Summing Up 2021
Fortuitously Non-Conformist: Summing Up 2021
As far as years go, 2021 was one of my favourite years ever. It began with a heavy, lingering, positively pandemic-related feeling of being stuck – not so much in time of life in general as in space in particular. So… What do you do?
We left dear old Stockholm and settled in a small town instead. What I dreaded would be overwhelmingly hard and troublesome turned out to be overwhelmingly smooth and auspicious. The machinery seemed to grease itself along the way, and before we knew it we had uprooted ourselves from a city and general environment that in my mind for a considerable time had been more coloured by nostalgia and sentimentality than by sober analysis of both outer circumstances and inner desires. Today, I wake up in a magical house in a town that has everything I need. Vanessa and I often look at each other and comment upon the fact that we feel that we live in a very pleasant dream.
I can see an arch stretching over this year as I look back. It’s one of dreary routine being exchanged for a fresh re-boot of both vision and work. I do essentially work with the very same things but my mind and attitude are in a much more constructive space-time. It allows for more leniency and efficiency at the same time, much in line with our beloved Daoist concept of “Wu Wei.” We do a lot but it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it.
In packing things, and then also unpacking them, there’s both symbolic and concrete insight. You see what you have; you stay aware and conscious of it; and you hopefully realise that most of it is absolutely useable for work. My own deeper glimpses/insights into my own archive has been (and remains) an inspiring jolt almost every day. It’s almost as if I now have to ward off (or at least sternly compartmentalise) all the potential book projects that pop up. Everything in due time, thanks to everything finding its own correct space. Order is divine!
Book-wise, this year was a balanced mix of old and new. I carried on with The Fenris Wolf re-releases as well as a new edition of FanzinEra and Sacred Intent. New books included Temporarily Eternal, Different People, and The Mega Golem.
The Mega Golem volume made me extra happy because it is in many ways not an attempt at “explaining” what the Mega Golem is, but rather an opportunity to give it more time and space to define itself. Vanessa’s exquisite collages and cut-ups as points of intersection made everything even more tantalising and seductive. And it makes me wonder/wander: where will the Mega Golem go next? (A strictly rhetorical question, perhaps?)
Many people have given the Mega Golem form and substance so far, and it’s always been a question of a sublime balance between creator and the created. If we don’t know the creators’ intents, can we still derive second-hand power from the Mega Golem? Of course we can. There’s an almost “asemic” aspect to this golemic adventure that I really enjoy. It is a language expressed in many dimensions but the particular signifiers aren’t known to us quite yet. Perhaps they never will be?
This reminded me very much of a passage from one of my favourite books on magIQ (Laszlo Legeza, Tao Magic, Thames and Hudson, London, 1975, p 20-21):
“Magic diagrams, talismans and charms required a secret language for their expression, a symbolism outside the scope of the ordinary graphic vocabulary of Chinese writing and painting. For this purpose, popular Taoism was able to draw upon the unlimited resources of the Chinese inventive genius. But in order to find unorthodox calligraphic expression, or to modify existing forms for occult use, the artist had to solve an almost insuperable problem. The rules governing the use of the sensitive Chinese writing brush, one of the most ingenious inventions of Chinese civilisation, were rather inflexible. Strictly speaking, there was only one way of writing a Chinese character correctly. The rules of the brush were admittedly more flexible for painting and for the so-called ‘free’ calligraphic exercises, in which the character was sometimes modified out of recognition. To fulfil his function, the occult artist had to stay either partly or completely outside the traditional conventions of Chinese calligraphy which, for example, did not accommodate waves and curving lines, or circular forms in script. Hence the emphasis on these in ‘free’ calligraphic exercises. Sometimes, of course, the writer was an illiterate folk-artist, and therefore already outside the tradition, so that his contribution to the vocabulary of unorthodox expression was fortuitously non-conformist.”
(“Fortuitously non-conformist”? That I would take for my motto for 2022!)
I also worked some more on and eventually finished my first novel in Swedish, Codex Nordica. It’s a book I have really enjoyed writing, and I look forward to its release in 2022.
