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What next? Fiona Horne

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15:23 / 19.02.02

I admit taht I do have a tendency to keep a fairly low profile with my practice, and have been known to bait Wiccans in the past but........... THIS.

I saw it in the book shop today and was totally thrown by it. Its either very clever Chaos Magick (Sacred Consumerism), Satire on the Buffy culture, or just plain sad? Wish I had pictures from the inside of another on eof her books, it was straight out of Just Seventeen, except the pics with her skyclad with a snake or skyclad doing a ritual on a little table. EEEEEEERRRgggggggghhhhh (best Homer Simpson voice)

I offer her up to the alter of Barbelith.

The Return Of Rothkoid

15:41 / 19.02.02

And so, the Magick catches up. Fiona Horne's had no musical credibility for yonks (she used to be in an early-90s-era band called Def FX, who had a couple of singles and one notable hit, "Psychoactive Summer", in Oz) and has been dropping the whole "D'yknow I'm a witch?" thing into interviews whenever possible. Alas, I think she's completely straight about it; she actually is what she says she is, despite the howls of protestation from real adherents...

I'm pretty sure she's appeared skyclad for Black And White mag, too... ahem.

16:27 / 19.02.02

quote: October 1998

You might wonder what on earth inspired me to be photographed naked in a coffee shop, let alone with snakes and turtles sliding all over me!

These photos are actually paying homage to a remarkable women with whom I share an unusual trait - we are Witches.

Rosaleen Norton, bohemian and intellectual, reigned supreme as Sydney's notorious 'Witch of King's Cross' during the '50's and '60's. We have something else in common - we are both artists - but whereas I work in the mediums of music and the written word, Rosaleen was a painter and drawer 'extraordinaire'.

During her life her work was compared favourably with Norman Lindsay's but Rosaleen's occult paintings featuring lascivious nudes, often female, cavorting sensuously with black panthers and snakes attracted a considerably greater degree of controversy and ultimately persecution than Lindsey's work ever did.

I feel inspired by Rosaleen's defiance of social norms and her strength - she was not afraid to follow an unconventional spiritual path and express that through her art. She carved a unique and potent niche in the world when women were afforded far less opportunities than they are today. Like Rosaleen I believe life is for the living and no possibility should be ruled out.

Scenes here have been re-created from her life: like the times that she would model for art students in a studio above a coffee shop, after which she would wander downstairs to drink coffee - still naked. An intimate relationship with animals would have her bathing with pet turtles and pouring milk over her body for her cat to lick off! She was very relaxed in her sexuality at a time when prudish behaviour was encouraged.

She explored the ancient Eastern sacred sex teachings of Tantra, learning to release the orgasmic serpentine energy of kundalini.

Rosaleen was a warrior for women's liberation, knowing what she wanted and how to get it. Like Rosaleen I am filled with the desire to explore the totality of my being, intellectually, spiritually, physically and sexually.

FIONA HORNE*

14:23 / 04.11.05

Having lived under a rock for the past few years, I've not heard of this woman, or her books (not really into the Wicca thing, anyway), and haven't seen Mad, Mad World, heard her albums, etc.

Anyway, saw her book at Borders the other day, Disinformation's "Pop Goes the Witch," and have to admit, I flipped through the book because, well, the lady is very attractive.

Anyway, just want to thank this thread for teaching me the word "skyclad," though, in yet another example of synchronicity, a few hours after I came across this thread the other day, I opened up my copy of Donald Kraig's "Modern Magick" and randomly landed on a page that offered a definition for "skyclad."

Pop Goes the Witch cover

Less searchable M0rd4nt

14:58 / 04.11.05

Is this the same one that's just done a Playboy centrefold or something? I find it so hard to keep all these $RW clones straight.

15:17 / 04.11.05

Magick sure does involve a lot of lying down, doesn't it?

17:02 / 04.11.05

Mordant, I think you're right -- I believe I read somewhere Fiona Horne appeared in Playboy recently. In fact, I think I saw it on her own website, which I clicked to via the link in the original post above.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

17:42 / 04.11.05

Of course, it's quite impossible to be of Majyks unless one is slim, blue-eyed and blonde. You have to look good skyclad, right?

