Narrative Magic: You Are The Folklore

Personal histories, myth-making, & main character energy

Happy Monday, friends. As usual, the world is on fire. But I’d like to invite you to refill your beverage and give your nervous system a brief break, just for a second. I want to talk about story, myth, and narrative. I want to talk about how magic, in its purest form, has always been storytelling. Most of all, over the coming weeks, I’d like to share with you some thoughts on how approaching your life and your spiritual practice through the lens of story can enchant your existence immeasurably.

First, though, a few little announcements:

• I’m taking sign ups for July monthly spellwork until midnight Thursday (7/18). You can find the sign up form and the details here. Those of you who already signed up have had preliminary work done already. Everyone who signs up by 7/18 will receive photographs and a report at the end of the month. This is a great chance to work with me in a spellcrafting capacity for a more affordable rate. Of course, if you have something more bespoke in mind, you can always reach out!

• Books are filling up for the rest of the month, and for August! I will be taking some time off in August for medical reasons (and because it’s my birthday!) So be sure to book ahead!

Now that’s out of the way, let’s talk about narrative magic!

I’ve spent the last few years very deeply entrenched in my practice, dipping my toe in and out of different waters, trying to find a current and a flow that feels organic and resonant. I am a forever-student: I love to learn and absorb new things, to experiment and discover. I am curious to a fault, and hesitant to ever call myself an expert. The last four years brought some interesting things to the surface for me, and presented some fascinating new avenues of exploration.

But what I found at the root of it all - and what was made very clear to me in September of last year, during what I can only describe as a kind of emotional limit break (affectionately known as ‘losing my shit’) - is the story. The stories we absorb and nourish ourselves with, and the stories we tell about ourselves and others. The myths and folklore of our youth, the fairy tales that sink bone-deep and calcify within us. Family histories and personal lore, the stories the land whispers to us and the urban legends that shape the maps of our childhood. The past, too, as story - the things we repeat, well past the point of clear recollection. Magic is fueled by these things. It blazes through the rabbit warrens, the labyrinths of logos: word as breath, as spark. Language as vehicle. Story as channel through which the magic moves.

a candle burns in the window of the house I stayed at in Poulton, England last year - a little village about 5 minutes from the village in the Cotswolds where I grew up.

Story begins with language. You are (I hope!) reading my words at present, perhaps while enjoying a nice cup of tea, or perhaps as you sip an adult beverage in your garden, listening to the songs of the unseen night creatures, their harpsichord legs and chittering mandibles. My words, appearing in a familiar alphabet on a familiar screen, arrange themselves in a particular order and so excite in your mind images, thoughts. I can open a little window into my world for you. I can take your mind for a moment and, like magic, charm it into coming along with me. Language is powerful that way - and we use it and are acted upon by it all the time, without even thinking. Most of us do not see words, grammar, or narrative as magical tech. It’s so in-built, we are so dependent on it, that we largely ignore it.

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein had this to say about such things: “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language” (Philosophical Investigations, pp.101). For Wittgenstein, the slipperiness of language was not to be trusted: it eroded the sharp, clear lines of logic and cast us all into the primordial ooze of chaos and uncertainty. For Wittgenstein, all philosophical problems boiled down to problems of language. It is in words that we become unstuck.

RIP Wittgenstein: you would have hated narrative magic and mythopoetic occultism. But for those of us who enjoy playing with reality, who like to bend and distort things - for those of us who remain curious and experimental in our approach to life - the unstuckness of language, the chaos cultivated by storytelling, is just what the doctor ordered.

Also Wittgenstein: “Where our language suggests a body and there is none: there, we should like to say, is a spirit.” (Philosophical Investigations, pp.67).

The threads of narrative and its power over reality had been evident in my life for a long, long time. I had known and realized it, but only dimly. It wasn’t til’ last year when a confluence of events flooded together and collapsed time in this weird, eerie, and deeply magical way that I began to properly consider it. I would say “understand it,” but that’s not quite accurate. I can’t say that I understand it really. I am grasping at the coat tails of the meaning of it all, crumpling my empty palms around the scatters of shadow that is the language, the magic, the story as it ducks its shrouded face into a dark alley and disappears once more from view.

During my feverish breakdown about all this last year, I talked to a number of people who absolutely shaped my understanding and thinking, and helped me process my own thoughts and feelings about what I felt I was perceiving. I owe a great debt to Aidan Wachter, who very patiently voice memo’ed me about the weird, magical impact of stories as I paced around outside a cemetery one hot, late summer night. Aidan’s books, too, touch many times upon the idea of writing one’s own fate, and I can’t recommend he and his work enough.

My friend and colleague Arden Leigh was also gracious enough to give me her time and wisdom as I quietly lost my shit, and I was thrilled to take her Myths & Magick class, which put into words so much of what I had been trying to grasp, and expanded my horizons in so many wonderful ways while also offering practical, actionable steps for therapeutic and spiritual healing/gain. Her dynamite course The Re-Patterning Project launches a new cycle today, but you can still sign up, I believe (if you hurry!)

Arden also linked me to this very cool and extremely relevant talk by her mentor and noted occultist/writer/graphic novelist Grant Morrison. It, too, helped me pull many of these threads together.

During this strange time, as I ruminated on story and its impact on our lives, I found myself reflecting on my teen years - specifically on the time I spent online in the late 90s and early 2000s. Those of us who were weirdos and freaks, unpopular kids and neurodivergent kids and isolated oddballs, will likely remember the early internet - before social media sanitized everything and turned online life into an AI-populated mini-mall. That chapter of my personal tale may need to wait til’ the next newsletter (some of you have heard it before: it involves Anne Rice vampires, an online cult, and possibly occultists using chaos magic to experiment on unsuspecting teens!) but I wanted to take a moment and shout out my friends and colleague The Seraphaeum, who knows intimately the import and impact of narrative. She saw the writing on the wall (pun fully intended) well before I did, and was gracious enough to take my hand and guide me through it as I finally peered behind the curtain. Her work, too, is tremendous - please check it out if you have a chance, and do yourselves a favor and buy a reading from her. She has an incredible gift, and her approach is singular, unique, and much needed.

Finally, I need to give major props to my friend Lisa and my partner, Wy. Wy, because he was something of a catalyst for all this - because he is a walking, talking hypersigil who can’t help but make magic, even without meaning to - and because he made me pay attention to Wittgenstein. Lisa because she knows, too, the seriously wacky and overwhelmingly strange power of story, and because she was able to be in that crazy, chaotic, unhinged space with me, understanding completely and innately, without me having to really explain. I hope she knows how precious that was, and will always be.

What are we to do with all this? What’s the takeaway? Why did I just spend several paragraphs acknowledging people before I even got to the point?

I think it’s important to acknowledge the people who helped and influenced me before we get too much deeper into the weeds with it. But I’ll warn you now: I’m not sure there’s a single, clearly defined point. Stories are slippery. Language, as Wittgenstein warns us, is imprecise and haunted. This is only the beginning. We’ve miles to go before we sleep.

But I can promise you, it’ll be interesting. And once you see the grammar, the structure beneath it all. Once you see how the mechanisms work, and how they might work in your favor?

Well. That’s really where the magic happens.

Have an absolutely phenomenal week. You deserve it.

xxx

Celeste