Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Ceremony (1977) is a ceremony. The cycle of the novel itself, going through the story, accomplishes the task of the ritual in the story. Tayo is a guide for the reader, a double, and for indigenous people, maybe an embodiment. It is a ceremony that involves everyone, that involves creepy plutonian radioactive waste and unchecked white acquisitiveness – indeed, all the evil seeping over the world, which, in the novel, comes to be known as “the Witchery.”* The novel is a counter to that. It is speaking a new reality into being. This process is present in all of Silko’s earlier work (Almanac of the Dead would take it to new and baroque heights): big shifts in the world are happening via the words.
Likewise, the book-length poem Trilogy, by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) is a rite of transformation, transmogrification, a rebirth from the rubble of blitzed-out London. One can recite it, enact it. As with her subsequent work, Helen in Egypt, it is high majic.** In the context of a world threatened by blitzkreig or nuclear holocaust, it made sense to turn to majic as a defense and way through. It is said that Gerald Gardner, thought by many to be the founder of modern-day Wicca, led celebrants in majical rites during World War II, designed to contribute to the defeat of the Nazis. And why not, if one wasn’t allowed to enlist? Things had gotten so bad and big by 1942 that metaphysical forces surely were at work; things weren’t normal; and while a military response was indicated, so, perhaps, was a paranormal one. The same may be true of the current global climate emergency. Anything global is out of the control of any person, state, or firm. To deal with it, we have to imagine a kind of species – or trans-species – agency that is outside the ambit of human history or psychology. And in such a situation, if you are optimistic enough to think that what one imagines can be brought about it the physical world, it is a short hop to majic. Majic is, I think, different than magical thinking. The latter is not dissimilar to hope: the belief that one’s desires will be fulfilled, more or less without a plan. Majic, by contrast, is a concentrated form of prayer, crossed with intense human intentionality. It’s the kind of thing that can soak up the back of one’s mind and seep out into things that you do with your hands and your feet. It is shifting reality using hands, feet, voice, and objects. That is also what politics is about, come to think of it. So, it is natural to combine political action with majical action. Levitating the Pentagon was a kind of lighthearted, publicity-stunt version. Marching widdershins around a red-state capitol while chanting might be another. In any case, literature seems an entirely appropriate place for ritual, for majic, as does dance, theater, visual art. Sharing an article on Facebook in the wan hope that it will incite people to action is a low-level form of majic, and how many people do that? Why not go on a streetcorner with a piece of posterboard on which is written: “What is outside of the clouds?” Poetry probably started as the verbal, rhythmic part of some type of religious activity – at least that’s a compelling origin story. Paleolithic people seem to have genuinely believed that by painting their quarry on the wall of a cave, and then painting an impression of their hands over those pictures (to signify, one supposes, the effective laying-hands-upon the animals), they would kill or capture them – or induce them to allow themselves to be killed or captured. Many tribal people do rites today that are not dissimilar. And they seem to work – people survive, at any rate. Why not expand that process into art? Granted, nothing short of living like paleolithic people is going to curtail global heating (after a century or two, anyway). But nothing short of majic is going to get people to think that’s a good idea. Why not direct any poem you read, any performance in which you participate, towards the world beyond our human bodies? Why not sing it into shape. ------------------ * In Silko’s Laguna Pueblo culture, a “witch” is a being that in Eurogenic cultures might be termed a “sorcerer” or even “demon.” This is obviously very different than the meaning of “witch” in Wicca or amongst those who have attempted to redeem and reclaim the term. ** I follow H.D. in using the spelling “majic” to denote a metaphysical practice, as opposed to “magic,” which designates a physical (sleight-of-hand) practice. On the relation between the two, and to the more-than-human world, see David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous.
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |