Foreword

CARL ABRAHAMSSON, the author of the lively, engaging, and occasionally quirky writings you now hold in your hand, calls himself a “subcultural entrepreneur” whose main interest is in the strange interzone between creativity and ritual, the liminal space blending magic and art that has come to be known as occulture. What is occulture? The term is said to have been coined by the performance artist Genesis P-Orridge sometime in the 1980s and is easily recognizable as a portmanteau word combing “occult” and “culture.” Abrahamsson agrees. It is a general term, he tells us, “for anything cultural but decidedly occult/spiritual.”

Needless to say that covers a lot of ground. In recent years the powerful and informative links between art and the occult have become a hot topic both with artists and occultists, but anyone with some knowledge of the history of both recognizes that the association between the two predates their current popularity by some time. Hermetic ideas informed the Renaissance, and the Symbolism of the nineteenth century was rife with notions of other worlds and intimations of strange, ethereal realities. The occult interests of the Surrealists are well known, but even before them the Russian esoteric philosopher P. D. Ouspensky was inspiring Cubo-Futurist and Suprematist painters with remarks like, “In art it is necessary to study ‘occultism’; the artist must be clairvoyant; he must see that which others do not see; he must be a magician.”

Yet although it has a fine pedigree reaching back perhaps into the roots of art and self-consciousness itself—the earliest known paintings, dating back some fifty thousand years, were made by our prehistoric ancestors in nearly inaccessible caves while experiencing altered states of consciousness and journeying in the spirit world—occulture is something more than an awareness that magic and art are strongly connected, notwithstanding the importance of this awareness. There is a purposive element behind the idea, a self-consciousness associated with earlier art movements, a need to define itself against the backdrop of the ever-increasing plethora of information, entertainment, and distraction that characterizes our time. Yet while many, if not most, art movements define themselves by exclusion, cutting out and rejecting everything not them—André Breton’s banishments from the Surrealist fold are legendary—occulture works with a broader brush, embracing a wide and at times contradictory assemblage of influences and interests. In this it shares much with a movement within modern occultism with which it is often associated: chaos magick. As I understand it, in chaos magick, one need not stick to the prescribed rituals or pantheons but can make magick with just about anything, provided one’s imagination is strong and one’s will is in earnest. How different is this from many forms of art since Duchamp, when the touch of the artist transforms everyday items—even urinals—into mysterious portals of wonder?

The wide lens of occulture is in evidence in this brilliant collection of lectures, essays, and articles aimed, in one way or another, at conveying the peculiar aesthetic shared by its varied subjects. Where artists may have once turned up their noses at trashy occult rubbish, and occultists peered confusedly at some incomprehensible conceptual work, the occulturist is able to move easily between the two worlds. He or she is in many ways a response to serious shortfalls in either camp. Occulture rejects the blasé cynicism and self-irony that characterizes much postmodernism. It seeks in the commitment of the true magician to his practice the seriousness that has evaded art for some time now. Yet in engaging with art and wider cultural expression—film, music, fiction, theater—occulture forces the often sequestered occultist out of his magic circle and into the broader fields of creativity. Magic can be performed in the cinema, on the dance floor, and in a comic book. And art is no stranger in the halls of ritual and ceremony. In occulture these occasional fellow travelers stick together for the duration of the journey, and they usually find some very interesting places to go to.

What strikes a reader of these short, sharp forays into the occultural landscape is precisely this breadth of interest and curiosity. I get the feeling from them that their author is determined to find something fascinating in everything, to be able to, like the magician or artist, turn what we might look away from into the center of our attention. Having worked in many of the fields he writes about—producing music, film, fiction, and photography (he is a kind of Renaissance occulturist)—Abrahamsson is well equipped for his expeditions; the reader is in the hands of a good guide through a cultural terrain that is not without its pitfalls. Some of the pieces here focus tightly on magical practice, mostly of the Thelemic, that is, Crowleyan, variety, and some readers may need a bit of background in this in order to get their full import. But the main ideas are clear and seem to fit in nicely with studies of dolls, dreams, magick as a kind of “currency”—an occult Bitcoin—and the philosophy of Anton LaVey. A piece on the similarities and differences between Aleister Crowley and Rudolf Steiner draws some surprising comparisons, and one on Jung, mythology, and their appearance in contemporary culture adds some new insights to an often too-familiar theme.

My own favorites were the pieces on Paul Bowles, Ernst Jünger, and Yukio Mishima, three writers who we would not immediately consider occult, but that occulture’s wide lens can easily fit into its frame. The idea of the “expat occultist,” a magician constantly on the move, as it were—as Bowles seemed to have been—seems obvious, but I don’t think anyone pointed it out as such before; at least I haven’t seen it. Jünger and Mishima seem natural for a comparison. Both, in different ways, had a fascination with combat and battle; Jünger, of course, was a decorated war hero, while Mishima was too young to see combat, a serious failing from his point of view that troubled him throughout his short life. Both developed fastidious, highly polished prose styles. And both were, again in different ways, on the right side of the political spectrum, although Jünger’s contemplative detachment is a rather different affair from Mishima’s histrionic and fatal acting out.

What is important here is that Abrahamsson is taking occulture down interesting new routes, beyond the pentagrams and black leather that too often obscure its more subtle offerings and provide the uninitiated with kitschy reasons to dismiss it. He is showing that the occulturist perspective can provide new ways in which to see literature and even the act of writing itself. But what these writings do fundamentally is what all good criticism should: convey the passion and delight that the critic found in his subjects, so that the reader can share in this transformative bounty. This collection, I think, manages that admirably.

GARY LACHMAN, LONDON, NOVEMBER 2016

GARY LACHMAN is the author of twenty books on the links between consciousness, culture, and the Western inner tradition, most recently The Lost Knowledge of the Imagination, Beyond the Robot: The Life and Work of Colin Wilson, and The Secret Teachers of the Western World. He writes for different journals in the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe, where he also lectures, and his work has been translated into several languages. He is on the adjunct faculty in Transformative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies. In a former life he was a member of the pop group Blondie and in 2006 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Born in New Jersey, since 1996 he has lived in London. His website is garylachman.co.uk.