What Future Does the Swallow Portend?

“Words make magic. They change the fabric of the world. Once something is spoken, it starts contaminating reality, or at least people’s minds. Let us remember that spoken words can be incantatory and performative; let us concede that they have power. Now and again we need to take the time to say things the way we want to say them, like spells. By speaking about politics, by speaking about revolt and the sacred, we take our place in the lineage of witches.”1 1  - Marie-Anne Casselot and Valérie Lefebvre-Faucher, Faire partie du monde, réflexions écoféministes (Montréal: Les éditions du 
remue-ménage, 2017), 17 (our translation).

“This does not mean that the word [magic] is absolutely necessary. Similarly, that which gets called Goddess doesn’t require recognition and worship. It’s not a question of joining but of feeling. … And daring to call Goddess that which forces us to think of the present, to resist ‘keeping things at a distance’ also means feeling the extent to which this present, this resistance can challenge our habits, our most entrenched certitudes. Perhaps this is all we need to sustain the order that articulates magic, politics, and empowerment.”2 2  - Isabelle Stengers, “Un autre visage de l’Amérique?” afterword in Starhawk, Rêver l’obscur .  Femmes, magie et politique (Paris: Cambourakis, 2015), 365 − 366 (our translation).

“Earth-based spirituality consists in establishing our strongest values in the living world itself, in the interconnected systems that make our lives livable.”3 3  - Starhawk, “Appendice E,” Rêver l’obscur .  Femmes, magie et politique, 354 (our translation).

For time immemorial, human beings have sought to understand their place in the universe. They have appealed to divinities, to the stars, to animal, vegetal, and mineral nature to interpret the world or foresee the future; they have created symbols to translate their intuitions and discoveries into images and words. And although science has largely discredited spiritual and supernatural beliefs, we have seen a return to the occult in popular culture in recent years, a return that can be understood as a direct reaction to the extreme state of anxiety caused by climate change, health crises, and international conflicts. The art milieu has responded to this mindset in significant ways as well, suggesting that a kind of occult turn has occurred in art. This is reflected first by a renewed interest in artworks that have long been excluded from art history and second by the reappropriation of esotericism by a new generation of artists, both in their daily lives and in their art practices.