>> And I'm so pleased to
introduce Kim Schwenk. Kim is
rare book cataloger at UC San Diego Special Collections and
Archives Library and an
antiquarian bookseller with Lux Mentis Booksellers. She has a
specialization in Americana and
European witchcraft history, history of early printed occult
texts, and bibliographic studies
of magical curses using plants and objects. She's also active
in occult sciences and the
occult book community both as a researcher and a practitioner.
As of 2019 she is researching
Occult Ex Libris, otherwise known as Hex Libris or occult
book plates. So without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Kim. Thanks so much, Kim. >> Thank you, Erin. I
hope everyone can hear me. And I
want to give a big shout out to Erin and the BSA for this
invitation to talk about occult
identities and books and beyond. I hope you find something that
resonates. I'm going to jam
here, because I have a lot to show you. My interest in the
occult has been really a slow
burn. It's something I've been fueling for a while.
Professionally, I have this
really unique position to work partially in the book trade and
partially in a rare book library
as a cataloguer, which is a complex marriage and almost
an alchemical wedding for me,
as I navigate the nuances of bibliographic description. It's
really tricky to work in both,
actually. As a bookseller I can afford a lot of liberties in the
book trade. And I tend to focus
on controversial material and talk about why it's important
in the context of the now or
in the context of collection development. And to be truthful,
and really in my stage life of
cataloging, I'm a baby cataloger. I'm an adolescent.
But not really to occult
studies. I do feel though at this time, the time of
neutrality is over. And the
impetus to challenge problematic bibliographic description and
collected collection development
is active and activated. So this poses an interesting discussion
about occult knowledge
ownership, provenance, but more critically how individuals have
dictated the evolution of occult
history. I became interested in this because of this idea of
book ownership and coveting
knowledge and the ideology behind collecting occult text
in an almost ironic possession
and what we do to protect that knowledge and to the objects. So
I got that started. This is one
of the first books I sold at a book fair or in my book trade
career here. And it tells an
interesting story, as it's a my first fourier into occult text
provenance as a narrative. This
book was owned by and in the library of James Wickersham, who
is the District Judge for
Alaska, delegate to the Congress in 1917. He was a die-hard
politician, but also a
mountaineer. And he made the first record attempt to climb
Mount Denali, although failing
due to the impassable mountain face, later known as the
Wickersham Wall. He also
authored a book called "Whence Came the American Indians?," a
study in comparative ethnology,
compiling anthropological observations of local tribal
customs referencing early
indigenous peoples observations of Astralis divination and even
witchcraft. It allowed -- this
book because of the ownership allowed some discovery beyond
just the content of the book, as
ownership and production became a focal point of how a book as
an object presents a compelling
occult identity in itself. The other thing that got me kind of
hyped about this was I gave a
talk a couple of years ago at a book conference, esoteric book
conference, on esoteric book
plates. And it got me thinking about identity for esoteric
printers and esoteric
publishers. We talk a lot about unique identifiers and
relationship designators in
the information science in the metadata world, but really what
it does is to add specificity
and recognition to creators and the like. There is very much
a comprehensive unique identity
in occult literature and how it fits into the world of esoteric
and magical studies. Many occult
publishers, like you see here, have branded themselves with
magical logos and in product,
even their choices of paper bindings, the materials used,
whether it's animal skin,
choices of parchment, fonts, inks, selections of artwork, and
etc., they're very careful and
consider about aesthetics. The metaphysical structure of an
occult book is that it embodies
the skeleton and the molding of this body of work. There's also
a purpose to elicit a practice
in magical text, to absorb the text, so that the person reading
the material just doesn't
consume the media that they're reading, that they become the
media that they're reading. So
in lieu of this, what actually is the occult? And in sort of a
brief, broad definition, the
occult arena, whether it is from a practitioner research or
documentary view, the field
of study itself is rife with issues. Those stem from not just
the, quote/unquote, academy, but
the implementation of the occult practice. So let's start with
a very traditional dictionary
definition of or relating to magic, astrology, or any system
claiming use or knowledge or
secret knowledge or supernatural powers or agencies, or is
something beyond the range
of ordinary knowledge or understanding. It's mysterious.
