Pagan Magazine: Remembered and Reimagined

A mock-up cover illustrating how Pagan Magazine might look 

in 2024 based on a recent post on Torpedo the Ark

 

Last year marked the 40th anniversary of Pagan: The Magazine of Blood-Knowledge (1983-1992). 

 

And, whilst I have discussed the origins of this obscure publication previously on Torpedo the Ark and provided a full index of issues - click here - I think this might be an opportune moment to offer a few further remarks in response to a suggestion that Pagan be digitised and made available online and in answer to the following questions asked by this same person:

1. Can you explain why you chose the title Pagan for the magazine?

 

As far as I recall, this was inspired by D. H. Lawrence; not just his religious and occult writings, but the fact that he and his close friends belonged to a literary society as adolescents referred to by some as 'the Pagans' [1]. 

 

This small group would discuss all kinds of ideas and read authors including Marx, Nietzsche, and Darwin and I wanted the magazine to reflect the same degree of intellectual curiosity. My readings of Nietzsche in the mid-1980s only reinforced my view that this was the perfect name for the magazine and although I never used the following section from The Will to Power, it very much reflects the kind of thing that fired my imagination at the time:

 

"We few or many who again dare to live in a dismoralised world, we pagans in faith: we are probably also the first to grasp what a pagan faith is: - to have to imagine higher creatures than man, but beyond good and evil; to have to consider all being higher as also being immoral. We believe in Olympus - and not in the 'Crucified'." [2]

 

I still think it's a nice title, although that's partly due to the fact that I'm strongly inclined towards auto-descriptive words beginning with the letter P: punk, pirate, poet, pagan, etc. However, I would almost certainly change the subtitle - if it ever was the subtitle and not merely a strapline - as the irrationalist concept of blood-knowledge is one I have come to find problematic [3]. I think now I would be tempted to go with Pagan: the Magazine of Dark Enlightenment.

 

 

2. Can you remember the circumstances surrounding the production of the early issues?

 

Not very well. I was twenty at the time and studying for a degree in Leeds. That period is very much like a dream now and I don't remember much about it.  

 

Fortunately, however, I kept a diary and, apparently, it was on Thursday 7 April, 1983, that I suddenly had the idea of putting together a magazine that would reflect my new philosophy - a post-punk primitivism partly inspired by D. H. Lawrence and a second-hand copy of the Larousse Encyclopedia of World Mythology.

 

I designed a front cover - which, to be honest, is a complete dog's dinner - and began writing the text that evening. The first issue wasn't completed, however, until the middle of the following month, when I was in London at Charisma Records. 

 

It was there that I made a hundred photocopies of the ten-side issue on 16 May. Don't ask what happened to them, but I know that one was sent to Malcolm McLaren's office at 25 Denmark Street and it might be noted that the woman's face featured on the cover with a thick black band of makeup across her eyes was inspired by the dancers in the 'Buffalo Gals' video (a look McLaren borrowed from Ridley Scott's Bladerunner (1982)). 

 

The image of Priapus which also featured on the cover was intended to be a kind of logo, but, sadly, it didn't appear on any future issues and I think Pan became the presiding deity for the most part.   

 

The superior second issue, with original artwork by Gillian Hall - my on-off (mostly off) partner at the time - came out in July and was quickly followed by issue three, which was a poetry issue with a picture of Jordan (Pamela Rooke) on the cover. The magazine didn't really come into its own until the period 1986-89, which is when the vast bulk of issues were produced (on A3 paper). 

 

 

3. Were you part of the pagan/esoteric/occult scene in the 1980s?

 

No, not at all. 

 

My interests were very much to do with art, politics, and popular culture, rather than magic or witchcraft. I read books about the latter and had a T-shirt with a picture of Aleister Crowley on, but that was about it. 

Having said that, there were issues of Pagan on subjects including alchemy, astrology, and tarot, so it would be a little disingenuous to say I had no interest in (or knowledge of) these things. Further, I was a regular reader of Pagan News, edited by Phil Hine, who has since become an internationally respected author on chaos magic and related topics and we occasionally cross paths in London. 

 

However, my attempt to garner support for the magazine from Leonora James, the Gardnerian High Priestess who was then serving as President of the Pagan Federation, ended badly after she decided that images I had used by German Expressionist painters had paedophile undertones. She warned me that if I were to send her any future copies of Pagan Magazine she would immediately report me to the police!

 

After that, I had no further contact with people on the pagan scene until I met Christina Harrington, in 2004, and became involved with things happening at her magical little bookshop, Treadwell's [4].     

 

 

4. Finally, do you still identify as a pagan and do you see Torpedo the Ark as a continuation of the project you began with Pagan Magazine forty years ago?   

 

I don't really identify as anything to be honest and, whilst there are certainly posts on TTA that might be interpreted as pagan in character, the blog is ultimately a very different kettle of fish and has a radically different philosophy and perspective. I found it fun doing the mockup cover for an imaginary issue of Pagan Magazine published in 2024, but don't think my heart would really be in it if asked to produce an entire new issue. Some things are very much of their time and Pagan belongs in the 1980s like a fish belongs in water. 

 

But again, having said that, I obviously still read Lawrence and Nietzsche and I have presented two papers at Treadwell's recently - one on the magical allure of objects and the other on occultism in the age of transparency [5] - so, who knows, perhaps for the 50th anniversary I might be tempted to reboot the magazine. But I doubt it.      

 

 

Artwork for Pagan Magazine, Issue 2 (1983), 

by Gillian Hall

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Early Years 1885-1912, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 170.  

[2] Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, ed. Walter Kaufmann (Vintage Books, 1968), section 1034 (1888), p. 533.

 

[3] I have twice discussed Lawrence's concept of blood-knowledge on Torpedo the Ark: click here and here. 

 

[4] See the post dated 4 December 2012 entitled 'The Treadwell's Papers' - click here. 

 

[5] Details of both these events can be found on the TTA Events page: click here.

 

 

A Brief Note on the Queer Gothic, etc.

Margarita Dadykina: Cathy's Ghost (2019) 

Sculpted figure (58 x 20 cm)

I. 

