Author: Lucera A.F.

The members of the Athenæum Azostos have carefully collaborated on a series of 13 interview questions in which to ask the sorceress of sword work and scrying: Harper Feist. Harper is an accomplished interviewer, writer, teacher, priestess, scientist, and experienced occultist, among many other scintillating titles. After falling in love with Harper as an interviewer and powerful woman in the occult community, the Athenæum members knew we just had to take her class, “Scrying: A Workshop on Esoteric Awareness.” And after taking the class, it was unanimous that we needed to interview Ms. Feist to learn more.

The enchanting Ms. Feist obliged, and we are pleased to present her insightful and titillating answers that leave us wanting more. Harper has given us – and you – a deep glance into the nexus of her sorcerous devotion by means of written word, connection with Other, and a deep awareness that transgresses the status quo… We know you will feel as honored and magickally excited as we do.

The Athenæum has chosen to present this and future Interviews in written form so that we may honor, if not return, the power of and to the written word. Moreover, the questions and answers in written form allow translatability in all its forms for our readers – and for you.

As we are the Library of the Ungirt we have to ask: which books, either historical or occultic, have inspired your art? Which have inspired your craft/practice?

Feist: It would be easier to ask what books have not inspired my practice <grinning>. I find hints about myself and the larger world in the strangest places, including scientific, historical, and esoteric sources.

The first books that brought my attention to magic, and the weird relationship that science and medicine has historically had to it, were Lynn Thorndyke’s A History of Magic and Experimental Science series. I ran into the whole of it in the basement of Norlin library on the University of Colorado campus as an undergraduate. My encounter with those books was so life-altering that I remember how they smelled, what the floor looked like… I became ME in those moments, I think.

If the whole trajectory of my life wasn’t set at that point, it was when my college friends and band mates introduced me to Aleister Crowley, Christopher Hyatt, and Robert Anton Wilson (RAW). And so much of scrying is making new stories about what your senses are telling you that perhaps RAW was my first real teacher.

There seems to be expectations by many that magickal practitioners must have been mentored (or require apprenticeship from teachers/elders), when, in fact, it is more often the case that the first form of esoteric knowledge learned by practitioners is via literature/books. To delve deeper into the above question (in the Current of scrying, too), if you could ‘visit’ your younger Self (at the age in which you sought esoteric literature for the first time) which book would you give young Harper?

Feist: At the time I started doing what I called at the time witchcraft, I was reading French surrealist literature, like Le Comte de Lautreament’s Maldoror. Baudelaire and Rimbaud were alongside. So, decadence and suffering, and original sin (I had already been shown out of my parent’s Lutheran church), made up my reading when I wasn’t reading for school. I took the maximum number of credits all the time, and worked more than half-time, so there wasn’t as much reading as I would’ve liked.

That grievance having been made, I wish that someone had enticed me to read folklore at that time. I needed Thomas of Erceldoune, or something else that introduced the Queen of Elfhame. I didn’t appreciate the link between the spirituality that feels best to me and the power of the very ancient and mystical natural environment until later. When I discovered this, awkwardly, I found that being outside gives me such a relief from an incredibly rational life that I now can hardly do without it. I am more easy-going (read: bearable) and more spiritually porous when I have a relationship with place.

Scrying comes in many different forms, and this is something students learn when taking your course. We would love to learn which scrying method(s) you prefer; also, what compelled you to create such an immersive and in-depth course?

Feist: I created the course simply because there was such a demand for information on the subject. I’ve always been sort of a natural at it, possibly because I have a past that left me with the ability to sort of easily dissociate. I refer to it as being “porous on demand.” My working hypothesis is that people in general are able to obtain to these states and are limited only by the focus upon linear and rational thought that is the focus of education. Too bad that education doesn’t actually work! The inability of people in general to think in a straight line is obvious, I suppose, but neither can they choose to loosen themselves from the grip of their need to pretend. At the least, I can be a role model. At the best, I can give people experiments to help them loosen up a little bit.

My favorite scrying technique is currently the classic bowl scrying with water. I like to sit with it in my lap and watch my heartbeat skitter across the surface of the fluid as I fall into the trance. I will say, though, that I do plenty of scrying on the inside of my eyelids, too. Further, tomorrow, I will probably have a different favorite technique.

As Ms. Feist so astutely states: “scrying is listening.” By listening not only to Other through scrying, but to Self and the genus loci of the Land, I learned to anticipate where and when I could cross paths with animals and spirits (and find tracks). I was One – we all are. But I learned to listen to that Oneness on a meta-cellular level.

-Lucera

The temperature in the room began to rise as I relaxed my eyes willing myself into a trance. Gazing into my cosmetic mirror, a beautiful male face appeared. I could not see his eyes, only full lips and a chiselled jaw. His face shifted closer as if he was attempting to push his head through the mirror. This startled me, and I intuitively flipped the mirror around.

-Poquis

Transformation – you mentioned in previous interviews about your fascination with the art of metamorphosis. How has your magickal practice transformed you as a person? As a teacher? As a student?

Feist: That experiment is an uncontrolled one, of course. You might as well ask the opposite. What would I have been like without my spiritual practices? Who knows, honestly?

I will say that it has given me a path to follow in my personal evolution, and that I’m moving steadily to a larger and more exciting universe with each new thing I try and each new working I do. And even more, every person I interact with about these gorgeous and tasty things… my magical and writing partners have changed the world for me.

Recently, I’ve been playing around with the model that the gods are at least in partial control of what I do, think, want, dislike… As much as the rational part of Harper hates it, there’s some good explanatory force within that model.

You have alluded to your practice being mostly or highly devotional. Is this a new path for you or have you always had a devotional practice? If you do not mind sharing, which deity/deities have inspired this devotion?

Feist: As far back as I can remember, I’ve had a devotional practice. When I was teeny, it was Christian, of course. As an adult, though, I was taught my devotional approach by Brigid.

My first job after grad school was in Andover MA, and shortly after moving to the Northeast, I developed a link with the local Reclaiming group. After the prerequisite nasty coven rearrangements, there were three of us that celebrated quarters and cross-quarters, oftentimes leading large public rites at the Unitarian church in town. I was at this time doing instrument development for a living and spent a certain amount of time in the machine shop. I did some machining, but mostly I hid there because I got along with the machinists better than the other Ph.D.’s. I was in the shop one snowy Imbolc morning when a piece of copper pipe found it’s way into my hands. It was about an inch in diameter and two feet long.

I took it home and nearly in a blind trance took it to the basement and started cutting it open along the long axis. I had only hand tools, and I was blistered and sore at the end of an hour and had made a slit a couple inches long. I cleaned myself up, dealt with my parental and spousal obligations, and fell into a dark slumber. When I woke up, a slightly different person, I went and bought flowers and candles and took them to the basement. I set up an altar to Brigid and worked for a couple of weeks with all the spare time I had to create a crown for her. I beat the pipe flat with a hammer and then shaped it to fit me.

I never wore it. I left it for her later in a meadow. Hail, Brigid, who made it possible for me to truly offer myself and my gifts to other gods and goddesses.

As if being a scientist and occultist was not cool enough, you have mentioned that you practice martial arts – which involve sword work. First of all, hell yes!! Please tell us more about that. Does this discipline and art ever overlap with your magickal practice?

Feist: It does, of course, because discipline. I refer to my magical work as work for a reason. We should give ourselves to the practice of magic in the same complete way one gives oneself to a martial art. We need to prepare to be stretched and molded, sometimes injured, for our art. My bloody acceptance by Hekate will soon be common knowledge… and involved the emergency room.

A principal focus to sword arts is the elimination of extra or unnecessary movement. This need is mirrored in all magical efforts. Find and do the necessary. Further, sometimes beauty is necessary. Lastly, as one of my sword teachers said, “don’t be a pirate.” What he meant by this was “don’t do extra-fancy things with your blade,” but I see it as a philosophical imperative.

