I Still Believe in Magic

I have recently been re-reading Chesterton’s play, Magic, with the Chesterton Society. Magic is really an amazing compact little work that Chesterton probably didn’t fully understand himself when he wrote it (he was not yet a Catholic). The play concerns the denigration of magic in a modern world consumed by facts and figures. Magic for Chesterton is the faulty of the imagination. Imagination, in his estimation was a quality lacking in the modern world. We no longer believe in something beyond ourselves. We no longer believe that there is a power for believing. We no longer even have the language to think about or talk about transcendence. In many ways, Magic, for Chesterton was a great remedy for the narcissism of the present age. It is the ability to look beyond the introspection of analysis and into a kind of cosmic synthesis. There is something greater than me. The world is more than meets the eye. Fairy tales used to be read in this way. Perhaps they are no longer. Fairy tales, like all great myths, tell a truth beyond facts in a way that engages the person completely. Today we have little use for myth, or we try to read it as fact and thus no longer understand the power of fiction to shape and inform us. If we have robbed ourselves of the ability to synthesize great Truths through story, we have robbed ourselves of something essential. I still believe in magic because I believe in the power of the human person to get beyond the commonplaces of daily life and soar into the creativity of divine union.