 

Sometimes, a literary genre and a theoretical framework can become so inextricably entwined that it is difficult to discuss the one without reference to the other. Thus it is, for example, that next month sees the publication of a new collection of essays exploring the gothic from a queer perspective [1].   

 

This notion of the queer gothic was one that I dipped in-and-out of over ten years ago, producing three papers presented at Treadwell's Bookshop; the first on Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891); the second on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850); and the third on Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847) [2]. 

 

Anyway, in anticipation of the Edinburgh Companion, here are some remarks I made back in 2014 in an attempt to (loosely) define what I understood by gothic queerness (as well as related terms, including the uncanny and the perverse) ... 

 

II. 

 

My concern with the gothic relates to a form of fiction that emerges during the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. I'm not concerned with Germanic tribes migrating about early Europe causing trouble for the Romans, or spiky-forms of medieval architecture (even if the ruins of the latter often provide a setting for many a gothic tale). 

 

Primarily, then, it's to a bizarre, yet, in some ways, rather conventional literary genre I refer when I use the term gothic, whilst happily acknowledging that elements of this have infected many other cultural forms and fields of inquiry, including queer studies. Indeed, such is the level of intimacy between queer studies and gothic studies that many scholars promiscuously drift back and forth from discussing the politics of desire, gender and sexual nonconformity to issues within hauntology and demonology. 

 

Obviously, this is facilitated by the fact that not only do gothic fictions and queer theories have common obsessions, but they often rely on a shared language of transgression to explore ideas. It has even been suggested that the gothic imaginatively enables queer and provides an important historical model of queer politics and thinking [3].

 

We can certainly never overestimate the role that gothic fiction played in the unfolding history of sexuality. For not only does it anticipate the later codification and deployment of sexualities, but it also participates in what Foucault terms the perverse implantation of these new forms of subjectivity [4]. 

 

If it is generally accepted that Horace Walpole's Castle of Ortanto is the first gothic novel - published in 1764 - it is also usually agreed that by the publication of Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer in 1820, the popular craze for gothic fiction had already peaked. 

 

Nevertheless, the genre continued to flourish and mutate at the margins of more respectable literature in the decades that followed. Indeed, many of the works now most commonly associated with it were written in the late-Victorian period: this includes Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). 

 

However, whilst slowly changing in form, content, and setting over the years, many things remained the same within the gothic text to the point of cliché; not least of all the continued narrative fascination for perverse sexual practices and abnormal individuals. In this, it is similar to pornography. Both types of writing share a compulsive and "seemingly inexhaustible ability to return again and again to common tropes and similar situations" [5]. 

 

Indeed, some critics argue that, like pornography, gothic fiction might ultimately serve a conservative function in that it perpetuates stereotypes and thus ultimately re-inscribes the status quo. And it's true that gothic tales often conclude with the moral order restored and reason triumphant (though rarely with a happy ending). However, at the same time, gothic horror seems to possess an uncanny ability to pass "beyond the limits of its own structural 'meaning'" and in this manner transform "the structure of meaning itself" [6]. 

 

And so, whilst gothic literature might often be predictable, it's never boring. It constantly opens up new worlds of knowledge and provides an opportunity to explore the pleasures of socio-erotic transgression; incest, rape, and same-sex desire are all familiar themes within the genre, not to mention paedophilia, necrophilia, and spectrophilia. 

 

Arguably, Sade takes things furthest in his One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom (written in 1785, but not published until 1904), his masterpiece of torture-porn often described as a gothic novel, even though the Divine Marquis himself rejected the term on the grounds that there was nothing supernatural about the horror and sexual violence in his books [7]. 

 

So, to conclude this briefest of brief introductions to the gothic, let me make clear that what excites about the genre is not that it simply causes gender trouble or allows for things to go bump in the night. More than this, it challenges (and in some cases overturns) many of our ideas about what it is to be human - and, indeed, of how to be human. This gives it broader philosophical importance than those who sneer at ghosts and ghouls might appreciate. 

 

And if, at times, gothic fiction fails as art due to its overreliance on sensational and supernatural elements, it nevertheless more often than not succeeds as a form of resistance to conventional thinking and the heteronormative status quo. And it is this, as indicated, which qualifies it as queer [8]. 

 

And what do I mean by queer?  

 

Well, let me stress that I'm certainly not using the term queer or the concept of queerness as synonymous with either homosexuality or gayness [9]. Indeed, I vigorously object to those who conflate ideas in this manner and use queer as an overarching and unifying label for what are distinct forms of practice, behaviour and identity (often with nothing queer about them). 

 

For me, the appeal of queerness is twofold: 

 

Firstly, it is not a positivity or subject position. It's a transpositional negativity - i.e., a mobile and ambiguous concept that resists any fixed categorical definition and remains permanently at odds with all forms of legitimacy and identity. Queer, ultimately, doesn't refer to anyone or anything; it's a form of non-being "utterly inimical to [...] authentic existence, ontological or natural" [10]. 

 

Secondly, it subsumes and dissolves all forms of dualism; not only sexual and gender oppositions, but also that model of thinking which would keep life and death as absolutely distinct and separate categories. Ultimately, it's this thanatological project that I most wish to further, even if that involves unfolding it within a spooky sexual context. This project, which is both morbid and material, picks up on Nietzsche's contention that life isn't categorically different from or opposed to death; that being alive is, in fact, simply a rare and unusually complex way of being dead [11].

 

Death, we might say, is the material kingdom of the actual and vital signs, although real, are but an epiphenomenal effect of matter. Or, to put it another way, life is a momentary stabilization of solar energy that upon death is released from its molar entrapment back into unformed chaos and an infinite process of molecular disintegration [12]. This becomes important when arguing that there can't really be any serious philosophical objections to romancing corpses or getting it on with ghosts - even whilst there may well be legitimate moral, social, and cultural reservations. 

 

Moving on, we must of course mention the perverse ... 

 

The perverse might be thought of as a more aggressive and transgressive form of queerness; one that takes us to the very heart of a game involving desire, deviation, and damnation. Historically, perversion is tied to political insurrection and involves straying or being diverted from a path, destiny, or objective which is understood as natural or right. To those who live their whole lives on the straight and narrow it is obviously an abhorrent concept. But, personally, I think it’s a good thing to stray off the path; just as it's preferable to fall into sin, rather than fall into line [13]. 

