In conversation with Afia Atakora

Afia Atakora was born in the UK and raised in New Jersey; she is author of debut novel, Conjure Women. Her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and she was a finalist for the 2010 Hurston/Wright Award for college writers. Set around the time of the America Civil War, Conjure Women follows the journey of midwife, Rue, as she navigates growing suspicion from the village community when a mysterious illness descends following the birth of an apparently unusual child that Rue feels compelled to protect. The narrative deftly weaves pre and post war narrative time-line with themes of womanhood, friendship and witchcraft. I spoke with Afia via email about folk magic, womanhood, and identity.

Photo: © Edwin Tse

Yasmina Floyer What inspired you to write Conjure Women?

Afia Atakora I’ve always been drawn to the enduring wisdom of folklore and folk magic. So many of the stories and practices that are passed down through generations are about preserving culture and imparting a self-sufficient means of survival. Particularly in cultures displaced by slavery or strife, the fact that the legacy of magic endures is deeply powerful. The determination to pass down these histories so often falls to women, so it felt natural to begin to explore the midwife, a fixture who appears in so many cultures, and begin to render her as more than the old healing witch in the woods. What does she look like young? How did she learn her role and how does she feel about it? I began with all these questions and slowly Rue began to form, to answer them.

YF The story unfolds around the time of Civil War, why were you drawn to write about that period in history?

AA When I began studying this time period, I had no intention of writing a novel about it. The research was for myself. As a Black woman living in America, I felt that I had a very limited understanding of the history of slavery and emancipation, particularly in the years just after the Civil War. We get this broad-strokes overview, “the slaves were freed and all was well.” When it came time to explore my archetypical “folk healer” where better to place her wisdom and skills than in the years just after the Civil War, when so many deep hurts needed healing?

YF What sort of research did you do?

AA A huge resource were the interviews conducted by the Works Progress Administration, a US government agency, who in the 1930s collected the memories of former slaves. Much of these histories are anecdotal, but they represent rich shared memories of the experience of enslavement. From these I collected little snippets of familial practices: lists of herbs, beliefs and colloquial remedies. I was fascinated by the personal practices that echoed each other across the vast US South and across time. Similarly, I was influenced by folk practices that still exist today, particularly those that are practiced in West Africa and are antecedents for other diasporic practices. I explored my own family history and traditions and wrote about those too.

YF Were there also folktales from your childhood that fed into the creation of CW?

AA My parents are immigrants from Ghana, but I was born in the UK and raised in the US. I grew up with their stories from “back home,” chief among these were the tales of Anansi the trickster. As I grew up and began to try to define my own identity in the US, I found the Brer Rabbit stories. It was sort of a revelatory experience to rediscover these trickster tales in a completely different setting and yet still wholly intact from the bedtimes stories that migrated with my parents. I wanted the history of memory within Conjure Women to mirror the experience I had in defining and discovering myself, as well as the enduring spirit of Black identity.

YF Were any characters based on people from your life?

AA None of the characters were fully based on real people, however I drew inspiration from my own experiences to shape the relationships in the story, especially between Rue and her mother Miss May Belle. My own mother worked as a nurse and home health aide while I was growing up and I often observed her interactions with her patients, the way that all children do, trying to understand the world and their eventual place in it. Similarly, the character of Ma Doe, who is a symbol of the long memory of Rue’s community, is named for my grandmother, who passed down so much of her matriarchal wisdom.

YF Our protagonist Rue makes really difficult decisions in the novel, choosing to do awful things for what she believes to be the right reasons. Do you see Rue as a heroine or villain?

AA I decided very early on that I did not want there to be any clear heroes or villains in this story. I was determined to explore slavery in particular from a complex psychological stand point. What deep wounds might enslaved people carry with them? In what ways do they go about healing them or visiting wounds upon others as a means of survival? How has the violence of slavery been perpetuated throughout time, in complex insidious ways, in ways we might not even immediately recognize? In the course of the novel Rue makes a lot of hard decisions, sometimes the wrong ones, but ultimately, I believe her story is one of redemption and self-discovery.

YF The townspeople begin to call Rue a witch. Do you identify her as such?

AA I very intentionally chose the term “witch” for the accusation thrown against Rue. There’s so much historical connotation to the word, so much of it negative and so much of it female. Rue and her mother possess mysterious skills throughout the novel, but Rue only becomes a “witch” in the eyes of the town people after they feel that she has failed them. The echo of that insult is not only that you are a strange woman but that you are a solitary one and women who live outside of the boundaries of society ought to be castigated for it. She becomes a dangerous witch in the eyes of the community particularly when she uses her powers to her own advantage, again an insinuation that a woman must never be concerned with her own needs or ambitions, but give of herself endlessly. Much of the story is about Rue taking ownership of this term, “witch”, of becoming not only proud of her abilities but proud to be a brave, independent spirit.

YF I love how you depict the women in the book as young girls navigating the transition into women. Why are you drawn to this period of womanhood?

AA There are many, many themes in Conjure Women but for me, the coming-of-age of young women is one that is paramount to the telling. While Rue’s experiences growing up, enslaved and then freed, are specific to this era, her relationship with girlhood is timeless. I was fascinated by the way that young girls emulate, learn from, and sometimes reject their mothers. I was drawn as well to bonds of friendship that women form with one another and the ways in which that changes as they grow up, especially within the constraints of a society which has clearly defined roles for what it means to be a woman of a particular race.

YF The novel explores identity and how identities shift depending on time and place, gender and race. What do you hope the reader will take away from the novel?

AA I hope that the novel portrays historical characters and enslaved persons as full-bodied people, not just caricatures, or object lessons, or bullet points in history. They lived full unique lives, sometimes flawed, sometimes painful, sometimes hopeful. The institution of slavery has cast a long shadow not only in America, that shadow remains and needs reckoning with. Despite the pain and the darkness, we owe it to these people to explore their histories and legacies. We owe it to ourselves, too.

