Childhood Nonsense ?

I was watching The Neverending Story this weekend, and I began to think how sad it was that ‘The Nothing’ is being actively propagated and developed in children of a continually younger age. The destruction of Fantasia by ‘The Nothing’ is sadly inevitable for all of us, but the Ivory Tower is not destroyed, at least not for the majority. The Ivory Tower’s existence is that small piece of childhood that none of us should ever loose and should look to as the foundation for rebuilding Fantasia. Why should we want to rebuild Fantasia ? Well, apart from to help us get through adult life, the answer came to me when studying a book on magical entity creation and the following comment from one of my favorite magazines:
“Kids – confuse the hell out of soft toys by pretending to be their best friend for eight years before suddenly deciding overnight to put them in a plastic bag and give them to a charity shop.  Scruffy the Lion August 2011”
How many of you had cuddly or soft toys ? How many of you wouldn’t go to bed without teddy, or your favorite ? Quite a few of you I bet. I had a cuddly Loch Ness Monster back in the 70’s. My Gran and myself made it together out of an old curtain I think (either that or an old dress). What started as an idea in my head (at the age of 5) came to reality a few hours later. ‘Nessie’ never left my side or bed, and went every where with me. Holidays, school, hospital. You name it, she came with me. The power that the soft toy had for me was incredible. She could scare off the monsters under the bed and in the wardrobe, keep me company at night when I was on my own and was essentially my very best friend. She was real enough to me and had feelings to go with it. In the winter she had a scarf to keep her warm, and a hat. If I was ill, I had Nessie to keep me company and I immediately felt 100 times better.
Our soft toys we had when we were children were far more than simply soft toys. They were our friends. As such we gave them a life force and the ability to do what we wanted them to do (frighten monsters under the bed etc). We didn’t think twice about it – it was a simple process.
The book I am reading, although making magical entity creation possible, is still quite difficult. Why is it so dificult now, when it was so easy to do when you were a child ?
Sadly, I fell into the trap of growing up, and all but three or four of my childhood cuddly friends ended up being given away to hospitals or binned. My wife is eager that I get rid of what I have left (after all,  I am forty five). No. My friends stay with me. I have many new friends as well (being a total sucker for Bear Workshop) and generally have a new one each Christmas. I have a little Jaguar I picked up from Singapore Zoo. He is my panic buddy – I suffer from panic attacks, depression and anxiety – he knows what to do.

Why am I saying all this ? I think that the essence of magic exists in childhood, at a time when the materialistic world has not had time to blinker your thoughts and beliefs.
Let your imagination go. Throw off the shackles of ‘resonsible adulthood’. Search your minds for the remains of your Fantasia, find your Ivory Tower and rebuild Fantasia (giving the Princess a new name if you want !). Visualisation is the key to magic and entity creation. Rebuilding your Fantasia will take your visualisation and imagination to a whole new level. You might even decide to go to Bear Workshop and get yourself a new friend. It worked for you during childhood – there is no reason apart from yourself to stop it working now.