 

Figures like Heathcliff or Dorian Gray are irresistibly drawn towards the perverse. Which is to say they are intellectually predisposed towards evil and that which is unnatural or anti-natural. The former, for example, knowingly engages in practices such as necrophilia and spectrophilia. And there's the rub; Heathcliff is fully aware of what he's doing and what he wants to do. It's the perversion of free will that leads to transgression, says Augustine. And it is transgression that brings death into the world. 

 

But it is also that which brings understanding and gives pleasure and we should never forget or underestimate the pleasure of perversion. As Freud was led to conclude, it's the perversions alone that ultimately make happy [14].

 

Finally, there's one more term which we simply must mention; one made famous by Freud in his 1919 essay Das Unheimliche ...

 

The uncanny is, arguably, also a form of queerness. But in designating the sinister, gruesome, and lugubrious it moves beyond sexual strangeness and gender troubling. The uncanny is more likely to give us the creeps than excite our desire. Wuthering Heights is, for me at least, the greatest of all uncanny novels; familiar, yet alien, seductive, yet repulsive; a book in which even the mortal status of the lovers is never fixed.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Queer Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, ed. Ardel Haefele-Thomas, (Edinburgh University Press, 2023). 

      There seems to be some interesting material in this 368 page book divided into three main sections - Queer Times, Queer Monsters, and Queer Forms - although, having said that, it does seem slightly old hat (though maybe I'm just miffed that I wasn't invited to contribute to the book). 

 

[2] 'Elements of Gothic Queerness in The Picture of Dorian Gray' was presented at Treadwell's on 18 May, 2011. This was followed by 'The Scarlet Letter: An Earthly Story with a Hellish Meaning' on 4 July, 2013 (advertised as 'A Slice of American Gothic for American Independence Day'). 

      As for the paper entitled 'Spectrophilia and Other Queer Goings On in the Tale of Wuthering Heights', this was due to be presented at Treadwell's on 7 October, 2014, but unfortunately had to be cancelled due to unforeseen (and unrecalled) circumstances. 

      Together, these essays formed part of a wider project to do with perverse materialism.

 

[3] See George E. Haggerty, Queer Gothic, (University of Illinois Press, 2006).

 

[4] See Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley, (Penguin Books, 1998). 

 

[5] George E. Haggerty, Queer Gothic, p. 9. 

 

[6] Ibid., p. 10. 

 

[7] Sade did admire at least one gothic novel, namely Matthew Gregory’s The Monk: A Romance (1796), a work in which every attempt was made to outrage readers in as many explicit, violent, and perverse ways as possible. 

 

[8] I don't want to overstate the case or make too wide a claim here. Haggerty is right to carefully resist the temptation to uncritically celebrate the gothic and its literary-cultural significance. As he points out, the genre was always somewhat marginal and semi-legitimate and never succeeded in challenging the dominant mainstream fiction of the age, which remained rigidly straight and heteronormative. 

      Also, if it provided alternative (queerer) ways to think through the politics of desire, it was ultimately powerless to prevent the "imposition of sexological thinking at the end of the nineteenth century". At best, the gothic continued to cast a shadow across the bright new world of scientia sexualis. See Queer Gothic, p. 19. 

 

[9] Elisa Glick is a Marxist critic guilty of this; see p. 11 of her book Materializing Queer Desire (SUNY Press, 2009), where she rather weakly explains her reasons for wanting to employ (and I would say misuse) the term queer synonymously with gay, lesbian, and homosexual. 

 

[10] Jonathan Dollimore, Sexual Dissidence, (Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 140. 

      I’m tempted, in fact, to drop the term queer altogether here and use instead a notion of the uncanny, which is closely related but without the sexual overtones. 

 

[11] See Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1974), III. 109, p. 168. 

 

[12] Those who attended Treadwell's regularly in 2006 will perhaps remember my six week course on thanatology in which these ideas were discussed in detail and at length. The work can be found in The Treadwell’s Papers, Vol. II, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010). 

 

[13] Even such a trite and common expression as the straight and narrow - thought of as the one true path into the future - reveals something crucial about Western metaphysical thinking; note the linkage of truth with linearity and teleology. People think they are strolling along this path naturally or by choice, but in fact they march along it by arrangement and coercion. 

 

[14] Freud made the attainment of (non-functional, non-reproductive) pleasure central to his theory of perversion and stressed that it is the perversions that make happy; their repression which causes suffering and neuroses. Freud also understands that this is why many normal individuals strongly dislike queers who dare to manifest and flaunt their perversity; not only do they find them monstrous and threatening, but also seductive and this places them in the uncomfortable position of having to overcome a secret envy of those who enjoy illicit pleasures. 

      Note too how Freud compares the perversions to the grotesque demons used to illustrate the temptation of the saints. This is precisely how such images and descriptions continue to function within gothic literature; i.e. as uncanny manifestations and queer embodiments of the perverse; a threatening excess of difference and deformity. See his Three Essays on the Theory of Human Sexuality, (1905). 

 

On the Whip and the Wand: A Response to Joanne Pearson

Artwork by Stephen Alexander for the Treadwell's Paper 

'The Whip and the Wand' in the Sex/Magic series (2005)

 

 

According to the academic author Joanne Pearson, the use of a whip or scourge as a magical tool within the context of (post)modern spirituality, including pagan witchcraft - or Wicca, as many of its adherents prefer to call it - has elicited little debate and ritual flagellation tends to be a largely concealed practice. 

 

She writes: 

 

"Techniques associated with BDSM in the public imagination [...] tend to be ignored, sidelined, dismissed, and whitewashed, both by Wiccan practitioners and by academic studies of Wicca, rather than being explored as mechanisms by which boundaries might be transgressed through the infliction of pain, exercised on the body, eliciting religious experience from skin and flesh." [1] 

 

However, that's not quite true: way back in 2005, for example, I presented a six-part series of lectures at Treadwell's Bookshop on Sex/Magic, at the behest of Christina Harrington, a respected authority on all things esoteric and the store's founder and presiding spirit.  

