20AR25-32

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AR 25:32 - "Esoteric technologies" and the occult

In this issue:

WITCHCRAFT - the emergence of political "magic"

Apologia Report 25:32 (1,489)

August 12, 2020

WITCHCRAFT

Sabina Magliocco's essay "Magic and Politics" <www.bit.ly/2X4SrMS> introduces a "special issue" of Nova Religio (23:4 - 2020) related to the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. "The articles in this issue address a gap in the literature examining intersections of religion, magic, and politics in contemporary North America. They approach political magic as an essentially religious phenomenon, in that it deals with the spirit world and attempts to motivate human behavior through the use of symbols. Covering a range of practices from the far right to the far left, the articles argue against prevailing scholarly treatments of the use of esoteric technologies as a predominantly right-wing phenomenon, showing how they have also been operationalized by the left in recent history. ...

"By magic, I mean ritual practices intended to influence the outcome of external events, whether within a secular or religious context. ...

"The use of magic for political purposes has a long history, and is pervasive in cultures around the globe." Examples follow.

"Damon Berry's contribution, 'Voting in the Kingdom: Prophecy Voters, the New Apostolic Reformation, and Christian Support for Trump,' addresses one of the most puzzling questions to emerge from the 2016 election and its aftermath: evangelical Christian support for President Trump, a figure who has never been especially religious and whose actions appear to have violated some of the most deeply held tenets of contemporary American Christianity. Berry explains how within the New Apostolic Reformation movement, a charismatic, evangelical form of Protestant Christianity, prophecies arose alleging that God had chosen Donald Trump to lead the United States as part of a divine plan to create the Kingdom of God on Earth." Also mentioned is "Pastor Frank Amedia's POTUS Shield, an internet-based, synchronous form of collective prayer." <www.bit.ly/2Dboyn9>

The most interesting of the batch, Magliocco's "Witchcraft as Political Resistance: Magical Responses to the 2016 Presidential Election in the United States," is said to explore "the emergence of a movement dedicated to resisting the Donald Trump administration through witchcraft and magic, [arguing] that the 2016 election created a 'crisis of presence' for many left-leaning Americans who experienced it as a failure of agency. Their turn to magic was in response to feelings of anxiety and helplessness." It also "examines the fissures within the magical resistance as clashes in ethics, aesthetics, and beliefs associated with magic came to the fore, effectively splintering the magic resistance movement and rendering it less effective" according to the abstract.

Magliocco "explores the reasons for their appeal, arguing that they channel oppositionality at a time of high anxiety, both creating communities that support participants during stressful times, and producing opportunities for boundary work that sunder practitioners into factions based on conflicting ethics and aesthetics. ... Arts of resistance include curses and similar magical acts, which can be interpreted as far-reaching fantasies of revenge against the oppressor."

This paper "demonstrates how the performance of magic for political purposes is an important part of contemporary political activism on the left as well as the right. Paradoxically, those participating in magic rituals against the Trump administration seem to be those who believe most strongly in modernity....

"In the United States, modern magical practitioners run the gamut of the political spectrum from the extreme left to the far right," with most being "left of center." Magliocco finds that "both left- and right-wing magical practitioners share with other occultist groups involved in politics an underlying element of [an "Ur-facist"] narrative ... while right-leaning occultists tend to conflate this narrative with ethnic identity and purity, those on the left adopt a more universalist view. ... The divisive policies of the Trump administration are an affront to their most deeply held religious values. ...

"Studies have shown that modern Pagans are more politically active and aware than the general population; many are involved in occupations that foreground social justice, such as education, health care, and social work. ...

"Contemporary American magical communities are made up of loose networks of individuals [where] it is typical for individuals to associate with several groups, or with none. Solitary practitioners are the fastest-growing segment of this movement. ...

"Academic approaches to magic historically portrayed it as an irrational or pre-rational way of understanding and interacting with the world. When not labeled as a surreptitious, antisocial way of controlling the outcome of events, it was thought to be the province of 'primitive' peoples, or of those in a subdominant position with little access to other avenues of power....

"Modern Pagans, Witches, and esoteric practitioners define magic, first and foremost, as a set of spiritual techniques to alter consciousness. [T]he practice of magic is governed by ethical principles that differ among traditions, and dictate both moral and aesthetic choices. ...

"Magic ... is an art form. This idea is embraced by many contemporary magical practitioners, including Michael [M.] Hughes, the creator of the 'Bind Trump' ritual <www.bit.ly/3gIPIR3> in 2017.

"It is worth pointing out in this context that ritual magic has much in common with political demonstration. Both forms of expression use language, chant, song, movement, images, symbolic action, and the carnivalesque....

"The use of magic for political purposes has a long history in the west." Magliocco cites "Gerald B. Gardner <www.bit.ly/3i4vG3R> (1884-1964), one of the chief architects of modern Witchcraft.... Perhaps no single group has been as influential in linking witchcraft and political resistance as San Francisco's Reclaiming, an ecofeminist tradition of modern Pagan Witchcraft founded in 1979 by Starhawk and a handful of collaborators."

