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I’ve just started reading The Art of Conversation with the Genius Loci by Barry Patterson. Barry is the author of Finding your Way in the Woods widely recognised as the best guide to working magic outdorrs. This book is an expansion of that previous pamphlet. Expansion doesn’t really do it justice though, as it’s not just the same text with an appendix bolted on, it’s a completely new book! And it’s fantastic, one of the best books on magic I’ve ever read. It’s really refreshing to read a book that isn’t simply a reworking or re-running through of the established tropes of a system– in fact this might be described as a systemless book, as it focus on experience and games to play while cultivating that experience rather than some abstract metamystical hooey. The first chapter gives an account of a trip to the Outer Hebrides, and what happened to him. And this is simple and refreshing to me., an account devoid of ritual trappings and techniques.
In the rest of the book we have accounts/ideas of working in the city, relationship with rocks and stones, consideration of divination, making music and so on. It’s packed with ideas and already, 50 pages in, I’ve chanced on a couple of fragments that have spun my ideas on their head. I particulary like the way he expresses his animism, in a way that straddles “rational” and “magicial”. I can’t stress how important it is that you, personally, go out and buy this book right now.
And while I’m at, why not get Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black I’ve written about this elsewhere on Barbelith but it may be of particular interest to Templefolk. It’s about a modern day medium, Alison, and her accomplice, Collete, as they move around suburban Britain to function room to function room channelling the dead. It has shades of all the dodgy “Britains Most Haunted” and Derek Acora stuff sitting snugly alongside real horror. Lots of humour there, pisstakes of New Age trend jumping, but a lot more. Some really interesting reflections on the Dead, wandering around lost, not knowing what's going on, jumping on the first senstive they come across. Also, the characterisation is, simply put, stunning.
My other comments C & Ped, from the "Underworld" thread in books:
I've just finished Beyond Black, by Hilary Mantel. It's a phenomenal book, one of the best novels I've read for a long time. It isn't directly about Hell, but she touches on it in two ways:
Firstly, she describes those who may or may not be Hell's inhabitants. I don't want to say anymore as I don't want to spoil the plot for anyone who might read it. And secondly, she paints the life of developed suburban Britain as a kind of hell... the sprawl of motorways, Beefeaters, mortages, Sainsbury's ready meals. Not in a sneering way either, I think there's something very convincing in her descriptions.
An extract from the opening:
Travelling: the dank oily days after Christmas. The motorway, its wastes looping London: the margin's scrub grass flaring orange in the lights, and the leaves of the poisoned shrubs striped yellow-green like a cantaloupe melon. Four o'clock: light sinking over the orbital road. Teatime in Enfield, night falling on Potters Bar.
The images perhaps resonant more if you live in or around London, but it's great writing nonetheless. |
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