 

These talks discussed a variety of topics from a philosophical perspective, including masturbation, anal sex, nakedness and - in the final paper of the series, entitled 'The Whip and the Wand' - fetishistic aspects of modern pagan witchcraft [2].

 

The lectures were eventually published in 2010 by Blind Cupid Press as Volume I of The Treadwell's Papers. 

 

Of course, to be fair to Pearson, this is not something widely known; the talks were attended only by a handful of people and neither filmed so as to be uploaded to a social media platform, nor livestreamed online as so many events are today. 

 

Similarly, the two Blind Cupid books of Treadwell's Papers - each consisting of twelve essays - were produced in an extremely limited number and those not sold via Treadwell's were left in the philosophy sections of several other London book stores for anyone who came across them to freely acquire [3].

 

Having said that, however, as a scholarly researcher and writer in this area, it's surely incumbent upon Pearson to be aware of this and not mistakenly assert that no one - other than her good self - has ever been bold enough to investigate the links between Wicca and BDSM [4].

 

Notes

[1] Joanne Pearson, 'Embracing the lash: pain and ritual as spiritual tools', Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis, Vol. 23, (2011), pp. 351-363.

      See also Pearson's earlier essay: 'Inappropriate Sexuality? Sex Magic, S/M and Wicca (or Whipping Harry Potter's Arse!)', Theology & Sexuality, Vol. 11, Issue 2, (Sage, 2005), pp. 31-42.   

 

[2] For full details of the Sex/Magic series - as well as all other papers presented at Treadwell's between 2004 and 2012 - click here. 

[3] Apparently, these books sometimes turn up online described as rare collectors items and selling for laughably exorbitant prices.

[4] I suspect that Pearson has sought to gain a little speaker's benefit by positioning herself in this manner; i.e., as the only one who dares to speak openly about the prohibited and the perverse, thereby challenging the established order and its taboos. 

      To her credit, however, Pearson began exploring the common conceptual ground between Wicca and BDSM several years before I thought of it; first presenting a paper on this at a conference at the University of Glasgow entitled 'Dangerous Sex: Contesting the Spaces of Theology and Sexuality', in 2002. But her later claims about the continued attempt to deny or overlook the kinky aspects of Wicca need some (retrospective) qualification. 

 

 

Readers who are inerested can read three extracts from 'The Whip and the Wand' by clicking here.  

 

Nostalgie für das Ding

Dorothee Richter and Kim Novak as Gillian Holroyd in

Bell, Book and Candle (dir. Richard Quine, 1958)

 

 

According to Dorothee Richter, who - among other things - is a professor in contemporary curating at the University of Reading, nostalgia for the thing is always reactionary and, as such, makes her feel uncomfortable and unhappy [1]. 

Which is a shame. 

 

However, at the risk of adding to her discomfort and distress, I'm afraid that my fascination with das Ding - whether in the prose poems of Francis Ponge [2], the philosophical reflections of Martin Heidegger [3], or the psychoanalytic seminars of Jacques Lacan [4] - grows stronger by the year. 

 

Richter can't quite understand why there are thinkers - like Vilém Flusser [5] and Byung-Chul Han [6] - for whom the thing is still an alluring object, albeit one that is rapidly vanishing in this virtual age of Undinge: 

 

"Have we not been here before, and have we not, with good reason, rejected the auratic view of things? [...] Why is there this cyclically recurring nostalgia for the thing in its pure aspect?" [7], she asks.

 

And, yes, I suppose we have been here before. And perhaps there are good reasons to be suspicious of those who become too taken with the idea that things, including artworks and human beings, have a magical quality or essence. 

 

But, having said that, who wants to live in an entirely disenchanted world where everything has been dissolved and digitalised into quantifiable data to be processed by artificial intelligence? 

 

I don't. And, if I'm honest, it shocks me that anyone would.

 

When push comes to shove, I stand with the young witch I met recently at Treadwell's [8], who told me that when non-things beckon her to enter a virtual hell, she relies on the saving power of bell, book, and candle to summon her back to reality.           

 

Notes

 

[1] Dorothee Richter, '(Non-)Things or Why Nostalgia for the Thing is Always Reactionary', OnCurating,  Issue 45: click here. 

      This is a slightly modified version of an essay, trans. Judith Rosenthal, that was originally published under the title '(Un)Dinge, oder warum die Sehnsucht nach dem Ding immer reaktionär ist', in Interdisziplinäres Ausstellen, ed. Sabine Fauland, (Österreichischer Museumsbund, Vienna, 2016).

 

[2] Francis Ponge (1899 - 1988); French essayist and poet. Influenced by both surrealism and phenomenology, Ponge developed a unique style of writing in which he closely examined everyday objects. See Le Parti pris des choses (1942), a collection of 32 prose poems, translated into English by Beth Archer Brombert as Taking the Side of Things (1972) and as The Nature of Things by Lee Fahnestock (1995). 

 

[3] Martin Heidegger (1889 - 1976); German philosopher. Considered to be among the most important and influential thinkers of the 20th-century.  In a series of post-War lectures delivered in Bremen, Heidegger discussed the question concerning modern technology and spoke about das Ding as a gathering place of the Fourfold. See Insight Into That Which Is, trans. Andrew J. Mitchell, (Indiana University Press, 2012).    

[4] Jacques Lacan (1901 - 1981); French psychoanalyst. Discussion of the thing constitutes one of the central themes of his work in 1959-60. He uses the French term la chose interchangeably with the German term das Ding. For Lacan, the latter refers to the thing in its dumb reality, entirely outside of language and the unconscious (thus ultimately impossible for man to ever fully imagine or describe). It remains, however, an object of desire to which we continually return; the unforgettable Other.   

 

[5] Vilém Flusser (1920 - 1991); Czech-born writer and theorist who lived for a long time in Brazil. Initially under the spell of Heidegger, Flusser developed his own take on the question of things and non-things; see Dinge und Undinge: Phänomenologische Skizzen (Hanser, 1993) and The Shape of Things: A Philosophy of Design, (Reaktion Books, 1999); a series of insightful essays (translated into English by Anthony Mathews) on things including wheels, carpets, pots, umbrellas, and tents. 

