Poetry as Magic

Note: For best reading pleasure, please listen to Obeah Man by Exuma. Exuma is a Caribbean musical group led by musician and Obeahman Macfarlane Gregory Anthony Mackay. I learned of Exuma through their collaboration with Nina Simone’s masterpiece, 22nd Century. Obeah is a longstanding spiritual-magical tradition of the Caribbean.

 In time, with the European colonization so too came their grimoires, their spirits and their theology, and as Obeah itself moved within this whirlwind of beliefs that was—and still is—the Caribbean, its practitioners inevitably encountered the material, absorbing and adapting its spirits to the technologies they knew. 

—From occultist Julio Cesar Ody’s Magister Officiorum

In 2015 I participated in the Psychoanalysis, Art and The Occult conference in London. The conference was fascinating. It was organized by Vanessa Sinclair (co-founder of Das Unbehagen—a key group of Lacanians in NYC & world-wide) and Carl Abrahamsson (who is a well-known occultist author and artist in Scandanavia and throughout Europe). True to title, the conference focused on the intersection of psychoanalysis, art, and the occult—and the main thrust of the discussion was that Western psychoanalysis needed to open up to occult paradigms if they were going to treat an international audience. So for example, how to treat a Haitian patient who believes that psychotic breaks can sometimes be interpreted as a spiritual message from another realm.

There were discussions of various systems of occult thought from around the world, alongside discussions by experts in psychoanalysis and Freudian history. There was discourse around initial investigations of the occult by founding fathers, Freud and Jung (spoiler alert: Freud was more into the occult than most people acknowledge, and there were strategic reasons for him barring occult discussion in public. Freud wanted psychoanalysis accepted as a “science”). Then there was a focus on how Western art is one portal in the West for understanding occult practices. Needless to say, the conference was fascinating.

There I met the leading occult publishers in Europe, Scarlet Imprint, and publishers/artists/occultists Alkistis Dimesh and Peter Grey (their latest work on the history of their magical collaboration is amazing). About a year later, I had a poetry manuscript I had tried with some US publishers, but the content of the poem seemed like it was too “spiritual” for American avant-garde poetry presses to match with. I sent the poem to Alkistis and Peter, and despite like a three-year waitlist, Trinity Star Trinity would be published like, next month. Too cool.

I was completely naïve to the portal I was about to step into. I thought of Scarlet Imprint in a conceptual way. My poem, dedicated to Hera, was all my dreams and visions I had visiting the birthplace of Hera on the island of Samos, Greece. Intuitively, I felt the poem should be performed as an invocation with candles and incense. Alkistis and Peter agreed. I felt I had found a publisher who understood my art—yay! And a framework to help this Oulipian poem jump out of itself to its audience. But I was thinking about this from the perspective of poetry.

Little did I understand this same group of occultists was thinking of me as a “witch.” And not only a witch, but an exemplary witch! WHOA OMG. Wait, hold up. What is the definition of a witch? Are all poets witches?! And we just don’t know it?

I began a two-year-long digestion of occult materials to try to understand this question. What I have learned has blown my mind. I cannot say I have answered this question; the materials which comprise the occult world would take a lifetime in themselves to master. But at the May 2019 follow-up conference to Psychoanalysis, Art and The Occult—aptly titled 100 Years of Modernism and the Occult—we spoke at length and I got feedback on my thoughts of what defines an artist as a witch.

Please consider a humble offering of my learnings below:

First, I want to lay a foundation by sharing the thing which most blew my mind in getting closer to the occult community. As a thinker, I had been of the position that all gods and religious beliefs seemed interesting to me, so why not believe in Hera? (To me, Hera represents the last of the “female goddesses” before we went to a male hierarchy of gods.) Ok great. I believe Hera exists; I believe I can feel her, and I believe I can write a poem which to the best of my ability represents or captures what it felt like to “speak” to Hera. Ok cool. So it turns out, that would be invocation.

Well, when you get into the occult community and the literature, it’s not just about “talking” to or “communing” or “feeling” spirits. It’s also at the other extreme, evocation. Evocation is the practice of calling a spirit into a room, getting its signature on a piece of paper, interpreting its messages as divination, and then sending the spirit into the world to do your bidding.

