NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE
Dark Arts, Sex Spells, Money Magic, and Other Things Your Neighbors Aren’t Telling You
By Christine Wicker
Reviewed by Angela Hutchinson
Spirit-Works.net
Magic has united and divided people from the beginning of time. Is it real? Is it a descent into darkness? Is there a true spiritual connection with the Universe? The occult is a controversial topic in many churches, although it was and continues to be practiced in many homes today. “Magical theory, unlike doctrines that stress the inadequacy and weaknesses of humankind, teaches that people have strength and knowledge within them that is hidden and must be uncovered by their own efforts.”
Author Christine Wicker leads the reader on her fascinating journey to find real magic. Relatable and humorous, she brings us to visit with witches, conjures, voodoo practitioners, and of course, self proclaimed elves and werewolves to name a few. She shares her personal struggle with the big banana curse that plagued her for years only to have it disappear after a voodoo headwashing. Her honest and sometimes amazingly open approach strikes a much needed balance of skepticism and humility. The author paints magic with a broad brush. She does not limit her search to the more strikingly obvious deviations of an overly practical society, Wicker writes of Pentecostals, a very popular, charismatic form of Christianity, as well as self help/motivational programs. They all partake in magical thinking. “At its most basic level, it means that there is a stream of power, life, energy, intelligence, spirit, call it what you will, that courses through the universe. Magical practice is the attempt to notice, to understand, to channel, and to control the force.”
Wicker addresses the rich history of the occult movement in America and across the ocean. Low and high magic, philosophers of the past, Christianity’s tie to magic are all intriguing topics within the pages of Not in Kansas Anymore. During this daring and engaging journey, the author finds herself not necessarily changing the world around her, rather interpreting it differently. For instance, she learns that magic practitioners have a weak sense of dualism, good and evil, and her own sense of extreme dualism was questioned. “Good and bad intermingle, and because they do, I could never find the purity I wanted, not in myself and not in anyone else. Once I accepted that idea, I stopped beating myself up so much. Whenever I tried to do good and something bad came from it in addition to the good, I said to myself, There’s the dark side. I began to see the intermingling of light and dark in other situations….It felt as though I had gone from reasoning as a child to being an adult.”
Wicker examines the 4 bridges that connect “magic and the mundane”:
1) Experiencing magic in childhood.
2) Practitioners “come to magic after being so knocked down that they need something to life them up”.
3) Religious seeking.
4) “People embrace magic because of their experience, but then the reverse occurs. They experience magic because they’ve embraced it.”
This path pulls you inward and you must learn to listen to your own feelings, your own authority. Wicker speculates, “here’s an idea that seems radical and a little frightening to me: if we’re not good at truth and we are good at meaning, maybe those of us who are merely trying to live our lives as best we can would do better to give truth a bit of a rest and pursue meaning.” How we perceive life, and not necessarily what may be deemed reality, can produce a life of peace and joy. It is the meaning we decide to give it.
The author met with the diverse world of magic to find and experience real magic, only to realize it was about choice. The search brought her far enough to understand she had a decision to make. “Writing Not in Kansas Anymore changed me forever. For the better? I’ll let you, dear reader, be the judge of that. It taught me that magic is in every life. I thought our choice was simple- to believe or not to believe in magic. But I was wrong. We have only one choice with regard to magic. To notice or not to notice. It’s happening in all our lives. Why? I don’t know. I only know that if you look for it, you’ll find it.”
Not in Kansas Anymore is transformative and liberating with a touch of comedy. After all, don’t we all get a little too serious in life?
Please bear with this personal note from the reviewer:
This book brought me back to my own sense of alienation as a child, I had crossed eyes too and I always found myself choosing what’s left over because of my own banana curse. What a small, small world eh? I also revisited my own upbringing in the Pentecostal church. See? This is synchronicity. The fact that I was blessed enough to read the story of a complete stranger, and see my own life in her words. . This is magic and it’s the way I choose to operate my own life.