I tend to like Ayana Sye's
[phonetic] description here, definition in arabic influences
on early modern occult
philosophy. And you'll get to know that why later. And she
says, "For the sake of brevity
and respecting tangents put simply, if we deconstruct the
occult to rephrase a
decolonial's definition of the occult, foundationally the
occult is completely based
in astrology to harness the natural, philosophical need to
explain how celestial bodies
causally influence terrestrial ones." This is an arabic-based
definition into a modern occult
one, albeit western one, of as above so below. Celestial bodies
serve as signs, sympathies, and
correspondence on how the hermetics decipher those based
on their experiences. So it is
not just about the content that makes a text of or about the
occult. Is it if the physical
occult is entrenched within those principles. For example, a
grimoire, a spell book, is not
just a book with magic in it, but it encompasses the
metaphysics, the paper, the
structure, the imagery, because of this cultural identity,
because of the commerce that
propels it and of the ancestors of the creators and the art that
it inspires. So let's continue
on with the metaphysical for a moment. There's a certain level
of reveal here, and generational
teaching and, frankly, cultural appropriation, eastern to
western from that. With that
in mind, I really want to illustrate through key text and
imagery to initiate and emulate
our efforts as humans to recreate this experience, that
reclamation of energy, perhaps,
certainly in a literary way, to invoke an act of possession and
the ritual of consuming identity
and acquisition. In a sense when we acquire something,
we bind ourselves to these
books as objects. We do this metaphysically and physically
with marks and physical
attachments, which produce memory and ownership. There's
a certain fetishization that
happens with objects. And I'm talking about this in a little
bit in terms of cultural
appropriation, however, cross-culturally, there
is a symbiotic connection
between practitioner and/or author/creator and the tangible
object it is integral to the
part of performativity. And that's really important in the
identity embellished here. So
Similia Similibus has to do with the process and the
metaphor in the creation. In
this case, this image of making a cursed tablet. By many
accounts making a mark on
something is a redirection of energy and also a possible
indication of power, materiality
reflecting the content and performance of that object. So
if language is essentially a
modality of power, a mark is an extension of that magical
practice. And in that practice
when we think about binding words with objects, in this
case, we recover our own
sense of poetic language and expression, ritual,
as fundamental constituents of
the human experience. One idea behind the occult become a
ritual expression is the
transmission of texts and imagery, but also the
transmission of an identity of
the creator itself. The occult has imagined patronizing
more critically marginalized
key creators and publication history. The best way for me to
do that is to contextualize
graphic recommendations and the book as objects
bibliographically, rather than
linearly talk about occult text. So one of the ways this idea
begins with the attachment of
incantations to objects, in terms of textual and visual
marks is some of the earliest
forms of incantation, specifically curses, with texts
appear in ancient Mediterranean
cultures with depictions. These textual objects are verbs of
transfer and attachment, in this
case, on this particular tab it was an issue a cursing for
stolen property. In Greek, the
deficio [phonetic] is closely defined as something to be
fixed, as a verb, affixed,
likewise or attached. These tablets were made of lead, very
crude metal, and inscribed with
the stylus with text of secret names of those demons and
divinations, which were only
understood by the magician and the creator who made it and the
communication to the spirits
themselves. Formulaic in nature, the tablets feature direct
binding utterance an appeal for
supernatural assistance and the anthology for the intended
target of the curse coupled with
symbols and figures of the gods. Then they were deposited near
the intended target where they
resided, died, or sometimes even worn as an amulet. The fact that
these curses were written down
in some cases accompanied by oral instruction and transferred
to a place of engagement,
whether it was a tomb or a water source, shows movement towards
humanity's understanding of the
universal power of language and posterity. It is in this idea
that there is a lasting power of
language being attached to the physical, and that gives form to
expressive and metaphorical
aspects of the human experience, even if in offensive attempt.
So introduces the idea of the
anathema, right, the concept of placing an inanimate object
under the protection of a deity.
And in this case, under God. Why not the original use of curses
on objects? It's definitely the
first instance of protection for texts, either in handwritten, in
manuscript form, or in the bound
codex as texts have evolved. As sacred as the writing itself,
books within the church were
considered holy vessels. So what better way to place protection
by putting them in the book
itself? This is representative of some of the ultimate forms of
ownership and power dynamics.
And here's just a list of a few varying degrees of book curses
translated that I have come
across. And you can see from the 12th to the 14th century how
severe they might be if you were
to take stolen property away from a library. To really drive
this idea home of sort of object
in amulet, I really want to quote Eyob Derillo from the
British Library. I was very
impressed by his talk on Ethiopian amulet objects and
recipe books. And he says,
"Occult texts or magical texts are living objects." And
it's so true. Materiality is
something you might wear. It's transgressive existence as
something in the present. And
once you place the marks, the sacred objects become holistic,
not only does it just contain
magic, but it is magic or sacred to community of people that
reasons that will exist and
survive for generations for people. This idea that
possession is permanent as a
transfer of power, this is trying what I'm trying to get
at. These types of manuscripts
featured help codify cultural identities, but solidify the
power and the concept that the
structure of the book and how it performs, the paper, what are
the elemental components of that
paper, whether it's plant or animal, the inks that are being
used as ritual products, and
predominantly in the western world, the book plate, as
example here, is intrinsically
attached to the creator and to the owner. And to note those
tracings is of utmost
importance. And who might better know to curse their own books
than the granddaddy of the
occult, Mr. John Dee. John Dee as a renaissance practitioner,
a magician, when he was not
talking to angels or trying to bail himself out of imprisonment
by selling his books, no the
less, and trying to impress Queen Elizabeth I, accumulated
a massive library. He had a
cataloger. And established one of the most provocative
accumulations of occult
ownership during the renaissance. His library itself
acts as a social agent, playing
a mediator role on the politics and reading and writing and the
study of magic. Occult ownership
and annotation lends itself to the mindset of the occultists
and sets a very high precedent.
