Poetry Magic 1

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And of course she’s not alone. Countless thousands of thoughtful and intelligent people have had experiences of a kind that they call religious. James paid them the compliment of taking these experiences seriously, and produced a classic of psychological insight. But could there be a Varieties of Magical Experience? Could the mental universe that produced witch bottles and sigil, and grimoires, and the whole idea of magic itself, be rich enough to sustain an examination of that sort? One point worth making is that aesthetics, together with theories of poetics and literary criticism, does not operate in a vacuum, but within a community of shared approaches and understandings. Typically, they are academia-based, and so written for fellow academics and their captive students. Their insights are important – indeed indispensable – for countering the half-truths that float around the poetry world, and for insisting that poetry maintain some depth and substance, but the young poet may wish initially to sidestep these abstruse matters and join another community, that of poetry itself. Poetry also has its beliefs and patterns of excellence. Its insights have to be acquired by participation – by writing and having that writing evaluated by fellow poets, by being able to appreciate a wide range of work, and by acquiring the crafts of literary composition. The deadline for entries is Friday 27 October 2023; poems must be unpublished as of our spring Poetry News issue publication date at end December 2023. Free verse poetry is poetry without many of its usual rigours, which opens up the doors for lots of creative possibilities. That being said, it might feel a bit daunting for some budding writers when they have no form to follow, so we’ve come up with some lovely resources to make free verse poetry at KS2 a bit more fun and accessible! Whether we realize it or not, when we write poetry, we are programming our creation with our intention. Like drawing a sigil, a poem is the shape and sound of our intent. Is it a poem of personal power? Is it a poem of memory? Is it a poem that recalls love? Is it a poem of reclamation? Being conscious of what you’re feeling — and programming your poem to achieve a certain goal when it’s read aloud or finished — you imbue your poem with power. It is a spell cast.

The language of binding indeed seems to characterize the magical curses, and the Greek term katadesmos—binding down—is used in the ancient sources to designate the magical curse tablets. In addition to verbs of binding, verbs of handing over or registering appear, as the target is consigned to the power of the divinity invoked. It is notable, however, that such language of transfer also appears in the public curses, whereas binding less often appears in such prayers for justice or community curses. On the contrary, I’d rather say that there are times when we have to keep our reason in line. I daresay that the state of Negative Capability, where imagination rules, is in fact where a good deal of scientific discovery begins. In the old expression, reason is a good servant but a bad master, and its powers are limited: no work of art was ever reasoned into existence, for example. David Hume was right: reason is (and should be) the slave of the passions, not their governor. Or as William James put it: “In the metaphysical and religious sphere, articulate reasons are cogent for us only when our inarticulate feelings of reality have already been impressed in favour of the same conclusion.” The objectives of magical practice, as it appears in the evidence, can be as varied as the range of human wishes; anything for which someone might want extraordinary power may appear as the aim of magic. Although some scholars have imagined magic as primarily concerned with harmful effects for personal purposes (with a special category of “white” magic to account for the exceptions), it is not the ill will that marks magic in the ancient sources as much as the extraordinary nature of the performance or the abnormal social position of the performer. Above all, the discourse of magic applies in cases where the practice is seen as an extraordinarily efficacious means of obtaining the end, whatever that end might be. November 2023, 6.30pm. Michael Phillips – Blake and Italy. Michael Phillips, master printmaker and leading expert on William Blake, will explore the influence of Italian art on Blake’s work.Rumi, from the Mathnawi, verses 4074 & 4075. Retrieved and lightly revised from masnavi.net “More of Cloyne” by Alfred Perceval Graves Written between 1292 and 1294 in commemoration of Beatrice’s death, Vita Nuova ( The New Life) reflects Dante’s first effort to depict her as an abstract model of love and beauty. In this collection of early canzoni, Dante uses a refreshing and innovative approach in love poetry, dulcestil nuovo (sweet new style), which equates the love experience with a divine and mystical spiritual revelation. Vita Nuova ends with Dante’s promise to write “what has never before been written of any woman.” Criticism of Vita Nuova has been almost invariably positive, although an occasional scholar has taken exception to its sensibility, finding in it an overwrought imagination and sensitivity. The story of Dante’s love for Beatrice is often taken as allegory, particularly by critics reading the book in the light of his later works. One of the ends for which magic may be used, however, is indeed to bring harm upon another person, and the category of curses includes many that fall within the discourse of magic. Curses aimed at hindering a rival in a wide variety of contexts appear not only in the literary evidence, but also in the material evidence of curse tablets, most often lead lamellae inscribed with the text of a curse. The contexts may be the more implicit competitions of business or personal rivalries or the explicit contests of public performances such as the theatrical or athletic arenas or the law courts. The extraordinary efficacy of these magical curses appears as a form of cheating within the contest, and it is notable that such curses are never boasted of as the means by which a rival was defeated (in contrast to strength, speed, or even cleverness), although rivals might accuse each other of cheating by use of magical curses. 8 The impact of social location works both ways. A remedy used by old wives may be labeled magic and thus dismissed by an urbane sophisticate, but likewise a remedy may be dismissed by labelling it an old wives’ tale and thus magic, whether or not it is actually brought forth by (or even ever used by) old wives. Jacco Dieleman, Priests, Tongues, and Rites: The London-Leiden Magical Manuscripts and Translation in Egyptian Ritual (100– 300 CE), Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 153 (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2005); Edward O. D. Love, Code-Switching with the Gods: The Bilingual (Old Coptic-Greek) Spells of PGM IV (P. Bibliothèque Nationale Supplément Grec. 574) and Their Linguistic, Religious, and Socio-Cultural Context in Late Roman Egypt (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016); Ljuba Bortolani, Magical Hymns from Roman Egypt: A Study of Greek and Egyptian Traditions of Divinity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016); and Athanassia Zografou, Papyrus Magiques Grecs: Le Mot et Le Rite. Autour Des Rites Sacrificiels, Παράρτημα‎ 85 (Ioannina, Greece: Panepistimio Ioanninon, 2013).

Read Ilya Kaminsky’s “ We Lived Happily During the War,” which imagines America’s end. What kind of magic appears in these poems? What purpose does it serve? What is true about this story despite all that is fictional about it? Individualism: seeing the world through the artist’s inner feelings and mental states, separate from religion, nature, science and society. The extreme self-consciousness creating a stream of consciousness. A friend and I had been sleeping in a Sadhu’s tent near the Ganga river in the Indian city of Varanasi. We awoke to the clatter of a large man bursting in, followed by two others, all wearing fearsom expressions. Before any of us had lifted our heads, his voice boomed with his demands.The redemption of the self is a valid way of approaching the redemption of all. One should never utter the poem without concentration, but instead sanctify it, know it, and reflect. Want to try one? This 11-line poetry spell for healing is accessible and potent. Write automatically Write a poem that speaks of the in-between, the crossroads, the liminal. What does it look at dusk? What does it feel like to be almost touched, almost loved, almost lost? How you capture what feels to straddle the liminal — in a poem? Word Worship Intellectualism: writing became less emotional, more analytical. Posing more questions than answering them.