Magical Thinking, Global Warming, and a Clothing Line
It’s June 5th, it’s 1:00 pm, it’s 57°, and it’s raining here in the Ojai Valley. Rain in June is not completely unheard of, however, we have had the longest cold and rainy season this year in our 14 years of living here. The magical thinking part of my brain thinks I am responsible for this because I didn’t buy the coat I wanted.
What?
Yeah.
You may have already noticed (and if not this will serve as your notice) that in February I began officially repping the Kantha Bae clothing line (the discount code of operatefromjoy will be automatically added if you use that link). Designed and manufactured by women-owned companies here in the US and in India, made from recycled cotton, kantha, and silk sari materials, size-inclusive, everything is one of a kind, it’s a boho sustainable dream for the faerie me.
Towards the end of January, they released a new line of coats, gorgeous, hooded, full-length coats made of the softest kantha material. I wanted one bad, but the common sense part of my brain reminded me that last February (meaning February of 2022) I was already running the a.c. here due to the weather being in the upper 90s, so I abstained.
A couple of weeks later, the entire shop was marked at 50% off and still, I said “No” to the Rising Sun Coats and myself. Surely it would get hot soon.
Yet it rained and rained and stayed cold and dreary and rained some more all through the month of February and then March and then April and May (oh sure, the sun broke through every once in a while. I do recall wearing a sleeveless dress a couple of times in May, and running the a.c once because we were teaching and my office gets hot as soon as I start channeling or doing any kind of energy work, but we are seeing record low temps and high precipitation). I became convinced (not really, but this is how magical thinking works, “‘cause maybe, one never knows”) that the longer I waited to buy a coat the more rain we would get or, conversely, that as soon as I caved and bought one, it would hit 78° here and the coat would just hang on the coat tree, mocking me until late November.
So here we are, the first week of June, and I could have been wearing that coat now for 5 months (they have long since sold out, and even the preloved ones that showed up later on the buy/sell/trade group on Facebook which I resisted are now gone. Plus, I am NOT buying a winter coat in June). The fear-based, superstitious component of magical thinking is always a limiter. Meaning magical thinking always limits us and is markedly different from the joys and ease of simple, grounded, and practical magic.
I was talking with someone the other day about this weather pattern we are in. In March we moved out of the La Niña weather pattern we had been in, which means in Southern California we should have had warmer and drier weather, and we are currently in a neutral pattern heading into an El Nino (which should mean warmer and wetter, but who knows at this point). He said he had spoken to some “old timers” who went on and on about how in the 70s there were cold and rainy spells well into spring, denying the effects of global warming with his tone. This is just delusion, from my perspective, an outright break with reality, again fear-based in its origins without, however, any acknowledgment that fear is present.
We magical thinkers, well, we know we’re being fearful when we play in our superstitious ways (again, your gardens can thank me for not buying the coat), and yet, magical thinking can pave the way to delusions where the presence of one’s fear goes underground.
Back on January 21, 2021, we did a workshop called “Practical Magic: Spells for Everyday Life”. A portion of this class covers the differences between magic, magical thinking, and delusions and how to effectively gauge your own experience. This class also includes a wealth of information on weaving and finding magic in your everyday life and includes very simple spellwork. You can find it here on my site
As for Global Warming and the effects of Climate Change, yes, we are in a period of accelerated change. Weather patterns along with everything else are no longer as easy to predict as they once were.
This knowledge allows me to more easily exist in the moment (except, apparently, when it came to buying the coat).
