Political Sorcery 2
Peace in Palestine, and everywhere
This is not a protest, is direct action. Political Sorcery proposes to come together and activate blessings for the ones that act towards peace and cursings for the ones that act towards wars and genocides, whoever they are. We don't even have to decide who is the most guilty for what's happening, if Israel, Hamas, the US, the military complex or other global capitalist interests are the worst. We might have our strong opinions, but if we really believe them, we will be open to test them. Just come with an intention for peace and for what is necessary for a meta-justice to happen, and let's see what Political Sorcery might do.
When politics are spectacle, when protests and other ways of "resisting" feel pointless, when it seems that they won and there is nothing we can do, maybe we can act from the other end of reality, on the metaphysical plane. No matter how "unscientific" or wacky it sounds, Political Sorcery might be a way to have a saying, an influence, it might be one of the few still possible ways to be political, with a twist. Political Sorcery is a way of acting at the end of hope. They think that we're powerless, and we might be in the sphere they function and understand, yet we're having power, and it's time to put it to good use. Political Sorcery creates metaphysical tools for fighting specific evils. In proximity and with the support of others, we develop charms, rituals, prayers, curses and other metaphysical ways to affect reality through our bodies, drawings, objects, chants, words. We can draw from different cultures, but we'll mostly create our own sorceries and perform them together for greater effect. It might work even if you don't believe – Political Sorcery makes itself real through practice. Its meta-message is that there are things beyond the power's understanding and control, that they're not untouchable. If “political” is to affect the power relations, Political Sorcery is a direct way of reclaiming its core. It is art that metaphysically acts on the world – art as political sorcery.
This is not just a symbolic gesture. Sorcery is a human capacity that we have and there is clear evidence of its workings. There is vast documentation about sorcery capacities in shamans, witches, saints, and people in general. In the "pointing the bone" shamanic practice, people who had been ceremoniously pointed and cursed would go into a rapid decline and no treatment has been shown to prevent their soon to follow death. Puzzling studies show that, mysteriously and scientifically unexplainable, prayer can help in healing even for the people that you pray for, no matter the distance. Our default scientism and physicalism infused perspectives render these things inconceivable. Yet, in all cultures, Western European until recently too, the fact that we can affect events at a distance and be affected was an unquestionable experience. Our bodies were forced out of these capacities to become anatomic, medical, machinic, suitable for industrialization and capitalism. That's why we are still culturally pressed to shy away from these subjects.
Metaphysical practices have their meta-ethics – impersonal, supra-human justice that comes from beyond, above. In many traditions, sorcery takes hold only if it's ethical. For sorcery to be effective it has to serve a greater good. If you try to abuse it for greedy personal gain, it might turn against you. There used to be a metajustice at work and the metaphysical was keeping things in check – you cannot exploit and amass huge wealth if greed is a fundamental sin, or if destroying nature means killing your "mother", or your soul. Capitalism is radically incompatible with these metaethics. To "progress" they needed to get rid of the spiritual. They had to burn the witches so a body as a mechanism, suitable for industrialization, to appear.
These zones are still tabu in current art, not only as subjects but also at a level of art function, yet, politically, ecologically and maybe also spiritually (to use another tabu word), being in a full mass extinction event and horrible humanitarian crises, we have to explore uncomfortable zones, to open frames, paradigms, the world. It's time to reclaim metaphysical capacities and put them to good use. We don't know what a body can do when it stops being an empty anatomical mechanism, especially if it starts to believe in its possibilities.
Previous notes from inside Political Sorcery:
“I touch the ground with my left hand, like listening to the earth, what a cliché. The cliché goes deeper – my heart aches. It's like I feel the horror that goes on on this earth. The wars, the aggressive exploitation, depletion, poisoning of everything. All this, that everyone knows, becomes an affective experience. At some point I was thinking, ok, but where is the sorcery? And something very feeble started to go the other way, from me, or rather from around me through me into the earth, into the world. It didn't really work, what's coming my way is much stronger. I'm a receiver again, overwhelmed by this sad affect coming from the ground. I cannot interfere. No sorcery today. Unless my amplified sensibility towards these horrors passes as sorcery.” (2023 November 10, Izvor Park Bucharest)
“The moon shines on my open palms. The wind makes my body airy. The sea extends waves to my body and my body to the world. It's a weak sorcery, a small butterfly effect – the little love that is activated here affects things that affect other things, that might affect and act on too big and evil things like wars, genocides, extinction of nature…. Love works, in mysterious ways. This is how I feel and imagine. Now the darkness of the caves here in the valley reaches my body as shivers of fear. Blackness expands in me through my chest. The charged body radiates affective darkness and fear. If enough of this spills into the world and more people join, it might actually impede our seemingly unstoppable bright marsh of destruction. Maybe the dead can join in. People lived in these caves for thousands of years, before being colonized and exterminated. I go into my cave for the night. Darkness is now open and pleasant, home.” (2024 January 19, Tenerife)
“If there is an event or an intention in a different part of the world that affects us here one way or another, than it seems reasonable that an embodied intention here might affect things at a distance, in one way or another. I move forward, take a few steps with my left hand pushing through air. I feel and hope that this means that I am pushing away harmful war troops, at least partly. I feel a weakening in the body, yet the gesture persists. I push forward and forward, maybe some of the people involved in the provoking of disasters feel this weakening too. The degradation of the environment cannot be separated from the degradation of one's own. The position of my arms gradually takes the meaning of an embrace. Not fully closed, not mimetic, but a suspended space between my chest, the palms, the elbows, a miniature world ahead of me. Maybe this can transmit some protection, a momentary embrace, or a field of resistance for the victims of the attacks, in Gaza, Ukraine, and everywhere where explosions seem imminent. Suddenly a feeling of revenge appeared. My body has some resistance to this, it normalized a little bit, as if powerless in the face of revenge. My torso twists and moves forward, like screwing itself through air. I feel this immediately connected with the possible villains' inner scorn. Their health will degrade, sooner or later, I feel this. We are tired, and so your heart is, but your harming bodies will crawl for generations, the harm will weigh you down, more and more and more, unable to speak, to move, to breathe. You will be mute for a long long time.” (2023 November 10, Izvor Park Bucharest)
📷 Adriana Gheorghe, Petre Fall, Cătălina Gubandru, Eliza Trefas, Florin Flueras.
With Eliza Trefas, Adriana Gheorghe, Cătălina Gubandru, Kira Valentina, lypkhan, Alex Trefas, Petre Fall…