The latest recension of the concept has been made popular by American technologists, using digital and, increasingly, precision engineered physical machinery as ritual tools to bring about the world they want to see.

This world is heavily inflected with Lord of the Rings themes, in particular.

This tendency has a few names, and has been recurring through less-reputable areas of “literature” for centuries.

I've been fascinated by this for years, in various guises. I think it's a key vector for understanding and operating within a sorcerous world. Make no mistake, our shared world is ruled by sorcerers, though they may not have this on their business cards.

Hyperstition is one name for it. As far as I can tell, this was labeled as such by the CCRU, the fascinating renegade philosophy cult formed at (then disavowed by) Warwick University in the UK in the 1990s and the early 2000s. Their various writings – both collected, and of the individuals involved – provide a snapshot into this fascinating time.

Amid all these superlative antics, there also arose the not-unrelated Chaos magic Hypersigil concept, stunningly demonstrated in Grant Morrison's The Invisibles comic series.

The idea has deeper roots, tested techniques and record of other experiments though. William S. Burroughs, for example, was obsessed with this intertextuality, regarding time and space as just another type of that can be edited, rewritten, interpolated. His influence can be found in both the CCRU and the work of the Chaos magicians.

In particular, using narrative to rewrite and fundamentally reimagine phenomenal reality was a key concern of Burroughs' 1981 novel Cities of the Red Night.

Shatter Day – from the 8-Circuit Mind tarot I made as part of Antero Alli's magnificent course

Shatter Day always closer: this enigmatic, apocalyptic utterance lands like a perfect strike at critical point of Red Night, right where the story is getting really out of control. My reading on this – it reflects the point where the fiction you have written, or are engaging with, collides with what you perceive as local reality.

That point where your script becomes the movie, and you're the leading actor in it.

It's a really strange feeling; my own initial experiments with this led to specifically getting what I wanted – but generally not experiencing great outcomes. I put this down to “conjuring blowback”. Certainly, there was also a failure of aspiration, of wanting to see if it works; seeking verification before trust.

Basically – once conjuring to get what you want – the essential challenge of handling the displacement and dissonance of actually getting it.

Asking and getting. If you're not used to getting – I was not, at this stage – this was a personally apocalyptic event.

I'm not sure how widespread these phenomena are. Joseph C. Lisiewski mentions a similar phenomenon, referring to this as “the slingshot effect” in both Ceremonial Magic & The Power of Evocation and Howlings from the Pit. As an aside, both of these are interesting, practical texts that certainly contributed working knowledge to the Grimoire Revival.

In light of these technical and media-oriented framing perhaps could be regarded more as feedback – which can be managed, if you know the equipment you're working with.

“Gnōthi seauton” – “Know thyself”, the lintel above the entrance to the Temple of Apollo in Delphi allegedly read.

More contemporarily, and perhaps more suited for some in these more ambiguous and accelerated times, is Hefner's notorious doorway maxim: “Si Non Oscillas, Noli Tintinare” – “If you don’t swing, don’t ring”.

The necessity of Promethian endeavours.

Nothing of value will be created from small, limiting myths. If a mythic pantheon has no room for aspiration, it becomes the sacred duty of those who burn with fire of the mind to amend it.

The self-selected, self-appointed ones who decide there is in fact (though first, in fiction) another way, that they disagree, and have a better plan.

This pen is held with an attitude of divine insouciance. It's yours for taking, though – as befits the tradition – it's better stolen, and you'll likely upset some people.

Authors exercise authority.

They authorise the whole damn show.

Shatter Day always closer.

Make it so.

#literature #theory #myth

The slightly salacious inclusion of the provocative term “Demons” in the title notwithstanding, this slim text efficiently, elliptically ties together the shaggiest of dog stories into a tangential masterpiece.

I adore this guy's work, unreservedly. Lecouteux's work always makes me think. I'm always enhanced, in some oblique way, by reading one of his books.

Demons and Spirits of the Land is no different – it's another wild folkloric ramble through various centuries and dozens of texts, from one side of Europe to the other, and leaves the reader with more questions than answers. But – the questions are good and necessary ones.

Saints as the “Athletes of Christ”

For me, this text caused a complete reappraisal of what Christianity had to offer early Pagans – namely, a powerful, centralising force, enabling the peasants spiritual domination over assorted troublesome entities, and their fearful conditions.

These canonised heroes of the faith come across as motley but muscular and sincere quasi-vagrants; they drift into town, deliver wild eyed sermons and promises of eternal life, then head alone into the wilds.

