Category: writing

‘John Dee and the Empire of Angels: Enochian Magick and the Occult Roots of the Modern World’ by Jason Louv

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

“John Dee (13 July 1527 – 1608 or 1609) was an English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, teacher, occultist, and alchemist. He was the court astronomer for, and advisor to, Elizabeth I, and spent much of his time on alchemy, divination, and Hermetic philosophy. As an antiquarian, he had one of the largest libraries in England at the time. As a political advisor, he advocated the foundation of English colonies in the New World to form a ‘British Empire’, a term he is credited with coining. . . His goal was to help bring forth a unified world religion through the healing of the breach of the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches and the recapture of the pure theology of the ancients.” – Wikipedia

If you read about the hermetic philosophy and its impact on religion in non-fiction and fiction, or the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I,  you will sooner or later come across John Dee. His influene extended into multiple areas, one being his belief in the value of communicating with angels. Louv’s book is a well-written exploration of Dee’s life.

From the Publisher

“A comprehensive look at the life and continuing influence of 16th-century scientific genius and occultist Dr. John Dee

“• Presents an overview of Dee’s scientific achievements, intelligence and spy work, imperial strategizing, and his work developing methods to communicate with angels

“• Pieces together Dee’s fragmentary Spirit Diaries and examines Enochian in precise detail and the angels’ plan to establish a New World Order

“• Explores Dee’s influence on Sir Francis Bacon, modern science, Rosicrucianism, and 20th-century occultists such as Jack Parsons, Aleister Crowley, and Anton LaVey

“Dr. John Dee (1527-1608), Queen Elizabeth I’s court advisor and astrologer, was the foremost scientific genius of the 16th century. Laying the foundation for modern science, he actively promoted mathematics and astronomy as well as made advances in navigation and optics that helped elevate England to the foremost imperial power in the world. Centuries ahead of his time, his theoretical work included the concept of light speed and prototypes for telescopes and solar panels. Dee, the original “007” (his crown-given moniker), even invented the idea of a “British Empire,” envisioning fledgling America as the new Atlantis, himself as Merlin, and Elizabeth as Arthur.

“But, as Jason Louv explains, Dee was suppressed from mainstream history because he spent the second half of his career developing a method for contacting angels. After a brilliant ascent from star student at Cambridge to scientific advisor to the Queen, Dee, with the help of a disreputable, criminal psychic named Edward Kelley, devoted ten years to communing with the angels and archangels of God. These spirit communications gave him the keys to Enochian, the language that mankind spoke before the fall from Eden. Piecing together Dee’s fragmentary Spirit Diaries and scrying sessions, the author examines Enochian in precise detail and explains how the angels used Dee and Kelley as agents to establish a New World Order that they hoped would unify all monotheistic religions and eventually dominate the entire globe.

“Presenting a comprehensive overview of Dee’s life and work, Louv examines his scientific achievements, intelligence and spy work, imperial strategizing, and Enochian magick, establishing a psychohistory of John Dee as a singular force and fundamental driver of Western history. Exploring Dee’s influence on Sir Francis Bacon, the development of modern science, 17th-century Rosicrucianism, the 19th-century occult revival, and 20th-century occultists such as Jack Parsons, Aleister Crowley, and Anton LaVey, Louv shows how John Dee continues to impact science and the occult to this day.”

Publishers Weekly Review

“Louv (Hyperworlds, Underworlds) delivers an overwhelming amount of information in this sweeping attempt to reconcile two schools of thought about Elizabethan scientist John Dee (1527–1608). Historians concerned with Dee generally fall into two camps, writes Louv: the political historians embarrassed by Dee’s late-in-life angelic obsessions, and the occultists indifferent to Dee’s involvement in the development of British intellectualism and politics. By elucidating the “direct intersection between the forces of magic and the machinery of empire,” Louv, with moderate success, argues for the importance of Dee’s ideas throughout the last 500 years of Western history. ” (Click on PW logo for complete review.)

