Description
Book SynopsisIn 2019 a group of book-lovers began to turn from their usual diet of contemporary novels to read classics of the ‘English eerie’ like Arthur Machen’s 'The Great God Pan'. The documents recovered, (edited by Phil Smith of 'Mythogeography'), and published here as 'Living In The Magical Mode', describe the subsequently inspired attempts of these readers – in a time of virus and social and climate catastrophe –– to live anew, with ‘magic-as-ordinary’, to do magic as if it were the washing up. At first, the readers fall on new ways of remaking their everyday lives in the magical mode, but the mode soon find ways to remake the readers. Challenging assumptions, magic turns lives upside down and shakes out mysteries. The documents of 'Living In The Magical Mode' describe a pulling back of veils, until all veils but one are exhausted; then the book-lovers put their hands upon the veil inside themselves.... 'Living In The Magical World' crosses dream wastelands, racecourses, motorway cafes, edgeland quarries and suburban valleys, in an adventure of encounters with ‘others’. It brings its readers to an occulted realm of unbounded desires that once unfolded refuses to recede. The surviving documents of the book club, reprinted here, describe the final frantic efforts of what remains of its members to understand a collision of many worlds and make novel webs of reconciliation.
Table of ContentsPublisher’s Note The Discovery of the Text The Group Disintegrates The Field Reports There is a Planet B Happenings “The Fuck Up in the Club is the Fuck Up in the World” Pan The Minutes Book contd. More Arguments Separateness Conspiracy Theories Inner Life Yet More Happenings Alchemy Games, Rituals, Arts and Journeys Sacred Space “Something Ancient and Dreadful” The Minutes Book contd. Horses and The Origins of Melancholy Psychic War Manifestoes and Grimoires Psychic War 2 Ritual Psychic War 3 How This Story Ends References Appendix l: Lexicon of pseudo-sacred spaces Appendix 2: bibliography for the Professor’s paper ‘Dancing in pseudo-sacred spaces: signs passing through flesh’ Appendix 3: pamphlet extracts received by the Guild