They return with the spirits, shackled and subservient, handing them over to the retribution of unwashed peasants in exchange for their eternal souls.

The terrorised peasants usually abuse then kill the elementals – a diminished end for these beautiful, enchanting, gift-giving beings.

Lecouteux delicately handles this matter – all sides get a fair hearing, good representation, relatable motivation. This in itself is commendable and gently instructive.

As a teacher, he deftly coaxes sparks of subject interest into a hungry fire that throw back the darkness, while casting longer shadows still.

Aside, comment: At Carcosa Bound, we do not approve of or condone this sort of behaviour towards spirits. We are firm proponents of overcoming our own terror, our ignorance of the unknown, as well as any material and spiritual poverty. We prefer interactions based on appropriate communication, knowledge exchange and mutual benefit.

Do your thing, relentlessly. Take no shit, generally. Harm ye none, conditionally. Do what thou wilt.

Experience and results to date suggest those of the spirit world respond to this, as well.

Questing Knights

In contrast to the adventures of ragged missionaries with their miraculous saviour, the other lead actors notably referenced as having landspirit dealings are quest-bound knights.

These either vanquish spirits, or more frequently encounter some sort of pivotal insight. Arthurian Grail quests abound.

Frequently – and in stark contrast to the early Christian stories – the accounts of the knights feature failure and humility, and the improvements made possible through this.

Lecouteux also makes a number of illuminating comments and hints on the identity and mysteries of the Green Knight, encountered by Gawain, of the Court of Arthur. Water spirits also frequently feature, as does a taxonomy of sorts, for easy identification in the field, as it were.

He leaves a trail of breadcrumbs, in the form of excellent references to many free-to-access public domain works, for those who wish to explore further.

A course of instruction, in a twilight tradition

The short monograph offers an introduction to a number of key texts.

Among these – Melusine, compiled by Jean d'Arras in the 14th Century. Huon of Bordeaux, a Chivalric tale featuring the Fae King Oberon, who has a curiously similar (near-identical) description to Lucifer in the grimoire tradition.

A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and other spirits, by Paracelsus. His recommendations equip the naive reader to explore these primary texts for themselves.

Really, one could wish for no better or more expert guide for forays into these difficult, archaic texts, and the veiled mysteries they contain.

I'd hesitate to say you could become a modern-day Geralt of Rivia with this book alone – but it could put you on this track, or a number of others.

If this is your jam, highly recommended.

#review #spirits #myth

Then, a reversal: Another hunt, and a glorious death – and another metamorphosis.

There are versions, improvements and shifting details, as there usually are in any story worth retelling. Easier to abandon truth and purity for a compelling performance.

As a youth, Actaeon receives training from Chiron, that strange recurring alt-centaur creature who teaches young boys to become heroes.

Astrologically, and astronomically, depending on your inclination, this comet that now bears his name serves as the mediator between the personal and transpersonal planets.

His notable students are universally doomed – but maybe this is just because they’re the only ones people remember.

So Actaeon the hunter, whether by design, desire, or just damn good luck, finds the Goddess Artemis, Diana, the Moon in the flesh, and steals a forbidden glimpse of the splendour of her true nakedness.

She transforms him into a stag, the animal he hunts, and he is pursued and torn apart by his own hunt-maddened hounds.

There is a tragedy there – but then, let us examine this tragedy more closely: τραγῳδία, tragos – goat. Ode – song.

This haunting Goat Song: sacrificing everything one has and is, in becoming; to have it all taken from you, to become immortal in myth.

A glorious sexual metaphor.

A worthy narrative.

Totally worth it.

#myth

Going through the Old World has recapitulated so many parts of my own development. All the facts learned in the classical studies classroom are attached to memories of growing up on a far edge of the world.

Athens, the famed city of the philosophers, and so much history, lends itself to these sorts of wankish ruminations.

Walking paths up the hills of the Acropolis for the first time, recognising the names of the shrines and turns, because they were a part of me. Education gave me an escape from a not-great youth, and this has escape led, eventually, here.

In the National Archeological Museum, facing the deathmask of Agamemnon, so called at least – an artifact signifying the point where myth and actual, material history meet. This was a myth, until it wasn't: Heinrich Schielman uncovered it as part of the funeral hoard in Mycenae, in 1876.

Facing the mask of a mighty, mythically cucked king, whose wife's elopement triggered the reckoning of Troy. The details don't exactly match, but they don't always need to when spinning a yarn this epic.