And I'm going to mention, Dee very briefly in the terms of the
amalgamation of his library and
the marginalia in his books, because his research on his
well-preserved library of
manuscripts from his annotation say something not just about the
study of his library catalog,
for example, in it there are marks like the one with the
purple arrow there this ladder
inscription that he used a lot. He also used the symbol of
Jupiter, shorthand for his name.
These are literal clothes that are attributed to him. And we
can thank Andreas Fromensheim
who was his cataloguer, and he also worked as a bookseller for
the famed Berkman Family of
Printers in the 16th century. So Dee himself created his own
identity through these use of
symbols. And in this one his "Monas Hieroglyphica" this
is basically Dee's cosmogram
itself. It appears on this frontness piece. And it is
Dee's intent to offer it, the
cosmogram, as a mystical object for relative contemplation, but
it was also seemingly important
and a unique identifier attributed to him. This symbol,
his symbol itself, prefaced by
his own motto here on the page, "He who does not understand
should either be silent or
learn." So why is this useful? I'm really only bringing this
device up because it is really
-- for occult scholars, it's really a recognizable moniker
and supports these pursuits of
instances of a hermetic language a higher vision, which he
remarked about throughout in his
entire library of books, a lot of times in the marginalia. Not
only was he a dedicated biblical
file who traveled with his library, he used his books
actually as sacred vessels. A
lot of times he asked of his books for angelic direction.
He was one of the greatest
bibliotaphs who was also inflicted with bibliomadness,
but one of the reasons why we
have this extensive and prolific library, which was heavily
annotated -- that is more
actually pretty fascinating to me as a bibliographer and a
cataloger than what he was
actually collecting himself. By personalizing the distribution
of symbols and, in fact, his
autograph, an energetic transfer of power within his copies for
his own reference, at the same
time, it's a reason why the provenance became so strong, not
only because he did write his
name in things, but there was an intention and subsequent value
behind his inscriptions, so much
so that the book thief, Nicholas Saunders, who tried to co-op
books out of his library, was
unsuccessful in his act of removal of his identity. Erasing
name ownership is really a
negation of power. It's hiding owners and it hides creators as
well. So when is a name, an
autograph, hidden on a fly leaf? When is that appropriate to
note, say in a catalog record?
Well, in my opinion paleography is really the key to explaining
blips in time and possibly a way
of us to communicate with the dead. It's a bibliographic
necromancy who did not get the
opportunity for redemption, for example. Bibliographic
description, the basis of the
author, date, and title, we're not just looking at it as what
it is sometimes, but we look at
books bibliographically as a layer of production, as a
collaborative process from the
paper maker, to the binder, to the book designer, to the owner.
I like to think of it as book
archaeology. So book plates and name inscriptions are the
illuminations of that production
history of that timeline of archaeology in terms of the
printing history and ownership,
but again, integral to the structure of the book itself as
object and as this collaborative
process, when you build that record up and you build that
character and the identity for
the book as object. There's a strong case to show that book
plates, as an example, are
social records. There's tons of data captured in imagery and
production. There are also a
borrowed cache of identities, appropriation of ideas. And
essentially, occult is a
conglomerate of ancient and contemporary thoughts, yet one
underlying idea is that it is
really protection and power redistribution. Art representing
symbology in the ex flavors in
the book plate is evocation. It's the invocation of
protection. And there's
definitely a relative element of this transferable power,
especially in the esoteric
circles of the occult revival. A lot of times these relationships
were forged with book plates
between the owner and the artists who forged the book
plates heavily. This is -- I'm
going to be talking about occult as a symbolic art form here. So
Althea Gyles, a book designer,
designed this book plate for Lady Colin Campbell. It's a
photograph, late 19th century.
And Lady Campbell, aka Grutrude Elizabeth Blood, ran in art and
music circles, with Gyles as
well, but also with the bad boys of the occult, as you can see
here Aleister Crowley. Both were
members, the women, members of the golden -- Order of the
Golden Dawn with WB Yates.
There's an excription [phonetic] at the bottom of this book
plate, "not granted to another,"
which is a very much of illusion to that order of the golden
dawn, but also to the collecting
scope of Campbell herself. This is just an example of the link
between artist and collector.
And that's evident in these visual cues. There's a lot of
cues about collector and a
symbiotic relationship between the person and the record of
their protection of their
property. And a lot of times you see this in mistonic [phonetic]
owners, people who were masons
and secret societies and also in occult authors and magicians,
like Kurt Seligmann himself.