[6] Byung-Chul Han; South Korean-born philosopher and cultural theorist living in Germany. I have discussed (or referred to) many of his ideas and books on Torpedo the Ark. In a note to his recent work, Non-things, trans Daniel Steur, (Polity Press, 2022), Han writes: 

"There has been an increasing interest in things in cultural studies over the past few decades. This theoretical interest in things, however, does not mean that things are becoming more important in everyday life. On the contrary, the fact that they have become the explicit subject of theoretical reflection is a sign that they are disappearing. [...] Similarly, 'material culture' and the 'material turn' can be understood as reactions to the dematerialization and dereification of reality brought about by digitalization." [99-100]

I review and discuss this text in a two-part post published in June 2022: click here to go to part one.       

 

 [7] Dorothee Richter, op. cit. 

      By the thing in its pure aspect, I think Richter is referring to the thing as a thing-in-itself [Ding-an-sich] with its own unique presence in time and space. This latter is what Walter Benjamin termed its aura - dismissed by Richter as merely a bourgeois attempt to spiritualise the object and give it aesthetic value or abstract beauty outside and above any political history or meaning. For Richter, all such thinking is mythologizing and there are no objects outside of language; a tree, for example, is a concept, not a thing (in itself) - indeed, the entire universe is mind-dependent. As an object-oriented philosopher, I don't subscribe to this correlationism.  

[8] Treadwell's is a bookshop located at 33, Store Street, Bloomsbury, London, WC1. It specialises in esoteric titles and stocks various herbs and ceremonial oils used in occult practices and/or modern pagan witchcraft. It was opened in 2003 (originally in Covent Garden) by proprietor Christina Harrington. I have given over thirty papers at the store: click here for details. For further information visit: treadwells-london.com

 

 

In Defence of Isis Veiled: What a Practice of Occultism Might Mean in an Age of Transparency

Cover art for the Treadwell's Paper 

Occultism in the Age of Transparency (2023)

by Stephen Alexander (shadowy version)

 

 

This post is a slightly revised extract from a paper presented at Treadwell's Bookshop, on 7 September, 2023. The event was graciously hosted, as ever, by Christina Harrington, and marked my return to the store as a speaker after an absence of eleven years [1]. 

 

 

**************************************************

 

 

The Veil of Isis is a metaphorical and artistic motif in which nature is personified as a goddess, covered by a veil or mantle representing the inaccessibility of her secrets [2]. 

 

Illustrations of Isis with her veil being lifted were extremely popular from the late 17th to the early-mid 19th century and were usually intended to show the triumph of Reason. However, even occultists were happy to play this game of indecent exposure; Madame Blavatsky, for example, used the metaphor of Isis unveiled when expounding the spiritual teachings of Theosophy [3]. 

 

According to Blavatsky, whilst scientists and philosophers revealed only material facts and superficial forms, she would penetrate further to the most hidden truths. That, to me at least, is a shameful ambition.

 

And I don't much like it either when practitioners of modern ceremonial magic also attempt to unveil Isis, or command demons hidden in darkness to make themselves apparent and obedient to the will of the one who has summoned them forth. 

 

For me, occultism - particularly in this, the age of transparency - should be a defence of concealment and anonymity, not making visible and naming those beings who stand dark on the threshold of the Unknown. 

 

I don’t want to violently drag everything out into the open - least of all some poor demon - so it can be subject to our x-ray vision. For even gods and demons die when they shed all negativity (all shadow, all darkness). That’s why Goethe’s Faust encouraged us to hold tight to the veil of Isis, even if we can never embrace the goddess, or catch anything other than a glimpse of her [4]. 

 

Occultism is ultimately not about revelation, but mystical initiation. And this involves closing your eyes and shutting your mouth; for it's an attempt to maintain the silence and stillness. Thus, when casting a spell, for example, whisper it in a voice that is lighter than breath. For magic, like poetry, is an event of stillness (i.e., a phenomenon of negativity) that enables us to listen to the silence (to be attentive to the darkness). 

 

In other words, magic is about tuning in to intensities; about forming a sensitive relationship with the world "that is not characterized by representation (that is, by ideas or meaning) but by immediate touching and presence" [5]. Only in silent stillness "do we enter into a relation with the nameless, which exceeds us" [6].

 

Silence, stillness, secrecy, and shadows are the fourfold of terms at the heart of occultism. 

 

And I would suggest to any would-be wiccans or neo-pagans here this evening that, instead of trying to move with the times and making secret rituals open to everyone, you stay concealed, hidden, and withdrawn. 

 

And, above all, stay still: for just as we can only ever catch a glimpse of the gods, they can only cast their gaze upon those who "linger in contemplative calmness" [7]. 

 

In sum: occult practices and magical rituals are symbolic techniques of becoming-imperceptible [8] and I’m hoping, that via a form of occultism, we might learn how to stage our own disappearance and darken the world, giving it back its shadows, its secrecy, and its silence. 

 

For whilst people talk a lot about plastic in the seas and worry about their so-called carbon footprint, I would suggest that light pollution and noise pollution are far more threatening to our ontological wellbeing. 

 

 

Photo by Paul Gorman 

(as posted on Instagram)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Readers can find a full list of previous Treadwell's papers by clicking here.

 

[2] The motif was based on a statue of Isis located in the ancient Egyptian city of Sais, which was said to have an inscription reading: I am all that has been and is and shall be; and no mortal has ever lifted my mantle - which admittedly sounds like a challenge. For an interesting philosophical study of this topic, see Pierre Hadot, The Veil of Isis (Harvard University Press, 2008). 

      Taking the allegorical figure of the veiled goddess Isis as a guide, and drawing on the work of both ancient and modern thinkers (the latter including Goethe, Rilke, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger), Hadot traces successive interpretations of a cryptic phrase which has long intrigued the Western imagination and is attributed to Heraclitus: Phusis kruptesthai philei (Nature loves to hide). 

      Hadot concludes that there are essentially two (contradictory) approaches to nature: the Promethean, or experimental-questing, approach, which embraces technology as a means of tearing the veil from Nature and revealing her secrets; and the Orphic, or contemplative-poetic, approach, according to which such a denuding of Nature is a grave trespass. 

