Most occult or neo-Pagan beliefs, which I will broadly refer to as \u201cmagic\u201d or \u201cwitchcraft\u201d throughout this essay, contain elements of creative fabrication, site-specific ceremonial ritual, intention with the land, and acts of elemental reverence. These practices, ideologies, relationships, and other New Age discourses influence art and are growing increasingly visible on social media. However, the largely white, Eurocentric discourses of (neo)New Age magic and witchcraft overlap with aspects of most Indigenous worldviews (such as ancestral recognition, elemental relationships, and fostering connections with the natural world) and can usurp Indigenous protocols and presence. It is a spiritual colonialism of the land that claims ownership through alternative forms of spirituality; at worst, it continues the displacement of original peoples, and at best, it takes part in appropriating or other thefts disguised as individualized spiritualism. Given this history and ongoing acts of appropriation within the (neo)New Age movement and the evolving consumer-oriented wellness industry, I want to position a rich Indigenous artwork in conversation with the work of three witch-art practitioners. Witches owe a great debt to the preservation of and space held for land-based spiritualities, particularly in settler-colonial contexts to which European descendants relocated, with cunning folk practices as part of the colonial displacement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mi\u2019kmaw artist Amanda Amour-Lynx holds a digital, isolated solo ceremony in the 2021 video work Skite\u2019kmujuawti<\/em>. The title translates to Milky Way: Ghost Road <\/em>and refers to the cosmological belief that the starry sky is where the Mi\u2019kmaq originated and where they will return when they join their ancestors. Analyzing this ceremony in relation to contemporary art-witch practices illuminates diverse ways that ritual, place, ceremony, and creation circulate in contemporary art practices, while centring an Indigenous maker and world view. In the video, Amour-Lynx floats through a pastel virtual realm while footage of rivers, urban skylines, and digital worlds alternate behind her. She appears to be grounding herself, breathing and focusing, with her hands resting on her abdomen. She describes the work as \u201cholding ceremony with myself,\u201d a virtual ceremony that is solely hers to inhabit and adapt to as it changes. Although the piece came about from the isolation and sparse opportunities for cultural connections during the pandemic, Amour-Lynx made more than a ritual space, she gifted an immersive virtual world. A Mi\u2019kmaq hieroglyphic form floats around her, and a digital illustration of young fiddleheads and other forms populate the screen. Skite\u2019kmujuawti<\/em> is a virtual ritual space, a place of initiation as a precursor to something else. She wears a homemade ribbon skirt and moccasins; such regalia connects her to spiritual protocols, demonstrating that she is ready for what will come next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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$\"Amanda-Amour-Lynx_Skitekmujuawti\"$ <\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Amanda-Amour-Lynx_Skitekmujuawti\"$
Amanda Amour-Lynx<\/strong>
Skite\u2019kmujuawti<\/em>, installation view, 2021. <\/em>
Photos : Tori Lambermont, courtesy of the artist & City of Mississauga Digital Public Art Program<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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For most witch practitioners\u200a\u2014\u200ain formal settings such as Wicca or in personal practice\u200a\u2014\u200aan altar is an important tool as a ceremonial collection point within their domestic space. About altars, the editor of Sabat Magazine<\/em>, Elisabeth Krohn, writes, \u201cA part of daily spiritual life, home altars often evolve with their maker, reflecting personal and spiritual evolution and change. They often reflect a religious competence that arises from feeling, intuition, and emotion.\u201d^{1<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 1 <\/a> - Elisabeth Krohn, \u201cWhat Is On Your #Altar,\u201d Sabat Magazine: II The Mother Issue<\/em>(Medialis Printing: Sabat II, 2016), 16.<\/span> The altar creates a permanent or temporary space of reflection and spiritual offering. It is a space that is revisited, but also always in flux. Anishinaabe art scholar Adrienne Huard writes that for Indigenous queer or Two-Spirit peoples, the fluctuating cycles of the land are a reminder of fluidity in nature, gender, sexuality, and personal evolution.^{2<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 2 <\/a> - Adrienne Huard, \u201cThe Land is Liminal,\u201d Atmos: Climate and Culture <\/em>(2021), accessible online.