Real Magick.

Real Magick.

When we talk about real and reality we get into some sticky areas. Philosophy, religion, belief and faith even psychology. 
I am waaaaaaaaaaaaay under caffeinated (my kettle died today) to debate or theorize about the substance of shared and singular reality.
So instead I will address a trend. This trend is to beat someones else practice with a stick of "critical history" or rude comments about how someones path/faith/magick was stolen or mashed into non indigenous practices, there by making it/them/"they" unworthy, wrong or suspect.
James Frazer supposed in his mighty tome The Golden Bough that before there was a "stone-age" or religion there was a "magic-age". This is a striking thought, at least to me. Anthropologist search hard and deep for something universally human and magick (I include prayer in this) seems to be it. So if we are one kind of beings wearing different colour meat suits from the same gene pool, how can anyone "steal" someone elses magick?
What we have here is a kind of cultural snobbery. I am not Indian or Asian, but I LOVE both kinds of food. Am I breaking some terrible cultural law? What if I add soy sauce to my Irish stew? What then? Ah but it is not authentic. So long as I do not think soy sauce is Irish, or that it makes my stew Asian all I have is MY tasty tasty dinner. Now it is never going to be the same as Great Aunt Aoife's but that is okay. You see cultures blend. They rub up against each other and share things. Food, music, art, architecture, ideas. This is not something new it has been happening for thousands of years. Romans invaded the British mainland to find many Celts speaking Greek!
Now; I really do think that moaning about dead people who can not defend themselves is a good idea either. Of course Gerald Gardener's practice had elements of shamanic practices he saw while in India, I imagine he drank spiced chai and love spicy food too. He wrote from his place of authenticity and his life was leaking though into his work. That is what happens. We do not exist in cultural vacuums. It would have been unreal, unauthentic if his life and experience DID NOT shape his work. That doesn't make his work less valid. His knowledge (which was huge and extensive) any less. He did something amazing. He was very brave and very courageous in a way that is hard for us to appreciate now and the rituals and books he wrote had many influences and while some are obvious, some are not. Authenticity comes from a sincere place. A place the the person is entirely themselves and present. In that sense he was probably more authentic than most other people to write a book about magick since.
Magick isn't something weird and "out there", it is something within us. It is a real force that has threads linking us all.