In conversation with Edward Parnell

Edward Parnell is the author of The Listeners, and more recently Ghostland, a memoir-cum-literary tour of Britain’s ghost tales and loss. The book was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Prize 2020 for memoir and biography. Its hauntings are linked with landscape, memory and an awareness of the passage of time. I spoke with Edward via email ahead of the paperback release of Ghostland. 

Elizabeth Kim What compelled you to write Ghostland and what did you initially have in mind for it? 

Edward Parnell The book came out of a meeting with my editor Tom at HarperCollins, who’d seen a blog post I’d written about the village in Suffolk where M. R. James grew up. We met and bonded over a love of ghost stories and slightly pulpy ‘70s horror movies and I went away wondering whether I could write a book about the love I’d harboured for ghost stories since being a young boy. I soon realised that were I to engage on such a project I’d only want to do it if I could bring something unique to the subject. And I realised how entwined many of the places that I would want to visit – places that were in some way linked to various stories, authors or films – were with my own rather haunted family history. And so I went away and came up with a proposal for a book that, as well as examining some of my favourite authors, would also be an exploration of my own lost family. 

EK Is that blog post still available, somewhere?

EP No, I took down that blog post when I began writing the book as there was some material in there that I wanted to use! I kept a few photos on my website.

EK Why do you think people in Britain and Ireland are so good at writing ghost stories?

EP All that pressing history, I think. Almost everywhere you go there are reminders in place names or old architecture of the people who have been there before you. Only the other day I was driving back to my house from the North Norfolk coast and passed a small country drove I’d not previously noticed called Gallowhill Lane, which put me straight in mind of M. R. James’s ‘A View from a Hill’…

EK You often refer back to M. R. James. Why do you think was James so influential, and which of his stories would you recommend to new readers?

EP I think James is so influential because his stories are simply so good – so full of atmosphere, eeriness and playfulness. He wasn’t that prolific (there are around 30-odd stories that were published in his lifetime) and as a result the consistency remains high throughout. I’d definitely try and read them chronologically in the order that they were published, though, as I do think there’s a bit of a drop off in the later stories – though actually the reason that some of those are perhaps a bit more unsatisfying is because they’re structurally more complicated and harder to try and decode. It’s hard for me to pick out a favourite as that seems to fluctuate depending on my mood, but ‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’, ‘Lost Hearts’, ‘The Mezzotint’ and ‘Count Magnus’ – all from his first published collection, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, are a good place to begin. 

EK Aside from M. R. James, which ghost stories have frightened you or spoke to you the most?

EP I’d like to think I’m not that easily spooked, but the one book that did unsettle me when I was writing Ghostland was Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House. I remember reading it on my own at home at night and definitely feeling a little nervous of killing the light and trying to go to sleep. Other favourites include Algernon Blackwood’s sublime ‘The Willows’, William Hope Hodgson’s weirdly wonderful novel The House on the Borderland, Rudyard Kipling’s heartbreaking ‘They’, and E. F. Benson’s ‘Pirates’. And if we’re talking TV and film then there would be another huge list!

EK I love Shirley Jackson! Now you mention near the beginning of Ghostland that most ghost stories happen in the past. There is a narrow division between nostalgia, sadness, and the uncanny in most. Your own tour of Britain via the ghost stories written about it is interwoven with a memoir of loss. Is there some truth to these weird tales? Are there some ghosts that don't move on?

EP I certainly think that there’s a truth in the subtext of lots of these tales, the best of which deal with huge themes like grief, loss and mortality. And life and the world can obviously be weird and unsettling – as these strange present days show us – with things happening that we can’t easily make sense of. A good ghost story can certainly help to explore this. 

As to ghosts that don’t move on, I think that most ‘real’ hauntings intrinsically contain place-bound phantoms. And that’s something that I feel a bit of myself, as I know that in Ghostland I was trying to stare back into my own past. Yet, I wouldn’t want to stop – to not be able to look back on everything that’s happened to me, even though doing so is sometimes painful; I think we walk a tightrope between acknowledging our histories and being beholden to them, but hopefully I’ve got the balance about right. 

EK From your book and beyond, have you ever had an experience or encounter you couldn’t explain?

EP I talk about a handful in Ghostland – one odd occurrence that took place in a room I subsequently found has a long and documented history of strange occurrences, and another in the house I grew up in, when I returned to it as a student. Generally though, I’d hazard that if as people we have different levels of weird-detecting ‘radars’ then mine is set at a very low level… Because I can seem to walk around places and not get spooked by things, whereas I have a friend who could be in that same room and claim to be picking up odd vibes that have completely passed me by.

EK How do you explain such unexplainable experiences?

EP I definitely always try to rationalise any odd experiences that I’ve been privy to – so for instance the ‘phantom door bell’ that periodically goes off in my house and plays a ringtone that isn’t selected is something I’d put down to being some kind of radio interference. I have no scientific basis for this, but it seems more likely than some esoteric spirit trying to contact me! I fully accept, however, that there are plenty of good documented examples of odd things that are difficult to rationally explain. So, like M. R. James, I take the view that “I am prepared to consider evidence and accept it if it satisfies me.”

EK So open-minded with a healthy dose of scepticism.

EP I would say open-minded with a health dose of scepticism neatly sums up my view of strange occurences. Though a bit like Fox Mulder, a part of me “wants to believe…”

EK New nature writing is increasingly veering into the territory of the numinous. I’m thinking about writers like Robert MacFarlane and Helen MacDonald. What role do you think this new sort of “emotional ecology” might have in repairing our relationship with the natural world, and in order to repair this relationship, do you think it’s important we also reconnect with the supernatural world?

EP I think in order to have even a chance of repairing our fractured planet we do need a lot more people to feel a strong connection to it, and then to make choices and act in ways that start to make a tangible difference. I don’t think that’s going to be easy to achieve, but if part of that process also means that people have to engage with the layers of history, superstition and human experience that are intertwined with places – then that surely can’t hurt. 

