ASMR | A Warlock's Consultation

Transcript

Hello, please have a seat. There's also a bottle of water there, feel free to take it. Before we actually get started, what were you told about this meeting? Mm-hmm.

So, in the interest of full transparency, this is not that. My name is Benjamin, and I am a representative of the. ..

that look on your face. What are you thinking? You know I am here, don't you? Mm-hmm.

Well, allow me to be the first person to tell you, your suspicions were correct. You are not crazy. Magic is much more common than most people think.

The thing is, it isn't evenly distributed. Everyone has a little bit of magic in them. At various times in your life, you will have more, sometimes less.

When that concentration reaches a certain threshold, someone like me is dispatched to have a private consultation. You are a magical person. I'm here to help you understand that.

Yes, that is a very common question. Has been for the last 30 years. Actually, it's pretty much the only question that gets asked these days.

Unfortunately, no, you're not going to Hogwarts. I'm sorry. I used to be more condescending about that, but then I had kids, and I understand the disappointment.

The truth is more mundane. At the K-12 level, magic classes are a supplementary to the normal curriculum. It wouldn't make a lot of sense to teach potion making to a student who hasn't even taken a basic chemistry course.

If you've seen trailers on campus, that's usually where the magical instruction is taking place. They're easier to clean and can be replaced at lower cost than brick-and-mortar classrooms. At the collegiate level, we offer technical courses for those who want to specialize, but also general ed and history for those who missed out in their elementary and intermediate years.

For those post-college, there is night school, which is very thematic, I know. We can also set you up to audit a few classes at a local college or university of your choice. There are also a number of weekend workshops available in your area.

That's a good question. There are magic schools. Many of them are scams.

Magic manifests in very different ways, and to force very different people with very different talents into one dogmatic way of doing things isn't a great idea. Everyone learns differently. What real classes do is offer guidance and a place to ask questions.

It's a safe space for exploring and experimenting, finding what it is that you have in you and learning how to live with it. Yes, that's a funny way to put it, isn't it? Well, I could go the old school route and say how to harness your power, but what if you only ever find a way to turn your toenails into mirrors?

That's me building you up for a bitter disappointment. That may sound like an exaggeration. Here's the thing.

Magic can be finicky, and what you want out of it won't always be what you get. Without wanting to be overly crude, a buddy of mine can make farts visible. It is a fantastic talent to have when you're six beers deep on New Year's Eve, but it has very few applications in polite society.

This is a guy who grew up reading Jim Butcher novels and desperately wanted to open a magical detective agency. The neat ending to that story is he did kind of become a magical detective. It turns out being able to make gas visible is really helpful for treating certain illnesses in animals.

He's a fantastic vet. No, that's not what I'm trying to say. My friend is an outlier.

So, let me put it this way. Learning, in any academic setting, is largely reliant on reading, right? Homework, assignments, tests, book reports, they all presuppose you can read and comprehend the English language.

If you happen to be dyslexic, that puts you at a major disadvantage, one that not all teachers and curricula are equipped to deal with, right? When it comes to magic, we all have dyslexia, to some degree. It works in a different way than the physics we accept in the material world.

You may understand that you can light a candle from across a room or enchant a lock to open for no one but yourself. But how you express that concept, that's tricky. Dyslexics may struggle with word recognition and reading fluency and even spoken language.

That doesn't make them dumb. It's that their brains are wired in a certain way and often failed by standard education. So to put any magician in a quote-unquote standardized classroom would be a grave disservice to a developing mind.

And again, if we're going to talk about the aforementioned Hogwarts thing, just because you can turn the family dog pink when you're eight years old, that doesn't mean you should skip out on a decade of math and social studies. And I hate to harp on this because I know how much your generation loves it, but imagine you were accepted to a study abroad program in an enchanted castle across a lake hidden from satellites. That tuition would be so far beyond the means of most students.

And in that world, wizards can't conjure gold out of thin air, so they're scraping and scrounging just like the rest of us. Hmm? Do what? Oh, sorry.

Can we cast spells to make money? Um. ..

The short answer is no. The long answer is. ..

Okay, let's do it like this. I'm going to give you an answer that I give a lot, which is yes and no. So, let's back up for a second.

Are there magic spells? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that there are things one can do to influence a magical outcome.

For the sake of expediency, we can call that a spell. But are there books of spells that work exactly the same way for everyone who tries them? No.

Or rather, there are books, they don't work that way. I'm sorry, I know this is a lot to take in, and it's very weird. That is why someone like me is dispatched to someone like you to answer questions, however poorly.

But, let's get back to your original question. Can a person cast a spell to make money? Yes.

