We leave for Disney World tomorrow. The other day, Jett and I were talking about who we were most excited to meet while we’re there. There are plenty of contenders. I love Star Wars, and as a child of the 80s it’s difficult to overstate how much that universe shaped my imagination. But my first answer was easy: Sorcerer Mickey.
Before Aleister Crowley, Austin Osman Spare, or Peter Carroll introduced me to elaborate ideas about Magick, belief, and manipulating reality, there was a mouse in a wizard hat. There was Sorcerer Mickey. There was Merlin. They introduced me to Magick long before I knew anyone had bothered to develop entire philosophical systems around it. Magic was simply the possibility that the world might contain something more than what was immediately visible—that reality might be stranger, more malleable, and more wonderful than it appeared.
Then, of course, I grew up. My beliefs changed. A lot. The child enchanted by Sorcerer Mickey eventually became the young man interested in religion and mysticism, who became the adult practicing Magick, who became the person studying consciousness, Zen, absurdism, and eventually determinism. Each version believed things the previous version couldn’t have imagined abandoning. And each, eventually, gave way to another.
Today, I don’t really believe in Magick anymore. Determinism doesn’t leave much room for manipulating reality through sheer force of will. But here’s the thing: I still believe in whimsy.
Maybe that’s one of the mistakes we make when our beliefs change. We assume that when we abandon an explanation for something, we also have to abandon the experience that explanation once gave us. We learn there isn’t really a wizard behind the curtain, so we stop allowing ourselves to be enchanted by the wizard. We mistake knowing more about the machinery of reality for an obligation to be less delighted by it.
But growing older doesn’t have to mean becoming less enchanted. I don’t have to believe Sorcerer Mickey possesses magical powers to stand beside him next week and, for a moment, let the world become magical. Of course I know there’s an actor inside the costume. That isn’t the point. The point is allowing myself to participate anyway—to suspend the endless analysis, stop worrying about what is literally true for thirty seconds, and experience something that has been meaningful to me since childhood.
Maybe maturity isn’t replacing wonder with knowledge. Maybe it’s becoming capable of holding both: knowing exactly what the trick is and still smiling when the magician pulls the rabbit from the hat. There is no contradiction between understanding how something works and allowing yourself to be moved by it. If anything, perhaps there’s a different kind of freedom in choosing wonder without requiring belief.
So next week, somewhere in Disney World, I’m going to meet Sorcerer Mickey. Somewhere between the determinism, Zen, absurdism, consciousness theories, and decades of changing beliefs, I’m going to let that kid who believed the universe might contain Magick have his moment. And I’m going to take a new profile picture with the wizard who started the whole damn thing.
Beliefs should be allowed to change.
But never surrender the whimsy.