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of magical realism novels set in the Florida Panhandle.

They can’t cure what I got

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing4 Comments

I know that sounds like the opening line of a love song where the loved one is a dangerous thing. But alas, that’s not the case.

What I got, is Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). Everyone seems to agree that the bowels are irritated one way or another, but opinions are mixed about what causes it and what (if anything) gets rid of it.

The Mayo Clinic says, “Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a common disorder that affects the stomach and intestines, also called the gastrointestinal tract. Symptoms include cramping, abdominal pain, bloating, gas, diarrhea, constipation, or both. IBS is a chronic condition that you’ll need to manage long term.”

I’m trying to discover what my “trigger foods” are in case that makes any difference in this ailment I’ve been fighting since June. A lot of the foods I like are on the don’t go there list. I’m drinking a glass one red wine right now. It’s on the might be good/might be bad list.

I can’t have cow’s milk or yogurt, apples, asparagus, wheat, broccoli, soy products, or sweeteners. I can have Lactaid, blueberries, hard cheeses such as feta, cantaloupe, potatoes, and lettuce. So, win some, lose some.

I’m looking at a diet called FODMAP, i.e., “What is FODMAP? FODMAP stands for fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols, which are short-chain carbohydrates (sugars) that the small intestine absorbs poorly.”

According to Johns Hopkins,

“Low FODMAP is a three-step elimination diet:

  1. First, you stop eating certain foods (high FODMAP foods).
  2. Next, you slowly reintroduce them to see which ones are troublesome.
  3. Once you identify the foods that cause symptoms, you can avoid or limit them while enjoying everything else worry-free.”

My first thought is, that seems really tedious. But I have no choice. I’m testing red wine today.

A lot of people have IBS. Many don’t know it. Those who do know can find information at the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins sites, among others.  FODMAP diet information can be found here.

Now I’ve got the Gordon Lightfoot song “For Loving Me” stuck inside my head. I’m sure it’s about cauliflower and snow peas. I ate them with wild abandon, unmindful of the consequences.

–Malcolm

How unreliable are we?

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

You’ve probably heard the reason why eyewitness accounts of accidents are often wrong. Eyewitnesses may not see 100% of the accident: their view is obscured by other cars/objects, they glance away, etc. But when asked about the accident, they believe they saw the whole thing since the mind tends to fill in the gaps with what probably happened even though they don’t realize there are gaps to be filled in. So, what they saw was a mix of reality and possibility.

Many of us face the same patchy viewpoint of things that happened in our own pasts. Sure, sometimes we exaggerate and know that’s what we’re doing–perhaps for so many years we forget we ramped up the action and our role in it. Or, we flat don’t remember the whole thing and have pasted in what probably happened in the way an eyewitness unknowingly fills in what s/he thinks s/he saw.

According to the Innocence Project, “Eyewitness misidentification contributes to an overwhelming majority of wrongful convictions that have been overturned by post-conviction DNA testing.” With that in mind, can we even believe our own stories and memories?

While I believe we know when we’re exaggerating a personal yarn, I don’t think we know how often we do this when we’re telling others about college experiences, military events, or other things that happened long ago. We’re making a lot of it up. And yet, if we read a novel or short story with an unreliable narrator, we’re likely to get angry when we discover we’ve been lied to–unless there’s something in the story that tips us off.

According to MasterClass, “An unreliable narrator is an untrustworthy storyteller, most often used in narratives with a first-person point of view. The unreliable narrator is either deliberately deceptive or unintentionally misguided, forcing the reader to question their credibility as a storyteller.” This site suggests four types of unreliable narrators:  (1) Picaro – the one who exaggerates, (2) Madman – the one who is detached from reality, (3) Naif – youthful ignorance, among other things, obscures his/her view of reality, (4) Liar – this person knows s/he is lying for one motivation or another.