You have mentioned in a previous Blackthorne School interview that your spiritual practice is a relief… and authoring is a service. Do you view this service as being a devotional service to deity, or a service to a community of spiritual learners? In your opinion, in what ways does the skill set differ from that of a good magickal practitioner and that of an effective author?

Feist: When I talk about service, both aspects are present, but they are very different from one another. Devotional service to deity makes me a spiritual person, and community service makes me a useful one. I have performed a variety of services to the community, including leading the local Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) body, teaching classes (including those with the Blackthorne School), giving lectures, etc. I do the latter when I have the bandwidth because there is a need. I do the former to remain sane, open and fully alive.

The members of the Athenæum have followed your work for several years now. Often, we hear you mention purification. How do these purification processes play a role in your praxes, and how do these processes translate from science to magick – and even coexist as one?

Feist: Aleister Crowley has a set of writings called the Little Essays on Truth. One of them addresses his views “On Chastity.” Of course, Crowley being Crowley, he’s not at all talking about the no-sex kind of chastity (I know, he would have exploded). He’s talking about purity being the lack of contamination in the same way that chemists talk about purity. Something that is pure is only itself.

That foundation having been revealed, I am fascinated with the concept of purity as a magical requirement. I have employed most of the traditional means and find them all more or less effective at clearing the mind, body and environment of distractions to enable a firm and unwavering focus on anything, here the topic at hand being a magical working.

Think you don’t need to work on your focus? See if you can set your phone down for five minutes (laughing).

This is mirrored in the focus on preparation in both my The Blackthorne School classes and the one-hour versions that I’m sometimes invited to give for other audiences. All preparation, all temple work I suppose, is meant to put the practitioner into a useful state of mind.

One of the things that we found incredibly insightful about your class “Scrying: A Course on Esoteric Awareness” was the astute conflation of the mundane and the magickal. At what point is the line between the two (mundane and magickal) blurred so that there is – or can be – very little distinction? Do you find that a steady and deliberate scrying practice enhances the blurred line? And, at the risk of sounding overly philosophical (if not existential), does such a line even exist?

Feist: In the class, we often refer to the fact that, at its root, scrying is listening. The whole of life these days is about trying to be heard, advice to be assertive, even the writing edit “active, not passive” fits here. To be complete, I would argue that people need to know how to be receptive as well as projective. Learning new ways to listen and reasons to do it will make you a better parent, a better friend, a better employee, a better leader… a better lover. At the nuts-and-bolts level, there’s not a lot of difference except the entity to whom you’re listening.

How has your role in the OTO influenced the ways in which you approach scrying? Magickal practices? Devotion? Which of Thelema’s tenets do you find are most translatable into the semi-untranslatable and transgressive experiences in which scrying and body work evoke? Which are the least?

Feist: Thelema is a very body-positive philosophy/religion. It gets around the Christian body-as-evil paradigm and permits sexuality a role in religious and magical practices. Sexuality is one of the most holy things that any of us will ever participate in, so being embedded in that milieu has been an important shift for me both as a woman and as a magical practitioner.

Interestingly enough, the whole “do what thou wilt…” thing implies we should optimally have control over our own thoughts, which is counter is some ways to my model for scrying. The contradiction is not enough to worry about but is a slight strain. I’m still absolutely involved in the OTO, as I’m sure you know, and that won’t change, but I’m not encapsulated by it, either.

One of the skills that initially attracted the Athenæum to you was your captivating interviewing approaches and techniques in Thelema Now. How do the processes of being the interviewer differ from this, being the interviewee? Which do you prefer?

Feist: I’m still most often the interviewer, which is lovely to me. A funny thing happens when I interview people…we start with me reading a book, or listening to music, or partaking in their art, we iterate over questions and then we do the actual interview. Somewhere in the process, I learn such regard for all of the people I speak with, I somehow don’t really want to stop hearing them. It’s really an amazing process, and I honestly think I’ll never tire of it.

There’s not the same alchemy when I’m being interviewed, but folks tell me that the things I say are useful, and so I’ll likely continue to do that occasionally.

The U.S. Grand Lodge Thelema NOW! podcast features interviews with artists, writers, magicians, and others whose unique perspectives contribute to the modern flowering of Thelemic culture. New episodes are published roughly once a month. You can listen on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or your favorite podcast player.

What is next for the Harper Feist? We would love to hear what you have planned – from sensational scrying sessions to science to sword work – for 2022 (or the foreseeable future).

Feist: I have so many writing projects and presentations that my day job is an irritating distraction! Pay attention when the Hadean Press Conjure Codex comes out in October!

Also, I’m doing a couple of projects with magical partners that I am going to be very proud to unveil when the time is right.

If you could recommend one book to neophytes or potential scryers, seekers, and/or students, what would it be and why?

Feist: The answer to this question probably changes weekly, but today it’s Philip Shepard’s Radical Wholeness. It’s a study of how western people are separated from their bodies, using data as diverse as neuroscience and mythology. He talks about life in the same way I do: from a completely different, arts-related, background. It’s good information, firstly. And then, you know what? He makes me feel less weird. Always good!

Thanks so much for your generosity, Athenaeum Grrlz! <3

A select few recent video interviews…

The members of the Athenæum Azostos have carefully collaborated on a series of 13 interview questions in which to ask the always enchanting and entrancing Red K Elders. Red is an accomplished and talented Otherwordly graphite artist and body worker, among many other alluring titles. After being introduced to Red’s art via her first HEKATE, the Athenæum members began following and falling in love with her work. When we heard Red was releasing a new print on the Dark Supermoon, aptly titled LILITH, we knew we had to reach out.

Ms. Elders obliged, and we are pleased to present such generous and intimate answers. Red has given us – and you – a deep glance into her sorcerous and skillful devotion by means of art, movement and written word… her gifts, her genius, and her daring abilities. We know you will feel as utterly indulged and honored as we do.

The Athenæum has chosen to present this and future Interviews in written form so that we may honor, if not return, the power of and to the written word. Moreover, the questions and answers in written form allow translatability in all its forms for our readers – and for you.

As we are the Library of the Ungirt we have to ask: which books, either historical or occultic, have inspired your art? Which have inspired your craft/practice?

Elders: You know, I only really came to Western mysticism these past few years. I’ve spent the majority of my adult life deeply immersed in Eastern traditions. So I really don’t know very much at all about the classic occult texts that everyone knows and I’m only now just discovering.

On a structural/somatic level, the many works of Hua-Ching Ni, and then Mantak Chia shaped a lot of the foundations of who I am as a creative-energetic-spiritual being. Also Esoteric Anatomy by Bruce Burger. There’s also a particular book I worked with deeply for a couple of years from my Tibetan Buddhist practises, though that one isn’t available to the general public.

Robin Artisson’s amazing book An Carow Gwyn was really my way into Western practises, and Jack Grayle’s incredible The Hekatæon continues to be hugely influential, along with The Greek Magical Papyri (PGM) translated by Hans Dieter Betz.

But also, so many other books! I live in a tiny old cottage that is packed to the rafters with books, and there’s quite a wildly varied mix. I’ll pick a few at random:

• The Wolkstein and Kramer translation of Inanna lived within me for quite a while, as I did a lot of deep movement journeying with those ancient texts. Similarly Descent to the Goddess by Sylvia Brinton Perera.
• Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm by Stephen Harrod Buhner helped to validate and put into words a lot of strange experiences I have had through my life.
• Offering From the Conscious Body by Janet Adler, as a companion to my movement practises, helped me navigate through some wild inner terrain.
• Of Water And the Spirit by Malidoma Patrice Somé – and also the novel The Famished Road by Ben Okri. Both are just astonishing in giving rich insight into ritual and spiritual practises in African culture. So much of it feels so right in my bones, and it brings me the revelation of spirits living very closely, alongside and with us – and a deep grief that my own culture has largely lost connection with this wealth and power.