There's a specificity and a relationship between book and
owner, as we will see. Another
prominent person I researched in this exploration was a fairly
unknown occult artist named Karl
Hugo Fresh, an esoteric graphic designer. He was born in
Stuttgart, Germany, studied
lithography in the Schreiber Art Institute between 1903 and 1905
in Stuttgart, where he later
then moved in 1914 to Slovakia, which was formerly Pressburger.
He spent most of his remaining
life there making a living as a painter and a graphic artist.
Although he contributed
illustrations to the local Pressburger Zeitung newspaper
and numerous books, his ex
Libris book plates designs are really particularly noteworthy
and something that I was
immediately attracted to in my research. Why? Well, because
they're an infusion of
composition interpretation, and an example of book plates to
exist as art identity
themselves, even though they're reproduced in replication with
the intention of ownership, as
art they act alone. Despite the mystery behind Fresh himself,
he was really enlightened by
the esoteric and it's really a mystery of design in his
creations. And this is one of
my favorite book plates. I'm assuming this was for a family
member, someone that he designs
us for. There's really no evidence of his personal occult
activity. He was definitely
influenced by the history of his time. Unfortunately, he died
on July 27, 1945, while trying
to escape a camp for displaced Germans and remains fairly
unknown in the occult art world.
As a comparison, Austin Osman Spare, well-known magician,
occult playboy, among other
things, and artist, these book plates I'm going to show you
were designed between 1904 and
1945. And so we can only surmise here about him, but another
magical scholar and magician
Kenneth Grant really puts into perspectives about Spares
sigils and his artwork, his
visualizations. And he says, "Sorcery is a deliberate act of
causing metamorphosis by the
employment of elementals. It forges a link between the powers
of minimal nature, i.e, the
astral plane between spiritual and physical realms or the
ether, the astrals of great
trees and of animals of every kind. Will is our medium, belief
is the vehicle, and the desire
is the force combining with that elemental. Cryptograms are our
talismans and our protectors."
So he was pretty interesting literally by his use of magic
and didactic ritual. He
empowered his book plates with his magical projections. He
would invoke a ritual and then
do automatic drawings. And so he reproduced book plates in this
methodology. This is the last
book plate that he designed being in 1945 for a friend of
his who's a journalist, Dennis
Bardens. And interestingly enough, Spare around this time
lost use of his arms for a while
in 1945. So it's an interesting morbid personification that he's
really projecting here. And it's
really unusual, but not out of the ordinary for a magician like
Spare. But it's this element of
confrontation. He's really invoked a particular trait about
his own identity, however,
self-absorbed that he was, self-absorbed that he was as
a magician, and infused it
graphically into the design. This is something different
than we might see in mass
commercialization of the book plate, which is normally
emphasizes the collector. Spare
has really infused his own likeness here magically. His
work illustrates an aggressive
fusion of magic and design. What's also beginning to form as
a narrative about ownership and
symbolic mark. I like to think that these book plates represent
the transfer of little mark,
analogous to the physical person, kind of like this
bibliotaph, whether that's
intentional or not. Like Spare's work, artist Pamela Coleman
Smith herself referred to her
visual renderings as melodious hieroglyphics, and considered
that definition to be a
synesthetic transmission of both sight and sound. She herself
believed she had synesthesia.
She wrote that she could hear and see sound. She could hear
color and see sound, because of
that her artwork is exceptional. Examples, tarot on the right
here and a book plate on the
left that she did not design, but you can see the influence
there. There's something
conventional -- beyond the conventional visualization and
linked, quote, for her, "the
desire to believe," these two, that desire and actual belief.
Regardless of what Smith evolved
to think about her art, it had a profound effect on later occult
revival and trends in art
nouveau styles to the 1960s modern aesthetics. Again, all
her tarot designs were
intentional and in some cases allude to the provocative nature
of art as identity. Her work,
although not recognized so much later, she was early 20th
century mostly, was influenced
on book plates because it exhibited the same kind of
energy as the tarot, as an
aspect of design. She valued a harmonic relationship of
principles in her work for
composition, symmetry, subordination, opposition,
transition, repetition, which
led to a lot of emotional harmony within her work. Another
example of book plate and tarot.
Her work subconsciously for her own words, "venerated a sense of
simplicity in the design and
summarized the advice to, quote, fine eyes within. Look for the
door into the unknown country."
So with that in mind, Smith still to this day her design
work is really slow to reveal
and to cite, definitely taking advantage of the public domain.
