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Hello from a newbie - ex-vicar / magician / writer!

Just a wee intro, from a Newbie…

Great to be here. What a wonderful site etc. I feel so encouraged by what I've been reading about 'Spiritual England.'

Briefly, I am a C of E Priest, who served for about ten years before taking a drastic step of becoming a freelance writer-magician. I perform what I call ‘Soulful Magic’ (the use of Stage Illusions to communicate spiritual ideas) and write books that bridge the gap between the two worlds of religion and magic.

I have had a long term love-hate relationship to Christianity, not least because of its current obsession with a success, perfection and narrow dogmatism. It seems to be being taken over by a culture of ‘we are the true believers’ and ‘my way is God’s way’ etc. This leaves almost no room for grace, and no room for the gift of being allowed to screw things up and get things wrong. I hold that we learn more about ourselves and more about The Divine through our failures than through our successes. I’ve always loved the original biblical stories of our faith because they’re all about folk who screw things up, fall, fail, sin, mess up etc. They seem to find light in the mess more than in the perfection. In fact they seem to find light and life and meaning BECAUSE of the mess. Those who follow the rules and do it all the ‘true way’ seem to have no room left for inner light – whereas the woman who weeps buckets over JC’s feet, or the boy who robs his dad and comes home in a pool of tears… well they meet the light head on.

So I use magic now - to try and communciate all this stuff!

I have taken my magic to places far and wide… and have been able to visit places and peoples whom I would have never encountered, were I still inside the institution. I have performed for huge groups of Alternative Spiritual Seekers at Glastonbury. I have stayed with the Leader of the largest Order of neo-Druids in the world and performed / lectured to his guests. I have stood a circle of Glasgow Pagans and shared my story and magic with them and what I have learned from these remarkable encounters has been totally priceless. It has blown my tiny mind – the light and love and mystery and magic.

Re. Magic - some ask me how liberal minded Christian magicians can retain the sense of mystery without sacrificing their intellectual integrity.

Well for now I must say that, over the last two years, my naturally skeptical side (99% of stage magicians are huge skeptics / i.e. Derren Brown) has actually given way to a much more open-minded approach to genuine encounters of deep mystery / magic etc.

Magic tricks can do two things: they can leave folk with a puzzle to work out - thus placing them firmly inside their own rational / logical ‘left-brain’ selves, or they can evoke true wonder and enchantment - thus placing them inside their more intuitive ‘right-brain’ selves. I try to encourage the latter. This does not mean, of course, that I try to make folk gullible or un-intellectual. Far from it. Rather, I try to show people how magic is a deeply powerful tool for encouraging the very same experience we get from encountering powerful symbolism, myth and metaphor etc.

The trouble with fundamentalism is that it uses such myths and metaphors as if they were literally true, thus making ‘truth’ dependent on fact. Then, those who ‘buy into it’ are gradually convinced that this must be the ‘One True Way’ because it’s based on a fact. My work is about exploding these ‘facts’ and transforming them back into the myths from which they came, thus (ironically) giving them a much greater sense of power to speak, heal, comfort, challenge, breath grace etc. than they ever could as mere facts of history.

That’s all I can say for now as I have somewhere to fly off to. If anyone wishes to ask me any questions at all about my magic or my neo-pagan encounters I’d be very happy, and will try my best to make sense.

With blessings of the bright summer sun,

Mark Townsend

http://www.magicofsoul.com

Originally posted by: BlueRaven