Tuesday June 11, 2019

Having finished Sword of Wisdom, I spend the first part of my sixth day at the British Library dipping into Jeff Nuttall’s Pig, a book written in the afterglow of Ulysses and Naked Lunch. This being a research junket, though, there’s only so much a’ that one can take, so I shift gears and thumb through another of Nuttall’s books, a hippie manifesto of sorts called Bomb Culture. At the end of the book’s preface, Nuttall writes, “What can be said in words about how the vat was brought to the boil I hope to have put down in the following pages” (Bomb Culture, p. 10). Nuttall’s book antedates Dick Hebdige’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style by a decade, feels more directly immersed in and connected with the hip counterculture than the latter, and says all that the latter says, only with knife-sharp clarity and glamour galore.

Monday June 10, 2019

A dreary day — cold, rainy — most of it spent indoors reading the final hundred pages of Ithell Colquhoun’s book on MacGregor Mathers at the British Library. I’m all for observation of synchronicities and correspondences, but Mathers’s attempts to align various ancient magical systems — alchemy, astrology, Hermetic Qabalah, John Dee’s angelic alphabet, Egyptian and Celtic lore — leaves me exhausted and overwhelmed. Perhaps it’s time to shift course.

Sunday June 9, 2019

On the train again headed back to London after a lovely time in Cornwall. We toured the hills and fields, dined on regional fare — baps, fish and chips, pasties, clotted cream, cones of Cornish whippy — communed with ducks, geese, crows, and seagulls, not to mention dogs, dogs, all manner of canine, Boscastle is a doglovers’ paradise — plus wildflowers, we mustn’t forget wildflowers, hedgerows dotted with dainty purple foxgloves and daisies, with time set aside Saturday night, after all this Arcadian hiking and lazing about, for a candlelit evening tour of the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic. Among the displays of charms and potions and wishing mirrors, the items that most intrigued me were the colorful Golden Dawn artifacts and the ornate robe worn in rituals performed by Argentum Astratum.

Saturday June 8, 2019

“A bit of peace” as I sit on a slate bench beside a stream, flies and potato bugs visiting on occasion but nevertheless respecting my space, allowing me to stare off into the shadows of the woods across the way. Earlier in the day I peeked into Merlin’s cave and glimpsed ancient Arthurian ruins along the coast of Tintagel. It pleases me immensely to think as Ithell Colquhoun did, viewing Cornwall in mythic terms, imagining time-traveling Druids and phantom islands shrouded in mist and communities settled by survivors of doomed kingdoms and sunken lands of yore.

Friday June 7, 2019

Trees, fields, pastoral countryside gleanings as fellow rail passengers sip their mimosas and cackle and carp above cans of Diet Coke. The current flat is an improvement over the former — many-windowed, all mod cons, like the observation deck of a starship — but because of its location on a busy road, the raucous sounds of the urban core fill the space day and night. Let us go, then, on a vacation from our vacation. Due to my assigned seat here on the train to Cornwall, I find myself sharing in what Philip K. Dick called “the great secret,” or the knowledge that we are moving backward in time. A driver meets us at the station and takes us along winding narrow hedgerow-lined roads to the wild and windy coast.

Thursday June 6, 2019

“We’re transforming Old Street,” reads the sign affixed to the construction site, next to which stand a team of bobbies cuffing a bewildered homeless woman, her possessions in plastic bags at her side. I observe and take note from the upper level of a double-decker bus headed to the Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History. My thoughts return to the woman throughout the afternoon, part of her lingering in my awareness as I view paintings and illustrations by Mervyn Peake and Austin Osman Spare. Apart from Éliphas Lévi and a small Fabian contingent that included H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw, the figures I’ve been reading about at the British Library seem to have left these stones unturned.

Tuesday June 4, 2019

The day begins with comrades and I busing down to Trafalgar Square, where thousands gather to protest the president, picket signs in hand. Elated by this show of force, I settle in afterwards at the British Library for another round of research. Objects of study include a full run of Gandalf’s Garden and books by Ithell Colquhoun. Dare I share here the fruits of this research, or shall I exercise discretion, assuming that the terms of my use of this material will be made manifest in the days ahead? “All in due time,” I decide over a bowl of Spicy Tonkotsu. “All in due time.”

Monday June 3, 2019

A long, rewarding day of research in one of the reading rooms at the British Library culminates in a relaxing evening in a park, the latter being my preferred space to write of late. A bell tower rings the hour as a woman in a violet dress and matching sandals strides past. I close my eyes and witness a crumbling facade amid a landscape of “unverified personal gnosis.” Elsewhere in the city, figurehead greets slumlord-in-chief, as in a Trauerspiel on the banality of evil.

Sunday June 2, 2019

Pint glasses clank together in a bin behind a bar emptied of patrons on a gray evening — the eve of another workweek. Pubs of this sort are all wood, leather, and tweed. Old-timey, tradition-bound. But comfortable all the same. I’ve been reading up on witches these past few days, Alex Mar’s book Witches in America leading me through a brief history featuring figures like Gerald Gardner and Aleister Crowley and groups like the OTO. I’m of mixed mind regarding this history, curious but wary. The power of these traditions seems undeniable — but what are the principles guiding this power, and toward what end?