It took some 60 years later for
her work, her tarot work, to have her name actually printed
on the tarot cards and also for
her art and design. There's a lot of imitation of Pamela
Coleman Smith out there on
product, but there's not a lot of attribution in terms of
I see a lot of records without
bibliographic description. And in the case of this, from
the 1960s is a playbill for
the musical "Hair" which is completely a reworking and
imitation of the lovers card
from her tarot deck. Likewise, in the tarot of the Bohemians,
similarly as a reference for her
design, her as a designer, her tarot work is multifaceted for
the publishing industry, yet
again is unattributed on first editions, especially like this
one, subsequently and into the
contemporary age. Like I said, in catalog records as
relationship [indiscernible].
So Pamela Coleman Smith, book designer. It's also very
underappreciated and accredited.
And it's reproduced as homage. On the cover of this is
a blind stamp of the wheel of
fortune tarot, but there's no attribution in the actual
book. Occultist as homage
is particularly problematic, specifically how its effect on
indigenous identities. And so
I'm going to talk a little bit about imposter syndrome and
that. One of the best examples
of this of cultural homage and cultural plagiarism is the
publishing empire of Laurence
William de Laurence, aka LW de Laurence, who is a powerhouse
in occult publishing world,
established in Chicago. He obsessed his image not unlike a
lot of magicians, quote/unquote,
at the time with Orientalism, which is blatant racism and
appropriation, but he became
pretty noteworthy on his ability to reproduce texts. I mean, he's
the father of the occult public
domain with a great level of scrutiny from real occultists,
however, because of his pirated
editions. I think it's fair to say he had a huge influence
on parlor and leisure society
occultism -- leisure reading despite him being Charlatan. He
was famous for doing this just
basically pasting over a label of either a change a design
in the publishing source and
dates and things like that and actually author names. He
plagiarized for one A.E. White
and Samuel Liddell MacGregor's tarot attacks, for example. But
it's sort of a fascinating look
about imposter syndrome and the dissemination and production
of texts. There's a wonderful
bibliographic catalog actually for his De Laurence company. And
I think it's a great resource
for catalogers, collectors, and booksellers. Because it's a
lesson in accuracy. And this,
again, this book archaeology to piece together publication dates
and edition statements. Again, a
lot of his publications did not list -- they listed a copyright
date, but they would not list a
publication date. So there's variance in publishing. And a
lot of times we can tell them
apart by, example, cloth color, extent size, and things like
that as these different titles
made their different printing debuts. Likewise, the famous
"6th and 7th Book of Moses" or
for short, "Book of Moses," this magical handbook is a
combination of biblical
apocrypha, hermetic -- Hebrew hermeticism, and it's basically
an esoteric grimoire, a spell
book. But the text had the ability to sort of navigate
through that and morph
through many traditions of Afro-Caribbean to folk magic and
root work of the Pennsylvania
Dutch even and sympathetic magic. But their design to a
degree is a reflection of their
commodification, how many times these were reproduced. They kept
getting published time and time
again in various iterations and a lot of times De Laurence was
the source of that, although is
not necessarily imprinted that in your title page or any kind
of bibliographic area, but I
want to take note of that typography there on the covers
for these, because that gives
you a lot of clues about when these were published. Not
unique, but much of the western
occult Canada [phonetic] is a regurgitation of Arabic and
African name source science and
customs. It also -- there's a difficulty with attribution
here. Similarly to the petite
Albert -- the Albertus Magnus grimoires and also Raymond Lull
who gets a lot of false
attribution and difficulty with that as a cataloguer. I grapple
with those descriptions
sometimes, those name authorities, which is why
context is so important and
acknowledging some aspect of book design, that's super
important. So in dating these,
I'll go back to this, because I really love these
slab-serif-type faces on this.
There's a real wealth of book design with these, and also the
binding designs, because they
were produced so cheaply during this time period of the early
20th century into the 1930s or
even the '40s, but it's very hard to distinguish between
editions. Similarly, the Livro
De S Cypriano, the occult text that has very much evolved into
pulp literature. It's much of a
fantastic element of the novella. The original Portuguese
text is a combination of the
writing of Saint Cyprion of Antioch, again another
falsely-attributed author. It
includes a list of various mancies, i.e necromancy,
pyromancy, divinations,
astrology. It's a dark arts primer, is what it is. Although
championed not just by western
occult people, but by followers of Afro-Caribbean traditions
mixed with Iberian beliefs. It's
almost actually occult light or folk catholic theology in its
sense. And you can see here the
progression of the design, like the books of -- the "Book
of Moses." We start to see
identification through the additions of colors, fonts,
pictorial narratives here with
the frontness plate. And this emulates the changing of the
time between the quality of
the paper and actually the attributions, the various
imprints in Spanish rather than
Portuguese are attributed to the monk Jonas Seferino [phonetic].
These were primarily published
in Mexico, Spain, and other parts of Latin America. What
these do though is they
recognize the importance of commerce in Latin America,
Spanish and Portuguese
communities and countries and that the book is validated as a
sacred object. And this produced
a formidable publishing history for these. Later editions added
in a broader ritual element of
magic, like a spell book, to become almost newsstand magazine
staples. You could go to a news
stand and pick one of these up for very cheaply. And they're
a basis for much of this
sort of modern contemporary [indiscernible] of Mexico --
the magic of Mexican healers.
