Are We Taking the Magic Out?
- Gregory Loewen
- Jul 29
- 3 min read
I've been reflecting on a tendency we humans have: our fascination with taking things apart. I'm sure my parents often wondered where things around the house had disappeared to, only to discover them later spread across my bedroom floor. I'd dissected them to understand their inner workings. I wanted to know what made them tick. Putting them back together... well, I wasn't nearly as good at that.
We separate, refine, isolate, and concentrate. We seem to believe that if we can reduce something to its smallest or purest parts, we'll better understand the whole—or somehow make it more powerful. Sometimes that's exactly what happens. Just look at many modern medicines. But does reducing something always make it better?
I grow cannabis and consume it the old-fashioned way: I smoke it. I've been doing that for over 50 years. I've seen a lot of changes in how the plant is regarded. From the Devil's Lettuce to modern medicine. From hand-rolled joints to pre-rolled cones, gummies, drinks, and hundreds of other products. We used to smoke it just to get high. Not anymore. It has proven to be a real medicine for many people, including myself.
Today we can take a whole plant and isolate THC into incredibly potent oils, tinctures, and concentrates. For many people, that's a wonderful thing. There are good medical reasons to want consistency and precision, and I'm grateful we have the science to do it.
But I can't help wondering if, in our pursuit of purity, we sometimes leave something behind.
The more I learn about cannabis, the more I'm drawn to the whole plant. Researchers call it the entourage effect. The cannabinoids, terpenes, flavonoids and everything else in the plant appear to work together. We're still figuring out exactly how, but the whole seems to be more than the sum of its parts. The experience isn't simply about THC. It's about the relationship between everything the plant contains.
That idea has stayed with me. It made me wonder if the same thing happens in spirituality. Weird segue, but that's my thought process.
For thousands of years we've tried to distill the sacred into its purest form. We isolate beliefs. We argue over doctrines. We defend one interpretation as though we've finally extracted the essence of God.
What if we're making the same mistake? What if spirituality has its own entourage effect?
That thought has been following me around for days.
I've met deeply compassionate atheists and deeply judgmental Christians. I've sat in churches, temples, forests, and around campfires, and I've felt something sacred in all of them. None of them felt complete to me, but every one of them taught me something.
Maybe wisdom doesn't come from finding the one perfect belief. Maybe it comes from allowing many experiences to work together.
Meditation has taught me something. So has grief. So has love, plant medicines, silence, friendship. And failure. None of them were enough on their own. Together, they've changed me. They've slowly shaped how I see the world.
Perhaps life isn't asking us to reduce everything to its purest form. Perhaps it's inviting us to discover how beautifully things work together.
Nature seems to understand this. A forest isn't just a collection of living things. It's a living relationship. Remove enough of those relationships and it stops being a forest.
Maybe we're like that too. Maybe consciousness isn't built from isolated truths but from connected experiences. Maybe love isn't one emotion, spirituality isn't one belief, and healing isn't one molecule.
Maybe the magic isn't hidden in the strongest part.
Maybe it's hidden in the wholeness.
The more I look around, the more I wonder if the universe has been trying to teach us this all along.
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