Mundane Magic ft. Molly Donlan

So on the topic of being a witch and which leads to witchcraft and magic, what is mundane magic? What does that mean to somebody who has never heard that term before?

[chuckles] So mundane magic is essentially taking the chores and tasks that you already do every day and adding magic to them so that they become a little bit more witchy, and so maybe you actually want to do them.

Uh, so it's a great hack if you are neurodivergent or you struggle with executive functioning, uh, you struggle to get started or motivated on things, or if you just feel like your to-do list is 72 miles long and you never catch a break.

It's one of those things where you can just sort of start to add these pockets of magic, these micro moments of magic into your day, and now your to-do list, yes, you still have to do all the things, and maybe you don't love folding laundry, but maybe you can find a breath of restoration in folding the laundry.

Or maybe you don't love folding laundry, but you no longer dread it.

And we can do that through, you know, a whole variety of practices and spells, but I'll give you one example that I, I was doing earlier today, 'cause I wrote the book for me, [chuckles] 'cause I need it just as much as anyone else reading it.

Uh, but I, I had a sink full of dishes when I woke up this morning and just really wanted to keep ... piling the dishes on.

I did not want to do them.

And I knew that if I didn't do the dishes, then it's like the counters are gonna stack up, and when the counters stack up, then it's gonna be hard for me to eat lunch.

And if I don't eat lunch, then this recording is not gonna go well.

And if this recording doesn't go well, then I'm gonna spiral about it, right? Like, all of these things that sort of build up when our space doesn't feel, you know, the way that we want it to.

And so instead, I, I, you know, stood there at the sink, and I decided to use the practice of washing the dishes as an opportunity to get really present and to wash away worry that might be in my mind, whether that's worry about, you know, things on my to-do list, or worry about the weight of the world that we're in right now, but just giving myself this moment of pause.

And so while I'm doing the dishes, you know, I'm feeling my feet on the floor, I'm coming into my body, and I'm feeling the hot water on my hands, and I'm becoming really mindful and using all of my senses.

You know, listening to the sounds of the water, and smelling the, the suds from the soap.

And really just every time I, I wipe the dish with the sponge, I'm thinking about washing away all of that debris, all of that clutter in my mind, and asking my energy to take that energy down the drain with it.

And, you know, as I do that, with each dish, it becomes more and more clearer in my mind, and I become more and more settled into the present.

So by the time I finish the dishes in the sink, all of a sudden I don't feel that same blah feeling that I usually feel at the end of doing the dishes.

You know, because I, 'cause I hate it so much, right? And so the whole time I'm usually like, "I hate this, I hate this, I hate this." But instead, I found just this little pocket of magic that I could tap into, and at the end, it was like, wow, my shoulders are a little bit softer, or my jaw is less tense, and my dishes are done.

So that's really the premise of what mundane magic is, taking what you already have to do and adding magic to it so that magic doesn't become one more thing on your to-do list that you put off and feel bad about putting it off.

Yeah, and I think it's super important to know that magic doesn't have to be elaborate or ceremonial to be mean- meaningful or impactful-

Yeah

... or to work.

You can have small little things to do.

But why do you think that so many people feel like they don't have enough time for a spiritual practice?

Well, I think that's, honestly, like what we see online and in spell books is these big elaborate rituals, right? We just went through the Lion's Gate portal, and it's like everyone's like, "If you don't manifest on this day in exactly this way, you're gonna miss it and it's gonna ruin your entire year." And, or the, you know, full moon rituals that require 52 crystals and, like, 17 candles and, like, a rhyming incantation, right? I'm exaggerating a little bit, but this is what we see online.