<\/span> The cycles of the seasons as transitory passages are also in artist and writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson\u2019s essay \u201cLand as Pedagogy,\u201d in which \u201cthe land, Aki, is both context and process.\u201d^{3<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 3 <\/a> - Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Reistance <\/em>(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 151.<\/span> Referencing the changing natural world, Amour-Lynx\u2019s virtual ceremony continuously shifts its setting Skite\u2019kmujuawti<\/em> references fabricated digital spheres, urban cityscapes, and clips of the real land and waterways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Transitoriness is not reserved for the earthly plane. Amour-Lynx alludes to star knowledge, sky world, and related teachings in Mi\u2019kmaq epistemology that focus on the land cycles. One of the hieroglyphic forms that appears is a beading motif, recalling family relations\u200a\u2014\u200apast, present, and future. The \u201ccosmic canoe\u201d symbol also touches on the spirit realm, the underworld, the transfer of knowledge between the two, and the earthly domain between them. The painter James Gardner draws from medieval \u201cesoteric,\u201d occult, alchemical, and astrological imagery in his practice. Both Gardner and Amour-Lynx demonstrate that the sky as a body of knowledge has been a staple in European and Indigenous understandings of ourselves. Planetary or star knowledge is a popular and growing aspect of New Age spiritualism more broadly, particularly in zodiac compatibilities and planetary birth charts. This interest is not new, but was foundational to the development of early Western science, alchemy, and navigation. Gardner\u2019s Neptune Bathing <\/em>(2018) features an abstracted, pondering figure sitting among pools of blue and green, with an ominous purple sky above. In Roman mythology, brothers Jupiter and Pluto control the realms of heaven, earth, and the underworld. As a planetary archetype, Neptune is responsible for the collective mindset, fantasy, and dreams. Dreamwork, visions, spirit realms, and other natural connections were all sources of inspiration for Skite\u2019kmujuawti<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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In Jupiter in Detriment <\/em>(2018), Gardner forewarns a decline of the generous, prosperous, and successful associations with the fatherly archetype. The composition is fractured, chaotic, and spilling from the middle plane to a cavernous orange and purple swamp below. The seemingly cautionary tale fits into a pre-modern European understanding of apocalypse and rebirth as cycles of renewal. These cycles not only repeat themselves in terrestrial happenings but in planetary alignments and paths such as retrogrades, equinoxes, and eclipses. Amour-Lynx and Gardner both pull from star stories as lessons for the earthly world, and as a process of finding meaning. For Amour-Lynx, this process includes stepping into a role of custodian of the land. Such individualized meaning making in the grand order of the universe is a solution to the nihilism of the modern age or the psychic suffering of Medieval planetary myths.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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$\"James-Gardner_JupiterinDetriment\"$
James Gardner<\/strong>
Jupiter in Detriment<\/em>, 2018.
Photo : courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Returning to terra firma, the rivers that run through Skite\u2019kmujuawti<\/em> are not those of Mi\u2019kma\u2019ki (the territory of the Mi\u2019kmaq peoples), but the fluid streams bring to mind a world rich in water. Wiccan writer Arin Murphy-Hiscock describes outdoor sacred spaces, either produced or visited, as a crucial backdrop to ceremonies.^{4<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 4 <\/a> - Arin Murphy-Hiscock, The Way of the Green Witch: Rituals, Spells, and Practices to Bring You Back to Nature <\/em>(Avon, MA: Provenance Press, 2006), 43.<\/span> She suggests that bodies of water, such as streams, lakes, rivers, and ponds, are transformative spaces with associations with the magical otherworld. Although it is not always present in her work, artist and water witch Alana Bartol uses the element to explore relationships with landscapes, sites, and extraction, exemplified by orphaned oil wells and coal mines. In a process known as divination or dowsing, water witches find aquifers, sites for wells, mineral deposits, and lost belongings. Bartol draws from this tradition to engage communities in a call to action centred on stewardship, responsibility, and natural remediation. Some of these motifs appear in her recent work; for example, coal chute rubbings, botanical drawings, and dried herbs proliferate in her exhibition Processes of Remediation: Art, Relationships, Nature <\/em>(2021). Water also flows through Amour-Lynx\u2019s work as she confronts questions concerning disconnection and reconnection contained in her digital environment. Both artists build an intimate relationship with space; Bartol\u2019s is expansive, inviting others to become stewards of the physical world, whereas Amour-Lynx\u2019s presents an exclusive space to which we are granted access only as witness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
