I have to warn you that I’m a sucker for anything that approaches a subject I’m interested in with the level of enthusiasm and wonder that Tracy Nicholas does in Mind Over Magick. I’m so much of a sucker for it that this review is going to be far from objective and border on gushingly positive. There’s just something about this book that’s joyfully infectious and I want nothing more than to spread that around as much as possible.
When I was young and thinking about getting into the occult and esoteric there was a barrier to entry in what kind of texts were available. It was far more difficult, way back before the internet turned everyone into an expert, and we were left with whatever books were available in the small, hidden away occult sections of our local bookstores. It’s fair to say that there was no such thing as variety or scope in their curation of the foot and a half of shelf space they gave it. It is not faint praise when I say that I wish this book had been on the shelf instead of the Simon-nomicon, the Satanic Bible, or the current version of Llewellyn’s Witches’ Almanac.
In Mind Over Magick: Making Magic in Everyday Life Tracy Nicholas creates a broad tableau of various magical approaches and unusual scientific phenomena to explain how our workaday world contains far more than what we’re reading on the tin. She touches on topics as far-ranging as the divergence from magic toward science, energy healing, the placebo effect, quantum psychology, meditation, and way, way more. There are even sections on how to utilize a variety of psychological techniques to enhance, expand, and enrich your magical practices. Mind over Magick is a short one hundred fifty pages but Nicholas brings this vast array of pieces all together in a way that makes it feel like the book is so much larger in the best possible ways.
Mind Over Magick would probably feel like a beginners survey for those who have spent a lot of time in the occult scene but Nicholas’s approach to the material makes it feel far more like an exhilarating jaunt that reveals previously unknown features of a familiar neighborhood than a dull chore. The book isn’t an instruction manual and it doesn’t teach you any particular spells or rituals. It doesn’t have pages filled with stodgy traditionalism or treat any particular path with more reverence than another. More than anything, this book is a challenge for you to examine the things around you with a new sense of clarity, curiosity, and awe.
Tracy Nicholas doesn’t claim to know which path is the correct one to follow to find “real” magic and she has no prescriptive methods for you to find it. This is utterly refreshing and I appreciate how clearly she states that this is not the motive behind her writing of Mind Over Magick. It’s clear that this book is for the curious, not the dogmatic. This isn’t to say that the subject matter isn’t well considered or thoroughly researched. It’s obvious that every point Nicholas touches in the text is there for a very particular reason and it all fits together incredibly well.
Mind Over Magick is Tracy Nicholas’s first book, if my research is correct, but it definitely doesn’t read like it. Her writing is clear and projects a vibrant enthusiasm. It’s a breezy read but it easily could have been far stodgier with someone else at the keyboard and I find that to be a benefit to the subject matter. I hope that Nicholas keeps going and I can’t wait to see what she has coming next.
It’s easy to be cynical or nihilistic in the times we are living in right now. I appreciate that books like Mind Over Magick exist to remind us that there are still so many things all around us to keep things interesting instead of overwhelming. I highly recommend cracking it open and reminding yourself just how much magic there is to find in our world and beyond.
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