The occult in Latin American countries is culturally
immersive as the magic itself
is inherited and integral to indigenous communities, which is
one of the reasons why I want to
talk about the importance of indigenous materiality and
identity, specifically with the
Papal Amate Codex. The Nahuatl people of Mishika, Mexico, use
their indigenous terms for the
amate paper, which is Ahmad [phonetic] for the bioregional
tree, the bark of that tree,
specifically it was a ficus tree, a fig tree,
[indiscernible], a nettle tree
or the morale, the mulberry tree, for the bark to create
this paper. Content wise these
Meso-American indigenous codex are roadmaps. They're visual
language. The Leparello
construction of them, the accordion fold, represents a
ladder and it resembles a ladder
and that represents a bridge between the creator and the
physical forms and the earth.
This is a metaphysical relationship between material
and the text are in the image.
And I really love this quote here, this translation quote,
specifically about the inks and
the wisdom that was produced in these codex. In the 20th century
we see this idea reproduced in
the work of Alfonso Garcia Tellez who reiterated the
production of the Amate Paper
Book, but it was not lost. Okay. Scholars say, oh, this
production of these books was
lost in time, perhaps to the western gaze, but the Atame
people continue the process of
making amate and have so. My last slide included two links to
the production of this paper and
it's really important to watch this, because these holistically
document the ritual and the
healing magic by the curanderos and every process of the
construction of these, including
the beating of the paper, the motion of cutting -- the paper
cutting for the deity paper
cuts, and the fiber of the plant is integral to the structure.
Amate is used as a fabric too
for clothing, like tapas, and really recreates a resource of
commerce for the community in
San [indiscernible], which is where Garcia Tellez is from.
These books quote, "Are designed
to control a pantheon of spirits that are believed to have
a great influence on human
affairs. The core of them feature any ritual that is a
sacrificial offering to the
spirits." The Pabella amate books are of their own
cosmology. The process of their
creation and the textual and pectoral evidence is recorded
on their leaves. In the
pre-Hispanic pre-colonial era these codex were and continue
to be intrinsic objects of
health and symbionic with their construction with the landscape
of the plants. Colonizers of
Europe dismissed them and saw them through the lens of
witchcraft and magic for cursing
or malignant purposes rather than healing purposes. This is
an additional statement at the
end of one of Garcia Tellez's titles. And it's a colophon, but
it's also a type of anathema,
because he states that not only is this a first edition, but he
says that it is forbidden to
copy this manuscript as a book outside of the Curendero
practice. Why? Because it is not
intended for anyone else but within the community. So it's
not supposed to be reproduced
by anyone outside of this indigenous community. And I
think that this is kind of an
example of something that could be noted, especially if you were
creating a bibliographic record.
I think this is important to note that. So we're going to get
a technical here for a moment.
This is my cataloger side speaking at the moment. This is
the authority record for Alfonso
Garcia Tellez for his personal name. This is an example of
something to practice in this
for me to enhance this record that desperately needs it,
because of the history and
importance of his work to indigenous manufacturing, to
history of the codex in Mexico.
I think that this is something I'm going to talk about later
what we can do, but this is an
example of what we can do is we need to enhance authorities like
these. The other thing I think
is important to note, this is a partial of a record for one of
his books. I really love this,
because they have included in the summary note in the 520 for
a non-catalog or folks outside
of OCLC, this is where you would summarize and describe the book
itself kind of like a content
note of what it is, what it means, and what the context of
it is. And they've included it
as a book seller's note. And I think this is really cool to
see, that sort of symbiotic
relationship here. The other thing that is great about this
is it's the 650s, which are the
subject headings, the subjects. And that I've identified the
indigenous -- sovereign
indigenous community. So and it's been broken down and
faceted between what it is. It's
of rights and ceremonies. It's also medicine. It's also
religion. There's a lot
of geographics, subject geographics, here as well. I
think that's really important.
