I believe in Magic

I always preferred the fantasy world to the ordinary reality we mostly observe around. Magic always appealed to me even if when I was growing up in the Soviet Union, a state where religion was banned at an official level (but people still, obviously believed).

I constantly looked up to the sky imagining that there was something more to what we could see with our eyes, that there was some kind of parallel world, and all the books I was reading at that time contained perhaps some elements of truth: that there were magical characters, that magic was real, that there was more to this world, besides some scientific explanations as how we came to earth and how the earth was created. I even remember the precise book that made a switch in my consciousness. A rather dark magical story, called Krabat, written by the remarkable German writer, Otfried Preußler.

The genre is a fantasy novel, that tells us the story of a boy who ended up as an apprentice of a sorcerer, and is lured into all kinds of black magic, where the goodness prevails at the end, as the boys at the hands of the sorcerer (who wasn’t very kind) unite to combat the dark forces, renouncing all kinds of magic in order to win the battle and live a life they wished for themselves, such as creating a family, falling in love, and leading a more or less ‘normal’ life. There is also a movie based on the novel, but I strongly recommend you to start with the book, especially that it was a book that had appeared first, and only later – the movie.

I was seven years old when I came across the book, a pivotal moment in my life as it was the night I fell in love with books and reading. My mum, I remember, was so relieved that I finally showed such an interest in reading, that she allowed me to stay awake until I finished the book, as I couldn’t stop reading, and eventually I finished it at five o’clock in the morning. I have a remarkable mum in this respect, she inflicted in me love for books, theatres, art and great food.

And so after I finished the book, I felt a change happening in my seven-years old mind. Just a single book, but extremely powerful, made me want to believe that magic was real, and that without it, the world would be a very boring space. I also sensed at that time, that if someone writes such stories, then he, the author, also believes in some magic, otherwise, why write a magical story in the first place?

After finishing the book I started to look for magic everywhere. It wasn’t an easy task as I was growing up in the Soviet Union, and apparently we were not supposed to believe in anything besides the communism, a beautiful dream, I have to admit now, but derived of some magical fun elements. I wanted the angels to rule the world, I wanted to meet them, and I wanted to believe that the world as we saw it, was an illusion, there was much more to this universe, some magic.

It was a week later that an angel appeared in my dream. I wasn’t familiar yet with the phenomenon of lucid dreaming (it’s when you wake up in your dream), but I now recognise what happened. It was indeed my first experience of lucid-dreaming when I woke consciously in my dream. I was in front of a lake, and a fairy was sitting next to it on a bench. I walked towards her and hesitated for a moment, as I wasn’t sure it was allowed, as I was clearly dealing with a magical creature. From behind I could see her lustrous blond hair, and wings resting on her back.

The angel waived to me, inviting me to sit next to her, and that’s what I did, and then she turned to me, revealing her magnificent blue eyes, and said:

“When you seek magic, you will always find it,’’ she then put her hand on my head and I immediately woke up, properly in my bed, in our apartment in Moscow situated on the 16^th floor, and I told myself that it was more than real, and not just a dream.

For the next two weeks, I was searching for the signs of magic everywhere. I was truly busy looking, I started a new book by Otfried Preußler, called ‘The Little Witch’, and while it was again a book full of magic, I failed to see its manifestations in my daily life.

But at the end of two weeks, when I was sitting on a big table in the office of my grand-dad, in the apartment of my grand-parents, which was situated in the same complex of apartments as the one of my parents, I saw a black feather making her way towards our balcony, where it landed and came to rest. I went to the balcony, took the feather, and knew at once that it was my first talisman and that magic and my dream  – it was all real, and I felt happiness like never before.

Later on other magical things appeared.

I learned how to lucid dream, how to practice magic and met the devil several times. He is not what we decided to think about him. Not at all, he is magnificent.

But then again I think I was Jesus in my past life and since psychoses couldn’t be healed like they do now, I made the huge mistake by running away from the devil.

The end result was terrible as you all know very well. Ending up on a cross was the biggest murder committed by humans on our earth.

Not pleasant, especially that there was also expectation to resurrect myself three days later.

I don’t remember whether I really did it, but what I did do, was a successful transition into my next life of Ekaterina the Great.

But if I didn’t run from the devil then, I would have been saved, rich and happy.

I am a bit weird, you know…

But I like it about myself😉