So, if this is real, or real enough, what else is?

Closing loops opened by a Classical education

So much of this trip felt like closing some sort of esoteric loop, built of time and text.

Shards of memory, polished smooth as they were handed down from impassioned high school teachers to eager students. No-one had seen what they were talking about, but all were invested in the majesty and thumotic vitality of these stories.

These lessons were a gift that opened up this world of old, cold stone and metal, decades later.

Through them, I could appreciate the form and function of the selection of kraters, the large vessels for mixing wine with water; ancient Greek proto-punchbowls.

Or entertain possible implications and intentions for metal votive figurines and other objects recovered from temple sites.

Or note the aesthetic development in particular sculptures I had only seen in scratchy reproductions.

Or admire the gear from Neoplatonic sage Proclus' home altar, in the end game of that phase of Greek paganism. The knife he used to sacrifice a pig; the mugs the celebrants chucked into the pit, after they shared wine and drank to the gods.

As something of an appreciator of both this line of thinking and of drinking parties with my friends, there was an immediate trans-temporal fistbump moment.

Classics and bold innovation

Nearby, at a bar I didn't catch the name of, some madmen and women have seized on and adapted another mystery tradition, replete with secret recipes, mythic tales and journeys, somehow in permanent, soft focus twilight: Tiki cocktails.

They've remixed tiki drinks and made them Greek ingredients. While initially highly skeptical, I can't go past a zombie.

It's one of the classic recipes of the genre, a potent mix of several rums, exotic ingredients like falernum, absinthe and grapefruit juice. It takes serious balls to mess with this – let alone substitute in and rebalance it to include ouzo.

But, the way they did it, it actually works, and is delicious. Not the same, but a solid homage, certainly.

Sometimes, you can remix the classics. But you have to know where you're coming from.

Mad, bad and dangerous to know

A few blocks away is a statue erected to the Byron as a warrior poet who came to aid the Greeks in their war for independence against the Turks in the 1820s. He died in Greece – of fever and not in battle – and is honoured as a hero here.

Seeing the monument to this notorious adventurer closed another loop I did not know was open – his was one of the first books of poetry I got, during my fumbling self-education; he seemed like a badass who scored a lot of chicks, and this was a strong recommendation at the time.

Personal experience is hard, and necessary

Travel like this is hard; shattering the comfortable context of safe everyday life, shaking it to pieces. Being surprised at the distance between what you think you know and what these places are actually like.

Also: handling the attendant hypervigilance, mood swings and untethered ideas this all provokes. As a wise and well-travelled old head (now dead) once said, reality checks don't bounce.

It's humbling, freeing and tough to replace old, comfortable hand-me-downs with new, very personal experiences.

But, ultimately, trials like these are what forge souls and make them shine bright, reflected through time.

Our potential, and how we reify this, is all we have, and what we are measured by.

#travel #myth

The sensuous curve of the long waterfront is a delightful walk; not even the starving, fornicating stray cats or the constant pestering horse-and-cart touts detract overly from this lovely seaside stroll.

The place does feel different from the more inland parts of Egypt, somehow – whether the gentle Mediterranean breezes, or the faint echoes of its legendary founding and subsequent cosmopolitanism seems unclear.

A Temple of Knowledge

The Library – Bibliotheca Alexandrina – is a magnificent building, and one of the architectural highlights. Something about the place feels deeply Archeofuturist, and not in a shitty low-resolution “despise sports, love wheatfields” kind of way. The structure realises a purity of vision. This is rare these days.

Inside – the hundreds of thousand of books, in a wide range of languages. The reading room is incredible, also, and features a series of steps leading downwards, into a well, providing progressively quieter and more secreted spots for deep thinking and inquiry.

In the more open areas, there are literacy-related treasures on display – printing presses and calendaring machines of historical or technological note; tapestries embroidered with scriptures, and calligraphy; mastheads and assorted notebooks from famous local publishing houses.

The Internet Archive has servers there, too – banks upon banks of servers on display, guarding the memory of the internet. It was a wonderful thing to see this seamless integration into this newest information age, in this special place.

Ancient Rituals

A day later, preparing to leave this city, in a moment of quiet reflection, I perform the Rite of the Headless One.

I like the early form of the ritual from The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation: PGM V. 96-172, otherwise called The Stele of Jeu the hieroglyphist. A key figure in the grimoire revival, Jake Stratton Kent, called it “the single most important ritual in modern magic”, in his provocative and useful chapbook The Headless One.

