Earlier this week I presented at the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers International Conference, participating in a session called Occult Geographies: (im)Material Agents and the Geographical Imagination. I’ll reflect on the other papers in my next post – until then you may like to take a look at my paper Devils, Elleves or Firadrakes: Genius Loci, Magical Technologies and the Occult Philosophy of Landscape. Full text and slides can be found over at academia.edu.
Entity relationship diagram depicting the digital artist as magician.
The paper as presented is actually a synopsis of a far more detailed, 10,000-word article, which I hope to prepare for publication shortly. It’s perhaps a peculiar collision of ideas: occult, creative and technological, but I think it’s a fairly good reflection of my multiphrenic identity! One thing it was a shame I couldn’t deal with fully in the conference paper was the further implications of John French’s translation of Agrippa’s Classical terms into folkloric parallels: however, this is discussed in detail in the full paper, tracing the roots of the Agrippa’s calling of the ‘good spirits’ to medieval folkloric practices, which came full-circle in the work of 17th century magical compiler Dr. Rudd.
