A Guide to Witchcraft in the Blockchain Era

A few years in the past, throughout a time of nice confusion and loss in my life, I stayed with a good friend who recognized as a witch. She carried out a divination ritual for me that left a deep impression, because it charted out the sequence of occasions that might play out in my life for a couple of decade. On the time, many ladies and queer folks in my life hid their identities as witches, however on this late pandemic period, increasingly are comfy proclaiming this facet of themselves publicly. Certainly, the rise of “witch” as a public identification helps to forged off the stigma of that phrase, at the least in sure circles.

Spell Bound: A New Witch’s Guide to Crafting the Future (Smith Avenue Books), written by Chaweon Koo and illustrated by Kring Demetrio, contributes to the rising literature on fashionable magic and witchcraft. With wealthy illustrations and a multicultural perspective that embody each Japanese and Western traditions, it helps readers curious in regards to the craft to each see and perceive the big selection of expressions that magic can assume, together with within the context of latest applied sciences.

Spell Sure’s chapters are organized by the 5 Chinese language wuxing, incessantly translated as “parts” or “phases”: wooden, fireplace, earth, steel, and water. Every chapter is then organized alongside the phases of Western alchemy: nigredo, or burning; albedo, or the the flash of perception; and rubedo, the purified kind that continues to be. 

Within the chapter titled “Fireplace,” for instance, Koo traverses time, from historical caves to modern-day VR areas. The nigredo part begins with the fireplace that our homo sapiens ancestors used to navigate the Lascaux caves in France, the place they painted the ghostly animals now well-known in artwork and cultural historical past. The creator makes use of this story to debate the roots of formality in modern magic traditions.

The albedo part introduces the concept ritual can and ought to be glamorous; as Koo reminds us, even the lotus posture in meditation is itself a type of efficiency. “For any witch setting down their path,” she notes, “if you wish to perceive ritual, there is no such thing as a higher place to begin than a playlist of BTS videos.”

The rubedo part of “Fireplace” explores the concept ritual can enter the metaverse, with new implications for every part from sacrifice to creating sacred area: “The hallmark of a robust, fashionable witch is her means to execute high-performance rituals, grounded in historical past and traditions. She isn’t afraid of change and know-how.”

Koo combines reflections, meditations, and workouts, accompanied by Demetrio’s wealthy illustrations, which convey the ebook’s ideas to life. For instance, a meditating femme determine with hair flowing out of an astronaut helmet displays on what magic may seem like on the moon. In a mirrored image on what magic means immediately, koi fish, symbols of fine lucky and perseverance, hover by Koo’s commentary that magic is, basically, about mastering our psychological focus — maybe crucial lesson for crafting a greater future.

One of many boldest design parts is the creator’s use of the structure to emphasise sure points of the textual content — phrases glide alongside our bodies and wrap round in circles and spirals. Whereas initially I discovered this complicated, it pressured me to pause, rotate the ebook, and transfer it round with the intention to perceive the phrases. The materiality of the ebook remembers what Koo writes in regards to the materials world: particularly, that we exist in our bodies and within the bodily world. Books will not be simply conduits for information, however are bodily issues that we maintain in our arms and that we will, and maybe ought to, flip by, spin round, and completely deal with.

Spell Sure is a pleasure to learn cowl to cowl, but it surely features greatest as a reference ebook, a phenomenal object in itself to peruse for inspiration. Readers can glide from matters like incense and NFTs to lucid goals and Tibetan chöd meditation (a loss of life meditation that includes imagining one’s personal physique being chopped up and fed to spirits and demons). As each introductions and provocations, every of those matters will probably awaken the reader’s curiosity in regards to the breadth and vary of areas to be explored beneath the umbrella of witchcraft.

Why is fashionable magic so ascendant immediately? We dwell in an age of nice uncertainty, to make sure, and the non secular consolation that magic provides can assist us navigate turbulent instances. As archaeologist and historian Chris Gosden has argued, magic has performed a task in human society from earlier than science and even faith, and helps us perceive how we form the world round us, which in flip shapes us. And one specific commentary from Koo helped me join the Twenty first-century witchcraft phenomenon to a bigger transfer towards decentralization — of media, know-how, spirituality, and identification.

“Witches are inherently decentralized,” she writes; “there isn’t a witch council, ruling because the authority on every part. As a substitute, magic strikes swiftly, peer to look, with extra highly effective nodes holding extra code. However each node, irrespective of how small, is able to transacting within the ecosystem — of performing magic rituals. That is precisely how blockchain know-how works.”

Spell Bound: A New Witch’s Guide to Crafting the Future by Chaweon Koo, with illustrations by Kring Demetrio (2022), is revealed Smith Avenue Books by and is accessible on-line and in bookstores.