So many strange coincidences happen where I'm chiseling away at a personal idea and then the piece of art I end up taking in at that time unexpectedly seems to execute on the ideas I was working through better than I ever could. I've thought a lot about magic and witches and such, always loving the aesthetics while of course having wishes I could fly a broom around or be free of any disease with a flick of a wand. Growing up I tried to put it away and tried to face reality feeling dwelling in imagination is the wrong thing to do when you could be trying to improve your reality. I tried to convince myself, what would I actually use magic for? For instance, would I really want to go around flying a broom everywhere? Before I got a driver's liscense I had ideas of all the places I wanted to drive to on my own, but when I actually got it I really didn't have the desire to go to many places. So I thought the things I wanted to do could be done without magic... but I still found parts of myself wanting it. What specific things did I actually want out of magic? The excitement? The comfort? The fashion? Or maybe something I was not consciously aware of.

An interpretation of When the Seagulls Cry's magic makes it the base of all magic in human fiction, "Can we just pretend that the world isn't terrible." Magic arises from human desire, 'I can't see a way to fix this, I just wish it could be magically different.' What arises when you can't control if your desires will come to pass can be described with the actions of Magical Thinking in anthropology, that try to soothe angst. From praying & dancing for rain, to obsessive-compuslive ritualistic actions to prevent illness, and knocking on dead trees to prevent your words putting a 'jinx' on the future. The thing about it is of course, pragmatically, this can sort of work. Just like a placebo, belief in something not true can still ease and soothe you, and if that relief is real, in a way, the belief is too. However, shall we instead focus on realization and acceptance of things we cannot control? This is also aligned with similar lines of thinking in religious traditions of passivity and submission to a higher power or order. The Magic of the Golden Land is a dreaming, where contradictory things can be true. Different imagined parts of yourself can coexist without being constrained to choice. Being ripped out of it when waking up is a toxin that forces you to face an undesireable existence.

This idea develops from purely as a tool for escapism. When not alone, magic is described as a way to communicate and transfer feelings. The intent behind it, why and how it's being expressed whether from happiness and love or fear and anger. Aesthetic Experience & Artistic Communication are magic. Doing something that can make someone feel something is magic (a transfer of energy, human energy is already mystic). Becoming a witch in this context is being able to see the intent and hearts of other people - why they do what they do, why they are using 'magic' as well as being aware of how you pass on that magic. "It's understanding. Without sadness, without hatred, without love, magic cannot be seen." (lerfpoet)

It allows you to see but what you see is not truth, it is another's perspective (it is not romantic love or eros, it is Understanding) 'Knowing love was the same as gaining a soul, the same as being reborn into a human.' (You do become reborn with a new person! A new you is created! As an example besides Sayo, A character cannot be understood on their own. There are many Evas: the Eva with Hideyoshi, the Eva with George, the Eva with Shannon, the Eva with George & Shannon the Eva with Krauss, the Eva with the family, the Eva with Ange, the Eva with her past self. A character, or a person, can do things alone but it is hard to imagine how they would be because usually their personalit(y/ies) only arise within the contexts of other people) Making a grey sea blue (through perception) is magic. In different situations the same cake can taste horrible or amazing. Without love it cannot be seen. (//it can also be used to refer to the magical thinking/group ritual that allows for people to believe things that are not so, a shared delusion/illusion//)

You can throw your life away and stay in the golden land where any outcome is possible in dream or you can choose a door and step through and exist in this one fragment of life. But what of the meaningful metaphors of things like Mephistopheles? But what of the fun from things like having a deal with the tooth fairy? Is 'real' life not enough? (Reality is an illusion/representation/appearance/dream/maya anyways...) People wouldn't wish for magic if they didn't feel they lacked something. People may face unpleasantness and accept it (not want it or enjoy it). It may be more useful in the long run to search for the source than treat the symptom even if it's not what we want.

All will, all desire, all perception is magic, of which only can be understood by non-furniture. It is filled with a spectrum of black and white magic. The rocks do not share in this illusion. The interpretation of sense experience into feeling into will is the magic which furniture and rocks do not have. There are ten thousand magics breathing life into the lifeless. And this is the animism of creation with your eyes and ears.

You are only yourselves in context of specific people (when your selfs are created). Who are you alone? Interesting, the dissolving of the self, ecstasy in flow for instance, self-negation, you don't exist. Letting go and letting yourself be carried away by the flow (just like desire which you do not decide). So much of personal joy that people pursue could be seen as trying to submit to a higher power into a trance, even if its just letting your body take over. {}