The Catcher in the Rye:  Does Holden Caulfield, a troubled teen, see and understand what’s happening around him? Probably not. So we cannot trust him as as a wholly reliable narrator. According to Kylie Brant, “Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye is the ultimate unreliable narrator. Reeling from a personal trauma, his narrations provide a caustic take on the world around him. His observations of people and events are veiled in pessimism. He tells the reader he lies all the time, but the reader doesn’t necessarily believe that initially because he’s sympathetic and relatable. ”

Gone Girl: According to Self-Publishing School, “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn presents an enthralling example of an unreliable narrator.  As you follow Amy Dunne’s narration, you’ll find yourself constantly questioning her motives and intentions. Amy’s manipulative nature and hidden agenda create shocking plot twists, challenging your understanding of the characters and the events unfolding in the story. The strategic use of unreliable perspectives adds layers of complexity to the narrative, making “Gone Girl” a gripping and unforgettable psychological thriller.”

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier:  CBR notes that “Mrs. de Winter, the narrator in the new adaptation of Rebecca from Ben Wheatly, is a voice of confusion who can’t keep the facts straight.” The new Mrs. deWinter cannot compete with the original, so readers/viewers cannot totally accept her perspective. A close look at the original film will show the same lacks of certainty.

Truth, it seems, in our lives and in our feature films and novels is always relative.  We are the storytellers of our lives as authors are the storytellers of their novels and screenplays. At some point, most of us accept the fact that all of it is unreliable, intentionally or otherwise.

–Malclm

‘The Milagro Beanfield War’ by John Nichols, a film by Robert Redford

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Film, writing

I’m thinking of this film today because I just learned that John Nichols died at 83  in November, and I’m rather embarrassed that I missed it at the time especially when such publications as The New York Times and The Guardian carried the news. (I can find no public-domain photographs of Nichols.)

The Guardian writes, “Nichols won early recognition with the 1965 publication of his offbeat love story The Sterile Cuckoo, later made into a movie starring Liza Minnelli. The coming-of-age book and subsequent movie were set amid private northeastern colleges that were a familiar milieu to Nichols, who attended boarding school in Connecticut and private college in upstate New York.

First Printing

“He moved in 1969 with his first wife from New York City to northern New Mexico, where he found inspiration for a trilogy of novels anchored in the success of The Milagro Beanfield War.”

Wikipedia writes, “Critic Richard Scheib liked the film’s direction and the characters portrayed. He wrote, “Redford arrays a colorfully earthy ensemble of characters. The plot falls into place with lazy, deceptive ease. Redford places it up against a gently barbed level of social commentary, although this is something that comes surprisingly light-heartedly. There’s an enchantment to the film – at times it is a more successful version of the folklore fable that Francis Ford Coppola’s Finian’s Rainbow (1968) tried to be but failed.”

I liked the movie although the reviews were mixed.

From The Publisher

“Joe Mondragon, a feisty hustler with a talent for trouble, slammed his battered pickup to a stop, tugged on his gumboots, and marched into the arid patch of ground. Carefully (and also illegally), he tapped into the main irrigation channel. And so began-though few knew it at the time of Milagro beanfield war. But like everything else in the dirt-poor town of Milagro, it would be a patchwork war, fought more by tactical retreats than by battlefield victories. Gradually, the small farmers and sheepmen begin to rally to Joe’s beanfield as the symbol of their lost rights and their lost lands. And downstate in the capital, the Anglo water barons and power brokers huddle in urgent conference, intent on destroying that symbol before it destroys their multimillion-dollar land-development schemes.

“The tale of Milagro’s rising is wildly comic and lovingly tender, a vivid portrayal of a town that, half-stumbling and partly prodded, gropes its way toward its own stubborn salvation.”

–Malcolm

The new year never seems to live up to the Times Square excitement

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn magic, writing

People are still shooting each other, having sex, drinking too much wine, getting married, watching bad TV, dying of old age (so long  Glynis Johns at 100), and eating too much fast food. When will it end?

