Sundry Notes: June

Conversions, The High Priestess, Trump, and Rewilding Witchcraft

Very often, I have many scattered thoughts which I want to write about but don’t want to turn into essays. I’ve decided to try collecting these in a monthly series, “Sundry Notes.” Here’s the first one.

I.

In the summer of 2014, I happened across an essay that completely changed my life.

I say “happened,” but maybe that’s not really how it… happened. I found it because quite a few others had found it and were talking about it. Some were arguing over it, barely containing their rage over what felt like for them personal insults on their beliefs. Others admitted they were a bit perplexed by its popularity, its imagery, and especially its style of prose. But for some of us, maybe more than it appears, the essay felt like a dark prophetic utterance from beyond the stars and beneath the grave.

That essay was called “Rewilding Witchcraft,” and its author was Peter Grey. Peter needs little introduction for some readers, as the press that he and Alkistis Dimech founded and run, Scarlet Imprint, is the most respected — and often envied — publisher of fine esoteric and occult books in the English-speaking world, if not all the West. Also, Peter Grey’s books, especially Apocalyptic Witchcraft, have done more to combat the near-complete commercialization of paganism and witchcraft than anything I and the publisher I run could ever hope to do.

For those who haven’t read the essay or even heard of Peter Grey, I highly recommend reading it. Re-reading it just before writing this, I’m particularly struck at how it could just as easily be written in exactly the same way now, and to the same effect. In regards to environmental destruction, extinction events, and climate chaos, it’s all continued without even a pause. And in regards to the pacification and commercialization of witchcraft, which churns out social media witches “unconnected to the land and its denizens,” it’s even worse than a decade ago. Yet, what didn’t really exist back then, and what exists now because of that essay, are countless thousands of people remembering the forgotten relationship between the witch and the land.

While I’m certain he’d prefer I don’t use such metaphors, Peter Grey’s essay activated vast networks of sleeper cells and agents, awakening them to what the spirits of land were trying to tell them. That’s how it was for me, at least. When I walk the hills and forests surrounding my home here in the Ardennes, when I pass streams and old stones and sacred oaks, I listen to them.

I mention all this not just because it’s the ten year anniversary of the publication of Rewilding Witchcraft (which was given first as a speech the year before), but also because Peter Grey’s decided to end his long hiatus from public internet writing and now has a Substack:

The Adder in the Churchyard Wall

. His first essay has already been published, and I highly recommend it.

II.

I lately spend almost all of my free time either in my garden or in the gym, and as far away from social media and mainstream news as I possibly can. Unfortunately, no matter how hard I try to avoid such things, I’ve now heard, as have all the rest of you, that Donald Trump was convicted of quite a few felonies.

I understand that this was likely met with great relief by many who are terrified of another Trump presidency. Biden is a deeply unpopular and relentlessly ineffective president, and his chances of a second term were looking otherwise quite slim. But if the other candidate disappears, then maybe he might win.

Living outside the United States for all these years now gives me a rather different perspective on this, though. The judicial system is quite often used as a political weapon to stop otherwise unstoppable candidates on both the left and the right, and even convictions for serious crimes rarely damage the target for long. Silvio Berlusconi, for example, was convicted of tax fraud, yet he was easily re-elected to the Italian senate once the mandatory ban after that conviction ran out. The president of Brazil from 2003 to 2011, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was convicted of money laundering and spent almost two years in jail. And guess what? He’s the president of Brazil again.

Very lightly scratch the surface of any politician and you’ll find the putrid rot of corruption. Biden is just as guilty of doing things the laws say the rest of us aren’t supposed to do, but Biden isn’t being targeted right now. And, those who are aware of this — even those who don’t like Trump — are taking this news differently. As Christian Parenti notes in his latest at Compact:

…those who are mired in Trump Derangement genuinely can’t see what so many others do see: an outrageous double standard that overlooks Biden family corruption while leaving no charge unpursued against Trump. Those who don’t see the double standard also have no idea how infuriating it is for many people who do see it. It is so blatantly unjust that it is likely helping Trump gain unprecedented levels of support among groups of historically stalwart Democratic voters like union members, African-American men, Latinos, and young people.

And I think Parenti is especially correct in his analysis of the diminishing returns of Trump Derangement. The more legal charges brought against him, the less value those legal charges have in the minds of everyone except those obsessed with seeing him punished.

A larger point, though, is that when the only way to stop an argument is by forcing your opponent to shut up, you’ve already realized your position has no merit. If the only way to get Biden elected is to put Trump in jail, then it’s pretty clear no one really wants Biden.

III.

