What Makes Work Mystical

Papa is fond of saying that what makes magical or mystical work effective is the hand that does it, not the ingredients.

In his house, the development of your character takes precedence over the sort of stuff people love to interpret as magical—making ‘potions’ and the like. As generous as he is with recipes, much of the work we do is on dealing with our issues and becoming a whole, complete person.

Through becoming a whole, complete person, we actually gain a greater capacity for mystical or magical work, in part because whatever capacities we have for it are not being wasted on dealing with our issues. This is not to say that people can’t have talent in that direction without doing something about, say, their paranoia or fundamental distrust of relationships, but that people who aren’t experiencing paranoia and relationship issues tend to be more consistently effective.

They’re also more pleasant to be around, which never hurts.

In a fundamental way, what makes work mystical is its focus on making the person whole and complete: wherever what we are doing is concerned with helping the person deal with their fears, anxieties, toxic relationship patterns, or PTSD, it is concerned with what most religions would call the soul.

The soul is the focus of mystical work—the part of the person which exists between incarnations, and the seed of the divine in them. Wherever the work being done is to help someone be free of the things which keep them from being able to recognize, experience, and eventually join the divine, it is in service of the divine.

For me, in the service of love. What I do in the service of love is mystical, and in many ways, its own reward.