$\"Alana-Bartol_ProcessesofRemediation\"$ Alana Bartol<\/strong>
Processes of Remediation: art, relationships, nature<\/em>,
installation view, University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, 2021. <\/em>
Photo : blkarts.ca, courtesy of University of Lethbridge Art Gallery & VivianeArt, Calgary<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Rituals around plants or herbs as medicines are intrinsic to many practices, and they link ceremonies to specific spaces. These pieces of geography carry with them their own teachings, archetypes, and folk practices. For contemporary witches, plant helpers and aids are part of most magical practices. As acclaimed witch scholar Scott Cunningham notes, \u201cThe power behind herb magic is formless, shapeless, eternal\u2026 It is always there, present in abundance no matter where we are or where we travel in the universe. Though the power is formless, it takes on many forms.\u201d ^{5<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 5 <\/a> - Scott Cunningham, Cunningham\u2019s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs <\/em>(Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2008), 8.<\/span> Plants hold energy, which can be redirected while also linking us to specific sites and ecosystems. Amour-Lynx\u2019s digital ceremony contains a cluster of three young furry fiddleheads. The tender curls, found in early spring, are a traditional food source during the hunger months. Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer highlights ferns as a key part of the process of \u201cecological succession\u201d which creates life on rocky surfaces\u200a\u2014\u200afirst lichens, then mosses and ferns accumulate bringing being where none existed before; the crunchy lichen Umbilicaria <\/em>is described as the \u201cbelly button of the world.\u201d^{6<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 6 <\/a> - Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants <\/em>(Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions: 2013), 274, 269.<\/span> Cunningham writes that in Western witchcraft, some ferns are protective and bring good fortune, and other species, such as \u201cmale fern,\u201d augur luck, love, and companionship.^{7<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 7 <\/a> - Cunningham, Cunningham\u2019s Encyclopedia<\/em>, 115\u200a\u2014\u200a16.<\/span> In the 2021 installation Rotten Pot<\/em>, Bartol hangs bundles of dried wormwood, tansy, mullein, thistle, and sweet clover from the rafters. These locally harvested plants pull abandoned industrial sites that have been reclaimed by nature and mountainside ecosystems into the art gallery. They bring their energy and magic, offering protection from poor health, poison, accidents, animal predators, or evil. Some also have a dual purpose as love charms. Amour-Lynx\u2019s clusters of digital fiddleheads creep onto the screen and disappear again, just like the passage of time, cycles of seasons, or the staggered bloom of young ferns in pockets of sunshine on the forest floor. Both Bartol and Amour-Lynx evoke plants from specific spaces for protection, cleansing, and love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Alana-Bartol_SilveryLupinePlantsofGrassyMountain\"$
Alana Bartol<\/strong>
Silvery Lupine, Plants of Grassy Mountain<\/em>, 2020. <\/em>
Photo : courtesy of VivianeArt, Calgary<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Pagan prision chaplain and video artist Jamie Ross has also taken up these issues of space and connection. Works such as XII <\/em>(2018) illuminate how incarcerated men connect to divinity and fight for state\/institution recognition. Also in 2018, with support from the artist-run centre Verticale, Ross led a demonstration and walk at the Laval correctional facility where he worked. Together, Ross and the incarcerated men preformed two halves of a May Day celebreation from outside and within the prision walls, centring a Pagan practice and highlighting the lack of rights for religious minorities in Qu\u00e9bec given the Christian focus and symbolism of multi-faith spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Jamie-Ross_Verticale_KristenBrown\"$
Jamie Ross
<\/strong>Un sortil\u00e8ge de lib\u00e9ration<\/em>,
performance view, Verticale, Laval, 2018.
Performer : Marie la Vierge.