In conversation with Kaitlynn Copithorne

Sanctae Hildegardis

Kaitlynn Copithorne is a Calagary, Canada-based illustrator and a regular contributor to Cunning Folk. We instantly fell in love with her distinctive aesthetic and her depictions of animals and folklore. You can see her work throughout our website, and illustrating Zoe Gilbert’s short story The Wild Hunt in our first print issue. We have plenty of exciting things planned in future together, and Kaitlynn is definitely one to watch. Normally Kaitlynn’s images speak for her, but we had a brief chat with her about her inspirations.

Cunning Folk Tell us about your own practice, both creative and magical.

Kaitlynn Copithorne I am an illustrator and visual artist working in digital, printmaking, and  painting mediums. I like my work to tell stories. Magically my practice would probably fall under the “traditional witchcraft” definition, and since I deal mainly with land wights and the energy in the landscape, depends heavily on where I am practicing.

CF How do you find ideas? Who or what inspires you?

KC Most of my inspiration comes from nature, folklore, and mythology, particularly creation and etiological myths. I grew up quite isolated on a ranch in rural Canada and spent a lot of time by myself in the forests and fields, and so I think the natural world just became my primary knowledge base for understanding the world. I’m a big collector of folklore as well and that is definitely where my mind tends to go first when starting a new project.

CF What is your dream commission?

KC Right now I think my dream commission would be an oracle or tarot deck. I am very interested in the challenge of creating a visual language for a body of work that large while keeping it all cohesive. 

CF What initially drew you to folklore and witchcraft?

KC Initially I was drawn to it through movies, especially The Craft. I was definitely an outsider and I saw characters I identified with empowering themselves through witchcraft and wanted that for myself. As I learned more about cunning people and witch lore I realized that their practices were actually not that different from my own “superstitions” as I called them that I developed growing up on the ranch.

CF You have done quite a lot for cunning folk. What about this project appealed to you?

KC I was drawn to Cunning Folk because it combined so many of my interests (mythology, folklore, witchcraft, nature) in one platform. I’m always looking for witchcraft and folklore themed publications and zines, and Cunning Folk struck me as contemporary and less academic than other publications I subscribe to, and I mean that in a good way. It handles these subjects on a very personal level, and I find it very fulfilling to myself creatively and magically to read about other people’s personal practices.

CF Pertinent to this current issue, do you think we are going through a period of re-enchantment?

KC Definitely. I think enchantment works as a cycle, and we are currently at the point where widespread dis-enchantment begins to breed re-enchantment on a collective level. Speaking specifically from a North American perspective, we are realizing that the colonial systems in place supposedly to keep us safe, healthy, and fulfilled do not in fact do any of those things very well, if at all, for a vast majority of us. Even more distressing is the dawning realization that this system isn’t failing us because it’s broken, it’s functioning exactly as it was designed to, and does not care about anyone falling through its cracks. And so, like cunning folk of the past, when the institutions won’t empower us, we seek to empower ourselves. To me, the fact that we keep circling back to magic when everything else has let us down speaks to how deeply embedded it is in us. When our power has been taken away from us we inevitably turn back to ourselves to replenish it, and there we find magic waiting for us.

Abracadabra

Magic Words: How Does Language Shape Our Reality?

February 2020

The Wild Hunt Spread

From The Re-Enchantment issue of Cunning Folk Magazine.

Illustration spreads from in-progress project The Moon Being Full.

Swan Brings the Holy Fire

Currently available in collection at Glo’Art Centre, Belgium.

Block Heater Music Festival 2020

All images © Kaitlynn Copithorne

In conversation with Jenny Hval

Jenny Hval is a Norwegian musician, singer-songwriter, producer, and novelist whose work is multidisciplinary and transgressive. She made her writing debut with the critically acclaimed novel Perlebryggeriet in 2009 (published in English as Paradise Rot in 2018). Her latest novel, Girls Against God was published in Norwegian in 2018, and has just been published in English by Verso (translated by Marjam Idriss). Girls Against God is a meditation on magic, art and writing, via the lenses of black metal, heresy, technology and the occult. I spoke with Jenny over Zoom shortly before the book’s release.

Photograph © Baard Henriksen

Maria Blyth The novel really resonates with me, Jenny, in part because like the protagonist I too was a provincial goth growing up in the far North. Though I’m from the Shetland Islands, I feel like I’m almost Norwegian—I’m familiar with the landscape, the Shetland dialect is very Nordic, and there are so many cultural similarities. The book really made me think about those provincial subcultures—goth, black metal, and so on. This made me wonder whether, growing up, were you a provincial goth too?

Jenny Hval I’ve never been to the Shetland Islands, but I’ve always wanted to go! I was really into horses in my youth, and that connection with Norway was really intriguing—this sort of in-between place. This book is very Norwegian. I think I tried to be a goth for a while, though not as much as the character in the book. I was in a goth band and I was trying out this goth thing. What connected with me was the opposition to a lot of things, but then I was also disappointed by how apolitical a lot of it was, or at least not political in the way I was leaning. So I think I ended up being in the goth group but also being more of a misfit. But that’s also okay; the clothes don’t fit, the corset doesn’t fit, my taste in literature didn’t fit with the ideal at the time. I never got into Lovecraft, for example. I think I was a bit snobbish. I wanted to go for more modernist-type literature; I was quite set on what I wanted to read and enjoy. One of the major traits of deciding what kind of identity you’d like to reach for, and how to get there—mine was literature and maybe music. So I was part of the goth group, but I didn’t feel at home there. And maybe others didn’t either. Maybe that’s a major part of being young—not fitting in, feeling like you fit in nowhere, that no-one understands you. 

MB That’s so true—even when you find your people, your subculture, that feeling of being an isolated individual doesn’t really go away.

