If we think that these human beings have been totally objective, totally dominated by facts, totally true—yes, totally true!—could they then have invented things? Where was the flute before it was invented? And the garden? And dances? And paintings? Absent. Nonexistent. No knowledge could possibly have pulled these things from nature. It was necessary that the imagination become pregnant in order that culture could be born.
Magic is neither a theory of the omnipotence of thought nor of the omnipotence of desire. On the contrary, it is an acknowledgment that reality is not moved by our desires, but that it ought to be. It gives bodily form to what Ernst Bloch enunciated in the word: “What is, cannot be true.” Facts are not values. Therefore facts themselves must be overcome.