Hughes' "Ritual to Bind Donald Trump is the most widespread and best-known, but far from the only piece of magic that has been performed...." Magliocco discusses some of these, adding that they "did not generate much negative feedback, perhaps because they were not widely diffused outside Wiccan and Pagan social networks. In contrast, Hughes' 'Spell to Bind Donald Trump' generated dramatic responses because it attracted public notoriety. ...

"But criticisms abounded within the magical community as well. Many experienced magical practitioners took immediate action to distance themselves from it and recommended against participation in the group binding. Their arguments were varied, but incorporated a range of themes, including ethics, efficacy, the danger of involving the inexperienced in magic, and the public nature of the spell.

"Arguments based on ethics focused on two principles commonly held by many modern Pagan Witches: the Wiccan Rede and the Law of Threefold Return." These being: for the Rede, "Since binding interferes with another individual's will, it could be construed as harming another;" and for the Law, "harmful magic, such as cursing, inevitably leads to 'recoil' or 'blowback': serious adverse consequences for the practitioner. ...

"Another set of critiques centered on the spell's construction and probable lack of efficacy. ...

"Magical practitioners, Witches, and Pagans are marginal religious players within their own society, part of the religious heterodoxy, and thus not bound by the same social conventions as visible groups." Magliocco notes "alternative spells. ... One of the first was Hecate Demeter's 'Magical Battle of America' <www.bit.ly/2XQnxZ0> posted on 18 February 2017, a week before Hughes posted his spell...." Demeter's was "a similar magical act for her readers, strengthening the forces of democracy to defeat authoritarianism [in which] the idea was that their combined wills could create a shield of protection for democracy. ...

"Another Pagan practitioner who used iconic symbols of the United States in magical resistance work is esoteric author Orion Foxwood [who posted] to his Facebook page on 24 February 2017 [what he calls] a 'charm of protection.' It invokes Lady Columbia, as well as the spirits of the founding fathers and those of the enslaved people who built the White House....

"Not all magical responses were focused on political change [with some instead] on surviving the collapse of the American empire. ...

"This theme is also prevalent in the work of contemporary Witch and author H. Byron Ballard. Ballard coined the term 'Tower Time' in reference to the current political situation."

Magliocco concludes: "Magic is typically a 'weapon of the weak,' those who resort to it are usually those excluded from power. ...

"Due to the power of the internet and social media, a spell that began as part of the hidden transcript gained global notoriety, attracting many followers outside the limited community of magical practitioners." <www.bit.ly/2DdPPoY>

Complementing Magliocco's paper, Egil Asprem's "The Magical Theory of Politics: Memes, Magic, and the Enchantment of Social Forces in the American Magic War," is much more obscure - and vulgar. The abstract reads: "The election of the 45th president of the United States set in motion a hidden war in the world of the occult. ... This article identifies key currents and developments and attempts to make sense of the wider phenomenon of why and how the occult becomes a political resource. The focus is on the alt-right's emerging online esoteric religion, the increasingly enchanted notion of 'meme magic,' and the open confrontation between different magical paradigms that has ensued since Trump's election in 2016. It brings attention to the competing views of magical efficacy that have emerged as material and political stakes increase, and theorizes the religionizing tendency of segments of the alt-right online as a partly spontaneous and partially deliberate attempt to create 'collective effervescence' and galvanize a movement around a charismatic authority."

Asprem finds that "Unlike their 'Muggle world' compatriots, however, the occult demographic has boosted its repertoire of incendiary tactics with magic [and sees] the magic war not simply as an internal political dispute in the magical community.

"I will argue that the 'magical theory of politics' undergirding both pro-and anti-Trump belligerents ... can be understood as 'enchanted' interpretations of social forces that are typically unleashed during anti-establishment political mobilization in times when political legitimacy is fracturing. ...

"We may conveniently distinguish the belligerents in the magic war over the 45th president of the United States by distinguishing three camps: 1) the Cult of Kek; 2) the Magic Resistance; and 3) the Magic Reaction. [These] three phases of the conflict ... stand in a chronological and dialectical relationship to one another. Taken in a broad sense, the Cult of Kek refers to a religionizing turn in online alt-right culture, primarily on imageboards.... The Magic Resistance refers to the highly publicized attempt by people disaffected by Trump's victory in the presidential election on 8 November 2016 to use spells and rituals to 'bind' Trump and his supporters. ... Finally, these anti-Trump efforts have sparked a Magic Reaction, attempting to unite Trump-supporting magicians, occultists, and alternative spirituality practitioners of all stripes in an effort to thwart the Magic Resistance's spells." (Go no further if foul language defeats your focus.) <www.bit.ly/3hLvruh>

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