JH Yeah. Subculture is often not as cultish as it seems—most societies and subcultures and congregations have more variation than you think when you’re young. You think that everyone’s part of the same flock of sheep, but as soon as you get to know people, it’s not the case because people are so different. So, I felt out of place, but quite at home. I didn’t enjoy the dresses but luckily there were fake leather trousers!

MB So, you were kind of into the goth scene—was this when you became interested in magic and the occult, or with this novel are you coming at it anew? I can see occult threads and themes throughout your writing and music.

JH Well I think I discovered it after doing it. I wasn’t very into these things beyond reading about Wicca and Pagan rituals on the early internet in the 90s. I was fascinated by it but not really studying it—it was pure fascination for me, but there was no such thing in my region, and perhaps not in Norway at all, at least that I could see. So it felt very far away from me. When I started doing my own music in my mid-20s, I guess that after a while I realised how interested I was in the ritual of performing. I think for many years I was more interested in the performing arts—performance art in particular—because of this closer connection with ritual than I could find, even in subcultural pop music. I realised I can do elements of this on stage, I can use the space visually, I can look at the space of the stage differently, even if I’m performing music. I can look at music as an incantation, as a spell, as something that is brought to life with its own kind of magic. That’s become more and more important in my work. I think that it’s been the motivation all along, but I hadn’t been able to see that until I started working towards creating this book. So, over the last six or seven years I’ve realised more and more that music does have something to do with magic and ritual. Even if my work is not coming purely from that subcultural longing any more. 

MB I really love this idea of the band as a coven casting spells together. One thing I like about the spells in the novel is how many bodily fluids are involved. This is something I find really interesting about all of your work—there’s something really tied up around physicality, the body, nature, “filth”, in a certain meaning of the word. Of course, bodily fluids feature throughout the history of magic and spellcasting—they are such an integral part of magical practice. Why do you think this is?

JH My entry points to magic are art and music. Music, because that’s my stage, it’s my ritual output, which is much more visceral a process than writing is. And I write a lot about this in the book—about how you write the spell and it can be performed, but it’s sort of in an in-between place of not existing yet, not being put into words yet, or not being in the body yet—like you’re creating future bodily fluids. To me, experiencing singing is what makes me write a lot about fluids and the body. I’m not necessarily the kind of artist you’d call a visceral artist—I don’t spit on stage or come across as an extrovert. I’m not a confrontational body-oriented artist. I’m really much more of a shy person. But I find that bodily fluids and singing come out of the same process—they both come out of your body and are not of your body at the same time. So they’re kind of in-between life and death. They’re in between the temporal and infinity—they don’t belong to you. Which is problematic because as soon as you’ve said something it doesn’t belong to you anymore. Which is beautiful, but it’s also abject. I remember back in my early band days, when I’d hear my voice in a tape recording, I’d have this very abject reaction; kind of like seeing your own pee, or getting your period. This experience, for me, was a very extreme experience. I think about this when I record because my intentional sound is always different to what I listen back to. It’s this strange opportunity to have this interaction with yourself that’s both inside and outside. So it’s partly this connection with singing, but also having studied a tonne of feminist literature, and the history of performance art since the 60s. To me, when I discovered all that, I discovered “oh, art is real”. There is something there that belongs to me, belongs to everyone. And it’s not coming from a place I can’t access or understand—it’s lived. 

MB On the topic of things outside the body, sometimes inside it, technology comes up in Girls Against God a lot. What do you think the role of technology is in magic, and vice versa?

JH I’m really curious about what your thoughts are! I felt like when I was writing about the visceral internet, or connective technological tissue, I was finally writing science fiction, which has been a dream for me to do. I felt like I got to this point where I could finally go off in that direction. For me, I write myself to starting points for going out of a more realistic type of narrative voice, then onto what I am the most interested in, which is getting to those places where I can write that film script, write the apocalypse, write about this intersection between magic and technology. For a while I thought I actually want to write an entire book that is about a parallel society in which everything is the same as the real world except the internet is visceral. That would be crazy! Now, because of the virus, I’m like “don’t go there, don’t do that”. I guess the internet is philosophically very fascinating, and there was a time when it was full of opportunity. I remember in the 90s when it was a hidden, subcultural place that felt like being underground. Not to be super nostalgic—that’s not a very productive story—but the book goes to this place where there’s a place for a different type of body, and a different type of experience of the body, and the connection with other people. I guess for me that’s the magical part—feelings of belonging and community, things that we’re really longing for at this time. Closeness, the feeling of affinity, the feeling of an unspeakable or inexplicable intimacy. Maybe beyond words, but maybe not beyond code. 

MB And maybe not beyond magic. If you could define magic, in a few sentences, without really thinking about it, how would you do it?

JH I’ve already thought about it! Transformation. One word, but many syllables.

MB And what does transformation mean to you?

JH It’s the combination of space and time.

MB Talking of words, and the meaning of words—swearing, blasphemy, and profanity come up in the novel a lot. Why is blasphemy so thrilling to us—why does it have this real allure, this magical quality?

JH Well maybe I could’ve said blasphemy is magic. It feels like a strong experience because it’s an opposition, and being in opposition makes you realise that you exist in opposition to something. Blasphemy to me is also being part of the huge opposition to institutions, which might be stupid, as we’re also part of institutions—this book is published through institutions, and I perform because of institutions. I went to university, I learned about magic, all because of institutions. The feeling of being in opposition is also the feeling of being part of forces that are almost in opposition to humanity, or to its structures and hierarchies, and being part of nature. For me, swearing is like being the wind in the trees.

MB That’s such a graceful way of framing it. In the same vein, it would be good to talk about hate—for the protagonist hate is such a fuel. Is hate a fuel for your work?

