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We
are pleased to present the following
excerpt from the book
Not in Kansas
Anymore: Dark Arts, Sex Spells, Money
Magic, and Other Things Your Neighbors
Aren't Telling You
by Christine Wicker
HarperSanFrancisco -
September 2006
Chapter 2.
Eat Only Chicken the
Day of the Game
I don't believe in magic, of course.
Hardly anybody does, but we all live by
it. It permeates our lives every day, and
we wouldn't give it up for all the science
on earth. Most of us can't. We can't
because we aren't aware of how completely
we live within its thrall. Who can break a
bond they don't know exists?
My first magical lesson came when I was
five. I was playing with the crippled girl
who lived down the street. We didn't like
each other much, but being the only
children in the neighborhood, we made do
with each other in a grudging, bickering
way. At one point in our play she took two
bananas off the kitchen counter and told
me to pick the one I wanted. I wanted the
bigger one. I knew I shouldn't take the
big banana. To take it from a crippled
girl would be especially bad. But I wanted
it. So I took it.
At this point, in defense of myself,
I'd like to mention that I was cross-eyed.
I'm not saying that cross-eyed trumps
crippled, and to be completely truthful,
it wasn't much of a factor in my case --
morally speaking, I mean -- because I
didn't know I was cross-eyed. No one had
mentioned it, and I wasn't an observant
child.
I might have forgotten about the
bananas by now except that mine had a big
brown soft spot in it that ran all the way
down the side. About two inches of my
banana was edible. Her banana was perfect,
and she ate it while I watched. If I had
been generous, she would have been eating
the rotten banana.
I knew what this meant. Somebody was
watching, keeping score. It was God maybe.
Who it was didn't matter. What mattered
was that I got the message. I never have
taken the big banana again. I've never
taken the biggest piece of chicken or the
last scoop of mashed potatoes or the
cookie with the most chocolate chips. I've
never pushed anybody aside at the bargain
table. I say to myself that I don't care
as much about such things. I don't want
them as much as other people do, but
that's not the truth. The truth is that I
am still ruled by the bad magic of the big
banana.
I was smart enough not to tell anybody
in my family about it. If I had, they
would have given me the horselaugh and
brayed, "Taught you a lesson, huh?" I
didn't call this experience magical even
to myself, but it clearly was, just as
magical as that bad witch who wasn't
invited to the party and got so mad that
she cursed poor little Sleeping
Beauty.
It was a curse for sure. Luckily the
big banana curse was a minor, manageable
spell, evoked by my behavior and not by a
capricious universe. The behavior it
evoked dovetailed well with my Christian
upbringing. But the lesson of the banana
was deeper even than Christian teachings
because it didn't have to be taught. It
had been experienced, and it seemed to
affirm something basic in the fabric of
reality. It didn't, of course. But it
seemed to.
Life went on. My eye got fixed, sort
of. The doctors call it satisfactory. It
turns outward a little instead of inward a
lot. It hasn't been much of a handicap, as
far as I know, and it has helped me some.
I understand outsiders in a way that not
everybody does. Or I try to. Not because
I'm smarter or more sensitive, but I know
how it feels to be among those who can be
summed up with one word of physical
attribute. There are lots of them --
cross-eyed, fat, crippled, bald,
weak-chinned, spastic, crazy -- and
knowing what that feels like makes me
listen harder. Or try to. If I wanted to
make it a joke, I'd say I look at the
world askance. Nobody who knows me would
disagree with that.
I grew up. I became a big-city
newspaper reporter, which is not a hopeful
or fanciful or magical profession. If
anybody had asked me two years ago to
describe the age we live in, I'd have
painted a picture right in line with what
the world's wise thinkers expected of me,
except that it would be utterly
dismal.
I'd have said science is our true God.
I'd have said that we live in a world of
marvels gone stale, adrift in an empty
cosmos. We hear no voices but our own. We
believe no omens, listen to no oracles. If
otherworldly visions come to us, we close
our eyes. And we never, ever think that we
might have some great task, noble destiny,
or grand calling. Such thoughts are
generally believed to indicate a need for
medication.
That's how lots of people would
describe life, but if an extraterrestrial
were to watch these nonbelievers as they
go about their lives, it would become
quite clear that they do believe in much
more than a material, soulless world. I
first began to know about these hidden
beliefs because I wrote a book on Lily
Dale, a western New York community of
Spiritualists where people have been
talking to the dead for five generations.
I wrote the book because I thought people
with such extravagant ideas were rare, an
oddity, something strange that would
excite wonder. What a chucklehead.
Whether the dead talk back is a matter
of contention, of course. I was careful
about that, not wanting to be branded a
crazy. But it didn't matter. In writing
the book, I'd been transformed. I'd become
a person who could be told things. People
all over the country started coming up to
me in bookstores, at meetings, during
parties to tell me stories they didn't
usually share with strangers.
They'd often start by glancing to each
side. They would shrug as if they weren't
to be held responsible for what was
coming. Then they'd say, "I don't know
what this means," or, "I'm just going to
tell you what happened." One by one they
came, butchers and bakers and candlestick
makers. Few would have described
themselves as believers in magic.
Once, for instance, I was in a Bible
Belt state with a group of women who raise
charitable funds for children's hospitals.
I talked about my book on the town that
talks to the dead. When the talk turned to
spirituality, heads nodded about the room
as several women attested to their strong
belief in Jesus Christ as their own
personal, living savior and to their
complete reliance on the Bible as the
direct word of God, suitable for any
occasion. I thought, Oh, boy. I hope
they don't go to praying and try to save
me. I hadn't needed to worry. They
finished dessert, and then they lined up
to tell me things.
"My mother read tea leaves all her
life. If a relative was about to die, she
always knew it," said one. Another told me
that her husband had second sight. His
whole family had witnessed it.