Photo : Kristen Brown, courtesy of the artist &
Verticale, Laval<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Early works such as Two to a Blanket, Feet to the Fire <\/em>(2012) explore the timber industry archive, May Day Faerie spaces, and contemporary queer Pagan communities. Ross bridges queerness, Pagan practices, and community-made sites. Amour-Lynx draws on queerness as part of her solo ceremony clothed in Two-Spirit regalia: a bolo tie, celestial and botanical ribbon skirt, and black moccasins with blue fur trim. These Indigiqueer presentations make space for a Two-Spirit ceremony even though colonization and evangelism have infiltrated so many Indigenous communities, elders, and protocols with harmful gender binarism and heteronormativity. Similarly, be they historical or contemporary queer communities and Pagan protocols, Ross creates spaces of celebration and ceremony for self-made families, covens, and practitioners. His Club Gemini <\/em>(2019) celebrates the Montr\u00e9al homophile bar and advocacy space that opened in 1969. Ross accessed it through archives and spiritual contact with queer ancestors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Jamie-Ross_ClubGemini\"$
Jamie Ross<\/strong>
Club Gemini<\/em>, installation view,
Pop Montr\u00e9al, 2019. <\/em>
Photo : courtesy of the artist &
Art Pop \/ Pop Montr\u00e9al<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Presented as a sound installation, Club Gemini<\/em>, like Skite\u2019kmujuawti<\/em>, creates a queer-safe ceremonial space, celebrating places of solace and connection. The spaces or rituals that we bear witness to in these works are free from erasure or persecution. One is made in response to community isolation in a languishing pandemic and the other celebrates the agitation and advocacy that resulted in the partial decriminalization of homosexuality under Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Cunningham writes plainly that magic, \u201chowever simple it might seem, provides practical solutions to problems.\u201d He continues, \u201cHerb magic\u200a\u2014\u200aas with all magic\u200a\u2014\u200amust be backed up with appropriate and timely actions in the physical world.\u201d^{8<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 8 <\/a> - Ibid., 4, 18.<\/span> Amour-Lynx, Bartol, and Ross all foster spaces for community reverence or reconnection that are uniquely individual. Like most magic, these spaces and ceremonies offer solutions to problems, providing tools to fix what is broken, be it meaning, isolation, colonial separation, or environmental degradation. Artists engaged in magic, Pagan ritual, the occult, or witchcraft create for themselves and in the process they manifest objects, actions, and behaviours that were once just thoughts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
As a process, Skite\u2019kmujuawti <\/em>reveals itself. Amour-Lynx\u2019s work leaves traces for the learning process, with imperfect digital renderings and clipping in the animations. Drawing from DIY glitch art, she demonstrates the vulnerability of the artistic process and the imperfection of an amateur\u2019s approach to new tools such as 4D forms. This technological learning is coupled with a display of personal spiritual growth in public. Returning to altars, Krohn writes that although they are private in nature for practitioners and their spirits, some gain insight by sharing them on social ^{9<\/sup><\/a><\/span>media.(\/NOTE]} 9 <\/a> - Krohn, \u201cWhat Is On Your #Altar,\u201d 16.<\/span> One of the last forms to appear in Skite\u2019kmujuawti <\/em>is the Google Maps icon, a contemporary \u201cx marks the spot\u201d or destination. The piece concludes with the icon hovering beside the \u201ccosmic canoe.\u201d As a gifted teacher and storyteller, Amour-Lynx shares her process rather than a perfect end result. And for those on a self-made spiritual path, it is a familiar refrain that the journey is itself the reward.<\/p>\n
Alana Bartol, Amanda Amour-Lynx, Chris Gismondi, James Gardner, Jamie Ross<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Artists are creators in that they bring new lives and objects into our world. Processes of creative conjuring and ritualistic meaning-making are important for marginalized communities, especially during troubled and uncertain times. Observances and practices provide meaning and a relationship with place, but also higher purpose as an alternative form of spirituality. This generative process of birthing may draw overtly from occult, metaphysical, magic(k), folk, or witchcraft elements as a layer added to the act of creation. In drawing from these themes, elements of ritual often root the artist in the site as a way of grounding. Within contemporary art, ceremonial practices such as repetition and overt ritualism with specific intention heighten meaning. This attention brings art closer to a visual manifestation of divination, relationships, or reverence rooted in and responsible to place.<\/br>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":163922,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[882],"tags":[],"numeros":[2758],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[948],"artistes":[2590,2591,2714,2086],"thematiques":[],"type_post":[],"class_list":["post-163276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-post","numeros-105-new-new-age","auteurs-chris-gismondi-en","artistes-alana-bartol-en","artistes-amanda-amour-lynx-en","artistes-james-gardner-en","artistes-jamie-ross-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163276"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":271393,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163276\/revisions\/271393"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163276"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=163276"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=163276"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=163276"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=163276"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=163276"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=163276"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=163276"},{"taxonomy":"type_post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_post?post=163276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}