JH For this work in particular, definitely. For this book, obviously it’s a huge motivation, for the protagonist it’s the reason to write, and because of that, perhaps for me as a writer. And I do think that I’ve needed to feel rage to begin to write, many times. I do think that sometimes I’ve needed this type of energy, oppositional energy, in order to say anything at all. But it’s not always my motivation. I think that it appears a lot, sometimes more humorous, sometimes more sarcastic or energetic, but also sometimes I feel very different energies—I think it comes in waves. Sometimes the need to hate, and sometimes the need to pick apart the emotional and go into an approach that is much more meditative. I’m able to get there also by using the hate energy. I don’t get to wellness by wellness. It’s never that easy. I kind of felt, after I finished this book, that I was more at peace with Christianity, which came as a surprise.

MB Well that’s transformation, and as you said, magic is transformation.

JH And writing is magic.

In conversation with Renee Sills

Renee Sills is an astrologer, somatic movement educator, artist, and the host of the Embodied Astrology podcast. Through her work, she seeks to articulate and centre the embodied experience. For Renee, astrology is inherently embodied. Based in Portland, Oregon, she is a second generation astrologer and her work is deeply influenced by that of Melanie Reinhart, Liz Greene, Alan Oken, Eric Francis, Dane Rudhyar, and Demetra George. Though Renee has primarily studied Tropical, Psychological, and Western Medical Astrology, her work is also informed by Sidereal Astrology and a multitude of other cultural cosmologies.

Maria Blyth How did your astrology journey begin, Renee?

Renee Sills My mother got into astrology when she was in her 20s. She and her best friend (who is my godmother and now my close friend) studied the correlation of plants and astrology for a herbalism business they started, then later she became a massage therapist and learned some Medical Astrology to help her work with bodies, then later in her life she started to work as a counselor and used astrology with her clients. Since it was something she was actively learning and researching throughout my life, I picked a lot up from her (and her synthesis of astrology with health, healing, and psychology) simply by sharing an environment. She would always explain me to myself through astrology and when, at 13, I wanted to drop out of school and do my own thing, she saw that my chart supported that and so she used my chart to help me figure out how to self-direct an education.

My mother died when I was 17 and I inherited her library of astrology books which I then began to read obsessively. I think that since I’d grown up with it as a common language, the concepts and methods felt super intuitive and were very easy for me to grasp when I started to study it on my own. I started reading charts of my friends in my mid 20s and then started the Embodied Astrology podcast a few years after that. It’s only been 5-6 years or so now that I’ve read charts for clients professionally, but about 20 years that I’ve been committed to the study. I’m always learning, and I learn from everything - books, podcasts, classes, talking with other astro-nerds, my own chart, and observing astrology daily. I’ve had two short-term mentors – Heidi Rose Robbins and Carol Ferris. I learn a ton from my clients and reading charts all the time. I learn a ton from teaching!

MB What do you consider unique about your personal approach to astrology?

RS I think that my synthesis of astrology, somatics, contemporary art, and politics is pretty unique. I was born in 1983 when Jupiter and Uranus were conjunct in Sagittarius. I’ve noticed that my generation is full of people who synthesize, combine, and work in innovative intersections of various streams of esoteric mysticism and praxis. I haven’t (yet) met any other astrologers that share my particular intersections.

I’ve been a dancer and a mover all my life and have studied somatic methods since I dropped out of school at 13. A lot of my somatic study has been focused on embryonic, fetal, and systems development and movement repatterning. This awareness blends naturally with astro for me since so much of astrology helps us to see into a person’s psycho-energetic patterning. Working with embodiment and astrology as a combined practice allows me to work directly with people’s psycho-energetics through guided felt-sense awareness and breath and movement practices. 

I also have two degrees in contemporary art - a BFA in Intermedia and Cyber Art (a dated term by now!) and an MFA in Social Practice. I think that living and surviving is inherently creative and I’ve found that I’m significantly happier when I think of my life as an art practice (jobs, relationships, all of it). I try to bring artistic methods into embodied astrology through using sensory scores, textural descriptions, imagination games and visualisations, and always, always promoting creative perspectives and agency in my clients, students, and listeners. 

Finally, I am a very political person. I think embodiment is inherently political and astrology is a very interesting lens to view politics through. I identify as a progressive and an anti-capitalist, anti-racist, abolitionist. In everything I offer – whether to a large audience through the podcast, or in a 1-1 session – I am always orienting towards the political. It’s not always didactic, but it is always political for me. I want to support people in listening to their hearts and intuitions rather than authority figures, in untangling themselves from the destructive, dehumanizing mind-states of capitalism and colonist white supremacy, and taking a critical approach to deconstructing the formulaic expectations colonized society lays out for us in terms of what our values “should be”, and how we “should” work/labour, relate, love, live. 

MB What do you believe is the relationship between astrology and divination, or fortune telling?

RS I think astrology is a very useful tool for divination. In my experience as a sensate intuitive, looking at a person’s chart really helps to open up my intuitive channels and direct my attention. I am not really a fan of fortune telling or prediction. I do think that we can use astrology to see into and articulate someone’s past or to describe the idiosyncratic nature of a person’s inner experiences. I think we can also effectively use it to describe future possibilities, upcoming challenges and opportunities, or to give perspective on timing. But, I believe deeply in free will and I don’t personally think it’s useful or possible to tell someone exactly what will happen in their future and to trust that that information won’t create its own magnetic attraction or cause and effect. 

Astrology allows for a very nuanced approach to divination and it can look at a wide range of information as well as things that are extremely specific. In this way I think astrology is special because it can be so acutely directed. I do think it’s important to cultivate one’s intuition though, because otherwise astrology will just be methodical and prescriptive and fall flat. Because it is so specific, it is possible to use astro quite precisely to name and describe elements of a person’s life but, without intuition I don’t think we can really connect with the needs of their soul, which will direct our attention in more non-linear ways. At this point for me, reading an astrology chart feels like channeling. I don’t spend a lot of time calculating degrees or concerning myself with what others have said the meaning of something is. I just let the symbols speak to and through me. 