17:53 / 04.11.05

For those who care, I found those 2005 PB photos of Fiona Horne, which are linked to off of this blogspot:

Fiona Horne's Playboy photos

Imaginary Mongoose Solutions

18:00 / 04.11.05

She was pretty rediculous in Mad Mad House, living up (or down) to every bad pagan sterotype.

04:49 / 05.11.05

Right, she's the Disinfo token magical chick. From what I recall, that "POP!" was mostly reprints, and old ones (Church of All Worlds?) at that.

I picked up "Witch" secondhand a few years ago after I interviewed Metzger for my old dot.com and he said he thought she was a big mover and shaker in girl magic. Hum. There's nothing all too shifty about her technique -- if anything, it's way gutsier than a lot of intro wicca out there. The Aussie witches I've played with are good shit (Wendy Rule, one of Fiona's comrades, threw down a hot circle at a gathering I was at, and with just her voice).

As for more hot sexy witch material, anyone worked with LaSara FireFox's Sexy Witch? Again, another one that by the cover and publisher seems dubious, but LaSara's the real deal.

Slick marketing does not bad magic make. It might sound odd, but reclaiming "normative" femme sexuality is almost subversive in witch circles, where being "natural" and crunchy are the default. The looks I got at Pantheacon going about in heels and a little black dress... in that context, I totally appreciate Fiona.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

09:40 / 05.11.05

reclaiming "normative" femme sexuality is almost subversive in witch circles

Now you mention it, yeah, I can see that being the case!

I know my comments probably sounded a little bitter, but that's because... well, I'm bitter. I don't really move much in magical circles, but when I was younger I met my fair share of guys who would have gone apeshit over Ms. Horne. You know the type: Nominally magicians, yet didn't seem to do much magic, biiiig fetish for the "Sacred Whore" thing, in theory; of course someone actually embodying the Sacred Whore archetype would have scared the pants off them. Be that as it may, I ended up genuinely feeling like my practice was essentially flawed because I couldn't (and still can't) really relate to the whole Scarlet Woman thing. To hear some fellas tell it, that's really the only game in town if you're female and into the magics.

--

16:26 / 05.11.05

Now if only Kenneth Grant could get a website that hawks t-shirts and skin care products.

I recall our bookstore got that Horne disinfo book... In fact, we got a bunch of copies of it, but it didn't sell well so we sent them back awhile ago. Oddly enough, we only got one copy of the Disinfo Book of Lies and no copies at all of Generation Hex, but then again, our particular store is one of the smaller Barnes & Nobles.

19:09 / 05.11.05

Mordant -- I can totally relate to the "Scarlet Woman or Bust!" mentality. So limiting. And it seems so male-bound. The women I know who court the archetype could care less.

(Does a certain amount of autonomous sexual ruthlessness come along with that energy, or is it stll percieved to be more or less Magical Girls Gone Wild?)

***

That "Pop!" book is not something I'd ever buy, either. Not because it's about witchcraft, but because it's a pretty badly done book about witchcraft. That's all. Fiona's own stuff is fun and glossy & a bit "Sex Magic in the City," and really, why not? Modern magic is an urban tradition; fuck, even some of, if not *the* oldest written witchy/scarlet woman stuff is thoroughly citified -- hello, "Uruk calling"!

It's a bit like the porn mag vs. romance novel thing when it comes to bookselling -- I'm sure your B&N has shelves full o' Llewellyn that are largely woman-centric in scope and readership. But that's not "real magic" to a lot of people -- I see that shit shelved in Self Help sometimes! -- and most Pagan woman are rounder than Fiona, right? So when a conventionally pretty blonde goes to a mainstream press, or mostly-male press, and her blown-out glamour shot graces the covers, maybe it looks tacky, but it also exposes the whole gender divide, and, by extension, why "sexy" magical woman still get told they're not serious or just doing it for attention or whatnot.