One thing that I would add to these, and this gets really
technical is I feel, as
I've said before, that the construction of these is very
important to the integralness of
these. And I would include genre terms, which these 655s at the
bottom to the actual
construction of what they are, what their construction is,
because I think that that is
very critical in examining and also recognizing this cultural
identity for him. So let's also
-- before I move on I just want to say one more thing about
Garcia Tellez and that is what's
important to note about him is that his family did copy these
texts -- let me actually go
back. These are community copies. They're community
commerce as it propelled the
amate paper production into another level of commerce. So
there's a lot of community
ownership here with these books, but I think it reinforces a
colonial idea a lot of --
there's a lot of colonial ideas to see these manuscripts as
plagiarized, but in order to
de-settle this as an example of an occult text, the amate ritual
codex are -- should be seen as
collective wisdom with a representation of space and time
that doesn't reflect a hierarchy
necessarily in ownership. Quite different than what I have
talked about in terms of sort of
provenance with book plates and value and -- monetary value
and things like that. So as an
occultist -- to identify as an occultist or a magician or which
in certain countries under
certain laws is punishable by death. The identity of -- so
here I'm going to get into more
of occult identities for folks of color and indigenous people,
and to identify as a witch,
magician, and occultist, can also be seen as a point of
privilege, certainly for certain
communities. The image of a witch is often or the
identification of witchcraft is
and has been vilified, but it's also been very romanticized
and celebrated and thus
understandably reason why someone might want to disguise
their association, to disguise
their identities and often be seen as other. Again, to
reiterate this idea of other,
too often indigenous communities are viewed with a magical lens
ethnographically as other enough
so that their culture has been absorbed into western ideas
either purposefully or
unintentionally. And this gets to this idea of indigenous and
African appropriation. It's
because of this that BIPOC, which is an acronym for black
indigenous persons of color,
cultural influence on the occult is very much borrowed, but
there's not enough context
referencing a lot of times when we talk about scholarship for
this, there's a lot of hidden
occult representations and a lot of appropriation because of this
ethnographical bias. It's, for
example, how do we see how -- how is Tituba from 17th century
Salem Witch Trials been seen?
How has she been fetishized and through this lens of witchcraft,
her image from these years in
scholarship? Our black identities and magic always
assume to be coming from a place
of exotic practice. Too often is recorded as such and
black and indigenous voice
are assimilating to white stereotypical narratives about
occult history. I would say
though the work here of Hagen von Tulien is exceptional, but
you can see the extent of the
work now knowing about paper cuts of Mexico and also Haitian
veve imagery is very much
immersed into his work. He does talk about that, but it's one of
these ideas that when you talk
about collection development, these are things that you can
bring up contextually if you're
doing a lot of instruction work within your library, for
example. So on this idea, black
voices exist in the occult and especially in spiritualism as
occult narrative and in secret
societies. There's two examples here. Rebecca Cox Jackson who's
a 19th Century Shaker
Spiritualist who was also a seer and a healer. Loretta Williams,
a faculty at University of
Missouri, noted, is also the first black faculty, female
faculty, at that college. And so
these are kind of examples that don't really get talked about
in the sort of the form of
the occult history and it's something to think about. And
again, in terms of collection
development, context cataloging and personal collecting. Yet,
when speaking about this
influence and singularity, Paschal Beverly Randolph is the
most universal 19th century
African American, born free spiritualist, occult scholar,
magical practitioner,
naturopathic doctor, founder of the American [indiscernible] --
order, publisher book design --
I could go on, I could do a whole presentation just about
-- I'm calling him PBR. It's my
affectionate term for him. We see his emblem here. We see this
motto. A lot of occult scholars
and collectors know this model of tri and his designs. He also
used an orabore symbol, which is
the snake eating its own tail, to emulate this Rosicrucian idea
of the supremacy of the will.
It's a rejection of failure and a practice of his own will. So
Randolph as a clairvoyant, a
seer, and a squire, but also as a radical sex magician. And this
is where -- this is where a lot
of white scholars get really uncomfortable here and the
contemporaries certainly at
the time that he talked about sexuality and magic in terms
of a nuptive moment and so --
between male and female. So whether you agree with him or
not on a certain level, a lot of
his language has been construed as misogynistic or his
interpretations of his actions,
he did champion women's rights. But he often himself struggled
with his own black identity,
where he was from, where his ancestral roots. So he traveled
a lot, in fact, he did travel to
Africa. And we see this here in this sort of emulation of
Egyptian occultism. And despite
his plethora of publications, he was sort of virtually dismissed
at his -- in his time. The other
thing -- there's an image of him. The other thing that
is another aspect to this as
far as attribution and his acknowledgments to the occult
world was his wife actually, his
first wife at the time was Mary Jane Randolph, as a contributor
and a publisher. And a lot of
his publications, she is the attributed publisher, author,
and apparently through some of
the scholarships I have read, had wrote a lot of medicinal
works on women's health and
the like, but she's virtually unrepresented in an authority
sense and a catalog. And so this
is sort of an example of what I'm talking about as far as how
do we expand on the lineage of
authority work for people. And again, her image, there's not
a lot written about her, but
again her image is sort of this fetishized image of this exotic
image of a woman, a woman of
color at the time. And so she's sort of lost in time as a
potential contributor for this
age. Here's, again, we're back to the technical, this is a
PBR's authority record. And it's
pretty good. And I want to point out a few things about it that
are great. The first thing is
that the citations here, someone very -- much very researched
and used a lot of great
citations for this from the African-American National
Bibliography and Oxford American
Studies Center Database. Something else really cool
about him is that he wrote
as a medium. So he has a name authority as author, as a
spirit. So that actually is
controlled vocabulary as well. So it's sort of interesting
that he has an authority for
his spirit too. And so the one thing, my biggest critique about
this though is, and this comes
back to this association, is his work as a publisher and as a
contributor and as a printer.
