I may not have mentioned this before but I like to joke that I work for a wizard.

The founder of the company is apparently Buddhist, he does a lot of free global event work for worldwide thought leaders (including managing HH The Dalai Lama’s last couple of visits to Australia), the logo and name for the company were chosen for auspicious reasons, Feng Shui is used to layout offices, etc… Yes. I find this all absolutely fantastic.

Anyway, his Chief Magical Enforcer -or Global Talent Director as he is technically called- was in London to run some training over the last couple of days. (Incidentally, that has been the reason for my brief absence.)

Given that ‘working for the wizard’ has been a long running joke among my team, I couldn’t help but burst out laughing when the CME clicked over to the first slide showing the Five Pillars of Leadership… Arranged as a pentagram.

Most of the training was a very accomplished adaptation of 7 Habits which I have some prior experience in so it left my mind with enough space to wander: There is a lot of best practice here that isn’t widely deployed in magic… If anything there is a deep-seated resistance to it.

And this got me thinking about early hominids.

Your evolutionary advantage

It turns out the secret to why modern humans evolved most likely lies with what we ate.

“Paleodental evidence suggests that after the divergence of early hominids from the hominoid ancestral line, a gradual increase in consumption of harder and/or more abrasive foods occurred – most likely nuts and seeds. This change probably increased intake of vegetable fat (mostly non-serum-cholesterol raising in nature) and would, perhaps, have facilitated overall access to food energy, but probably had little other nutritional effect. About 2.5 million years ago, however, there is evidence that animal foods began to occupy an increasingly prominent place in our ancestor’s subsistence. Decreased molar size, less mandibular and cranial robusticity, and alterations in incisor shape all suggest greater emphasis on foods requiring less grinding and more tearing, such as meat.”

And what was so special about the inclusion of meat in our diet?

“A cardinal feature of human evolution has been development of increasing brain size: Homo sapiens’ cranial capacity is thrice that of Australopithecus afarensis. A prime selective force driving this increase was almost certainly the complex nature of social interactions among early hominids. There is, however, no a priori reason to assume that such interactions, at first, differed much from those of chimpanzee and gorilla ancestors. Social complexity was thus a necessary, but insufficient, selective pressure acting to increase brain size. Another necessary factor was probably adequate dietary substrate to allow formation of brain tissue. (Crawford, 1992) The limiting raw materials, AA, DTA and DHA, could have been provided by animal tissues as hunting and/or scavenging activities assumed greater importance in human subsistence. (Eaton, 1998) Increasing complexity of interpersonal and social interactions together with availability of animal tissues – to provide the necessary structural lipid – constituted a unique psychonutritional nexus which may explain human brain expansion.”

Note that the inclusion of meat doesn’t actually mean other foodstuffs were dropped from our ancestors menu. Tubers, fruit, wild grasses; these all provided an as-close-to-stable-as-life-got-back-then caloric supply.

No, the great evolutionary secret was in the combination of variation and interaction i.e. “doing things”.

A varied magical diet

In all honesty, how varied is your magical diet? And -more pertinently- if it isn’t varied enough what’s your excuse?

The truly amazing thing about the internet (other than hulu) is the instant access to the greatest compilation of human thought ever assembled. The overwhelming majority of which is free (and legally so).

It is absolutely the best place to start. Moving on from that, here are some suggested inclusions in your magical diet:

• Read generalized “effectiveness books”. 7 Habits is good. I’m on the fence about Tim Ferriss -sometimes he’s amazing, sometimes it’s just buzzwordy lied.
• Read business/career strategy books. I love Linchpin, The Rules of Work, The Rules of Money & Career Warfare.
• Keep up with psychological theory.
• Keep up with popular science. This can be as easy as downloading the New Scientist and BBC Focus apps (or subscribing to the magazines).
• Keep up with popular archaeology. Remember that your spiritual worldview, in one way or another, has travelled down the millenia since the first time hallucinogens accidentally contaminated the Neolithic food supply and opened up some crazy doorways in our brains. It’s important to check in with what the current view of your magical grandparents actually is.
• Take a public speaking class. What impact would this have on your evocation?
• Learn contract negotiation for free online. Or anything else a bit different.
• Join volunteer biological field expeditions. Britain is awash with Royal Societies that go and monitor population numbers, etc.

Whatever you do, just make sure you mix it up and feed this experience back into how you approach the world.

Perhaps it’s the key to your magical evolutionary advantage?