Farming is Magick!!

In Heka I go all the way back to those humans that cave painted to demonstrate that humans have been using magick… well as long as there have been humans. But from their I jumped to ancient Egypt, the pinnacle of magick as I see it.

It was not until I talked to the rather lovely Todd Elliot that I had to face-palm and realize I had somehow missed a rather large and rather important stage of human development, where magick was perhaps deployed in its most natural environment of all: farming.

In fact, farming may be one of the clearest examples of what magick originally was: participating intelligently in forces you cannot directly control.

Think about the correspondence:

Magick: intention + timing + correspondence + ritual action + unseen forces → manifestation

Farming: intention + timing + seed + soil + weather + unseen biological forces → manifestation

And the parallels get almost absurdly precise:

• Timing matters — lunar cycles, seasons, planting windows, celestial observation.

• Correspondence matters — this plant belongs in this soil, with this much light, with this companion, under these conditions.

• Ritual action matters — ploughing, sowing, watering, pruning, harvesting: repeated actions performed at the correct moment.

• Reciprocity matters — you take from the land, but must also feed it.

• Invisible agencies matter — fertility, decomposition, microbes, weather, pollination; historically these were understood through gods, spirits, ancestors, land beings, etc.

• Transformation matters — a tiny apparently inert object disappears underground and becomes an entirely different living form.

• And most importantly, you cannot command the result. You create the conditions under which the desired result is more likely to emerge.

That last one is huge.

The farmer doesn’t make the seed germinate.

The farmer arranges conditions.

And that is remarkably close to the model of magick I have been developing for myself. Constructing the conditions in which a particular possibility has the best chance of being actualized!

So here is the face palm….farming maybe be the perfect model for magick! You don’t create the result. You create the conditions that allow the desired result to appear!

Todd Elliott’s material therefore isn’t really a weird side branch about “magical farming.” Farming itself may be one of humanity’s earliest laboratories for learning the fundamental magical proposition:

How do I enter into relationship with forces larger than myself and persuade reality toward a desired outcome?

It is certainly worth a watch : )

More soon lovelies xxx

p.s. The wonder Janine told me to spread the word for Aussies but Todds book is $104 on Amazon Booktopia Aus has it for $75.