Have you ever tried to buy your dreams? It is easy to get caught up shopping for things that actually are hard work to achieve. I know I did this with magic in the years where I could not quite figure out how to know I had found magic.

Crystals, cards and candles. Incense, cloths and cauldrons. Candle holders, wands and staffs. Books, courses and classes.

At some point I bought everything.

A mix of a feeling of inadequacy that began with a longing in kinder-garden and matured into full-fledged insecurity in my teenage years combined with excellent marketing led me to a place where the shelves of my home were loaded with occult books and magical paraphernalia.

Sometimes I still catch myself browsing the internet or wanting to look up spiritual stores in any city I visit with the hopes of finding that one thing I can buy that will put an end to my longing for meaning and herald in the age of magic and spirit led life. In this age I am wise and fulfilled and create my work, care for my loved ones and raise my children with the wisdom of all times. When I die I will be remembered as someone special who even if they did not change the whole world, still managed to touch the lives of many with a dollop of magic and meaning that heals and ripples out.

I imagine this touch of magic will result in people caring more for animals, for plants and trees and rocks and sand, for clean air and other humans. I imagine this touch to softly heal the traumas we carry so that cold and harsh hearts may warm and soften.

For many years I shopped for magic. Sometimes I wonder if the only reason I co-founded an online shop that specializes in old, rare and new tarot cards, was so that I had an excuse to visit every magical shop wherever I went and buy interesting decks. I barely use any tarot decks but a small selection, yet I have amassed more than a hundred only to once in a blue moon pull them out of the shelf, touch them and sometimes reorganize them all. In the end I only decide this is not "my deck," these are not the cards I will read the fortunes of women, men and children with. These are not the cards by which I shall predict when the great wheel turns another spoke. To this day I have not found "the deck." I have managed to find many a good home for many decks by helping to sell them on www.tarocks.com, including some from my own collection!

Shopping for magic never brought me the satisfaction I hoped it would. It did enable me to give many gifts. A singing bowl here, a deck of cards there, some milagros gifted for a while to anyone who visited my home. Some candles rolled of honey wax for a friend casting a spell, some crystals for client magic and gratitude, and some wild harvested copal to other clients just getting started on their path. It is even more fun to gift than to buy!

But meaning, wisdom and magic cannot be found in the items or experiences that money can buy. I know this. I never really wanted to know this. I love shopping, especially when I feel gloomy.

Even though it seems like a fantastic route to take, I was forced to reflect why I could not find this magic I sought for outside of myself. I knew that the place of discovery would be within, in my own heart.

Finding magic in my own heart means that I have to trust myself. I need to think I am valuable and good enough to be able to translate the lessons of the linden and the birch tree, the rocks and the rivers, the ocean and the stars into practice. I would need to be confident enough to trust that those whispered words spoken silently upon winds during moments of meditation were words of wisdom I could apply to my daily interactions. I would need to believe that the feeling in my gut that was particularly strong when I stood with my feet in the ocean was an actual direction I could apply to my working life. I would need to trust myself that what I felt with my five senses was real and wiser than the words of a book could ever be. I would need to understand that exploring around beaver tracks and paying attention to the environment was better than any book or course. I would need to learn to breathe.

How absolutely terrifying.

How totally against a consumerist world to think that there is no need to buy anything. That it is enough to ask the winds and the mountains and my five senses and the flame of a candle.

How totally against an industry that desires nothing more but to shorten my attention span and keep me busy even when I am resting to think that it is in the quiet moments of staring into nothingness and breathing deeply that meaning and magic can be found.

But this is exactly where the magic lies. It is in the honey and the beehive. It is in my arms when I hug my family. It is in the soles of my feet as they roll off the ground. It is in the moment when I stand outside beneath the stars and feel moved to whisper words, light a candle, and fill a heart shaped bowl with fresh water. It is in the relationships I have, with people, and myself, with the landscapes around me and all the lives upon, above and beneath them.

With all that being said, there are some courses, books, and items that I have bought and been gifted that are a big part of the magic I live every day. There's a big difference between wanting to buy an achievement, or acquiring something to participate in an experience. The latter is quite wonderful.

Credits: Text and picture by Pipaluk. Picture programmed using audio tracks and VDMX5.