As an artist and practitioner, do you have a Patron of Art? If so, how does this Patron play a role in your creative and magickal endeavors?

Elders: On an everyday level, I’m just enormously grateful to anyone who has ever bought any of my prints, and there are some very kind and generous people who continually support me in this way. I’m greatly indebted to them, because their patronage enables me to devote days to going so much deeper in my work.

There are also several patrons from unseen realms, who I feel hugely blessed to be connected with, and continually humbled to be touched by Their presence. Cultivating and tending my relationships with Them feels fundamental to everything. There is never a day I don’t express my gratitude in some way, and every drawing day involves a great deal of ritual work in propitiations to these ones. I have them to thank for any success. I feel very tiny in Their presence.

You have mentioned publicly that you picked up drawing again due to the pandemic. This is fairly recent! What inspired you to create magic-infused graphite (and we must know, how did you come to choose graphite?) portrait drawings of Old Gods and Mythic Beings? Did you begin with the intent of creating this body of work?

Elders: I was creating an oracle set in Robin Artisson’s ASKION course offered through the Blackthorne School. That was where I also met Jack Grayle, whose work would also become very influential to my drawings. It was a very potent oracle making! 

Robin asked us to make some drawing or representation of Hekate to help consecrate the oracle. I hadn’t done any drawing at all for about three years; my mode of creative expression for quite some time had been writing. But I picked up my pencil and this simple drawing of Hekate just flowed out quite effortlessly and astonishingly. I was amazed to see the lines still so very strong, clear and graceful. I felt again through my whole body the ecstasy of drawing and became instantly addicted once more.

I work with graphite because I love the barely perceptible sound of it sliding over the tooth of the paper. I feel that resonance in my body. It is a delicious fingernail down my spine. I adore the impeccable precision of the finest sharpest pencil point. And also – graphite is rock, and I come from rock people. That is deep in my ancestral blood.

I didn’t have any intention about creating any body of work, it really just evolved organically into this theme. After that first Hekate, I looked back to the last body of drawings I had done several years previously, where I was fusing figures with sacred geometry. My two most potent drawings from that time were of some mystery goddess named RUNE, and also ORPHEUS. I couldn’t find any information about RUNE and I didn’t know much about ORPHEUS or any of the Greek myths, so I began reading and researching. Then a drawing of VENUS emerged, followed by ZAGREUS.

There were some animals and child portraits and animal-human pairings and hybrids for some time. Then some first very simple drawings of Hermes and Artemis, then Persephone, so there was clearly already a theme developing around the Greek Gods that was becoming fascinating to me. I began researching into their myths and histories.

I was also continuing to work with Robin Artisson’s writings and some of his ritual work, and one day I carried out a ritual of his to connect with and honour a body of water. I went to one of my very sacred places out on the salt marsh to make an offering to the sea there, which felt very powerful.

The next day everything shifted in my drawings and a whole new piece came called INITIATION. It was like everything flipped and I went underground. My drawings had been very clean and white, but for the first time, this one had a dark background, which felt much more complete and right.

After that I found myself drawing some of the spirits I was connecting with through Robin’s work. LUCIFER came next, and CERNUNNOS, followed by GREAT GRANDMOTHER, THE CAILLEACH, ANDEDION and DALIX. They all demanded much more depth and focus from me and the level of detail They were asking for forced me to start working with real models.

Do you have plans to implement any other types of mediums in future pieces? Have you created artwork in other mediums like paint or sculpture? (If so, may we see?) 

Elders: I have a quiet longing to make oil paintings. I have experimented with painting in the past and I know I have skills there too, but oil painting feels like a whole new world to learn.

About fifteen years ago I was exploring working with clay and that always draws me back. Clay is so sensual, ancient, and permanent. I love the thought of creating future ancient relics. Yes, I do have a photo of a series of little porcelain pieces I was making from around that time.

Twenty years ago I was running my own successful graphic design and photography business in London, mostly working for the city’s top hotels and restaurants. But I was also creating my own art through photography. I was fascinated with the magical and telekinetic powers of adolescent girls and the latent Gods in men. I’d assemble a team of highly skilled stylists and assistants and create an entire shoot making darkly-lit portraits in sacred places such as disused Masonic temples hidden beneath the city (which I only discovered through working with the top hotels and restaurants). It was a lot like ritual, really. I was trying to draw forth the hidden mythbeings laying dormant in the heart of my subjects. There was a feeling of grace when everything suddenly flowed together like a gorgeously choreographed ballet and I clicked the shutter at just. the. right. moment.

In many ways those photographs were the precursors to my drawings today. I was quite surprised when I revisited them recently to see this strong thread running from then to now that I hadn’t even noticed. I do still have a yen to set up whole big gorgeous scenes in ancient temples again.

But I also feel a deep belly pull downwards to just to stay focused with the pencil drawings that are currently moving me most, and become absolutely masterful with that.

Would you please share some of your tips/tricks/life hacks on how to stay focused and motivated on artistic production – and also as a woman with adult responsibilities in a world ravaged with digital distractions? Moreover, if we may ask, how do you balance adult responsibilities with artistic endeavors and a spiritual/magickal practice? Any words of advice for the hoards of us also juggling more than enough?

Elders: My biggest impediment to creative work is also my greatest help. I have two daughters, aged 13 and 9, and I just can’t drop into the space required to work when they are around. So I have arranged my life to give me three full days each week where they are not with me. Those three days are so precious to me and thus I become incredibly focused, with zero procrastination. There are certain rituals I always engage in on those days, that release the tension of the previous days, reset my body into creative flow mode and open the seams for the Gods to flow.

I feel extraordinarily lucky to have those sacred days every week, which I’ve now built a ring fence around, to keep protected. I absolutely do not do any everyday chores or tasks in those days. The rest of the week I’m an ordinary middle aged solo mama, finding it quite a challenge sometimes to manage everything that mundane life throws in our path, whilst always secretly yearning and plotting and preparing for my next days alone to give myself to my Muses. Like probably every mother, I feel guilt and regret not being able to give my daughters more of myself, more of what they need and deserve.

So even though I have engineered this situation where I can immerse myself regularly and fully with the strange sirens that sing out to me, it also comes with a sense of loss, to not have a more wholesome and healthy family system for my daughters to be held by, nor a greater community and cultural support structure in general that respects and values both mothers and artists.

Regarding balancing digital distraction, that’s hard, as I rely on social media to promote and sell my work, so most evenings I have to be online to do that. I just think of it now as part of the work, but I do have to set limits for myself. I rarely scroll the Facebook feed. As soon as the question comes up: ‘What can I look at next?’, I’ve made that a trigger for me to: Switch. The. Damn. Thing. Off.

If I’m ever distracted during an art working day, by picking up my phone or such like, I become acutely aware of being watched by the Gods who I may have been propitiating that very morning. I immediately feel guilty, like I’m doing something extremely disrespectful, squandering this sacred time that I have carefully choreographed and created with Them. I feel Their negative judgement bearing down through my whole body. If scrolling screens is what I choose to do with sacred creative time, then why should They honour me with Their presence? It’s imperative to maintain my end of the deal if I want Them to keep theirs.

I don’t have TV, rarely watch films and never do gaming. I watch videos of lectures and courses I’m doing as research for my drawings, in the evenings. I think I must be quite boring, really! On the nights my girls are with me, we sometimes watch the lectures together. My nine year-old is loving Jack Grayle’s video presentations of his readings of The Iliad from his totally inspirational GodSong course!

Anyone who follows you on social media will have seen glorious photos of your native landscape and the intimate body work that goes into gathering inspiration for your art. Clearly this process is deeply spiritual and complex, but if you could indulge us, we would love a peek into your processes and/or ritualistic creation. How important is this work to the overall outcome of the piece?