MB For readers interested in learning about astrology, where would you recommend they begin?

RS I think we always learn best when we’re excited about what we’re learning. I would say to start with media and teachings that feel the easiest to absorb and integrate. Not everyone can pay attention to books for a long time, but some people love to read. There are such great podcasts and online classes now, and so many astrologers who offer mentorship. Also, there are so many different kinds of astrology (Tropical, Sidereal, Jyotish, Mayan, Chinese, to name a few) and the amazing thing is that all of them work! Choose an approach and teachers who resonate with you. 

Start learning by asking how astrology can help you with what is current and relevant in your life. Astro is something that is so big that we’ll never be able to learn everything there is, which can be overwhelming, but that knowing can also be supportive to maintaining a beginner’s mind. My number one piece of advice is to not have a goal/destination. People get “good” at astrology when they love it and are hungry to learn it. Just connect with what’s the most interesting for you and let it lead you and you won’t go wrong. After that, my number two piece of advice is to observe it happening. A lot of astrologers get so caught up in making meaning that they forget to observe their own experiences. Keep a lunar calendar and notice how the moon’s phases feel in your body. Pay attention to seasonal light. Track your transits and progressions. Be fascinated by your own chart and what it’s doing. 

In conversation with Jessica Hundley

Jessica Hundley is a writer, director, and the editor of Tarot, the first volume in TASCHEN’s Library of Esoterica series. This visual compendium includes more than 500 cards and works of original art from around the world in the ultimate exploration of a centuries-old art form, and excerpts from essays from thinkers such as Éliphas Lévi, Carl Jung, and Joseph Campbell. It’s a beautiful book and resource and we were thrilled to speak with Jessica, via email, about the making of this book, and her own practice.

Elizabeth Kim What inspired you to compile a book on tarot? What did you want this book to be?

Jessica Hundley I’ve always loved Tarot and have been collecting various decks since I was 12 or 13. The art, the iconography, the way the symbology of Tarot immediately taps into our own knowing and intuition, all of this was the reason I wanted to create this book. We’re living in a moment where we need tools, meditative, healing practices that lead us into deeper understanding of ourselves. Tarot is one of those tools. I wanted to create a beautiful, seductive and inclusive introduction that would welcome all – and felt the best way to do that would be to focus on the art, the history and an easy to understand overview of each card. I wanted to  focus less on the dogma and more on the artistry, to draw back the veil and bring more people in, show them that this is a practice that can be helpful to everyone - creatively and emotionally.

EK Tarot hasn’t always been regarded as an art form by mainstream culture. Do you think this is changing?

JH Absolutely. So many incredible contemporary creators are turning to Tarot for inspiration. Although artists have been working with Tarot symbology since the Middle Ages. And in the 20th century, fine artists from the Transcendental and Surrealist schools were deeply inspired by Tarot—Dali, Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington and later, in the 1960s and 1970s Pop Artist as well, such as The Fool Collective and Niki de Saint Phalle. De Saint Phalle’s Tarot Garden in Italy is arguably one of the greatest and most awe-inspiring works of Tarot art in the world.

Strength, The Black Power Tarot, 2015, by Michael Eaton and AA King Khan

EK Which are your three favourite cards or decks from the book? Can you talk us through your choices?

JH It is impossible to pick favorites! I love them each for various reasons. And I’m drawn to different decks depending on the day.  Every card we included is important in its own way and will speak to someone out there. My hope is that people will go through the book and find cards they resonate with, then support the artists that are self-publishing their own decks. 

EK Do you read Tarot yourself? If so, what's your card-reading practice like?

JH Yes. I read for myself. For others, I don’t read in the traditional manner. Instead I do workshops where I guide people in using tarot as a creative tool, reading the cards to encourage inspiration or overcome creative blocks. For myself, I usually do a one card reading every day, asking a simple questions, like “what should I focus on today?” and the cards always offer something poetic and insightful and relevant. I use Tarot regularly as a tool to tap in and tune in to my own intuition.

EK The archetypes have throughout history largely remained the same though the imagery and symbols change. Why has tarot such an enduring appeal, across time and different cultures?

JH Exactly because of what you just stated! We recognise ourselves in the cards. Archetypes remain, because we are all human with the same desires and fears and needs. There is something beautiful and reassuring to know that we share the same stories as our ancestors, that we are all on the same journey.

EK It’s heartening to see a major publisher of art books focusing on the occult and the esoteric. Some of your other books have delved into this territory, for example The Taschen Book of Symbols. Is the demand increasing for books on this subject? If so, why do you think that is?

JH I think people are seeking ways to find themselves, to find connection and spirituality and communities outside of traditional, normative culture. Tarot and astrology and witchcraft, all of these are not just practices, they are ways of knowing, of learning more about yourself and your world.

EK This is the first in Taschen's Library of Esoterica series, which sounds exciting. Can you tell us a little more about that?

JH I’ll leave you with an excerpt of our “For The Seekers” statement that will be included in the final pages of each volume of the series. 

“FOR THE SEEKERS:

The intent of this series is to offer an inclusive, introductory overviews to these ancient rituals and to explore their complex symbolism objectively, rather than dogmatically. In doing so, the aspiration is to draw back the veil and to reveal a deeper appreciation of these valuable tools of the psyche. Esoteric knowledge offers powerful methods for self-exploration and meditation. These magical practices have developed over centuries in order to allow for a further under-standing of the inner world.

The goal of this series is to present condensed summaries of these ancient systems and from there, encourage readers to further explore the rituals, ceremonies, and sacred philosophies of various global cultures. The task is to inspire readers to seek out knowledge, to study the teachings of scholars past and present, whom have dedicated themselves to the development and preservation of these ancient arts. 

