The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life

Standing on the blessings delivered in Care of the Soul and Souls Mates, Thomas Moore now relates this very practical and personal guide to renewing our daily, seemingly ordinary lives with a magical Re-Enchantment.

Note: Audio may take several seconds to start

Thomas Moore Text Excerpt

Thomas Moore
I been studying magic for about twenty five years. Now by magic I mean a long tradition that’s been written and talked about and practiced in Europe for, I don’t know, a couple thousand years, three thousand years! But I think it’s left out of the books and left out of, certainly out of education.
No one knows about this history of magic. But I’ve been reading it very intensely for all these years. What I did was decide instead of writing a book about the magic and about the history, to write a book about our ordinary daily lives and incorporate some of the principles of these ideas about magic.
Tom
When you say magic, it might help us to get some definition there. You’re not talking particularly say about alchemist or about Merlins are you?
Thomas Moore
Well alchemists certainly. Alchemists because alchemists were some of the magicians, how would I put it? Some of the magicians of the past were alchemists. Not all of them were. Alchemy is a very interesting way of going about enchanting one’s life. And astrology is another.
There are many, many ways of bringing magic into ordinary experience. Now what I’m doing is not just taking this popular notion of magic. I’m trying to deepen it somewhat.
Tom
Alright, I guess I’m trying to get some more flesh on the term magic, because it means so many things to different people.
Thomas Moore
Sure, that’s right. What I mean by it in basing my thoughts on many of these old texts, is that when you read these old books on magic, what they say basically is that there is more to nature, to human nature and to culture and to the natural world, than you see with the scientific eye.
That, for example, people like to go into the woods, into a forest, because they say they feel better, it does something for them, refreshes them. Well that itself is a kind of magic. It’s like recognizing that nature is not just there to be used for, as a commodity. But that it has a spirituality. There is a nature spirituality. And that is part of the magical world.
What I’m saying is that if we were more sophisticated about this the way people in the past were, of this dimension of the natural world and other things, then I think that we would not have as many problems, first of all. Secondly, we wouldn’t be trying to solve our problems in such a rational and intellectual way, but would realize that by living in this world in a different way, we would be healed in many different ways.
Tom
So the world is naturally a healer, our environment, the context of our lives?
Thomas Moore
Absolutely. So people who garden, as an example. A lot of people, millions of people in this country garden. And I would say that this is a form of magic. A garden is a magical thing……