The wild places cleanse me; something of the land seems to rush all about me like a flurry of handmaids and wash all my stresses away. I soften into the process, let myself be held and moved by something unseen. I just go with it. It looks like dancing, but it’s really some kind of unblocking, opening, loosening, clearing process. I feel myself being filled with this immensity rising up through my roots, that seem to extend infinitely downwards. I don’t know really what it’s all about but I feel enormously humbled by it. I become like a newborn babe, all glowing. Receptive. That’s a good place to be when I pick up a pencil. Then the drawing just comes, and doesn’t stop… for six or eight hours or more.

If I don’t go and connect with those wild places regularly, then the drawing just doesn’t flow as easily. It comes in stuttering, small chunks, or I get distracted.

Which artists (either in the traditional sense or a more ambiguous definition) have influenced your artistic work, your creativity, and your praxes? In a similar vein, which of your pieces is your personal favorite and why?

Elders: I adore the German choreographer Pina Bausch. Her contemporary dance theatre pieces are bone-throbbingly powerful, extraordinary, raw, primal, beautiful. They speak to the human condition, with all its tender hopes and losses, its grief and wonder. Pina has sadly left this mortal realm now but I was lucky enough to witness her grace in one of her pieces many years ago. She annihilated my sense of self. I have always said if I could choose my life all over again, I’d have joined her Tantzheater Wupperthal company as a dancer.

In visual arts, I’m always drawn to the darkness of Caravaggio, and in a similar vein, the contemporary paintings of Roberto Ferri totally twist my guts.

So many other incredible artists too! Off the top of my head: William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Leonora Carrington, Zdzisław Beksiński, Gustav Klimt, Alphonse Mucha and Art Nouveau in general. I’m also totally obsessed with Russian landscape paintings, especially Arkhip Kuindzhi whose work makes me cry.

And then, Russian landscapes in films… Tarkovsky’s Stalker was hugely influential on me, as was his Andrei Rublev. Several of Terrence Malick’s films also speak to me of that mystical union of landscape and being.

Of my own drawings, I’m always rapturously in love with whichever current drawing is coming. I have to be, it really is a devotion that I crave to be with. When I have to put a drawing I’m working with aside for my days of being “mama,” it’s some strange torture that I have to try not to think of. 

I can’t get enough of Jack Grayle’s offerings. He produces the finest kiln-dried tinder for my creative fire. His courses on Hekate and the PGM, and currently his year-long journey of readings and discussions with T. Susan Chang on Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, are all absolutely fundamental to my work with the Greek Gods and Goddesses. I’m enormously grateful to him for his support of my work, and for generously sharing his extensive knowledge in such eloquent and accessible ways

Before drawing did you have any other creative outlets that you integrated with your spiritual path?

Elders: I have had several periods of writing, which twines really well with my movement practises, where it becomes witness, or helps me to keep some grounded witness presence within myself even as I let myself go fully into the void.

When my children were young it was harder to find any moments of aloneness, so my creativity was expressed through creating a woodland based community group which ran for six years where we’d explore handicrafts such as knitting, sewing, weaving – and also singing and storytelling, all out under those watchful pines. That was a magical time, where I really felt creating and holding that space for all those many families was feeding the land there in a very deep way. All the elements seemed to move harmoniously in unison with our endeavours. We’d be gathered in a circle round the fire and I’d be singing seasonal songs to the earth and elements. I’d sing a love song to the wind, making elegant gestures with my whole body, and the wind would come and swirl around us and be with us at that fire. It was a very special feeling of being at one with the universe, and some great mysterious unfolding.

Ostensibly it was a group for children, but I loved seeing the parents who would not otherwise have been out there in the woods, being touched and moved in some very profound ways. They still talk about it now. I like that.

As Hekate devotees ourselves, we love the artwork that you have created for the Goddess. It is through Her that we were introduced to your talent. In what way has Hekate influenced and/or changed your art and praxis?

Elders: A few months after the transition in my drawings from light to dark, Covid arrived and put a stop to my regular work as a deep bodyworker and massage therapist. I had no other financial support and rent and bills to pay and two children to feed, so it was pretty scary. 

By some kind of divine timing I had just begun Jack Grayle’s in-depth 13 week course on Hekate, also offered through The Blackthorne School. The practices we were doing to connect more deeply with Hekate – Goddess of transitions, of liminal places – were absolutely fundamental to me staying sane and grounded as my only income literally disappeared before my eyes.

Early on, Jack reads “Document to the Waning Moon” from The Greek Magical Papyri. It was incredibly powerful for me. I had several very clear strong visions and one of them was of another drawing of Hekate. I also felt a huge compulsion, a directive even, to really push and promote my drawings in a shameless way that I never would have dared before. I needed to survive, and my drawings were the only asset I could see at the time to make that work, as we were in full lockdown and I was home caring for my daughters.

I really felt Her presence, holding this totally unknown transition for us all. I was immensely grateful and started giving more honouring to Her, setting up a shrine in my house and making heartfelt urgent prayers to Her for continued support. I was amazed when the drawings started to sell, enough to just about support us, and enough for me to realise that my drawings were something I needed to take seriously for the first time in my life, and devote proper and full attention to. Still, She made me wait several more months before granting me the opportunity to draw Her again. I had a lot more learning and research and prayers and offerings to make first!

It is so beautiful that you gather inspiration from real human beings. How do you go about choosing models for your work? How did you choose the model for your newest piece – LILITH?

Elders: Social media really has been fantastic for meeting and creating mutual support with a whole community of other artists, and an excellent way to find the models I have been working with. I follow a lot of great photographers and models, and the process seems to happen in a couple of ways:

Sometimes I have a vision for a drawing and then I will search for the right model – or I come across a model and then have a vision of them already in some finished drawing. In those cases, I will ask them to pose for me, I’ll send them sketches of what I see, and pay them to make a specific photograph of the pose that I need.

Other times a photo will appear on Instagram that immediately seizes me and I see something more in it. Then I contact the photographer, and often the model too, and ask for permission to work with their image and change it into something else. Sometimes its not much of a change – like in Lilith, which is really very similar to the original photograph of model Ellia Brightmoon, made by Blas Photographer. The original photo focuses on her body, and does not include the whole left arm. But I saw that whole left arm, with a snake twining round and sliding up to her heart, with the golden geometry of the sun illuminating behind her.

Fascinatingly, when I contacted Ellia to ask how she felt about being Lilith (because that also feels absolutely important that the model and photographer are giving their blessing to the drawing), she was astonished. She does theatre work, and Lilith is the artist name she uses; Lilith is one her own Patron Goddesses.

Also, I posted a video clip of the drawing process with music by a band called Archive that I had been obsessively playing while making the drawing, and it transpired that Archive is her favourite band.

These things do fill me with wonder, at how we are mysteriously brought together in these synchronicities and resonances through creative processes, for deeper reasons sometimes that we may never know. I feel some kind of strange kinship connection now with the models and photographers I’ve worked with in this way, many of whom I have stayed in contact with, and who have opened the doors to more curious places.

This Lilith piece is breathtaking. What elements were you aiming to capture? What inspired you to choose these elements and portray them as what registers as so poignantly and hauntingly Lilithian?

Elders: It’s funny, I’m almost ashamed to say that I really didn’t know ANYTHING about Lilith when this drawing appeared. I was working with the Greek Gods, and felt that was my focus at the time. But I randomly saw that photograph and had this strange clear flash of vision and had to sketch it: a sensual woman with left arm outstretched, eyes rolling back in her head, the snake sliding up that arm to bite in her heart, all in the ferocious glare of a mystical sun. As I was sketching I was hearing ‘LILITH, LILITH, LILITH’ over and over, so I had to find out: Who the hell is Lilith?

Through some research I connected with Idlu Lili Regulus, who has been writing an immense tome on Lilith for several years (called She Of The Night, to be published by Theion Publishing in 2022. Recommend!) Idlu was incredibly generous and helpful to me in sharing information and supporting my understanding of the drawing of Lilith. I now see the snake as the embodiment of the divine pairing of Lilith with Samael. The huge golden sun burning down on their union in the desert, molten with the sacred geometry of all mystical union.

