This is part of the Mystical Journey series. If you’re new to the journey, you can begin here.
What if there was a Bureau of Interconnected Meaning, a way to piece together the story of your life, identifying major plot points and the domino of events that made them inevitable, and just as curious, glimpsing where your story is heading?
Well, there is, in a way. Your psyche is a near-infinite filing cabinet, containing all of the info you need (and then some) to co-create the life you desire. The art is in activating your divine algorithm, so you can access the files you need, when you need them.
Jungian Magic is the practice of not only accessing those files but translating their contents into real-world change, one step at a time.
I’ve written before about my visit to an artspace in OKC called Factory Obscura, a dreamlike wander through a coral reef crafted entirely from ribbons and gauze and old packaging and colored lights, and today, I want to riff on that experience.
Together, we’ll meander through the underwater rooms of the mind, discovering, along the way, the tools of Jungian Magic.
Shall we begin? Cue up our ethereal soundtrack:
Watch your head as we make our way through this tunnel here, the walls pulsating with a soft, bluish-green glow, covered in a thick, wrinkling textile–faux fur, maybe? It’s okay, you can touch it. It sort of looks like we’re inside a giant anemone, doesn’t it?
Just up ahead the tunnel ends, and we find ourselves in a cavernous room that, paradoxically, feels cramped, columns staggered throughout the space like a dense forest, making it impossible to see just how far the space extends.
You reach out to run your fingers over the nearest column. It’s covered in nobbly eggshell foam, squishy peaks and valleys bristling all the way to the ceiling.
Someone’s spray painted it in sparkly, metallic colors that catch the stars of light glinting off a disco ball, rotating lazily, and all sorts of trinkets are embedded in the foam: a palm-sized book of nursery rhymes; a plastic baby doll, naked and wide-eyed; a My Little Pony with a luxurious purple mane.
There’s something we’re meant to see here, something we’re meant to find.
You call my name, dragging my attention from a clear plastic bubble containing a miniature kitchenette. I couldn’t quite tell, but it looked like a turnip sitting at a dinner table, eating…turnips? You’re crouched low, peering into a round opening, just big enough, I think, for us to crawl through.
In here? you ask. But I don’t know either, so we make our way inside.
On hands and knees, shuffling slowly, I’m struck by how rarely as an adult I ever really feel the ground in public. When did that stop, crawling and exploring and inspecting things up close? Why shouldn’t we want others to see our curiosity?
We find ourselves in an enclosed cube, lit with pink and yellow fairy lights and its own musical backdrop. We know that this world, in here–it’s different somehow.
Two floor cushions, tufted and velveteen like the rabbit. We settle ourselves in place, cross-legged and waiting. Your eyes close and mine follow–it feels only natural–as the music weaves through my thoughts, inviting my breath to slow while the imagery in my mind grows rich with detail and dynamism, like a jungle overtaking everything in timelapse.
There’s an entire world in my mind, and a path appears.
I wonder, briefly, if you’re seeing the same, but the path beckons like I’m tied to a rope, and I step forward. The path winds through trees, trees that look sewn more than grown. Stitch marks and embroidery twining over the trunks, the buds little tufts of tulle. A textile woodland, and where is it leading me?
I hear a wheezy, cheerful tooting, and behind me, I turn to see a tiny train chugging along the path. As it nears, the whistle blows, and puffs of steam chug from the stack, each one a fluffy, white cotton ball, this world an after-school craft project come to life.
I follow the train as it leads deeper into the quilted woods, a rushing, shirring sound growing louder and louder until there, just beyond the next curve, is a gurgling stream, the water, it seems, made of colored cellophane, animated by some unseen hand so that it crinkles and glints.
What a strange place this is!
The train disappears around the bend, but I’m drawn to kneel at the water’s edge, gazing into its origami current, trying to make out my reflection. And then I do–I see myself, only I’m unlike anything I’ve encountered in the mirror. This is me me. The real me. I don’t know how I know, but I do.
And then, with a start, I’m back. Back in the cube, eyes blinking in the fairy light, and your eyes open, too, returning from wherever you’ve been.
An envelope, creamy smooth with a golden key embossed on the front, rests in the center of the cube, certainly not there before. You nod at me before picking it up, tearing open the flap to slide out a card, neatly typed in a cursive font.
I scooch closer so we can read together:
Welcome to Yourself. It’s good to have you back.
You’ve just experienced an Archetypal Attunement, the first key of Jungian Magic. We thought it best that you be introduced in person, as descriptors don’t really suffice.
You’ll learn more about these Attunements as you progress on the Journey, but what we can tell you now is that each Attunement is a means of traveling to the astral, a realm of vast possibility, the echoic blueprint of all you see in the physical world.
Here is where you will explore the hidden patterns governing your life, unweaving and reweaving the bits that no longer serve into a new and beautiful tapestry of your choosing. These Attunements tap into the power of archetypal stories, which naturally awaken dormant aspects of your psyche–the very aspects you need to craft the life your soul most desires.
You turn the card over, making sure there’s nothing else on the back, before sliding it into your pocket for safekeeping.
It’s time for us to leave the cube and keep exploring, in search of more Jungian Magic keys…
