Magick!
- Thread starter luka
- Start date
Grim (I mean serious content warning-level grim) in places, but well worth your time is Emma Seaber's thesis on anorexic life-writing as occult practice - tl;dr how do you externalise and manage chaotic and "ugly" (socially unavowable) emotional and physical extremity? How can writing itself function as an occult machine (very Burroughsian, actually)? What if a journal or diary starts to become something more like a grimoire?
Although one of the points Seaber makes quite strongly is that the stereotype of "the anorexic" as always adolescent, always a girl, is completely misleading, I still think this way of relating to writing as a magical technology is very "adolescent": what do you turn to when you want to stabilise a life-process that is no longer governable by the control routines that have managed it up until now? Adolescents glom onto books, records, systems of signifiers, all of which are accorded magical powers of attraction - they have a special affinity for me, and through them I can start negotiating affinities with others. But some people start creating their own canonical mini-universes, which may not be meant for sharing (or may carry a plea for a very special and hard-to-find sort of sharer, that one person who really "gets" you etc).
Although one of the points Seaber makes quite strongly is that the stereotype of "the anorexic" as always adolescent, always a girl, is completely misleading, I still think this way of relating to writing as a magical technology is very "adolescent": what do you turn to when you want to stabilise a life-process that is no longer governable by the control routines that have managed it up until now? Adolescents glom onto books, records, systems of signifiers, all of which are accorded magical powers of attraction - they have a special affinity for me, and through them I can start negotiating affinities with others. But some people start creating their own canonical mini-universes, which may not be meant for sharing (or may carry a plea for a very special and hard-to-find sort of sharer, that one person who really "gets" you etc).
version
Well-known member
"It's entirely conceivable that life's splendor surrounds us all, and always in its complete fullness, accessible but veiled, beneath the surface, invisible, far away. But there it lies—not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If we call it by the right word, by the right name, then it comes. This is the essence of magic, which doesn't create but calls."
— Kafka
— Kafka
Bit late to the party here but this does look fascinating. I kinda have "questions" because occultism and magick are normally framed as routes to empowerment and I wonder, is that what's happening here?
Martin D
Well-known member
I think we once wrote a single sided A5 pamphlet on the good stuff.
version
Well-known member
@william_kent @Murphy
abcnews.go.com
A Wisconsin teen allegedly killed his parents to "obtain the financial means and autonomy necessary" to kill President Donald Trump and overthrow the U.S. government, federal authorities said in court documents.
[...]
The sheriff's department issued a search warrant and say they found material on the teen's phone related to "The Order of Nine Angles," which is "a network of individuals holding new-Nazi racially motivated extremist views," according to investigators.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation reviewed documents allegedly written by the teen, which calls for the assassination of Trump and the start of a revolution to "save the white race," according to federal court documents.
Wisconsin teen allegedly killed parents in extremist plot to assassinate Trump, FBI says
Nikita Casap, 17, allegedly killed his parents to "obtain the financial means and autonomy necessary" to kill President Donald Trump and overthrow the U.S. government.
abcnews.go.com