Now I also feel this kinship and mutual support with Idlu Lili Regulus that otherwise would not have existed, so these drawings also are bringing me into relation with other humans in this world and that feels mysterious and precious too.

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A post shared by Red K Elders. Drawing the Gods (@rkelders.art)

What is next for the great Red K. Elders? We would love to hear what you have planned – esoterically, cunningly, and innovatively – for the remainder of 2021.

Elders: Well, as is often the case when following the subtlest of shimmering threads, the way I keep thinking things are going to unfold keeps rapidly shifting. I think that’s a sure sign we are on the right path, when we encounter the trickster that riotously upsets the table just after we have all politely sat down to tea.

My fascination with the Greek pantheon of Gods continues, as does my research and praxis with them, and I had planned to make a book in this vein. I have several clear finished drawings in mind, I even have the models and have already shot the reference images for the next two drawings which are ready to go. And yet, that inner flame I feel for that project has curiously just recently diminished somewhat, and I have a strong demand from some other wild dark female Goddess who wants to come first. 

I quite like that, because Zeus was next in the queue, but sorry Zeus, you will have to wait while this other dark feminine force takes centre stage. That’s what I’m working on now, and She’s coming very clear and fast so She may even be complete in the next few weeks.

Beyond that, in 2022, I’m certainly feeling a book of some sort will come. I have acres of writings, but need to sift through it all for the gold and merge it well with my drawings.

Many people have been asking me to teach them drawing but I don’t feel I can do that as I never went to art school. But I can teach people about the processes and practises I use to get into creative flow states, the movement bodywork and the rituals I work with. So I’ll be doing just that by hosting a weekend residential retreat in England next Spring called ‘Conjuring the Mythic’.

And following on from that, I’ll be hosting an online course on the same subject, perhaps in Spring too.

Lastly, I’m courting a few galleries to have my first exhibition. The majority of my print sales go to the USA so it seems likely that’s where my show will be.

If you’re interested to be kept informed about any of my offerings, feel free to join my mailing list.

If you could recommend one book to neophytes or potential artists, what would it be and why?

Elders: I have a gorgeous huge volume: The Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection which documents the collection of artworks in a wonderful art gallery that just happens to be fairly close to me here in Norfolk (we don’t have many big galleries here so it’s quite a wonder!). As well as gorgeous works by Francis Bacon and Henry Moore, the collection includes a great many folk artworks and objects spanning 5000 years of creativity from Polynesia, Alaska, Western Africa, Mesoamerica, Japan, and the Cyclades.

There are so many objects of power and beauty in the collection, made without artifice or pretention, that still seem to house some magic of great immensity. Even the tiniest hand carved walrus tusk is utterly exquisite. I always feel totally aflame when I am in the presence of such artistry, and even the book still conveys that.

So for anyone starting out with art, I’d recommend exploring that, feeling that presence, letting it seep into their bodies and then begin to wonder: How can my art also be a house for Spirit?

The members of the Athenæum Azostos have carefully collaborated on a series of 13 interview questions in which to ask the enigmatic albeit brilliant Robin Artisson, who has come to be known and celebrated as a modern traditional Witch, author, teacher – and an absolute authority on folklore, pre-history, “Spiritual Ecology,” and the “Unseen World.” Artisson is the author of An Carow Gwyn: Sorcery and the Ancient Fayerie Faith, The Witching Way of Hollow Hill, Letters from the Devil’s Forest, The Flaming Circle, The Resurrection of the Meadow, The Horn of Evenwood, Hands of Fate, The Secret History (and several more!)… and of course, The Clovenstone Workings: A Manual of Early Modern Witchcraft.

During our experiential, deeply moving and profound analysis of Clovenstone, the Athenæum became so Witched and bewitched by both the book and the author, we just knew we had to reach out to Artisson for an up-close-and-personal glimpse into his sorcerous life, work, and praxes. Artisson obliged, and we are so honored to present an in-depth Interview with his generous, intimate, and hauntingly truthful responses – his current projects, his upcoming works, his processes of writing, the collaboration with Molly McHenry, and which of Robin Artisson’s books is not just the Athenæum’s personal favorite – but his as well.

The Athenæum has chosen to present this and future Interviews in written form so that we may honor, if not return, the power of and to the written word. Moreover, the questions and answers in written form allow translatability in all its forms for our readers – and for you.

As we are the Library of the Ungirt we have to ask: which books, either historical or occultic, have inspired your writing? Which have inspired your craft/practice?

Artisson: This is quite a difficult question to answer, because many sorts of books have provided needed supports to me as I spent years trying to get into a more direct space of experience of the powerful things that I know indwell this world, and even our own bodies and souls. Some have provided support; others have been inspiration at a more creative level; this is critical, because creativity within a certain aesthetic or spiritual range is the essence of just about everything to me.

Other books have provided a powerful academic or historical basis for what I write or understand, and the reason why such books are important is because (aside from just good information being gained from them) they bring a sense of confidence to me, and to others; there is a confidence that what we are doing is within a range of human experience and within a historical range of reality which can still be felt and even make us stronger today.

I would say that the first book that ever inspired me was Paul Huson's Mastering Witchcraft, and for multiple reasons. He actually had historical workings of real Witchcraft adapted into that work, but he also didn't follow the formula for other Witchcraft books from the 1970s through the 1990s; there was no attempt to graft in a duotheism of a Nature God and Goddess; there was no attempt to really hit up dubious "Celtic" origins or aesthetics for everything; he starts his Witch Mythos in the occult-baroque legends of the Watchers and the Nephilim, and stays with that spiritual aesthetic throughout. It was quite a divergence and very satisfying to my younger mind.

Beyond that book, others I have found critical, for all the reasons I listed above, are Arcana Mundi by Georg Luck, Jennifer Westwood's Albion: A Guide to Legendary Britain, all of Emma Wilby's works, but most critically Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits and The Visions of Isobel Gowdie, Evan-Wentz' The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, the works Warriors of the Wasteland and Beowulf and Grendel by John Grigsby, Hyatt and Black's book Pacts with the Devil, and Wirt Sikes' book British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends, and Traditions. 

Also critical to me, over the years, have been Stories from the Six Worlds by Ruth Holmes Whitehead, Powers Which We Do Not Know by Daniel Merkur, Spirit of the New England Tribes by William Simmons, The Underworld Initiation by R.J. Stewart, Folklore in the English and Scottish Ballads by Lowry Charles Wimberly, and literally everything by Katharine Briggs - particularly her Encyclopedia of Fairies. 

I would also have to mention the tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, alongside Schönwerth's collection Original Bavarian Folktales, A.H. Wratislaw's collection of Slavic Folk-Tales, and Kvideland and Sehmsdorf's amazing collection Scandinavian Folk Belief and Legend.

This list is of course extremely far from complete. Pretty much any book by Claude Lecouteux would belong here, too. So would the works of Derek Jensen and David Abram (whose two books Becoming Animal and The Spell of the Sensuous were both completely critical to my entire understanding, and still are) and Paul Shepard's book Coming Home to the Pleistocene. Still not a complete list, but these books all stand out to me strongly.

What compelled you to write something as powerful and visceral as The Clovenstone Workings?

Artisson: I wrote The Clovenstone Workings because my own efforts towards developing Oneiromantic power - power, clarity, and capability in dreams - became strong enough to lead me to many dramatic successes at making contact with the Unseen World. But this happened in conjunction with my growing personal understanding of how much of historical Witchcraft was a phenomenon completely interlaced and tied up in dreams. I felt like I had achieved a breakthrough in understanding, an understanding of both history and of modern-day technique towards the gaining of these special dreams, that could help a lot of people right now.