 

[3] Blavatsky’s most famous work - Isis Unveiled:A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology - was published in 1877. For some, a seminal text; for others, a work largely plagiarised from the writings of other occult authors. 

 

[4] Whilst most people understand a glimpse simply to mean a brief or partial view - to catch a quick look, perhaps in passing, of something or someone - it has a more poetic and philosophical resonance for those with ears to hear. D. H. Lawrence, for example, was fascinated by the word and often used it in his late poetry to describe how aspects of divinity are seen in the faces and forms of people when they are momentarily unaware of themselves. It's this glimmer of godhood which gives human beings their more-than-human beauty; which makes the flesh gleam with radiance or the bright flame of being. See the related group of verses on pp. 579-582 of The Poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013). 

      Heidegger also privileged the word Blick, which I would translate as glimpse. For Heidegger, a glimpse is a kind of lightning flash which provides an insight into that which is, whilst, at the same time, guarding the hidden darkness of what remains forever withdrawn. See 'The Turn', from the 1949 Bremen Lecture series Insight Into That Which Is, trans. Andrew J. Mitchell, (Indiana University Press, 2012), pp. 64-73.

 

[5] Byung-Chul Han, 'Stillness', in Non-things, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2022), p. 77. 

 

[6] Byung-Chul Han, 'The Magic of Things', Non-things, pp. 56-57. 

 

[7] Byung-Chul Han, 'Stillness', Non-things, p. 83.

 

[8] See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi, (The Athlone Press, 1996). According to the above, there is one becoming towards which all other becomings rush, marking the immanent end of becoming and providing the process with its cosmic formula; the becoming-imperceptible (279). 

 

 

Readers who are interested might also like to see two earlier posts that acted as previews to the talk at Treadwell's: 

 

'In Memory of Anne Dufourmantelle: Risk Taker Extraordinaire and Defender of Secrets' (14 May 2023): click here 

 

'On Georg Simmel's Sociology of Secrecy and Secret Societies' (10 August 2023): click here. 

 

 

Scattered Pictures of the Smiles We Left Behind: In Memory of Four Treadwellians

Thomas, Meni, Mark & Bianca

Treadwells, 34, Tavistock Street, London, WC2 [1]

(c. 2006) 

  

I. 

 

I rarely think back to what might be termed the Treadwell's period (2004-2008), but, when I do, I find it is with increasing fondness for the curious little bookshop and its owner Christina Harrington, and, of course, for the handful of people who used to assemble in the basement to listen to my philosophical reflections on topics including sex/magic, thanatology, and zoophilia [2].  

 

Some of the regular attendees to these lectures soon formed a magic circle with whom I would go for drinks and discussion afterwards. As this group had around a dozen members [3], the Little Greek used to jokingly refer to them as the disciples, though I'm sure none of these highly individual characters recognised themselves as such or thought they had anything to learn from me. 

 

 

II. 

 

Sadly, very few pictures were ever taken at the Store when I was there; 2004-08 was just prior to everyone carrying a smartphone and sharing photos and video footage on social media.

 

However, in a rare snap reproduced above, we see four members of the Treadwell's contingent all looking surprisingly cheerful for some reason [4]. 

 

The gang of four are:

 

(i) Thomas the Austrian; an artist and genuine oddball, whose chief pleasure was telling me how wrong I was about everything and whom I used to imagine as a bald-headed bird of prey picking at my entrails ...

 

(ii) Melpomeni Kermanidou; a beautiful and talented singer-songwriter from Down Under, who, knowing how I hated the sight and sound of people clapping, once threw rose petals at the end of one of my talks - an act for which I will always adore her ...

 

(iii) Mark Jeoffroy; an occultist, poet and illustrator with finely curved lips and a boyish, slightly sinister charm; his eyes sparkling with the conceit of his own corruption, he told me once he was the spiritual heir (if not the actual reincarnation) of William Blake.     

 

(iv) Bianca Madison (aka the Great Dane); a former model turned therapist, nutritionist, activist, author and public speaker, who encourages everyone to learn how to love themselves and live inspired, healthy and compassionate lives (i.e., become a bit more like her).    

 

Wherever they are and whatever they're doing now, I hope they're just as happy as they seem to be in this picture and that - one fine day - we all get to meet up once more ... 

 

Notes

 

[1] Treadwell's moved from this address to 33, Store Street, WC1, in 2011. Those who cannnot visit one of London's friendliest and most fascinating bookshops in person, can go to treadwells-london.com

 

[2] See the post from 4 December 2012 entited 'The Treadwell's Papers' for details of the thirty papers presented at the store during 2004-08 (and the four additional stand-alone papers presented in 2011-12): click here. 

      Readers might also find Gary Lachman's 2007 article in The Independent on Treadwell's interesting, providing as it does an insider's insight into the store at this time. Lachman is spot-on to argue that what set Treadwell's apart from other occult shops is that it was a centre where people from different intellectual and artistic backgrounds could meet and exchange ideas. For this, all credit must be give to Christina, who conjured up an environment in which the world of philosophy and literature could flirt with occultism and pagan witchcraft.

      See: Gary Lachman,  'Pagan pages: One bookshop owner is summoning all sorts to her supernatural salons', The Independent (16 September 2007): click here.

 

[3] Other Treadwellians in my little circle included Steve Ash, Tom Bland, David Blank, Dawn Garland, Annette Herold, Simon Image, Sara the Satanist, Fiona Spence, and - of course - Simon Thomas. 

 

[4] We know from the clock on the wall that my presentation would have just finished, so perhaps that explains their joy; now they were free to go off and enjoy themselves in the pub.         

 

 

 

Gymnosophy 3: Ye Shall be Naked in Your Rites (Redux)

The original poster for the fifth paper in the 

Treadwell's Sex/Magic series (2005)

I. Opening Remarks

For this third entry in the gymnosophy series of posts, I thought it would be nice to (re-)examine the role of nudity played within modern pagan witchcraft - and to do so by offering an edited version of a paper first given at London's finest occult bookstore, Treadwell's, way back in March 2005.*

The essential argument of the paper was that truth doesn't, in fact, love to go naked - despite what many witches insist on believing, and that there is nothing natural or authentic about nudity. Indeed, working skyclad, very often exposes more than the flesh; not least a lack of style which, like culture, is ultimately founded upon cloth.

