How to be a Wizard - How life is magical, and we are too

by Peter Harris

Overview

This short book is not focused on the trappings of wizardry, fun though these may be, nor is it a guide to gaining power over anyone but oneself. It is not about 'pointy hats', though Gandalf's looks very good on him.
Instead, it outlines the foundational thoughts of the True West (as I see it), and in the 'Emerald Tablet' section lists the 'Wizard's Desiderata' - the kind of life which is truly powerful, truly magical, truly mythical, and truly possible. It always has been possible to be a 'wizard' of one's life, though never perhaps with as little danger of being burned at the stake.

'How to be a Wizard' is the fruit of a very long journey by one misfit christian turned process philosopher turned 'wizard' and fantasy epic writer, who ended up building a magical or at least idealistic and romantic place called Cafe Eutopia (a 'temple' to Love, Beauty, Truth and Freedom) in a little town in New Zealand, besides many other adventures of the mind and spirit. I offer it in the hope that it will spark a burning desire to truly be the wizard of your own life, and then of your community, and ultimately, no matter how imperceptibly perhaps, to help the whole world.

I value the true tradition of the West, to which I belong. Yes, I know it has gone horribly wrong in so many ways that many think it (and/or the planet) is doomed. But I believe that its problems can all be solved by a return to the 'True' West - the ideals of Love, Beauty, Truth and Freedom which have inspired its best, and kept some check on its worst. Also a return to seeing the world as organism, not a soulless machine, as has been the dominant model since Descartes.

My vision is that more and more 'Wizards of the True West' will arise in answer to the challenge of the times, and like Gandalf will help to turn the tide. But we desperately need not only the goodwill, the desire to see good things happen, but also the philosophical foundations on which to build. These have been undermined by many enemies, most of them the very ones we look to to hold them fast and keep them strong - our philosophers, in particular, and academics in general. Relativism, 'postmodernism' and nihilism, not to mention PC nonsense of many shades, have been actively promoted by many of them, so that now these ideas have become the norm, and what I write in this book may seem incredible to you at first. So, read it as an interesting fantasy, and if it seems like a pleasant alternative to the 'real' world of our postmodern, materialistic madness, try some of it out. You may be surprised to find that it actually works, actually rings true. Then - spread the word!

Product Details

BN ID:	2940044995314
Publisher:	Peter Harris
Publication date:	09/17/2012
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	661 KB

About the Author

I am sometimes known (by those who approve of wizards) as The Wizard of Eutopia. I live in The Story Ark, an old army barracks on the main road of Kaiwaka, 'The Little Town of Lights' - blink and you miss it, only at night you can't because it has fairy lights everywhere. For twelve years I've been building, also on the main road (well, a little to one side of it), a sculptured ferrocement 'folly' called Café Eutopia.

What is Eutopia and why should you care? Well, it's an organic café, a temple to Love Beauty Truth and Freedom, and a bookshop - not necessarily in that order. See photos. For lots more, taken by tourists from all over the world, just enter 'Cafe Eutopia' in Google images. The tourists love me; the locals keep asking, 'When's he going to finish the darned thing?'

Unbeknown to them, for even more than those twelve years I've also been building a much more ambitious, unseen 'folly' - a fantasy epic named (in a dream after I failed to come up with a title) THE APPLES OF AEDEN. I've also written a few other books, as you can see - fiction, non-fiction and some in between.

To release the writing from the computer screen (and beat the gatekeepers of traditional publishing)I started a digital printshop and developed a quick method of book-binding, and more recently, embossing and 'edge-carving' antique-fantasy-style books (and, at the other end of the book spectrum, ebook uploading).

I spent much of my earlier life, like many of us in the troubled 'post-everything' West, in an angsty quest for Truth (between enterprises intended to feed us but always threatening to consume us - spinning wheels, clocks, oval picture frames). A teen convert to radical Christianity, I thought I should become a Bible translator, so I got a BA in classical Hebrew and Greek. But in the process I 'lost my faith' (quite rationally I think!)and became an angsty agnostic.

To feed a growing family, I tried to focus on the oval frames and sacrificed a few tormented years on the anvil of manufacturing, much of it in a cold, dickensian defunct woollen mills in Dunedin. Upon reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I had an epiphany which saved our business.

But in 1990, just when we had paid off my father-in-law and even started to make some money, the rubberband of my soul (I felt) was stretched to breaking point, and I had to leave the workshops of the North where we had moved, and go to the City to study ...