I say "a lot of people" while knowing that it won't ever be that many people, relatively speaking. But all I needed to help was one person and it would have been worth it. I believe - firmly - that our real success as human beings, our most ancient (and now largely forgotten or deeply hidden) path to authenticity and peace, lies in how well we penetrate the depths of ourselves and the world and learn to be friends with spirits and with the many powers we live among and with in this world.

And I knew this book would, along with some others I’ve written, help some people to do that. And I know that powers in the Unseen World want this. And I know I stand to gain favors from them for doing what I do, favors beyond what I’ve already gained. And then the inspiration hit from a deeper level and took me away. I didn’t have any choice after that; the book really wrote itself.

Define the processes that facilitate your writing. Are these words from you? Channeled? Do you have a Patron of Writing, much like the “Empowerer of Dreams” discussed in our review re The Clovenstone Workings?

Artisson: The way I write is largely tied up with feelings. It's like a great storm or force inside me, very deep inside, which contains a lot of things that I understand or have learned, but also a lot of things I don't understand. Normally, it feels perfectly fine but it can make me agitated. As time has passed, it has become somehow changed or manipulated by spiritual powers that I maintain relationships with. They seem to have done something that can make me feel crazy or even ill at times, a thing I consider to be a holy affliction of types.

Then, special times come when ideas appear inside me and I think "A book? An article? A big essay that I can turn into a PDF?" But then it just comes as it wishes, outside of my control. I won't feel well unless I sit down and create it. And often, I don't know what it will look like when finished. I try to spill ideas into outlines or notes, but they are usually quite chaotic. I lose whole days and often stay up all night while typing away; it's a kind of delirium and really unpleasant much of the time, but I feel better after typing for long periods, getting it out of me and into some other medium.

I don't know how organized most writers are, but I'm not too organized. When the works want to come, they just come. They can't be forced, or planned. They also don't come on any schedule. Sometimes they feel like messages from other beings or places; sometimes I get a break and can say things I really want to say, but it's always very mysterious to me, the whole process.

I do not have a specific patron of writing or efforts of that nature. I do have familiar spirits that I relate to for certain matters, though, and I do have my own ways of requesting guidance or help of a tutelary nature from certain other-than-human persons. I do that often; I think everyone in this vocational life-way should.

As Clovenstone is a “Manual of Early Modern Witchcraft,” how much historical research did you put into writing this book? Describe the information-gathering processes (and/or rituals) and how those facilitate what the previous question encapsulated.

Artisson: Clovenstone is called "A Manual of Early Modern Witchcraft" because its primary focus is on topics and experiences that are directly connected to, or tied in with, what historical sources tell us Witches were involved with or experiencing. I would say years of research went into this book, even long before I knew I would ever write a book like this. Things I had researched and read about years ago were "activated" in my mind and memory as the book itself began to emerge inside me.

Sometimes I think most of the craft of writing is like that - you spend years reading things, learning, and then life flows along, and one day you have a special need for what you learned long ago, and it's there for you, ready to help. I sometimes wonder if we don't run across things and take them into us which only reveal their reasons why some time later, or a long time later.

I did a lot of time interlacing my own ritual or metaphysical understandings with the patterns of Early Modern Witchcraft that I was trying to breathe life into, in Clovenstone. Glanvill's book Saducismus Triumphatus was one of my primary historical texts that fed into Clovenstone, and it's a tediously long book, very hard to read! But I was looking for special things within it, things that could bring some of the experiences it's describing back to life for me and for others.

When I gained what I was looking for, I had to find a way to give it the power to exist. That meant relying on divinatory arts and familiar spirits to channel the special words used in the book to perform many of the feats described within. That process was onerous enough all on its own, but nothing compared to testing these things to see if they could produce the extraordinary effects I was wanting. I tend to believe that if something works on me well enough, it can work for most people. And when I was comfortable with these workings, I put them in the book. 

Of course, this is still a simplification of the process. I partly feel like I assembled a work, but another part of me feels like it assembled itself. I know I couldn't have any peace until it was done.

Let’s discuss “Words of Power.” In which ways have Greco-Egyptian sources inspired and/or influenced how you divine powerful words? In which ways have they not?

Artisson: The Greek Magical Papyri (PGM) has been my ultimate source for what I call "Strange Words," ancient words utilized before the rise of the Christian world, to add power to my attempts to reach the powers in the Unseen World. Though the PGM material requires many years of study to really utilize at high effectiveness, those years of study have been done and certain formulas or sequences of Strange Words have been selected for their high degree of effectiveness. I would say the influence of the PGM is very profound on my spiritual work and life, but even discovering some ancient sequences of sounds that cause things like trance states to form, or gain the attention of spiritual beings, is not the end of these efforts, only tools for an ever-increasing exploration. 

The PGM formulas are very practical, and that is their greatest use. They work; they accomplish what I or others need, and that is the final reason why they get utilized. But again, they are not the end of any road; what they unlock leads to other places, and thence to even other experiences. In my own work (private, and soon to be shared publicly) there are other means and methods beyond PGM phrases or formulae that allow for the conditioning of the mind and body towards awareness of the Unseen. These other means don’t relate directly to the PGM but they aren’t at odds with them either. We’re blessed to have the surviving information in the PGM acting as another gateway to deeper points.

Was there a target audience of sorts in mind when writing/performing/doing/divining Clovenstone? Is there a target audience for other types of writing that you do, and if so – what or who is this ideal audience/reader?

Artisson: There was a target audience for Clovenstone; it was the Strange Souls of the world, the people who are either Witched (transformed in their souls such that the closeness of the Unseen World or its entities is more apparent to them somehow), or the people who were just sideways enough within their deep selves to desire to become so. That was the primary intended audience; the secondary intended audience was those men and women who are not excited or engaged by what passes for "Witchcraft" in so much popular culture and on the popular market.

My ideal reader is anyone who feels like the world (and our lives in it) has depths that are very rarely penetrated, or which stand outside of our easy conscious reach due to countless ages of foul social conditioning and the impact of the many lies of the human social world. I hope to reach people who understand that what is real, sacred, and true cannot be stolen or destroyed by human nonsense, but that our power as humans, so deeply conditioned by human society, can be hindered with regard to how we access the real, sacred, or true. Those people are ready to learn to use their minds and bodies in new ways - which are also very old ways - to overcome the modern world spiritual impasse in the only way I think it can be.

Too much spiritual optimism traps people in a dangerous place. I want as much as anyone to believe that I can just go stand outside, open my arms, and invite in the whole world, or spirits, or Gods, or (insert thing here) and if I just trust enough, or still my mind enough, I can leap into profound connection, but I think most serious and aware people already know it takes more than that for us modern people. 

The forces that imprison us in certain states of mind/convention naturally lead us to think that the spiritual journey is a thing of ultimate ease, or somehow democratically open to all, but that is a kind of opiate. And that's charitably assuming that those imprisoning forces even allow people the relief of a spiritual anesthetic. These days, they are just as likely to try to force or shame people into atheistic nihilism. 

As far as audiences for my writings go, I write for different people. I described the chief sort of person I might be trying to reach above; but I do consider the Witched audience to be different, in one or two important regards, from the more general audience I intend to reach. That more general audience is the audience of what I would call "Spiritual Ecologists". Spiritual Ecology is a movement that I am deeply invested in and very proud to be a part of. These people, like myself, simply wish to live being aware of the spiritual dimension of everything we encounter, and everything we are.

And this ambition is possible! But it requires a lot of work de-conditioning ourselves away from many modern assumptions. To say that everything we encounter and everything we are has a spiritual dimension is not to say that the spiritual aspect of things is the primary one, the only "real" one, or the only important one. That is never the case. The many experiential dimensions of things - from the most dream-like and surreal, to the most fleshy and tangible - are all important, valuable, and needful. Within Spiritual Ecology we run face-to-face with what some might call Neo-Animism or the modern revival of a general Animistic worldview; that's an important expression of Spiritual Ecology, hearkening back to its original expression.