There's not a lot of authority for that for him in cataloging.
And so I would like to see more
of that in the context of describing him because his
publication work was so
prolific. So the greater question is: Who are black
indigenous people of color
occultists? In my view, occult scholarship in embracing
under-recognized communities in
collection development needs to reconstruct this through
structural methodological,
pedagogical, and for generational means. There's a
lot to be discovered. There's a
lot to be collected. And there's a lot to be celebrated in
contemporary voice as well. For
example, folks here, whether it's Rollo Ahmed, who was a
British Egyptian occultist who
wrote this one book here that I could find "The Black Art."
Harriet B. Wilson, another 19th
century spiritualist and a medium. And also more
contemporary, the work of Sylvia
B. Davidson who writes on mental health and the relationships
between occult, but actually
-- zines. Zines are these contemporary evidence of the
work that's being done now for
-- to uplift and enlighten, recognize black voices, whether
it's pop culture serials or in
the format of zines. And this is something that we need to
identify in occult narratives
that really dismantle a hierarchy of how occult history
and occult evolution has sort of
gone from this point. It remains to be seen that the field
itself, occult scholarship,
has issues with viability, representation, and white
privilege. There could be
a lot of interdisciplinary scholarship, including
metaphors, context of imagery,
and social and cultural values. A scholarship in the
contemporary sense, should
inform how we view the evolution of the codex, but also talk
textual documentation and
publishing. Fundamentally, it is how we need to view and interact
continuing relevant contemporary
practices, but also evolve and entrench them in the present.
There's a slew of radical
approaches to contextualization history, even established ones,
but most of theories can be
revised and contested. It is a culture of flux. And when
appropriate, informs much about
the importance of the resiliency of occult textuality. So I want
to wrap up. Lastly, let's talk
about some applications here. What are you doing, you know, in
the context of this as possibly
librarians, as possibly administrators, as catalogers,
and collectors in the context
of occult and magic? What am I doing? Well, this is what
I suggest. If you want to
really become a bibliophilic accomplice, you need to survey
your collections and look at
your inventory because you need to see the work. We actually
need to see what you have and
see what you need to collect, what you need to write about,
what you need to promote,
perhaps signaling in terms of social media. And stop examining
your guilt so much. Oh, we
haven't collected in this area. We feel so guilty. You know,
it's like start now. You need to
go further than that. Don't just collaborate. Reciprocate. Back
the work. Advocate for the
work. And that could be in the intellectual reparations. If
you're having someone translate
something, pay them. If they're -- for example, if you're having
someone translate something from
Spanish to English, pay people appropriately. And that goes
beyond advocacy in your
citations and your catalog records, but also in the
institutional context, we talk a
lot about allyship. And there's a lot of rhetoric of patting
ourselves on the back, talking
about to how to support diversity in terms of
recognizing work, but there is
so much work to do. We need to do the work. We need to invest
extra time. And that could be
inviting collaborations with black scholars, indigenous
scholars, on your works. In
terms of ALA -- and here's an abstract listed here. ALA has
been working on genre term
demographics to recognize African-American authors to
catalog records. So that's being
worked on too. This is in the MARC field of 386. And like
the abstract mentions, this is
appropriate, depending on your institution and your
collections, there's also
similar work being done to address gender and gender
identifications. It's about
visibility and aggregation and that recognition. So I think for
catalogers, in addition to those
local practices on cataloging work, we can look in our
collections and see who needs to
have more summary work done in the note field? Who needs to
have name recognitions and
enhancements of catalog records? I'm actually doing this right
now for some African-American
poetry. Booksellers, we have the time to look at authors and to
look at authors of color and do
the citation work. And if so, if you're writing in the context
of occult black history, do not
limit to just slave narratives here. The BYPOC experience
is right now as well. So if
you're looking to work with relationships between
librarians, let's look at
faculty as well, look at the course work that's being done,
and what are the student needs
as well within these institutions. And how might we
be able to sort of uncover some
of these identities within the occult that haven't really been
expanded on? So like I said,
there's two links here at the bottom. I suggest that you watch
them about atome manuscripts and
the making of them. One of them's in Spanish. But also
lastly, I would like to say that
part of the honorarium for this fund, I would like to go to
support the Museum of
African-American History, the Stone Book Award, or
specifically to possibly see
some more scholarship and Americana occult history
in particular. My email is at
the bottom here. And I really appreciate everyone sticking
around for this. And I hope that
you find it useful and engaging. And let's continue the
conversation. Thank you.