Having said that, ritualised nudity as practiced within Wicca isn't simply a naive exhibitionism. It is, rather, a symbolic gesture rich in philosophical and political meaning, involving as it does questions to do with power, freedom, and the body. Whatever it might signify, taking your underwear off in a public space is never simply an innocent act.      

II. Five Good Reasons to Get Naked According to A Witches' Bible

The Wiccan penchant for performing ceremonies naked is often justified on the grounds that it's an ancient pagan practice. However, whilst it is certainly the case that ritual nudity does have a long tradition within magic, it should be noted that it was extremely rare within a religious context until it was assigned as a central feature of the witches' sabbat by Christian writers keen to imagine all manner of transgressive activity taking place within the woods at night.

According to Janet and Stewart Farrar, however, this doesn't really matter - "whether or not the widespread Wiccan habit of working skyclad is mainly a phenomenon of the twentieth century revival […] or the continuation of a secret custom […] is hardly important […] what matters is its validity for witches today" - and there are, they claim, at least five good reasons for working naked:

The first is that it challenges the metaphysical division between mind and body. In other words, by working naked and affirming the beauty and potency of the flesh, witches are making a quasi-deconstructive gesture.

Whilst I'd probably not describe this mind/body division as the cardinal sin of the patriarchal period,  I’d agree, as a Lawrentian, that it has been modern man's fate to be self-divided in this manner, so that the upper centres of consciousness dominate and exploit the lower centres of sensual and intuitive feeling. I'd also support any attempt to counter this which values nakedness as something positive and pristine and helps us overcome the bad conscience that has attached itself to the body and its forces and flows.

Secondly, according to the Farrar's, a naked body is far more sensitive and responsive than a clothed one and trying to work magic whilst dressed is "like trying to play the piano in gloves". There is, therefore, a sound practical reason to disrobe.

Unfortunately, never having attempted to raise psychic energy whilst naked - nor play the piano whilst wearing gloves - I cannot personally vouch for this. Neither can I confirm or deny their additional claim that "the naked body gives off pheromones far more quickly and efficiently than a clothed one, so it may well be that [...] a skyclad coven is exchanging unconscious information more effectively than a robed one", though this seems reasonable (if, that is, human pheromones actually exist).

The third reason for working skyclad, say the Farrar's, is because it allows one to be oneself.

This psychological claim leaves me profoundly depressed: to suggest that undressing is a "powerful gesture of image-shedding, a symbolic milestone on the road to self-realization" reveals naivety at almost every conceivable level. The Farrar's also assert that when naked we are able to see others for what they really are and to relate at a truer level; one that is entirely unmediated and closer to universal nature.

Of course, they are not alone in believing such nonsense. Indeed, the idea of nudity as a way to reach (and/or liberate) an essential self regarded as the origin of all truth and goodness, is common within Western culture. Our society is filled to bursting with intellectually challenged and emotionally disturbed people striving to achieve authenticity and to create identities in which their deepest selves are expressed.

The fourth reason for witches to get naked is a political consequence of the above. Subscribing as they do to the untenable hypothesis that modern man is sexually repressed and, therefore, in need of sexual liberation, it comes as no surprise to find the Farrar's insisting that people are fearful of nakedness in much the same way that the slave is fearful of throwing off their chains and embracing freedom.

However, whilst the moral prohibitions of Judeo-Christian culture have undoubtedly shaped our thinking and behaviour, it's not in the straightforward and simplistic - not to mention entirely negative - manner that the Farrar's imagine. And couldn't it be that our fear of the naked body is as much due to an aversion for corpses and animality, as it is a sign of our repression ...?

Finally, the Farrar's argue that nakedness is a way of overcoming personal vanity and teaches those who would otherwise be seduced by "the appeal of splendid robes" to realise that "psychic effectiveness comes from within". 

I have to admit, it's particularly disappointing to discover just how many witches seem to have a puritanical mistrust of fine clothes and expensive make-up. Do they not know the etymology of the term glamour? Historically, hasn't the witch always been a woman dressed in a striking fashion, with her pointed hat, full-length cloak, cat-skin gloves, and long-toed shoes? Hasn't she always understood the magic of colourful cosmetics and exotic perfumes?
 
So hostile are the Farrar's to the idea of wearing clothing during a ceremony that it is only with great reluctance that they make one small concession: menstruating women may, if they wish, keep their knickers on - providing they are of a plain cotton variety and nothing too frilly, colourful, or seductive. I'm afraid that as Nietzsche said of 19th-century feminism, we might say of 20th-century pagan witchcraft:

"There is an almost masculine stupidity in this movement [...] of which a real woman [...] would be ashamed from the very heart."

Today's witch should, in my opinion, revolt into style and dare to look splendid; not only delighting in her own appearance, but actively striking a blow against the drabness of the secular world with its blues and browns and sensible footwear. If she risks being thought a whore in her emerald-green stockings as she struts through town, better that than to be identified as just another office worker or shop assistant on her lunch break.

III. Closing Remarks

It's ironic, as Ronald Hutton points out, that in the ancient world pagan goddesses were most often associated with the city and with the arts and learning; i.e. with culture and society, not nature.

The goddess as Earth Mother is essentially a post-Romantic notion, created by poets like Swinburne and James Thomson. The latter, for example, published a verse in 1880 entitled 'The Naked Goddess' in which the heroine, Nature, comes to town only to be told by the local authorities to cover herself up immediately in either the habit of a nun, or the robes of a philosopher. Only the children appreciate her innocence and the beauty of her nakedness and, when she leaves the town, they return with her to the woods.

This is a nice story. But to make it into a kind of foundation myth, as neo-pagans seems to have done, is, I think, mistaken. Ultimately, whilst it may be magical to go wild in the country - swinging from the trees / naked in the breeze - so too is it a blessing to have a new pair of shoes and a warm place to shit.

Notes

* This and other papers from the series can be found in Vol. 1 of The Treadwell's Papers, by Stephen Alexander, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010).