Honestly, more power to her.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

19:37 / 05.11.05

There was a considerable amount of hand-wringing over on some of the pagan/heathen/magic comms that I haunt, on the grounds that Horne's Playboy spread would "make them look bad." It was odd; on the surface, people were claiming to be mortified by yet another supposed plastic witch being in the public eye. But I found the underlying vibe strangely prudish, as if it was really the display of her body that was generating the hostility.

I can't really comment on the effect that Horne's Playboy appearance will have on the general perception of witches, Wiccans and pagans in the public eye, since I'm not a Wiccan and in any case I'm not familiar with her work. But if a noted rune-worker turned up in the jazz-mags wearing nothing but a mjollnir and a big smile, I really don't think I'd have a problem with it.

19:47 / 05.11.05

She seems like she has her head on straight and groks the Craft. B.toxin raises some good points about conventional beauty and how it might irk crony wiccans.

From an interview on Femail.com.au:

I have not used the Craft for revenge - though to be honest it has crossed my mind! I deal with the issue of hexing extensively in both books and make it clear that it's not worth the trouble. It is more empowering and a show of stronger magick to be able to heal yourself of the damage committed by another and move on.

I wouldn't recommend a spell to make a guy fall in love with you as this is interfering with someone else's free will and a Witchy no-no! There are plenty of spells you can do to increase your inner and outer beauty and you can attract more love into your life - it's just better not to aim your love spells at a specific person. When I do my radio show with Richard Stubbs (TTFM Weds morning in Melbourne) so many people call in wanting spells for more love in their lives, but I always encourage them to work on themselves and then love will follow.

XXII:X:II = XXX

05:36 / 08.11.05

I think we're all still dancing around the original question this thread poses, which is whether her brand of Pop Machick (ah come on, give me a little credit for coining the phrase) is, in the larger picture, better or worse for the common cause of spreading the magic meme. True, she seems to have her head screwed on at least halfway straight on the issue, but is she attracting personality types that will in turn give the Great Work the respect we'd like to see it given? 14 year old mallrats and Playboy subscribers who don't read it for the articles aren't exactly a prized demographic when it comes to your typical magic aims. On the other hand, the less serious, vapid ones might drop out after abortive putterings, leaving the ones who genuinely hear a calling. Are the eyes and ears she grabs any better or worse than those which ole George might ensnare when he at long last gets off his duff and finishes Pop Magick!?

So, on the whole, good, bad, in-between, indifferent, what?

All Acting Regiment

05:47 / 08.11.05

More people in = good thing.

I may start to get incoherent here, so do tell if I do. I think the issue with Magic+Playboy here- and more vaguely the wider sex industry- is that Magic's supposed to be a tool for positive change, and Playboy is basically the Black Iron Prison, or would like to be if it could. As I see it, it's a honey trap, a mechanism made by men for making women appear available/vulnerable/objects in order to take money from other men via the false sense of happiness/satisfaction/security the former brings them. It's a bad construct, and one we could do without.

Horne of course may well realise all of this, she may well have absolutely legit reasons for posing in play, it's just that in magical terms Playboy is a bad spirit thatin it's current form can only have bad effect on one's practice.

07:51 / 08.11.05

True, she seems to have her head screwed on at least halfway straight on the issue, but is she attracting personality types that will in turn give the Great Work the respect we'd like to see it given? 14 year old mallrats and Playboy subscribers who don't read it for the articles aren't exactly a prized demographic when it comes to your typical magic aims.

So what is a prized demographic when it comes to magic?

07:56 / 08.11.05

it's just that in magical terms Playboy is a bad spirit thatin it's current form can only have bad effect on one's practice.

So how does that statement accommodate the fact that Robert Anton Wilson (who in many occult and chaos magic circles is considered beyond reproach, even saint-like) was the editor of Playboy for years - during the period he wrote most of his more influential books? Fiona Horne's association with Playboy makes her some sort of dupe, whereas RAW's editorship of Playboy makes him what?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

08:00 / 08.11.05

14 year old mallrats and Playboy subscribers who don't read it for the articles aren't exactly a prized demographic when it comes to your typical magic aims.