Would you consider Clovenstone a standalone piece or is it complementary to other works you have written? If so, which works?

Artisson: The Clovenstone Workings was very much written to be a standalone work. I wanted it to be a kind of go-to book, the sort of book you'd choose to have if you could only have one book of its sort. That's how I felt about Paul Huson's book Mastering Witchcraft for many years; and in reality, one of the things I was fantasizing about while creating Clovenstone was how it might be considered (one day) to be in the same category of book as Mastering Witchcraft - that some people would have those feelings about it.

Having said that, I allude to sorcery and the deeper workings of sorcery in some of my other works, and Clovenstone could absolutely act as an adjunct to expansion to those. In An Carow Gwyn I give all of the bare-bones basics of sorcery as I understand it, and then go into advanced topics even - but Clovenstone could be seen as a branch that goes further from that point, describing a special kind of sorcerous feat (the creation and achievement of Pacts), among other feats.

Do you feel, in hindsight, there is anything you would wish to add to Clovenstone? (And we are dying to know – when can we expect a hardcover?)

Artisson: There's an enormous quantity of things I could add to The Clovenstone Workings, but it appeared and arose in the shape it needed to be in. I would be more likely to write a second volume, another book about Witchcraft in the stream or current begun by Clovenstone, than I would be to expand it. And I have had a hardcover version ready to go for some time now; by this time next week I will have done the final things the company needs me to do and should be able to make it available. It will contain a tenth image by Molly McHenry that no one has seen yet - a fantastic image of a young witch on the floor of a forest somewhere drawing a Gateway Ring, while all manner of spirits and strange entities watch her doing so.

How did you begin a working relationship with the artist for The Clovenstone Workings, Molly McHenry?

Artisson: Like nearly all great relationships and friendships in the modern day, Molly and I's began while strolling through the internet, and we just bumped into one another. We started talking through Facebook messages, but I was a little reticent to reach out to her, because I was a stranger guy from FB and every female friend I personally have has told me ten different horror stories about dude-bros from the internet spamming them with out-of-the-blue requests for friendship or conversation. 

But lo and behold, Molly responded, and there was never any talk about restraining orders or reports of harassment, nothing like that. She recognized the name Robin Artisson and was completely open and friendly. It wasn't long after that I discovered she was an artist, and at the time she didn't have a lot of her art on her FB (or at least not where I could see it) so I was really shocked to discover how good she was. 

As we came to know one another better, and as I saw how hard she worked and how talented she was, I knew I wanted to help get her art out there, but I also knew that I probably couldn't afford her talent. My only hope was to turn the charm on and get her to agree to completely exploitative rates of pay, and hope that she would accept her work being exposed to a wider audience as partial payment. I hate to pay people less than they're worth, and that's really all I've ever been able to do with a talent like Molly.

She was a total champion about it, she worked for rates I could afford and turned out ten masterpieces that really captured the feeling of the soul of Clovenstone. It couldn't have existed completely without her. She has done other incredible work for me too, that will be seen in the future. I've always been a bit jealous of the things Molly can do so easily, like make incredible art, be liked and trusted by people, etc. I have a lot to learn from her.

Which of your books (that you have written) is your personal favorite? Why?

Artisson: I think The Clovenstone Workings might be my current favorite of my own works, with An Carow Gwyn coming in very close behind it. And this is because those two books really say so many things that are important to me, at a soul-deep level. These are like testaments of a sort (if such a term can be used) to things that I think are very critical in human existence, and in existence in a much wider sense than that. They are a means of adding my own input to the very large, complex, and old dialogue my culture has been having, on the margins of society, about what might be real, compelling, sacred, or important to know or experience. When it comes to the Neo-occult world or Neo-pagan world, too, there are many voices but not many that I find straying from the stale center of the regurgitated metaphysics that stem ultimately from the flawed presentations of our civilization. While these things are popular, and while they burn hot in people’s lives for a more-or-less brief period, many find them unsatisfying in the long run and there’re very good reasons why they should. There was always a sense of wanting to offer meaningful alternatives, of putting a “difference that makes a difference” out there, and circumstances conspired to make me able, and so I try hard to do so.

Not many authors start their own publishing company. What inspired you to open Black Malkin?

Artisson: Black Malkin Press is more of an imprint of sorts, just a way of marking my books and showing where they really came from: from the whole complex of spiritual-ecological and sorcerous efforts that I and certain others are involved in. Sad to say, we are not a “really real” publishing house, just a self-publishing operation at present. I’m not against going through a traditional publisher, though I have heard some horror tales about things that certain publishers wanted writers to do, to alter their manuscripts.

And really, while I have nothing but respect for reputable publishers who have fair practices and treat writers and creators well, we are living in a brave new world and self-publishing has come a very long way from where it was when I first encountered it. These days, if one can do a clever technology dance (which I personally despise doing but have little choice) one can really reach people with self-published works.

Many of us are anxiously awaiting “The Wish-Man’s Children.” Is there anything in the works now in which you want the reader to be aware?

Artisson: Due to various circumstances, related to everything from pandemics to interpersonal gymnastics, The Wish-Man's Children had to be pushed over into 2022, but it is still in preparation. As a project, it is very new ground for me, because it is multi-media and requires the creation of a lot of different things, like traditional visual art, fake articles and news stories, maps, even some videos. It's about 65% a fiction story and 35% practical lessons in sorcery based on that fictional narrative, which is intended to be instructional. It has a long way to go, but I am committed to making it happen.

Right now, aside from getting the hardcover of Clovenstone out, I am also about to publish The House of the Giantess which is an in-depth survey of beliefs, culture, and a sort of "history of pre-history" focusing on prehistoric Britain. In it I give a very detailed analysis of the famous monument Stonehenge, and give what I consider to be a strong, supportable deciphering of how and why it was built, and for what purposes. I also talk about many other deep spiritual-ecological issues tied into our spiritual pre-history and give many resources within for deepening spiritual practices.

Other projects that are working in the deep (and there are some) will be announced in good time. I'm always working!

If you could recommend one book to neophytes or potential seekers, what would it be and why?

Artisson: This is a very hard question to answer. I guess it might be impossible to answer because there's many things a "neophyte" might be seeking. So it depends on what the person in question is looking for. If they were looking for Witchcraft in the British or Western European sense of that word, I would want them to read one of Emma Wilby's books Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits or (more especially) The Visions of Isobel Gowdie. Neither of these works are what I consider hard to read, but they are long and academic and the information can be dense. But every letter of every word in those books is solid gold if people want to understand the truth about Witchcraft in the most profound historical sense.

Some might not like the idea of giving a neophyte some academic books, but these are more than just academic texts. Much more. Below the words and deep in the ideas is a vision, a real and powerful reality, which is still alive now just as it was alive centuries ago. It just sleeps and dreams a bit deeper now, but it is there. And a person must be guided or do their wanderings with reference to such a vision. It's like navigating around a countryside using a high mountain in the distance as a reference point. 

If the neophyte in question was looking for something more general like Spiritual Ecology or modern Animistic life-ways, I would not hesitate to direct them to David Abram's book The Spell of the Sensuous. That book has the power to free us from the many cultural assumptions that bind and limit us, especially assumptions that bind and hinder almost all Western occultists. I would hope that a person who read The Spell of the Sensuous would also read Becoming Animal right after, also by Abram. These books are total expressions of what the freedom of the soul and the ecstasy of the sensual and the sacred really look like.

The members of the Athenæum Azostos have carefully collaborated on a series of 13 interview questions in which to ask the talented, magickal artist Molly McHenry. McHenry provided illustrations throughout Robin Artisson’s The Clovenstone Workings: A Manual of Early Modern Witchcraft, the most recent Review by the Athenæum. We were so impressed by not only Clovenstone, but the beautiful, haunting art that made the magickal manual come alive, that we just had to learn more about the wonderful artist behind the illustrations.

