There's a feeling of power that can't be described. It's different for every person, but it's always the same. The ganger feels it when he takes his kamikaze. The street sammy when he spins up the Vindicator. Magicians, though, we feel it more. There are primal forces in the world, deep and strong, which, at certain times, in certain places, surge through us and lift us far beyond what he could otherwise be. When we tap into that power, it's like nothing you can imagine.
Everything you see, everything you touch, everything you hear is both sharp and clear, but impossibly distant. You can feel the energy crackling like lightning on your fingertips and it seem the smallest thought can reshape the world. Like a cosmic force, like a walking god, the world is laid out before you, waiting to be shaped by your will alone. For a druid, it's standing at the center of Stonehenge on Samhain. For an Aztlan shaman, it's the temple in Tenochtitlan during the high ritual. For a hermetic mage, it's the Library of Alexandria during the Concordance. For me, it's Carnaval.
Ortho had said that he wanted to study the background emanations and the nature of magic there. Stepping off of the plane and into the streets of Rio de Janeiro, I became the nature of magic there. The music soared over Sugarloaf Mountain and voices raised in song even from the boats out in Guanbara Bay washed over me. I could feel the dancing of eight million people flowing through the earth beneath my feet. It was as if all the world existed for nothing except the joy of music.
Throngs of metahumanity crowded the streets, and I was drawn to them, through them, at the mercy of the power so suddenly pouring into me. The millions reveled and I gave voice to their exultation, losing myself to the power of the growing celebration, letting it flow over and through me. Laughter and song welled up around me, filling me with the magic I had, until that moment, only thought I had known.
Men and women, young and old, elves, trolls, and awakened beings of all types, known and unknown gave themselves completely to the moment, to the music... to me. They came to me in their thousands, to hear the song, to see the lights, to feed their strength into the roiling power.
Hundreds of stories were made those days, and I could not begin to tell them all. The leopard elf, shining pizza, drunken soycaf breakfast, laser sunrise, candy-coated rebar... the people who were there will always remember, and those who were not will never understand.
Maybe other magicians can know this power, and feel the energy of it flow through them as I have. Perhaps it as exhilarating to them as it is to me, and perhaps they even desire as much as I do to feel it flow through them again... But I promise, no hermetic library has half so much caprinhas nor half so many naked women as Carnaval, and I shall never envy them their books. Can they say the same of me?