The hope is that The Library of Esoterica emboldens readers to begin their own journey down into the dark the halls of the arcane, to pull the dusty tomes from the shelves, to take the timeworn cards from the satchel and spread them across the silks, to look up to the sky and read meaning in the movement of the stars.“

The Empress: Sebastian Haines, "The Tarot of the Golden Serpent," 2013 (detail)

Temperance, Mountain Dream Tarot, 1975, by Bea Nettles

Judgement: David Palladini, "Aquarian Tarot," 1970

© U.S. Games Systems

Pamela Colman Smith with puppets she created, featured in the October 1912 issue of "The Craftsman Illustrated"

The Hanged One: artist unknown, "Estensi Tarot," 15th century

© Bibliothèque nationale de France

The Tower, Neuzeit Tarot, 1983, by Walter Wegmuller

All images courtesy TASCHEN - copyrights remain with the respective artists.

In conversation with Amy Hale

Dr. Amy Hale is a writer and anthropologist who specialises in the emerging fields of Esoteric studies and Pagan studies. She has a PhD in Folklore and Mythology from UCLA. From a young age, Dr. Hale has been obsessed with The Celts, or as she told me, what “people love about the idea of ‘The Celts’, much of which, as it turns out, is far more romance than reality.” Her research and writing interests span Druidry, Paganism, the earth mysteries movement and spiritual tourism in Cornwall, “in addition to slightly darker research into radical right-wing Paganism.” Her book Ithell Colquhoun: The Genius of the Fern loved Gully, a biography of the British surrealist artist Ithell Colquhoun, will be published in November 2020. I spoke with her in August 2020.

Nicolette Clara Iles What is your experience of being an academic within studies of the occult? How does being both academic and practitioner affect your work—or life?

Amy Hale I haven't exactly had a traditional academic career, so honestly, it hasn't impacted me much. The fact is, it is a relevant phenomenon in the modern world that impacts identities, populations and economies, and that has been the focus of my work. I am not an apologist or theologian. Even when I was a Lecturer at the University of Exeter, looking at modern Paganism in Cornwall was always part of my research, and no one took any issue with it, because the occult and Paganism has had a material impact on Cornwall that is very worth looking at. For most of my career I have taught online, so that perhaps kept me out of the line of fire of colleagues and departments who might have taken issue, but even when I worked in a corporate environment, helping build curricula for Christian schools, my area of research was never an area of concern. The bottom line is that even with a slightly odd area of expertise I conduct myself like a professional and my personal beliefs or practice is no one's business. When people find out they are mostly just fascinated by it.

NCI How can magic and occult studies become a more accessible territory?

AH I think in a lot of ways we are in a Golden Age of esoteric thought.  There is more open access to ideas, resources, texts and systems than we have ever had. The possibilities to network and exchange thoughts, ideas and information on occult topics is historically unparalleled. I think the access is there and I believe that esoteric cultures are thriving. I think the big question is more about the ways in which magic and the occult changes wider cultural conversations. I hope that one thing to come out of this esoteric flowering is the realisation that regardless of what people may tell themselves or others about their own spirituality or lack thereof, we are actually complex beings with a range of creative responses to our environments. The idea that the world has been disenchanted by rational thought is starting to slip away, because people have always had remarkably complicated, and sometimes contradictory worldviews. You can be rational, even an atheist as I was raised, and still experience the world around you with awe and mystery. I think it’s in those liminal moments that the space of magic emerges. 

NCI So what led you to write a biography about Ithell Colquhoun?

AH From the moment I first encountered Colquhoun's archives at the Tate in 2000 I knew I was encountering a very special person. She seemed to know everyone in the occult world and even her scribbles and doodles showed such an incredible command of esoteric thought. As I write in the book, I believe that Colquhoun was arguably the most engaged woman occultist of the 20th century. She spent every day painting and writing about her esoteric life, and in this book we get just a taste of what it must have been like to life a life that was so influenced by occult thought over seven decades. She provides a unique case study, but the fact that she was a woman makes her historically even more rare.  The other thing the book does, and this was really my primary intention, was to show how her life and art reflected the historical and cultural currents in Britain at the time, and how occult practice intersects with wider cultural movements. 

NCI How long did you spend researching Ithell Colquhoun? Can you tell me more about that process? I imagine there’s such a full history to go through that condensing to one book must have been a feat!

AH My journey with Colquhoun has been quite a ride! My initial research for that book started about 20 years ago, and the bulk of it has taken a decade to research and write. The research was mostly self-funded, and involved trips to London to work in the Tate archives for weeks at a time while still working my day job as an online professor. It literally took quitting my job to finish the book because the material is just so complex. I’m not sure I will ever feel done with researching Colquhoun, and I don’t think I ever will be.  Her work was remarkably complicated and every day I feel like I am learning something new, or have a new insight into what she might have been doing.  Her reading and experimentation was incredibly vast.  I have more Colquhoun based projects in the works as well! One book won’t be enough.

NCI What can we expect from "Genius of the Fern Loved Gully"? Were there any surprises you encountered while creating this book? 

AH I think there may be a couple of surprises for readers. First, I am hoping that people will be blown away by the sheer force of her intellect and creativity and her astonishing command of various magical traditions. The woman never stopped moving, thinking, writing and doing. We are really getting to see an amazing case study of a woman who incorporated her occult interests into every facet of her life and as a result saw the world in such an unusual way. I frequently try to imagine, given her love of colour theory and correspondences, what the world looked like through her eyes, when each colour maps to wider abstract ideas and concepts. Every colour, every shape was a code waiting to be revealed, and I think she probably unraveled quite a bit of that.

Then there’s the sex stuff! Her explicit sex magic images from the early 1940s are unlike anything we have ever seen, to my knowledge anyway, created by a woman magician. It wasn’t just heterosexual couples either.  She painted women with women, men with male angels, she was clearly looking beyond traditional magical conceptions of gendered polarity. Colquhoun was never afraid to be in your face about sexual images anyway.  Many of her early botanical images were just lightly masked close ups of genitalia, but the sex magic series is utterly fascinating to me. I think people will also be surprised at the fact that she had an affair with a woman and experienced same sex attraction. For me, this really put another interpretive spin of some of the pieces in her archives that were either implicitly or explicitly vulvic in character. 

