What did you have for lunch? I had a bacon and cheese sandwich. Not very vegan, I know. I keep trying to motivate myself to come up with healthier and more ethically conscious alternatives.

Is it my parents fault? Did they perhaps feed me too much bacon as a child? Do I now have an unhealthy attachment to bacon that my genetically less conscientious personality is now powerless to break up with?

I don’t love the school of thought that says society is responsible for all my shortcomings. It makes me feel helpless. The science backs this up. Expert Roy Baumeister’s research on this field at Florida State University proves what we already know about this: being too much of a determinist leads to shittier choices. In numerous studies, they found participants who were primed to believe the power was not in their hands were less likely to work harder to complete a task, or to offer help to other people. So maybe I could have sourced a decent bacon substitute if I had started the day with a magical intention to act with gratitude to Mother Nature. If I had meditate on the Queen of Pentacles card in the tarot minor arcana, perhaps.

But did you know that 90% of US juvenile offenders have childhood trauma? That’s what a study published in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology in 2013 by Dierkhising and others found.

But anyone can make it if they try hard enough, right?

Meritocracy is a lie. You’re not telling me that the top 7% of the population who are lucky enough to be privately educated became 65% of senior judges, 44% of newspaper columnists and 59% of civil service permanent secretaries by having intrinsically superior talent, work ethic? Through being more deserving? “Better?”

So fuck it! The system is rigged so there is no point in trying. Right? Actually, no. Why? Because “more is different”, as the Nobel Prize Winner of Physics, Philip Anderson once said. You’re right, huns. We’re going to get out our pentacles, our sacred water, our herb bundles and we’re going to manifest our way to the top.

Baumeister elaborates: “our actions cannot break the laws of physics, but they can be influenced by things beyond gravity, friction and electromagnetic charges.” According to Baumeister, when it comes to upsetting the established, oppressive “order” of things that keeps people at the bottom down, we have one advantage that many other animals do not: culture.

And that’s where the magic happens.

When Audre Lorde penned the now-famous phrase “self-care is an act of resistance” she must have had some idea of the revolution her words would incite. Although she was speaking explicitly to the experience of women of colour, the magic of this principle has caught fire across all demographics and has application for everyone.

Love yourself. It doesn’t matter if the models the biggest brands use don’t look like you, you’re still beautiful. It doesn’t matter if ableist educational systems have silenced your creativity, you don’t need them to tell you you’re a genius. It doesn’t matter if nobody wants to publish your poems –have you not heard of self-published multi-million copy bestseller poet Rupi Kaur by now? That’s what Amazon is for.

Start each day with a ritual of self-love and a commitment to honour your highest intentions. To love yourself unconditionally.

Whether you’re an atheist, an agnostic or a spiritualist, the healing power of witchcraft has something to offer everyone. You deserve to be healed. You can recover. Your past does not need to dictate your future. You can transform your darkest moments and your deepest pains into your strongest magic.

So put your dancing shoes on.

Get your paintbrush out.

Wear red.

Write your darkest moments on a piece of paper and then declare aloud how they have made you more powerful. Then burn them in a bonfire of self-celebration. Then when the embers have died down and your energy is at its most electric, bless your brothers and sisters with the power to lift themselves and each other up out of the darkness and into the dawn of a new era. You are magic.

Ritual and Magic

How Ritual Can Help You Beat Determinism // Jasmine Crellin