“In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.”
“Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.”
– C. S. Lewis, in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
You have heard it said that the word is governed by “scientific laws”—that, at its smallest scales, the world is a collection of particles of such-and-such a sort (or fields, or strings, or whatever it is the physicists have on their minds these days). You have heard it said that fire is just a rapid oxidation reaction, that the stars are just very big fires, or that a waterfall is just the inevitable consequence of a sufficiently large and appropriately arranged group of hydrogen and oxygen atoms.
Do not listen.
It is my contention that the world is governed by magic.
By “magic” I do not mean the craft of the performance magician, nor even the craft of a real sorcerer. It is not a craft at all, in fact. It is the sort of thing which underlies and structures the motions of a world. I could give many clear and obvious examples: it was at work when Harry spoke to the snake, when Yoda felt the galaxy-wide suffering of his fellow Jedi, when music first moved a person to tears, when Frodo’s vial shone in Shelob’s lair, when Aslan was raised from the dead, when mist came up from a New Hampshire lake in the first sunlit hours of October 2nd, 1981, when Arthur pulled the sword from the stone, when (somewhere in the world today) a child laughed.
Now, I am certain that any reader who has seen a mist come up from a lake, or has heard a child laugh, or knows that Aslan rose from the dead, will need no argument from me. You know very well already that the world is magic. But for the rest, here is an argument.
My argument begins with a challenge. I challenge you to come up with any definition of “magic” which is i) plausible, ii) does not beg the question, and yet iii) which does not pertain to the operations of our world. Take a moment to think. I can wait.
Perhaps you thought to yourself, “I shall define ‘magic’ so that it is necessarily excluded from the natural world—perhaps I will say ‘magic is the supernatural’.” First, that’s obviously cheating—see Condition (ii). Second, even so, it hasn’t worked. I contend also that the world is run through with the supernatural. More, it is founded upon the supernatural. Do you disagree? Well, define “supernatural”. “Not natural”, you say? What do you mean by “natural”? If, at this point, you simply gesture wildly around you, you have lost. Everything you are gesturing at is magic. (You still disagree? Well, then define your terms. With less regressing, if you please.)
Allow me to suggest a way out. I propose that we define “magic” as the product of beauty and mystery. (I confess that it’s an illustrative definition, not an analytical one—less like defining platypus as a semiaquatic monotrematous mammal, more like defining platypus as what you’d get if you crossed a duck with a beaver. But I think the latter style of definition is more useful to us. The former tells you a few precise but limited facts about a thing, but the latter gets across the main idea. At any rate, that’s our concern at the moment.)
Anyway, if you will accept my definition (and perhaps even if you will not), then I can prove to you definitively that the world is governed by magic.
Have you heard of the jellyfish turritopsis dohrnii? After reaching adulthood, it can revert to an immature state and live its life over again—and it seems able to repeat this indefinitely.
Have you heard that traveling nearer to the speed of light will make everyone you pass by seem to move and change in slow motion?
Have you heard that an entire tree, perhaps nearly a hundred times taller than you, can grow from a seed that will fit between your fingers?
Have you heard that ii = e-π/2?
Have you heard that the mantis shrimp is able to see by ultraviolet as well as visible light, and is even able to see according to the polarization of light?
Have you heard of Stephen the Deacon, who, in the very act of being unjustly stoned to death for blasphemy, forgave his killers?
Have you heard that the largest stars we know of at the moment could fit the orbit of Jupiter inside them?
Have you heard that a droplet of water is able to take hold of a ray of light, and turn it back in the direction from which it came—sometimes even revealing its secret inner structure (which, as it turns out, is made up of a thousand brilliant colors)?
Have you heard that a man and a woman, by a special sort of loving embrace, are able to create a new person?
Proof upon proof, dear reader—proof of a caliber that would make any lawyer’s eyes well up. Nobody would ever have believed a single one of these things I have listed, except we have seen them. I am confident that you will now admit that our whole world operates on nothing less than the most powerful, most enigmatic wizardry.
But perhaps even now you will say, “Well, yes, but the water droplet reflects the light because it has such-and-such properties, and is subject to such-and-such quantum mechanical laws, etc., etc.” Yes indeed! So you are aware, then, that collected water forms a surface! And you are aware that light is wont to interact with certain surfaces of certain sorts in certain ways, according to spectacularly elegant mathematical patterns! Truly, there is no end to the mystery. Dig, oh scientists, dig! Show us more and more of the magic!
(Some people talk as if scientific explanations diminish the magic. I could scarcely imagine a sillier view. As if you observe that some crushed-up grass seed and some water can be mixed in a certain way, and they will rise—wonder of wonders!—and that baking this yields the most delicious of all foods, but then someone comes along and tells you about “yeast” and “metabolism”, and supposedly this clears away the magic. Ha! As if you have a better grasp of metabolism, whatever that is, than of rising. As if invisible airborne creatures are less mysterious to you than bread. As if either is less wondrous.)
Perhaps you will say that all I am doing is encouraging you to marvel. Far from it! I am not telling you to do anything—I am telling you a truth about the world. I am telling you that the world is magic. Do with that what you will, but do not flatten it into an imperative. Do not make it about yourself. Don’t do anything; just receive.
I do confess, however, that I myself would wonder at you if you were truly able to gaze upon our world’s mysteries with your mouth closed and your eyes ready to follow. I would indeed expect the looking to change you somehow. It is a tragedy that anyone manages to learn about fire and water and life without laughing in joy, or tearing up, or grinning like a dunce. Yet we do manage it. So often, somehow, we are stonefaced. We brush unblinking by mysteries far beyond our understanding. We weren’t always so dull, you know. When we were children, we saw more clearly. We saw just how deeply delightful, and how delightfully deep, everything is. (Oh, to watch a child behold a lily pad, or a fiddle, or an ice cream cone for the first time! Again and yet again, this too is magic.) But we have forgotten the wisdom of our youth—I do not know how.
For you who have chanced upon this letter, my hope is that you will remember. Everything is magic. Just look, and you’ll see.
[This is a heavily revised version of a comment which I wrote for my school’s literary journal (The Quad) in 2015.]