I think for me the biggest realisation was, that despite her love of nature, solitude and general anti-modernism, Colquhoun came from a privileged background and that impacted how she saw the world as well. She had a modest trust, traveled frequently, had domestic help, sometimes owned more than one property, and didn’t have to have a job for most of her life. I think that people have envisioned her as being earthy and gritty with her magic, but she believed that magic wasn’t for everyone, it was for those who were ready to receive the messages of the universe. 

NCI How do the Occult and Art link for you?

AH As long as humans have been creating, we have expressed spiritual ideas through art, whether through performance, symbol, or representation. I think all art is meant to take both the artist and the viewer on a journey, and the study of occult and esoteric art raises interesting questions about process and practice that, for me, as a scholar, move between art history and ethnography.

I think in the past scholars who have studied the relationship between art and the occult have focused on the symbolic aspect of “occult art” rather than the process or practice of the artist. Occult practice has not been taken as seriously because it was seen to potentially delegitimise the artist by making them seem, well, nutty, and the same aspersions were also then cast on the researcher. It has been difficult to talk about actual occult practice by artists and writers until I think quite recently. I am not an art historian, though, and because of my academic interests in performance and ritual, my own writings on this topic have been focused on the intersections of art and practice, where the art is part of the magic or the ritual. There are such interesting questions to be asked about how artists experience making art (including ritual, theatre or other performance) as a way of connecting with the numinous, or with ecstasy, and how they communicate that process to the audience. For artists like Barry William Hale, where ritual and performance are so entwined, I am utterly fascinated by his ability to transport the audience using a skilled combination of image and somatic methods. For Ithell Colquhoun, I believe her art was meant to help the viewer cultivate different ways of seeing so that they could penetrate spiritual dimensions.  It was clear that she was trying to achieve that with the processes she worked with in her visual arts and in her writing, which were intensely magical. ◉

In conversation with Sabrina Scott

Sabrina Scott is a tarot reader and teacher based in Toronto, as well as the author of the award-winning graphic novel Witchbody (Weiser Books). I asked them some quickfire questions about their relationship with the tarot (think of this conversation as a three card draw) and what followed is a fascinating insight into the practice of a contemporary card-reading maverick. You can find Sabrina on Instagram @sabrinamscott. 

Could you tell us which tarot deck do you work with the most often and why?

Every deck has its own energy and its own personality, and so to me it makes some sense that as we move through different phases in our lives we also build and shift our relationships with our tarot decks. There have been times in my life when I've not touched the Rider Waite Smith for months - I've been too fragile coming out of a tough or challenging season, and so during those times I've found The Wild Unknown comforting. Asking which deck I work with most often is like asking what friend I talk with the most, haha! Sometimes it might be one friend, sometimes it might be the other - it just depends what each of us have going on in our lives at that moment, and whether or not our vibes are aligned.

How would you recommend beginners choose their first tarot deck?

Personally, I strongly suggest everyone have an edition of Pamela Colman Smith's illustrated tarot deck, whether that's the Rider Waite Smith edition, the Waite Smith Borderless, or whatever. Her images are absolutely foundational to how tarot is understood today, and it's unavoidable. Becoming proficient in getting to know this deck will open up so many opportunities and pathways to understanding other decks that are inspired by it or based on it (whether loosely or explicitly). A lot of people have fought me on this, found their decks alienating, come back to the RWS, and been like... oh. Her illustrations are just incredibly intelligent and visceral - nothing's extraneous, everything has specific meaning and well-thought-out symbolism - from colour, to gesture, clothing style, composition, everything. As someone trained as a professional illustrator - and who later taught both illustration theory and practice at the university level - Pamela Colman Smith's illustrations impress me more than any other deck, despite how old they are. She was brilliant and her contribution to tarot is so important.

What is unique about your personal approach to the cards?

I don't believe in memorizing, and I believe in personal relavency and connection to the cards. Now that I've been practicing for 20 years, I do make more space to read tarot books for fun - and I must admit, I've been shocked by how common it is for readers to simply see tarot as a psychological tool and/or as metaphor, or 'just a fun party trick.' A surprising number of professional and well-known readers don't seem to acknowledge the energy and beingness within each deck of cards - tarot cards are often seen as 'inanimate objects.' I couldn't disagree more. The cards are alive - they are beings with whom we communicate and collaborate, and when our relationship with our deck is solid, meaningful, and reciprocal, that's when the real magic can happen when we give and receive readings. I see tarot as a collection of vibrant matter, energetic beings worthy of respect - who will reach out and speak loudly if we develop our skills of listening.

I also have an anti-oppressive lens on how I read and teach tarot, which thankfully is becoming slightly more common. By that, I mean I read with an awareness of race, gender, sexuality, disability, body size, class, and all that fun stuff. I bring this framework to how I interpret the cards. One example of what this means in practice is that I don't see cards depicting figures with larger bodies as being about 'greed.' It's just a larger body. Similarly, I don't see cards depicting disabled bodies as being metaphorical. Disability is disability - I don't read it as a 'metaphor' for some kind of temporary setback. In how I teach tarot, I also refer to the cards quite often in a gender neutral way, or use descriptors more along the lines of masculine and feminine, assertive energy and receptive energy - depending on the cards and the deck in question.

I see card reading as a dialogic, conversational process - between myself, my client, my cards, and the spirits and energies which surround me and my other collaborators during the course of the read. I don't believe in giving passive predictions that put my client in the position of passenger in their own life. To the contrary, I'm all about helping folks see the patterns in which they're entrenched, and see different pathways out of it - different choices create different results and a different life.