Magic lives all around us, in us, as us! Magic, as connection, liminality and surrender!

Magical Guest Series with Liminal Walker Julie Schmidt

There could be no more perfect way to close out our Magical Guest Series than with this insightful exploration of magic by shamanic seeker Julie Schmidt.

Julie is a treasured member of the Inner Sanctum of Heretics here on Substack who never fails to bring to our explorations a depth and resonance that invites us all to a deeper plane.

Her own Substack publication—Walking the Liminal is one of my favorite… all ways inviting me deeper into myself and the world.

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I’m honored to be a quest writer here on Mystery, Magic & Mayhem while Allysha is away on a magical adventure in France. I love that she and I both understand magic as something not fantastical or removed, but as a natural way of relating with the world. A way rooted in beauty, cycles, and sacred presence. Even when forgotten by modern eyes, magic is always here, waiting to be seen. That’s why I treasure Allysha’s Substack, she continually reminds us of the wonder within us and the enchantment that surrounds us.

In honor of Allysha, a writing on Magic…

✨Magic and Connection

Real magic is not the sleight of hand that dazzles on stage nor the age-old tale of witches wielding power to bend nature or people to their will.

No, magic is the living pulse of existence.

The heartbeat of life, the unseen wisdom that weaves all things together. It speaks in a language of synchronicity, the glimmer we see out of the corner of our eye, the deep guttural promptings of our intuition, and the way a crow circles just when we're asking for a sign.

Magic cannot be manufactured, instead it’s a truth we remember. Not something we possess but what we meet in this present moment. We are not separate from this scintillating and vibrating mystery. We are born of it.

Each tree, each blade of grass, every creature humming its unique song, this magic of life. Our Earth is not a backdrop to our lives, but is our kin, our mother. We are formed from her soils, her breath moves through our lungs, her waters flow in our veins, her fires fuel our passions. When we forget this, it’s like we have severed the thread that connects us to our source. Remembrance is our coming home.

To live magically is to live in relationship. With the moon, the seasons, the weather. With our ancestors and our dreams. With the silence beneath the sound and the stillness within every movement.

The web of life is not a metaphor, IT IS REAL, and we are woven into it.

Magic and the Liminal

Centuries ago, magic was inseparable from spirituality, healing, medicine, science, and religion. It was the golden thread that bound them together. Over time, all these have become their own distinct institutions, mostly divorced from one another. Magic, once central, was cast to the edges. Relegated to the heretics, mystics, witches and outcasts. Many who were persecuted, burned or killed.

This unraveling marked a shift, one that intentionally moved us away from deep communion with the world to categorizing, creating distinct demarcations and polarities that sanctify one thing only to quash another. We see this today: in politics, religion, and our culture. A tendency to elevate one side while condemning the other.

Yet polarities are innately connected. Conflict only arises from our beliefs about them. These opposites naturally dance as interdependent partners. Pairs held together by a dynamic tension, a liminal space where they form a collaborative relationship. As we see in these examples:

Day and night
Ebb and flow
Internal and external
Activity and rest
Alone and together
Inhaling and exhaling

And those we struggle with:

Grief and joy
Birth and Death
Good and evil
Liberal and conservative
Pain and pleasure
Hierarchy and collaboration

To dance with the opposites is to dwell in the liminal, the threshold between worlds, where magic lives.

🌀Magic and Surrender

The world is shifting, and many of us are standing in the doorway, between what was and what will be. This is not a mistake. It is a calling.

To step into the liminal is to remember we are not here to conquer the world, but to be in deep kinship with it. To let the sacred speak through wind, root, river and flame. To recognize ourselves as part of a vast mythos, an ancient, ever-unfolding story.

Let us walk barefoot and heart-first. Let us bow to the unseen, the wild, the holy in all things. Magic is not elsewhere; it is right here! Asking us to slow down, listen, and surrender to the wisdom and beauty that is always with us.

Surrender is not a defeat. It’s yielding to the sacred flow. An offering of ourselves to that liminal space between doing and being. Just like a river as it releases to the shape of the land and finds it flow. We too are invited to step into life’s deeper current. To release the grip of certainty. To meet the Mystery with reverence, trust, and an open heart.

It’s tuning in and paying attention. Noticing how your body knows when a storm is coming. How a hawk appears just as you whisper a prayer.

At this threshold, logic unravels and wonder begins to bloom.

When we lean into this natural tension of the liminal, we discover true magic:
The grace to be fully present with what is.
The clarity to live our soul’s purpose.
The revelation that we are not just part of the magic - we are the magic.

🪄The Practice of Magic

• ✨ GRATITUDE
  Gratitude is a nectarian elixir, the most potent alchemical spell that can be spoken. For me, it loosens the grip I have on scarcity and not-enoughness. Every thank-you opening my heart and weaving me back into the sacred reciprocity of giving and receiving. Which naturally reveals the abundant beauty that’s already here, maybe cloaked in the ordinary but waiting to be seen with curious eyes.

• 🌿 NATURE
  Nature is my living grimoire and is like an herbal remedy. When I wander beneath ancient redwoods, trace the tides along the shore, whisper wishes to stars, or bury my hands in soil, I return to the sacred rhythm of life. I tap into the magic moving through me as it touches all that’s around me.

• 🙏 PRAYER
  Prayer is the spellcraft of the soul. An ancient weaving of word, emotion, and yearning. Whether whispered as a blessing, sung as an invocation, or silently held as devotion, prayer is most potent when it rises from the heart. I offer mine to the Beloved - be it the Goddess, Nature, the Luminous Unseen, or even the deep mystery within myself. It’s a bridge between worlds.

• 🔥 RITUAL
  Oh, how I adore ritual. Lighting candles, tending altars, calling in the elements, the directions, my guides, ancestors, and the Goddess Herself. Each gesture, each symbol, a key that unlocks the doorway to the sacred. I include divination into this too. Tarot, oracle, runes; portals into the archetypal and unseen. Rituals and incantations draw me into a deeper current, where presence is the magical pulse in every breath.

🌟Final Thoughts

Magic is curiosity, the key that opens the door to wonderment.
It’s love, the sacred power awakened through connection.
And it’s hope, the conviction that even in adversity, things can change.

Magic is an art where intention is everything.
Inviting us to tune in and step into the liminal.
Using what is given for healing, awareness, and transformation.
Always with care, always with love.
Living with reverence.

For you, me, all of us are the magic.