Performing this short ritual here seems fitting – it was from this place, and, though in translation, the intent is there and the words still have power. The familiar feeling of momentous connection grows, as I say these beautiful words, but it hits even harder and deeper somehow.

I flap around for a while afterwards, enjoying the dis-integration and return to familiar awareness, slipping back into the usual clown costume I live in, with all its ridiculous, earnest concerns.

The Uber driver arrives – we found taking Egyptian Ubers between cities is the easiest and least-complicated way of getting around – and we begin our drive back to Cairo.

Egyptian drivers are exceptional, and have a mechanical proprioception attuned to a degree I’ve never seen before. They also drive fast, especially on the broad, straight desert roads connecting the cities.

Desert Rains

We’re out in the desert when the rain begins. Torrential – the heaviest we’ve encountered anywhere in our travels so far, and in the middle of the Egyptian desert, of all places.

Part of me questions our driver’s wet-weather driving experience. Another part immediately offers reassurance: we wanted proof, experience, knowledge. A story. You’ve got it.

The particular line from the third part of the ritual I performed earlier is booming, repeating over and over now. This is when the Magician joins with, and is empowered by, the Headless One. These words, now heavy with cosmic importance, are absolutely obvious, natural, inescapable:

“My sweat falls upon the Earth as Rain, that it may inseminate it.”

This magic is as real as it gets. And it is beautiful.

#travel #myth #ritual

It's an affecting site – especially when you look slightly more into the story. Further details that have since emerged that the allegations, trials and murders showed once again, the motives were more upon the earth, rather than under it.

One young accuser, Ann Putnam, accused over 60 people. Her father would buy their land at cut-rate prices; the veritable fire sale.

It highlights the error of attributing to devils what people are perfectly capable of doing for, or to, themselves.

This memorial stands in stark contrast to the mid-century, highly affected gropings towards some “witchiness”; that weird American expression that gets tangled up with feminism, social issues and various flavours of New Thought. This is fine, as far as it goes – but you have to ask where the other bits are; the flying ointments, Sabbats, shapeshifting, the arrangements with tutelary spirits. All the actual magical bits, where things go bump in the night.

Beyond this, what is most curious about this is just how sexless, safe and neutered the end result is. It all seems very ... confected.

A wild quest; illicit love, pirate gold and lost history

A few minutes away, near the Salem seaside, there’s a museum bearing testament to something that seems too outrageous to be true – and the hoard of pirate treasure to prove it.

An underwater archeologist and treasure-hunter named Barry Clifford weathered ridicule for years, hunting for a rumoured lost pirate ship he heard about as a boy: the Wydah.

Clifford was possessed by the story of the captured slave-transport ship, which had been turned to the pursuit of extra-legal income gathering activities by a gathering of rogues and rapscallions in the early 1700s.

The ship, as a so-called republic of the sea, was governed by the egalitarian, libertarian values of “the articles”, the code which each sailor would swear to uphold. The ship was captained by the dashing Sam Bellamy, who turned to piracy for love – specifically, the love of Maria Hallett.

After a stellar career as a pirate captain, Bellamy was apparently heading around the Massachusetts coastline.

About this time, Maria was branded “the Witch of Wellfleet”, apparently due to being seen howling, pleading and cursing on the beach.

The god-fearing locals thought she was communicating with the devils of storm and sea; they did not know that her pirate love, and his crew of free men, were sailing through ship-wrecking seas to meet her. They also did not know she was with child.

Bellamy’s ship, laden with a legendary horde of reallocated Spanish gold, was lost that night; those who didn’t drown were captured and hung. The body of Sam Bellamy was never found. Maria Hallett apparently gave birth to a boy, though never revealed who the father was.

Sometime after, she and the child also disappeared. Another mystery – no one knows where she went, or what happened next. There is a theory he survived, and they were reunited, and lived out their lives together – though this is just a tale; do the stories of pirates and witches get happy endings?

Three hundred years later, after a decades-long treasure hunt, Barry Clifford found the wreck, with 200,000 catalogued items – among which – in a story almost too fantastic, the hoard of the actual pirate treasure.

The exhibition deftly placed piracy in the context of the time, and tells these stories. It’s all there, including the treasure. It’s a wonderful, exciting place to visit, and so well done.

So, on the face of it, it seems Salem’s history of witchcraft is largely fabrication, misapprehension, and wilful ignorance, capitalised on with an evocative and high-valence PR exercise. Meanwhile, other stories, no less compelling, remain largely underexposed.

#travel #witchcraft #myth