Am I the only person who kind of feels that the Hot Topic Shoppers, while risible, might actually be providing useful cover? If people took WIIWD seriously they'd probably try to ban it.

09:14 / 08.11.05

>reclaiming "normative" femme sexuality is almost subversive
>in witch circles
That's nonsense. In the many and varied witch circles within which I have circulated there is no problem with femme sexuality, normative or otherwise.

The witchy boards I frequent tend to express the opinion that they there is not necessarily a problem with her making money off PlayBoy. However, there is a problem with the fact that Fiona Horne is something a shallow self publicist using her adoption of Wicca (I don't know for sure if she is lineaged but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt) as a tool with which to line her pocket. And her books aren't very good.

Personally I think it's cultural appropriation of Wicca (and by extension of the western mystery tradition) but I'm not going to lose sleep over it.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

09:22 / 08.11.05

I don't know for sure if she is lineaged

I feel sort of uncomfortable with that...does a person have to be initiated to be taken seriously? I mean, if her books and writings suggest someone without a very great depth of involvment in her supposed path, that's one thing, but lots of people are solo practitioners. Just the way it goes sometimes.

11:50 / 08.11.05

Hello again Mordant!
> does a person have to be initiated to be taken seriously?

No, of course not. However, as has been noted before, I take a fairly rigourous view of the term "Wiccan". Despite the obfuscation of its meaning through its exploitation by capitalist media, it has had a fairly specific definition for fifty years: a person who is a coven-initiated witch in a line going back to Gardner.

Now let me be clear: I do not believe that Wiccans are better than pagans or occultists or anybody else. Nor do I believe that being a Wiccan makes you any more deserving of being taken seriously than anyone else. Nor that solo practitioners are any worse than Wiccans at magic or occultism or paganism or whatever we want to call it today.

However... Wicca is a particular category of occult activity and Wiccans are a particular category of occultist. The term means something, even if you don't like Wiccans. Just because in a post-Buffy world that term has been blurred to mean anyone with a vague interest in pentacles and black velvet does not mean that I or anyone else who has spent years of their life getting their head round this particular discipline should suddenly say, "yeah, you know fuck all about what Wicca actually is but you can take my label and completely mis-apply it."

Like I say, I don't know if Horne is a Wiccan or not -- but she applies that term to herself. And I am giving her the benefit of the doubt -- maybe she is a genuine Wiccan. If she is, I don't particularly appreciate her work, or her use of the term for self-publicity. If she is not, I would prefer it if she did not arrogate to herself the image of initation which has not earned, in a bid to increase her celebrity.

But like I say, I'm not going to lose much sleep over it.

14:15 / 08.11.05

Fiona Horne's association with Playboy makes her some sort of dupe, whereas RAW's editorship of Playboy makes him what?

For God's sake, you just don't understand anything do you? Can't you see she is FEEBL WOMEN while Robert Anton Wilson wrote the Illuminatis trilogies? If you just shifted out of your narrow and conformist "reality tunnel" (READ HIS BOOKS) you would understand.

trouser the trouserian

14:49 / 08.11.05

Witchcraft and nudity sorta go together don't they? Time was when almost every article about witchcraft in the popular British press was accompanied by pictures of the divine Maxine Sanders wagglin' her boobs at the camera, or a soft-focus snap of Alex Sanders in the nip about to do something momentous with a cucumber.

15:50 / 08.11.05

Wanted to chime in that RAW's tenure at Playboy involved editing Playboy Forum, not the magazine itself. It was a short-lived project in the '70s in which people sent in their thoughts to Playboy on politics, conspiracies, etc. So Wilson never edited Playboy proper.

18:14 / 08.11.05

Lots of witches have got their kit off for the camera...

... funny to see illmatic giving gypsy a caning over raw, he's had it coming a while

20:45 / 08.11.05

Legba wrote:

...in magical terms Playboy is a bad spirit that in it's current form can only have bad effect on one's practice.

