Purple Magazine
— The Magic Issue #42 F/W 2024

editor’s letter

In thinking about this chaotic world and sensing collapse, I instinctively chose to explore magic for this issue. Without knowing much about it, I began with many questions: could the world of magic be more than entertainment, more than dubious esoteric practices, and more than a realm of coded signs, cryptic symbols, and fantastical imagery? Could magic be not a miraculous solution, but an alternative? Could magic revive beneficial practices that have been forgotten? A world of neglected possibilities? Or, even better, a potential re-enchantment of the world? Or a faint glimmer of hope?

After finishing the issue, to my great surprise, the answer is yes! Magic works! Magic can change the operating system of the universe. It can take control of reality and transform how we perceive life in this chaotic world.

How is this possible, you might ask in response to this novice’s enthusiasm?

First, magic can truly change the way we perceive reality and offer a different paradigm, one that mocks analysis and rational thinking. It liberates us from our addiction to language and logic. It offers a beneficial confusion, a joyous upheaval of perception, and a “non-knowledge” embracing the unknown or the uncertain. Also, magic connects us to the world in an animistic way, reminding us that we are living beings interacting with all other living beings — plants, animals, and the natural world — and Earth’s cycles and vibrations. It reawakens a forgotten pagan sensibility and resonates with contemporary ecofeminist movements, mind expansion, and psychedelic research.

Finally, magic is the power of words, the mystery of art, the Music of the Spheres from the quantum to the cosmological. But, you might argue, magic is nothing but illusion and manipulation. Yes. And that’s the beauty of it.

— Olivier Zahm

[Table of contents]

The Magic Issue #42 F/W 2024

Table of contents

© Purple Institute

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