The Doorway of Wonder

Can you remember the first time you were overcome with wonder? When you came across something unexpected that just stopped you in your tracks?

I've collected these moments like treasures I collected on the seashore as a child, squirreled away, sand and all. As a child, it was discovering a perfect spider web early on a winter morning, frozen and jeweled with the dawn sun. As a teenager, it was standing beneath a night sky far from city lights, when the Milky Way revealed itself in all its glory and I saw my very first shooting star. But one memory in particular always comes first to mind.

Experiencing a sense of wonder is important - it is an act of engagement and being within the world that creates joy, an experience of beauty and fascination. A balm for your soul, at a bare minimum a sense of wonder is an interlude to the everyday-ness of the scientific materialism we're still surrounded with. As someone that struggles with my mental health, finding joy has been a challenge at times, but also one of the best remedies to anxiety and depression. Even my doctor tells me that on occasion - do something that brings you joy. Sounds trite, but it helps. But I digress.

This prescription for joy through wonder isn't just good medicine for mental health—it's essential nourishment for magical practice. For me, it lifts my awareness out of my immediate surroundings in a way that, at the same time as being elevating, is fundamentally grounding. If you're into mindfulness, a sense of wonder can put you right back into the moment where you're wholly there. Even though it makes you feel present, wonder evokes a sense of mystery, of the other. Wonder becomes a platform that provides solid footing to send your awareness into the ether, to commune like a silent song. Discover that sense of wonder, and you're right on the precipice of magic.

The very first time I recall finding a complete state of wonder I was probably 10 or 11 years old. I woke in the middle of the night, and was puzzled. Why was my room all lit up? It wasn't morning, yet I could see everything in silvery detail. I heaved all the blankets off myself, crawled across the bed and peeked out the curtain. The whole back yard was lit up and  seemed to glow! I peered around, trying to see the source of the illumination. Craning my neck, I could just see that there was a full moon above the house, holding the light around herself and unfurling it across the backyard. I was enthralled. Never had I seen moonlight cast such a spell, transforming the ordinary into something ethereal. I don't know how long I spent peering out from behind the curtain, but I can still picture the vegetable garden and fruit trees transmuted into sculptures of silver and shadow. I didn't have the language to understand what I felt then, but thinking back, it felt like a revelation. 

Think back, remember an instance as a child you experienced a sense of wonder. Sit with it for a while. Don't analyse it, don't try to rationalise it. Just sit with the visual and feeling it evokes. Once you've found that ethereal grounding, pray. Perform a spell. Do some sigils or something simple but meaningful. Do some magic from that space, and see what happens.

When you work from this state of wonder, you might find your magic takes on a different quality—more vibrant, more immediate. The barriers between worlds seem to thin, and intention flows more freely. That childhood openness to mystery creates a doorway through which the extraordinary can enter. In my experience, spells cast from this space of wonder carry a resonance that logical, procedural magic often lacks. They commune with the universe like that silent song you first heard in childhood moments of awe, reminding us why we were drawn to this path in the first place.