Anonymous, Camille Flammarion, L'Atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire (Paris, 1888)
Where do ideas come from? You may understand creativity as something that comes from within—for writers like Cormac McCarthy, ideas can be plucked from the unconscious mind. Alternatively, you may view it as something external to you, just as Virgil and Homer invoked a muse to help channel creative forces. Either way, the creative occult could help take the pressure off the self-conscious creator, and enable us to push past blocks and find flow.
Creatives have long sought inspiration through occult methods. We are launching a themed submissions window for occult-inspired work. To name it, we borrow the term Spiritus Mundi, or world-spirit. Employed by Cornelius Agrippa and later by the poet WB Yeats, Spiritus Mundi denotes the realm from which all creative and magical inspiration can be drawn. There have been countless others writers who channelled the creative occult, from Sylvia Plath to William Burroughs; artists, such as Kandinsky and Ithell Colquhoun.
We’re now considering submissions. Every two months we will post a new theme or occult method to inspire your own creativity. When possible, we will pair prompts and submission windows with a Zoom workshop, available to a certain tier of Patreon supporters.
Our first theme is Serendipity and Synchronicity
In his essay “Chance Traveller”, Haruki Murakami, recalls a number of strange albeit real coincidences he has experienced that no one ever believes. The events weave together and seem too improbable, too coincidental to not be planned by him, or divine intervention. After one wondrous tale involving jazz music, he says: “Was the god of jazz hovering in the sky above Boston, giving me a wink and a smile and saying, “Yo, you dig it?” Explaining to the reader his thoughts on these synchronicities, he says this: “Don’t misunderstand me—I’m not the sort of person who’s into occult phenomena … I’m not saying I don’t believe in any of these. No problem with me if they really do exist. I’m just personally not interested. Still, a significant number of strange, out-of-left-field kinds of things have coloured my otherwise humdrum life.”
Murakami’s fiction, too, seems planned. And yet he says it’s not. He writes to find out what will happen next. The events pool together naturally, in the right order, and seem predetermined. It brings to mind the Felix Felicis potion, from the Harry Potter series. Everything Harry does upon drinking it seems to bring about a successful outcome, even if he sets out unsure what it is he wants. For writers and artists, looking for patterns in daily life can be helpful. It provides limitations when we’re overwhelmed by choices. It enables us to create narrative structure, to form connections, to distil and anchor our ideas and feelings to specific moments. Perhaps it’s a particular image or motif that keeps recurring. A word, or string of words, you keep seeing in advertisements, street signs, in books and newspapers. Once you’ve found it, perhaps you’ve found a thread to follow. Sometimes these threads lead nowhere, though you enjoy the ride. Sometimes they act like omens, portending a seemingly inevitable outcome. Other times, they might lead you, your characters, or practice, closer to where you, they or it want to be.
You may respond to this theme through artwork, poetry (maximum three poems), creative non-fiction or short fiction (up to 4000 words in length). We will publish selected submissions online.
How to submit
We accept submissions via email. Please send your work to cunningfolkmagazine@gmail.com. We ask that you include Spiritus Mundi in the subject line, followed by your name and the genre of the work you are submitting. Your work should be provided as an attachment, not pasted into the body of your email. It needn’t be occult-themed, though we do love work that draws on the occult, mythology, folklore and magic; more importantly, its creation must in some way respond to the theme. All submissions should be accompanied by an artist bio of no more than 100 words. Unfortunately, we are currently unable to offer a fee for submissions. We are fully volunteer-run. We will therefore only respond to submissions we wish to publish. The deadline for the current theme is 30 June 2020.