> Dan in Plureality

“Hi. My name is Daniel. And I'm a Mana Junkie.” 

“Hello Daniel,” They say. 

“Welcome,” Ms. Amita says. “Relax and start wherever you'd like. We're here for you.”

*

It can be difficult to talk about. Mana. How it feels. The strange. The inspiring, the disturbing, the meaningful. Whatever you want to call it. Being plugged in or being unplugged. Mystery or revelation, genesis or apocalypse. Trying to talk about it can feel like Orpheus having won his love back from the dark of the Underworld: if you look back, if you doubt it or try and name it, you'll lose it again. The observation collapsing the quantum wave of possibility.

Maybe that's why it's so addictive.

*
 
Behind the mirrored glass, observing Daniel and Ms. Amita and the rest of Them, Dr. James scans his files. “The subject is male, cisgendered, straight, white. He experiences symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder, severe depression, occasional dissociative disorder, and possibly paranoid apophenia. He routinely engages in delusional behaviour and often seems unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality.” Closing the folder, he sighs. “It's all the bloody TV and comic books and role-playing games. He's such a stereotype really.” 

Dr. Hannah shrugs. “It's an increasingly common complex,” she says. “There's a new term for it going around. They call it being a 'magician'.” 

“Okay Daniel,” Ms. Amita says. “Why don't we start somewhere specific? How about when you first started practicing magick? Formally, I mean.” The rest of Them are watching, listening.

*


The room I'm renting in the house with my five friends has a separate section at the back with its own door. It makes a perfect temple. For the last two years I've been studying English at university, a straight-A student, on the Dean's List, reading about science in my spare time, training with the fencing team. Captain Picard was my hero. 

Now I'm sitting cross-legged in my improvised temple, candles lit, a copy of Peter Carol's 'Liber KKK' beside me, discovered and downloaded off the net late one night in the computer lab at school. I'm wearing my trenchcoat because it reminds me of John Constantine, the urban mage from the Hellblazer comics. I've performed a circling ritual using a survival knife that my father gave to me when I was thirteen years old. It's Halloween night, I'm almost 23 years old. Last weekend I was passing by the woods where I played as a kid and the sky was filled with hundreds of crows. 

For the next three hours I sculpt a figure out of clay, a little manga-faerie that I saw in my imagination one night before I fell asleep. It's cold in the room; steam rises from my hands in the candlelight as I moisten the clay with hot water.

For the next 8 months, until I close the evocation ritual by releasing the sculpture into a river, I visit with her and imagine her. I imagine that she tells me things and helps me. 

For the next 8 months, whenever I am with her it feels like I am dreaming.

***