In terms of books for others was was also Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan – Infernal Wisdom from the Devil’s Den, for Inner Traditions. As you might know, this is a kind of expanded version of my film Anton LaVey – Into the Devil’s Den (2019), and it will be published in February 2022.
I also wrapped up another anthology à la Occulture – The Unseen Forces That Drive Culture Forward (2018) for Inner Traditions. Its working title has simply been Occulture 2 but I have high hopes that it will be called Tripping the Dark Light Fantastic – Essays on Individuation and Occulture. Tentative release during the first quarter of 2023.
Music-wise there wasn’t too much going on. I did release a brand new album via the Canadian label Flesh Prison. This spoken word/ambient album is called Reseduction and I like it a lot. I might even release it as a film in 2022!
I also began work on the album with Vanessa and Little Annie Bandez. I recorded them together in Miami a couple of years ago, and this lovely collaboration will eventually bloom into a very dark and trippy flower of great nocturnal radiance.
Film-wise, Into the Devil’s Den was released on BluRay and on several streaming platforms. And I did make one new film: Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: Write Your Own Code. As Genesis and I were working on the documentary film Change Itself (released in 2016), we agreed that it would be great to also have Genesis reading poetry in the film. One clip was eventually used. Write Your Own Code contains all of the material we shot in Oslo, Norway, 2014. These sessions also became the creative ignition for the spoken word album we made together in 2017, and which was released in 2019 by Ideal Recordings: Loyalty Does Not End With Death.
Early in the year, I successfully crowdfunded the An Art Apart – Number One project, which will become a book and a film based on the interviews I have filmed with a great number of remarkable and inspiring artists. I am very grateful for all the contributions to this pretty massive endeavour. Both the book and the film will definitely be released in 2022.
One of the most stimulating things in 2021 was that I “lectured” more. Vanessa and I now have a monthly evening of talks and lectures c/o Morbid Anatomy, so that wonderful environment has been great to write for. But there were many other opportunities too, including Jake Kobrin’s ambitious “Magick 101” online course. These essays and talks have made me realise just how much I enjoy writing and talking about these topics that we could call “occultural.” It’s truly a blessing to be so immersed in something that I love so dearly, and judging from requests and offers, it seems an increasing amount of young people are interested, which is absolutely delightful.
The more I write about this intersection between art and the “occult,” the more I seem to see. It has become if not a “Perpetuum Mobile,” then at least a very colourful five-wheel drive hot rod drifting down the old yellow brick road.
I have jotted down some good ideas for the Society of Sentience, too. This is not meant to be or become some kind of magical order in the traditional sense. But I can certainly see the benefits in developing an occultural network that not only contains theory but also practice, and not necessarily one that is always “transparent.” There’s a lot to be said for the power-generating aspects of secrecy, and this is something to be seriously considered and worked with. This has potential and will definitely be interesting to develop further during 2022.
Speaking of which: the last book of the year was It’s Magic Monday Every Day of the Week, by Vanessa and myself. It’s a collection of our writings about our own ongoing magical practices. We have a segment on our Patreon specifically for this kind of magical sharing, and we intend to anthologise these texts in book-form on a yearly basis. The feedback we have had so far is inspiring, to say the least!
A lot could be said for 2021. It followed in the trails of the peak (?) pandemic year of 2020, and looking back at it, it makes sense. Mutating and adapting viruses led to us becoming more vigilant and careful; possibly healthier too in many ways. Moving to a small town has certainly made us realise how unhealthy cities are. I am actually surprised that there haven’t been more pandemics around… Humans certainly seem to facilitate opportunities and environments for optimal viral dissemination!
Well, no matter what, another year has passed by and in hindsight it was a truly great one. Not necessarily because things more or less went back to macro-level “normal” (whatever that means) but because I re-routed and re-rooted myself in new soil together with my beloved wife. It immediately changed things for the better, and every day is a blessing for which I am genuinely grateful.
Here’s to a wonderful, healthy and successful 2022! Vade Ultra!
Carl Abrahamsson, Vimmerby, Dec 31, 2021
(Photo by Vanessa)
https://www.patreon.com/vanessa23carl
