonial made us tear up, because bringing that sparkle, that remembered feeling, that embodied truth to others is the highest hope we have for Idola Stellarum. For this reason, our ideal is to be stellar ambassadors, bringing this message and embodied hope down from the stars to earth. Another testimonial from the same series states this well:
“[Through my relationship with this talisman,] I really feel like I have become an emissary for an entire lineage of spirits and support. I want to thank Idola Stellarum for that work as a way to invite other people to similar kinds of engagement. I think it’s a really beautiful thing that you are doing.”
—Drew Levanti, testimonial for Idola Stellarum’s Venus in Pisces Ancestral Agape talisman
—Drew Levanti, testimonial for Venus in Pisces Ancestral Agape talisman
Our own experience has been that as our relationship with astrological talismans deepens, so too does our sense of connection, wonder, and safety. While our many practices have brought different gifts, our relationships with astrological talismans have brought us a distinct sense of existential security: the deep, magical sense that everything will be okay—not because nothing bad will ever happen, but because we have the relationships, the faith, and the connection to the divine that will carry us through the river of time without the sense of disconnection and doom that derives from the materialist worldview.
Magic is real, we can adorn ourselves with it, and it can change our world.
As stewards of the tradition of astrological magic, it is our privilege to bring the wonder of astrological talismans to others. Sign up to our mailing list for word of our upcoming talismanic collections and workings:
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