The eighty-year-old former president of
the group reached into her bosom to pull
out a silver cross with a little charm
next to it.
"Know what this is?" she asked.
"It's the evil eye," I said. According
to magical theory, the eye on her charm
would stare down the evil eye if it were
directed toward her.
"Evil eye. That's right. I'm Greek. All
the Greeks wear them. Even the
children."
A blond woman of middle years asked,
"Have you ever known anyone who had the
evil eye put on them?"
"No," I said.
"Well, someone put it on my daughter,"
she said.
The daughter was about eighteen months
old. She and her family were strolling
along a New Jersey beachfront boardwalk
when a man approached them. He was an
actor from a fun house and was dressed in
a monk's robe. He had a rope around his
waist. From it hung a cross, which he was
twirling.
"Oh, what a beautiful child," he said,
looking intently at their daughter. Then
he began to follow the family, continuing
to stare at the little girl.
The man's focus was so strange and his
tone so eerie that the father turned the
child's stroller around and began pushing
it away from the man, faster and faster
until the family was practically running
to escape. That night the child fell ill.
She had a high fever and began throwing
up. The next day she was still sick and
crying constantly. A child who had always
loved men, now she wouldn't go to any of
the men in the family. The mother's sister
had been on the boardwalk when the actor
approached, and she was troubled by his
actions. She called their aunt, who was of
Polish heritage.
"He's put the evil eye on her," the
aunt said. "You'll have to remove it." The
mother's sister was to take four straws
from a broom and throw them over her
shoulder into the corners of the room as
she said a litany of Polish words. She was
then to take a fifth straw, burn it with a
wooden match, and drop it into a glass of
water. They were to give the baby a
spoonful of water from the glass.
"Make sure you do exactly what I told
you," she said, "and don't let anyone who
doesn't believe be in the room when you do
this."
The mother, who didn't know Polish, was
so frightened that she would foul up and
kill her daughter that she couldn't do the
spell. So her sister did it. The baby fell
asleep immediately and slept four hours.
When she awoke, the fever was gone and so
was her fear of men.
"Are you telling me the truth?" I
demanded. But I knew she was. She was as
wholesome as Thanksgiving dinner and
probably sat in the front pew of the
Baptist church every Sunday.
Kids upchucking in the night and then
getting better the next day isn't all that
unusual, but I didn't say so because she
knew that already and my saying it would
have missed the point. The point of the
story was that evil is alive, and good can
defeat it in magical ways. It's a good
story, and the last part makes it better.
No one told the little girl about that
night, and she was too young to remember,
but for the rest of her childhood she
feared men in monk's robes and would cry
whenever she saw them.
As I heard a hundred tales and more, I
also began to see magic everywhere,
planted deep in the stuff of everyday life
and flourishing. Britney Spears appeared
on the cover of Entertainment
Weekly wearing a red Kabbalah cord on
her wrist. Paris Hilton had one, and so
did Madonna, who adopted the name Esther
to go along with her new faith in Jewish
mysticism. The cords, which deflect the
evil eye, were so popular that the
Kabbalah Centre, where the stars go for
instruction, tried to patent the string,
sold for $26 to $36. The U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office declined that
application.
Go into any large bookstore in America
and you'll find several books on regional
ghosts and haunted places. Ghost hunters
and ghost busters work all over the
country. E- Bay sells haunted dolls and
teddy bears. One week's auction offered a
haunted tuning fork, a haunted milking
stool, a haunted gravestone rubbing, a
haunted blanket, and a haunted
bathtub.
Magic also penetrates our lives in ways
that are quite mundane. It's at the car
repair shop when the engine stops pinging
as soon as the mechanic appears and begins
to ping again only when you pull out onto
the street. It's in the beauty salons when
hair that spikes about your head like a
scarecrow's coiffure turns supple and
silky on the day of the appointment. It's
at the restaurant when diners arrive only
after the waiter sits down with his own
plate and smokers' food comes only after
they've lit up.
You've heard of voodoo economics
perhaps? Money magic is the most pervasive
of all. Of course it would be, since money
itself is the ultimate magic, a piece of
paper that can do everything. Everyone
wants good money magic, a way to win the
lottery, gambling luck, an unexpected
check in the mail, but the money magic of
everyday life is more often bad. Win some
money, get a bonus, have a little
inheritance, and a major appliance will go
out, the kid will get sick, a tire will go
flat. Once you're as poor as you were
before the money arrived, life returns to
normal. It's as though there's some kind
of balance sheet that makes sure we stay
at exactly the same level of prosperity
all the time.
These are matters of life's proceeding
that hardly need to be commented on.
They're so common that they show up in
jokes, and no one looks bewildered or
wonders what's being talked about. Trot
out all the scientists you want, arm them
with a million statistics. It won't do any
good. We know these things.
I often heard people talking about
inanimate objects as though they were
alive and powerful. This can opener never
works for me, someone might say, or the
bus always comes early when I'm running
late. Or I always have to kick the machine
before it will start. Or this computer
only works for Mark -- it hates the rest
of us. Or it never rains when you've got
an umbrella. No one is serious, you say?
Maybe not, or maybe they're whistling in
the dark. It doesn't matter which because
language creates reality. What we name is
what we notice, and that's another
argument for the inherent strength of
magic. We've been programmed to ignore as
much of it as we can, and still it pops
up.
Copyright
© 2006 Christine Wicker. Reprinted
here with permission.
Christine
Wicker is the author of the highly
acclaimed national bestseller Lily
Dale: The Town That Talks to the Dead.
She is a former religion reporter for the
Dallas Morning News and has won
numerous awards for her journalism. Visit
the author online at www.christinewicker.com.
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