Jane and Stewart Farrar, A Witches' Bible, (The Crowood Press, 2002), pp. 195-98.

Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, (Oxford University Press, 2001). 

Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1990), VII. 239. I have slightly modified the line quoted here. 


Readers interested in part one of this post on naked philosophers of the ancient world, should click here.

Readers interested in part two of this post on naked body culture in modern Germany, should click here. 

Readers interested in part four of this post on streakers, should click here.

Witches' Brew 2: We're in Love With Janie Jones, Whoa ...

Janie Jones displaying her hex appeal

Marion Mitchell - better known by her professional name, Janie Jones - began her showbiz career as a caberet artist in the late-fifties, initially performing at the Windmill Theatre in Soho. But she first achieved public notoriety in 1964, when she attended a London film premier wearing a topless dress.

A decade later, and Miss Jones was jailed for hosting illicit sex parties at her home that involved prostitutes. Whilst banged-up behind bars - she was sentenced to seven years, but only served four - she met and befriended the Moors murderer Myra Hindley (something that she would later regret doing).

After her release, in 1977, she still made occasional appearances on TV, but, basically, her 15 minutes had come and gone and the only reason I remember her name is because Joe Strummer had a crush on her and she inspired the brilliant opening track of The Clash's debut album [click here].

However, I was amused to discover that she released several records herself as a pop singer in the mid-sixties, including the novelty song Witches Brew, which reached number 46 in the UK singles chart in late-1965 (so not exactly a smash, but a bigger hit than any subsequent releases).

To be honest, it's a fucking awful record - one that even the witches of Treadwell's might have difficulty dancing to. Nevertheless, those who would like to give it a listen can click here.

Note: those interested in part one of this post - on the 1960 film Witches' Brew, featuring Pamela Green - should click here. 

Witches' Brew 1: Skyclad with Pamela Green

Pamela Green in Witches' Brew (1960)

There's a kinky connection between Wicca and naturism, in that participants of both these things love to get their kit off at every opportunity and frolic naked (or skyclad, as the witches say). 

It's not suprising, therefore, to discover the existence of an 8mm striptease film, featuring English glamour model and actress Pamela Green, called Witches's Brew (1960). Nor is it surprising to find that the film was directed by George Harrison Marks, a key figure - as photographer and filmmaker - in the British porn industry for over forty years.

(Note: Marks even makes a brief appearance in the above as a hunchback assistant.)   

In 1949, Miss Green joined the Spielplatz Naturist Club, located in the village of Bricket Wood, Herts. Spielplatz had been founded in 1929 as a utopian retreat for nudists by Charles Macaskie and his wife. Among their visitors was Cambridge scholar and poet - and founder of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids - Ross Nichols.

It was whilst staying at Spielplatz that Nichols probably first met Gerald Gardner, who established a coven nearby as part of his development of Wicca as a modern neopagan religion.       

Put these people together - Gardner, Nichols, Macaskie, Harrison Marks and Pamela Green - stir gently and bring to the boil and voila! one produces a veritable witches' brew of sex, magic, nudity and nature worship all set in the pleasant surroundings of the English countryside. 

According to those who knew her, Miss Green not only had a signed first edition of Gardner's The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959) on her shelf, but even named her cat Pyewacket, à la Gillian Holroyd in Bell, Book and Candle. So as well as being a favourite amongst the dirty mac brigade, she must surely qualify as a figure of special interest to those who hang round Treadwell's and belong to the spooky community.       

Some of the women at Spielplatz taking part in a 

Miss Venus contest including Pamela Green (centre)

Photo by Stephen Glass (1950)

Notes 

Those interested in knowing more about Pamela Green should visit the excellent website devoted to her: Pamela Green - Never Knowingly Overdressed: click here.      
 
Those interested in reading part two of this post - on Janie Jones - should click here. 

This post is dedicated to Christina (obviously): treadwells-london.com 

On Orgasm and the Will to Merger (Another Thanatological Fragment)

Man can find his individual isolation or discontinuity hard to bear. Thus he often seeks primal unity, or a return to universal oneness. But this will to merger is, of course, a sign of fatigue and decadence; a thinly disguised longing for oblivion.

Lawrence is clear: "The central law of all organic life is that each organism is intrinsically isolate and single in itself". When this is no longer the case - when individual singularity breaks down - death results.

And yet love, of course, is a vital attraction that brings things together into touch ...

This obliges us, therefore, to admit the relationship between Eros and Thanatos and acknowledge that the French description of orgasm as la petite mort is not merely a metaphor.

As Nick Land writes:

"Orgasm provisionally substitutes for death, fending off the impetus toward terminal oblivion, but only by infiltrating death into the silent core of vitality … The little death is not merely a simulacrum or sublimation of a big one … but a corruption that leaves the bilateral architecture of life and death in tatters, a communication and a slippage which violates the immaculate [otherness] of darkness."

When we come, we open ourselves onto this otherness and to the possibility of personal annihilation; losing identity in a spasm and an exchange of shared slime.

Despite the primary law that dictates singularity, the greater truth is that we need one another and we need love. Thus the secondary law of all organic life - according to Lawrence - is that "each organism only lives through … contact with other life". 

Of course, if we go too far in this direction, then love is no longer vivifying, but destructive and deadly. Men might live by love, but so too do they die, or cause death, if they love too much or allow their love to become infected with idealism.

Lawrence values coition precisely because it is a coming-close-to-death, but not a form of merger; a meeting but not a mixing of separate blood-streams. There is no real union during sexual intercourse and, once the crisis is over, the discontinuity of each party remains intact.

But such intimacy brings us to the very point of fusion and leaves us changed, or wounded by the experience (which is why love is often poignant, painful, and transformative all at the same time).

Orgasm gives us a clue regarding the return to the actual and the deep communion that awaits us. It is, as Bataille says, a betrayal of life as something individual and distinct.

Thus, ultimately, the truth of eroticism is ... treason.

See:

Nick Land, The Thirst for Annihilation, (Routledge, 1992).

D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, ed.  Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Note: this is a revised extract from a paper presented at Treadwell's on 28 Feb, 2006 as part of a lecture series entitled Thanatology. Those interested in reading related thanatological fragments can click here and here.