There is a distinction here. Invocation can be partially attributed to imagination or a dreamscape or even wishful thinking. Evocation cannot. It’s very material and based on proof and outcomes. While it is easy for me to grasp that people believe such things, it is another to really let it sink in that this kind of magic exists and works (and literally all over the world). And, it is another to dig into the history of how and why this works—what Gloria Steinem called “a politics of the skies.” It’s an incredible history—this tome of documents around the world regarding magic! I urge you to visit the work of Scarlet Imprint to begin an investigation here, if you are so inquisitive.

So back to my question: are all poets witches and what is a witch…

Well, what is a witch? To my mind, it would be the following things: do you light candles or incense as a form of catharsis or ritual? Do you combine herbs in specific recipes with the intention of having a concrete result in the world (aka herbalism)? Have you read and practiced and been initiated into a study of witchcraft? Do you sell your practice? And have you ever been part of a group (coven) which practices these things together?

Personally, I would give the “witch” title a lot of criteria. Turns out I’m wrong, and the working definition, historically, is broader. She (or he) is a witch simply because they sense the spirit realm and create ways to communicate with it.

If you ascribe to this definition, I am a witch. I created a way to communicate with Hera in my book, Trinity Star Trinity. The way of creation is obviously not limited to poetry: it can be visual art (Kandinsky comes to mind), it can be film, it can be a candle ceremony, it can be herbalistic, it can really be anything. My favorite artist I have met who does this is Charlotte Rodgers. I look at her sculptures (made largely of roadkill) and—it’s uncanny. I see a spirit, a personality, a resonance. It’s not about the “what” one is using—it’s about a belief in spirit and a belief in communing with it.

Now, we get into a sort of political hole, like the kind I reference in the Steinem quote: “what kind of spirit?” Here it gets tricky. What about those of organized religion who believe they channeled “God”—like St. John the Evangelist who wrote The Book of Revelation or Russell Nelson who channels the word of God for the Mormon church? This would actually fit under the definition of “witch” above—except that in the West, historically, a “witch” is literally outside of organized religion. What about that wrinkle?

OK. So. *I think* the answer is as follows: Historically in the West the term “witch” applied to those who were outside of Western organized religion. (And btw, in my research on this topic, the shocker for me was the sheer volume of women (and some men) who were killed. The volume is so much bigger than I ever realized! And the rape! And the torture! OH MY GOD AND GODDESSES! For background here read Colin Wilson’s terrific 1970s collection, The Occult.

While these murders have obviously left a terrible, bloody mar of baggage on the term “witch,” I would argue that if you are speaking from a contemporary occultist POV, the definition of “witch” should be considered more than the term’s usage in Western history.

Here’s why—let’s go back to Haiti, or West Africa, or Northern Brazil. These communities grew up with a mix of spiritualisms. Christianity, that is, communing with Jesus, went along right next to communing with the local gods. And so, I think it helpful to define “witch” as anyone who communes with any gods.

But ok, if those are the definitions: are all poet’s “witches”? Well, here’s my humble schema: There are two axes, the axis of process versus content/outcome, and the axis of spiritual versus secular. On the process versus content/outcome axis we have spiritual techniques (of process) and spiritual forms (of content). On the secular side we have secular process and secular content.

One question unanswered: Is spiritual content necessary for being a witch? For example, Dodie Bellamy’s Cunt-Ups or John Cage’s I Ching paintings. Bellamy uses a witchy technique to create her work, which William Burroughs and many witches use to divine art or spells: cut-ups. But is Dodie’s work witchcraft? Is John Cage’s? Not that it matters to the valuation of the art, but the delineation proposed here around the witch category is whether Dodie or John believes they are channeling something from a god or spirit. So in short, are you a poet-witch? To me it’s a question of the artists’ belief in spirit.

Do you believe in the spirit world? And are you channeling this in your art? If so, I conclude grandly and humbly, you are a witch.

***

This essay is an adapted version of a talk that occurred at the conference, Re-Writing the Future: 100 Years of Modernism and the Occult. The original paper will appear in the next edition of The Fenris Wolf.