Molly McHenry, or Artharpy, has provided an honest and insightful glimpse into her creative world, her processes, her projects on the horizon… and how she was able to combine visionary worlds with Robin Artisson whilst collaborating for The Clovenstone Workings.

The Athenæum has chosen to present this and future Interviews in written form so that we may honor, if not return, the power of and to the written word. Moreover, the questions and answers in written form allow translatability in all its forms for our readers – and for you.

We are the Library of the Ungirt, we have to ask: which books, either historical or occultic, have inspired your art? Which have inspired your craft/practice?

McHenry: I'm a lifelong book lover so there are many that have been an inspiration. I all but completely stopped reading fiction by the time I was a teenager, but the spark was not diminished with non-fiction. When I discovered witchcraft and herbals, it was clearly a lively new road I had to explore.

Grimm's fairy tales have been an obsession since early childhood. Even editions without illustration still painted pictures. I was one of those kids with an "overactive imagination," so I got used to dreaming up scenes everywhere, not just in text but also music and random patterns in nature. It was a game that stuck.

As an adult, I see dramatic scenes in the classic grimoires. I have a sizeable collection of spellbooks old and new that stir artistic and magical inspiration any time I need it. 

I'm a big fan of Agrippa but also Anna Riva and Judika Illes. I respect that no-nonsense, "no way but through" kind of approach to the occult.

It is nearly impossible to embody the power of the occult – let alone the Current in The Clovenstone Workings without a working knowledge of witchcraft. We must know: are you a magical practitioner as well as an artist?

McHenry: Yes I've been practicing and studying folk magic and traditional witchcraft for the past 24 years. 

I've spent time leading a local coven, teaching classes on successful spellcasting, and also selling my services to the public as a spellcaster and tarot reader. It's been a busy time lol.

The things I've experienced in magic seem to me both deeply mystical and also quite plain and obvious. I like to try to express that in my art. Magic has been a daily part of life for me; only sometimes do I realize how odd that might appear to others.

Do you have a Patron of Art? How do you divine the pieces that you create?

McHenry: I have no Patron specific to my art but what I do have is dreams. 

In late 2019, I got terribly sick suddenly and my life came to a halt. I lost months of my life to a few surreal hours of consciousness a day and then 15+ hours of sleep at a time. 

I painted as a way to have some value in those strange hours and my long deep sleep gave me lots of inspiration. My dreams became vivid and detailed, full of lifelike characters and places full of backstory and lore. I've painted many of my dreams since then. 

Other paintings of mine are based on the complex emotions that come along with my somewhat complex life. It's a comfort to put a face to a name, as it were.

It is mentioned on your website that you are a self-taught artist. Which artists – alive or not, well-known or not, either historical or contemporary – have inspired you?

McHenry: I have a soft spot for decorative, stylized art like that of Alphonse Mucha, but also the fantasy of Boris Vallejo, James Gurney, Arthur Rackham, N.C. Wyeth, and Maxfield Parrish.

I've also been a huge fan of the Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists, especially Van Gogh. I've been trying to recreate anything as perfect as The Potato Eaters for a very long time.

Is this your first time collaborating with an occult author? How was the overall experience creating the art for Clovenstone?

McHenry: It was my first occult collaboration but not my first time illustrating an occult work. I have a few as yet unpublished manuscripts of my own and have been adding the needed artwork to them in between other projects. I'd say my first love is illustration so it's a delight for me to work this way.

This collaboration was very pleasant. Mr. Artisson and I quickly fell into a good rhythm with his vivid ideas feeding my sketches. Each of the images seem to come together effortlessly.  

How did you and Robin Artisson come to work together?

McHenry: We met a few years ago with me as a huge fan of his work. The level of conversation that ensued has been a deep expression of our different yet connected practices and beliefs. 

Especially as art became a greater and greater part of my life it started to reflect that conversation. Of course Robin's always in the midst of a project as well. Working together was a natural fit. 

Please divulge the creative processes that went into creating the art for Clovenstone. We know it was a collaborative effort in some form, but we would love to know if these images were based solely on your experiences with “The Workings” or if you were asked to create specific images by Robin Artisson?

McHenry: I was kept in suspense about much of the workings inside the book as the rest of you! We would talk at length about the focus of each image and he would give me cues and bits of information so that I could match the tone of the text as much as possible. However, I didn't get to read the text until much later. I think that helped me not to become cluttered with possibilities.

The process was a back and forth exchange with me sending sketches until I'd landed on the right angle, the right expression, etc. That's where all the excitement is, when you're first putting form to an idea, so I never rush it. 

Some of my own ideas ended up woven within, naturally, but I did my best to do justice to a style and focus that Robin created.

It was quite an honor, of course, that the 10th illustration--the one found only in the hardback edition--was based on an original painting of mine.

What medium did you choose to create the work in Clovenstone, and why? Is this your typical medium? If not, why did it differ?

McHenry: The medium I used was sepia ink on toned paper. I love traditional art and use it as much as possible, though I do a fair amount of commissioned work digitally. 

Toned paper is easy to work with, inspiring deep shadows and drama, so I used it for my own pleasure. I wasn't sure how the images would appear in the book--if the look would still fit--but that element was easily adjusted as the book grew, and I would say the two sort of merged organically. 

I love working with ink so I do quite a lot of it, especially in the month of October, of course. My main affection is for oils, but this book was asking for some old-world pen and ink crosshatching, and I was happy to oblige. 

If you have done any of the work in Clovenstone, which of “The Workings” were most potent for you? For your practice? Do you continue to refer back to this book?

McHenry: I think I was most captivated by the use of "The Great and Terrible Names" and also "Dream Incubation." 

As I've said, dreams are a flowing and constant part of my life so incubation has been a fascinating and rewarding experiment. The use of Great and Terrible Names is a fresh, dark take on my beloved practical magic. I'm thoroughly enjoying testing myself with these works.

Pertaining to the above question: How has Clovenstone inspired your artwork outside of what you created for the book? How has it or continued to impact your art, your creative processes?

McHenry: Illustrating Clovenstone brought out more of a desire to create scenes of the occult world in action. I’ve grown an even greater appreciation for images that tell partial stories to whet the viewer’s curiosity and not completely satiate it. Indeed, I believe that magic already does that to us.

Would you say Clovenstone introduced you to something new or did you find yourself comfortable in the current before creating the artwork for it?

McHenry: I’ve read several of Mr. Artisson’s other works so I was familiar with his practice and style. This book is its own creature, as readers well know, so I was content to be led and let it unfold in time.

Can we look forward to any future occult projects/books featuring your artwork?

McHenry: Yes indeed! There is a large project on the horizon which isn’t quite ready to be discussed, but will contain more of my pen and ink work. 

Also, soon I will be releasing my first book, “The Thousand Fruit Tree and Other Pagan Fairy Tales,” a modern set of fairy tales told in the Grimm style specifically for the magical community. It will contain many, many full-page color illustrations carefully crafted by me. 

If you could recommend one book to neophytes or potential artists, what would it be and why?

McHenry: Oh my. That’s a tough one. 

I think the most important book any newcomer could have is the one that inspires them to begin today. Magic is in the action so I encourage everyone to find a place and step in immediately. Spellbooks were my place but it might be elsewhere for others.

Older spellbooks like Valerie Worth’s “Crone’s Books” and Kathryn Paulsen’s Complete Book of Magic and Witchcraft we’re greatly inspiring to me since I first picked them up in the 90s. Mastering Witchcraft by Paul Huson is another that has a spirit of its own. 

Art is a similar beast. I find anatomy and reference books inspiring but that might be a little dull for others. The Spectrum series, however, is an annual collection of the best in contemporary fantasy art and is always a good bet for feeling the creative flow. 

In the end, though, creativity and magic are both tied to something deep within. Each time we express that little-seen side of ourselves, others get to view our distinctive fingerprint. Those imprints are something special, uniquely human, and they will last longer than our lives.

Check out the artist’s social media links below to learn more.