As you probably saw, I’ve a book coming out in September, The People’s Guide To Tarot: A Primer for Everyone. I’m quite humbled to say that the pre-sale for it has thus far been the largest Ritona/Gods&Radicals Press has ever seen for a book.

I’ll admit something. My deeply negative experience with the publisher of my previous book, Here Be Monsters, really quite crippled me for quite some time. Writing the book took up two years of my life, and to have the publisher fail so spectacularly in even the most basic ways really crushed me. For a while there, I even considered not writing any longer. But as a friend noted to me, it was probably a process I needed to go through.

The hardest bit of all that was not knowing exactly why things seemed to be going so utterly wrong with the book. Why was the director of publishing acting so aggressive and insulting to me whenever I brought up issues? Why were the publicists not returning my emails? Why were journals, reviewers, and other influential people not receiving the copies requested for them? Why did they not follow up on events I tried to organize? And why was I constantly warned that I’d be punished if I promoted the book in certain venues that other authors with the same publisher did?

These questions drove me mad until I finally remembered the wisdom of one of the Tarot cards, the High Priestess. Here’s what I write about her in The People’s Guide to Tarot:

II, The High Priestess

Awareness of mystery, unconscious or hidden forces and influences. Secrets, Stillness, Silence. Feminine magic.

Often, the High Priestess (or Papesse) is shown sitting with an open book or a scroll in in her lap. In many versions, she’s between two pillars, sometimes with a crescent moon at her feet. Representations of The High Priestess vary very widely across various Tarot versions, and this is quite understandable. That’s probably because, as with the dreamworld and unconscious forces she signifies, it’s not easy to translate them into everyday symbolism.

We usually use the word “mystery” to define something we cannot explain or don’t understand yet. In its oldest sense, though, the word referred to things that needed to be kept secret and required silence. In fact, the word “mute” comes from the same root as mystery.

The High Priestess is a card of mysteries, of silence, and of stillness, as well as the deep wisdom that comes the body, rather than the mind. She tells us that it’s okay to sit still, to not know the answer to a problem, and to wait out storms rather than trying to stop them.

Often when troubled, worried, or anxious, or when we are facing difficult decisions and situations, we try to think our way through things. Sometimes, we might also try to take actions that not only do not help, but actually make things worse. The agency and action taught by The Magician can only get us so far; sometimes the answers we need come when sit still, when we rest, and when we sleep.

When I see the High Priestess, I like to think of roots. They’re the part of a plant we almost never see, and they do everything in darkness. Beneath the surface, beyond what we can see, is a whole world of secrets and mysteries giving life to what is visible.

It’s okay to just let the still, silent, unseen forces in life work their magic, and to wait until we know the right course of action, the right decisions, or the right words to say. This is true even in the rare cases where The High Priestess might be pointing to the secrets of others. Again, we don’t need to know everything, nor can we, and silence is sometimes the greatest kindness we can offer each other and also ourselves.

Anyway, I now know more of the answers to those questions which previously drove me quite mad, and the truth of the matter is hardly shocking. In fact, the book itself contained most of the answers, especially the chapters on The Grift and The Vampire.

IV.

And on the matter of identity politics, I’ve been thinking a lot about a former friend of mine’s recent conversion to Judaism and his subsequent zealotry about Israel and global antisemitism. While I cannot possibly know what is going on in his head, I’ve been struck by a few observations which have broader relevance to the way identity works.

First of all, before his conversion he was one of those sorts who relentlessly railed against racism, sexism, transphobia, and all the other evils that social justice claims to fight. Since his conversion, though, antisemitism has become the real global threat, and he’s able to find it everywhere.

There’s a common situation that seems to occur with many recent converts, and not just those who’ve converted to a specific religion. The most zealous vegans I’ve ever met were those who’ve just become vegan, just as those who’ve just started CrossFit are the ones most likely to not shut up about it. On the other hand, you’re not so likely to hear people who’ve been doing those things for a long time get upset that you’re not doing it, too.

What I find particularly fascinating in his case, however, is that he was able to retool the entire social justice framework so easily into this new identity, and to see enemies everywhere. But whereas those evils were arrayed against other people, after his conversion they’re now all against him.

I bring all this up not to question the authenticity of his conversion, and I’ve written previously of the problem of even applying the idea of authenticity to religious beliefs. Instead, it seems to me that there’s likely a psychological mechanism underlying the relationship between zealotry, conversion, and identity. No, I don’t know what it is, precisely, but the fact that the manifestations are often the same no matter whether the person has just discovered a new religion, a new ideology, or a new lifestyle means there’s got to be something there. Especially because of conversion’s tendency to immediately divide the world between the new in-group and all its enemies — be they omnivores, unbelievers, or what have you — there’s something about this we need desperately to understand.