Care to unpack this a bit?

06:56 / 09.11.05

"Personally I think it's cultural appropriation of Wicca"

Oh, no you DIDN'T!

Unless you're alluding to some sort of "strict Wiccan constructionist" (a la, I dunno, Scalito-as-Gerald-Fucking-Garder), you have GOT to qualify that statement.

As for Playboy being "the Black Iron Prison," what? Like, OMG did you guys know that there's magicians out there who are using the EVIL CORPORATE MEDIA to disseminate magical information and practices? How can we trust their magic? How we can be sure that those it will attract are here to do the "Greak Work"?

How can one draw this absolute lines around "pop culture" and "the great work" anyway?

***

FWIW, as a whore a feminist, a witch, and an all-around mediawhore, not some "tool" of the patriarchal media, I can assure that we do, in fact, exist. Just like some of those Girls Gone Wild ladies are actually megadykes are not less queer for kissing for money, so are naked witches selling sex magic as porno no less powerful. It's all glamour. It's all a show. Get them hot in the cheap seats with some tits and ass and then sass then with the fierce stuff. (And all the old harlot priestesses with tits bare sing, "This is how we do it, baby...")

06:58 / 09.11.05

"Like, OMG did you guys know that there's magicians out there who are suing the EVIL CORPORATE MEDIA to disseminate magical information and practices?"

Obviously, I meant "using." Sorry about that. I can't spell when I'm naked, apparently.

07:53 / 09.11.05

Wanted to chime in that RAW's tenure at Playboy involved editing Playboy Forum, not the magazine itself. It was a short-lived project in the '70s in which people sent in their thoughts to Playboy on politics, conspiracies, etc. So Wilson never edited Playboy proper.

Bugger, I actually quite liked the idea of RAW living some bizarre Hugh Hefner lifestyle while putting out books like Cosmic Trigger. Like 'Boogie Nights' but with transdimensional squid intelligences from Sirius, possibly wearing glitter and roller boots. Shatter my illusions, why don't you.

10:38 / 09.11.05

I just wanted to add to my on the "appropriation of Wicca by suspicious authors" thing -- wouldn't pretty much *most* Craft books also be guilty of this?

It takes a whole section of crap Llwellyn books to raise a bad witch, but just one to spawn a great one -- who recognizes the useful and the bullshit within it, and moves on into the world a more discerning pracitioner for it... hopefully, maybe, at least in my dream world of Where Witches Come From These Days.

Hell, I'd take Hot Topic-created magicians, too. At least there will be fishnet involved. Perhaps a cute fairy sticker. Whatver. It's better than most magical "aesthetics" out there.

Unconditional Love

11:55 / 09.11.05

Wilson posed in a few centre folds i think, thats about it.

12:18 / 09.11.05

It takes a whole section of crap Llwellyn books to raise a bad witch, but just one to spawn a great one

I'd agree, I think that if a person is going to be a good witch or magician, then they will be, and a hundred rubbish books on magic aren't going to change that one way or another. I don't think anyone who is any good at it really learns their stuff out of books, so much as the odd line or paragraph or exercise they come across might resonate and carry them a little further on the individual road they are walking down. A signpost here and a helping hand there.

Broadly speaking, I think its a good thing that there are lots of popularist, even tacky, books on magic in the marketplace. It makes it more accessible to people, less of a closed shop, it gives people the confidence to dip their toes in the water. I don't think anyone limits themselves to these books because they don't know there is better stuff out there to read. I think the main market for them is probably the entry level people who are maybe a bit embarrassed about their interest anyway, and buy it as a half-joke. Some of these people will go on to read more books on magic and probably move beyond the shallow end, some of them won't. But the ones that won't probably weren't going to anyway. The fact that a lot of these popularist books on magic tend to be a bit rubbish isn't really ideal, and there's an argument to be made that some people might be actively put off the whole thing by reading a couple of irritating books - but the easy answer to that is to write a good one yourself and put into the world! Raise the bar for tacky, accessible books on magic!

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