Yes. But how that happens can vary wildly. For instance, luck is an element.

I don't mean it's an element, I mean it's an element. Just like tin or sodium. With strong enough magic, one can influence chains of luck to result in positive financial outcomes.

Though that does tend to throw the natural ecosystem of luck out of whack and you get a cascade of monkey spa problems. Anyway, you could cast a spell to locate gold, but the spell might lead you to a gold deposit that sits three miles underground. You just don't know.

I did know a guy in college, a different guy than the fart guy, who managed to summon a few thousand dollars into his pillowcase. He was very gifted. Also the biggest donor I've ever met.

The problem was, we couldn't work out if he just transported money out of a bank vault, or a cash register, or if he'd actually just made money out of nothing. Because if its serial numbers were valid, he wasn't just summoning money out of thin air. He was influencing the space-time continuum.

He wasn't just conjuring dollar bills. He was retroactively changing the minds and machines of the mint that printed that money. Or did he just make a bunch of counterfeit money that would get us into a bunch of trouble if we spent it?

It got really weird and existential, and we never really figured it out because the money eventually turned into a pile of hamsters. Anyway, it's complicated is the best answer I can give you right now. You'd think there would be a definitive answer to this.

Not only does science tell us nothing can be created or destroyed. Surely, you must be thinking, some magical scholar in the past would have a long, boring treatise on the subject. But magic users have traditionally been a secretive bunch, and when found out, tend to get exterminated pretty thoroughly.

Sometimes by each other. Our records only go back so far. I guarantee you there are beautiful lost works in private collections, but who has them and how you could ever see them is a mystery.

And frankly, most people don't practice magic powerful enough to worry about things like that. What kind of magic do I do? I respect your curiosity, but we're not here to talk about me.

My job is not to show off, it's to conduct your consultation and recommend courses to you, should you be interested in taking them. Oh, nice diversion. How long have I been doing this? Well, this job I haven't been doing for very long.

Only about 20 years. Is it? Look, let's get back on track.

I can't give you a magic show, or even answers to all of your questions, but I guarantee if you enroll in classes, you will meet many people who enjoy searching for the same answers you are. Oh yes, that's what witches have been doing since forever. Well, some people still call themselves witches.

Every locality has its own name for its magic-forward communities. In various places they are known as covens, compacts, circles, rings. Sisterhoods, brotherhoods, fellowship has been pretty popular in recent years.

You get the idea. Me? Oh, I'm boring.

I just call it the group. But I'm also an AA, so I'm part of both the program and the group. Yeah, I told you, I'm boring.

But I score high on charisma for some reason, so that's why they gave me this job. Who's they? No, it's, no, not the Illuminati, it's the school board.

The me- No, the regular school board. Consults like this are funded by the state. We do have a lot of private funding, of course, but there are still a few New Deal programs that are buried in various education budgets.

We worked really hard to get Roosevelt on board with this kind of public outreach, and he was very receptive. This might seem like a covert operation, but it really isn't. It doesn't need to be.

Exactly. Because of the magic. If you don't mind, I'd like to ask you a few questions about yourself.

The interview portion of this consult is entirely voluntary, and you can pass on any of the questions you don't wish to answer. Would you be comfortable with that? Wonderful.

These questions will help us to get a sense of your affinities. There are no right or wrong answers. Okay? Okay.

Mmm. Mm-hmm. Hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, it can be that.

It can be a lot of things. What happened? How long did the feeling last? Uh-huh.

Mm. Question five. What is your favorite color? Do you really want me to tell you, or would you prefer to keep it a mystery? Well, that answers question six.

Question seven. Where do you feel most at home? Mm.

Question eight. Has anything ever happened to you, or have you seen something that you cannot easily explain? Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I've been there. Question nine. Please take a look at this dress.

What sound do you think it makes? Oh? Is there something strange about the color? What color do you think it is? Interesting.

And the sound? Yes, the sound. Yeah, just take a moment.

Look at it. Take a deep breath. Aha! Now we're getting somewhere.

I'm afraid I can't answer that. Question ten. Pick a card.

Any card. No, just kidding. Here's the real question.

First, please put your hand on the table, palm down, with your fingers touching the table. I will put my hand over here. Now, look at me.

Keep looking at me. Look in my eyes. We can stop at any time.

Are you okay? Okay. Keep looking at me.

Keep looking. Keep looking at me. Now I'm going to ask you to brace yourself.

What do you think is going to happen? That's okay. Nothing bad is going to happen.

I promise. I promise. Just keep looking in my eyes.

And. .. There it is.

I know. That's it. All done.

Mm-hmm. That was. ..

Some people call it tuning. It's not. ..