I’m more concerned about the mass shootings than the wine and the sex and the marriage–like the senseless attack at Iowa’s Perry High School. Shooters kill a bunch of people and then kill themselves. Why don’t they kill themselves first? That would reduce the amount of grief and paperwork.

We expect too much magic, it seems, with the changing of the year.  Or maybe we don’t expect enough. Or, worse yet, we expect the same old, same old. Speeding tickets, DUIs, getting fired, getting hired, texting too much, running into a tree while texting, being shot by the cops while breaking into a store, finding the Oak Island Treasure. Yes, when will it end?

I have high hopes for the human race, but low expectations. Perhaps you feel that way, too.

I don’t think “it” will end because it’s easier for all of us to sit back and watch “it” happen on TV without worrying about “it” (all the bad stuff) than figuring out how to fix “it.” Okay, most of us don’t know how to fix it, though one would think that by working on the problem as a group we could make progress with the changing of the years.

Then, New Year’s Eve would mean something.

–Malcolm

‘The Waters’ by Bonnie Jo Campbell

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, writing

Bonnie Jo Campbell (American Salvage, Q Road, Once Upon a River, Love Letters to Sons of Bitches) will release a new novel The Waters on January 9. Entertainment Weekly calls Campbell “a bard, a full-throated singer whose melodies are odes to farms and water and livestock and fishing rods and rifles, and to hardworking folks who know the value of life as well as the randomness of life’s troubles.”  Her fans will welcome this new story that as author Daniel Woodrell (Winter’s Bone) said, “tells a story so deeply rooted in a specific place that the accumulation of details approaches the magical.”

From the Publisher

“A master of rural noir returns with a fierce, mesmerizing novel about exceptional women and the soul of a small town.

“On an island in the Great Massasauga Swamp―an area known as “The Waters” to the residents of nearby Whiteheart, Michigan―herbalist and eccentric Hermine “Herself” Zook has healed the local women of their ailments for generations. As stubborn as her tonics are powerful, Herself inspires reverence and fear in the people of Whiteheart, and even in her own three estranged daughters. The youngest―the beautiful, inscrutable, and lazy Rose Thorn―has left her own daughter, eleven-year-old Dorothy “Donkey” Zook, to grow up wild.

Campbell

“Donkey spends her days searching for truths in the lush landscape and in her math books, waiting for her wayward mother and longing for a father, unaware that family secrets, passionate love, and violent men will flood through the swamp and upend her idyllic childhood. Rage simmers below the surface of this divided community, and those on both sides of the divide have closed their doors against the enemy. The only bridge across the waters is Rose Thorn.

“With a ‘ruthless and precise eye for the details of the physical world’ (Jane Smiley, New York Times Book Review), Bonnie Jo Campbell presents an elegant antidote to the dark side of masculinity, celebrating the resilience of nature and the brutality and sweetness of rural life.”

Kirkus Reviews

“The wise woman privy to nature’s secrets has become an overused fictional trope, but it’s mitigated here by Campbell’s sharply drawn characters and her refusal to make easy judgments about them. A birth rather predictably reconciles the town’s men with the Zook women, but the new arrival does not solve everyone’s problems. Campbell’s thoughtfully rendered characters find life rewarding and bewildering in equal measure. Atmospheric, well-written, and generally satisfying despite some overly familiar elements.”

–Malcolm

What’s a dead rat on a Leprchaun’s dinner table?

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

It’s a writing prompt. Writing prompts, which feature a potential plot scerario, are used to inspire writers to try out their skills and create a sense of adventure by writing a scene or a story based on the prompt. His works fine in a creative writing class where all the students work on the same project. The results are critiqued and/or discussed after the work is turned in.

I used a variation of the wrting prompt when teaching journalism classes. The students would be presented with a list of facts and asked to write a news story, feature story, editorial, or obituary. This allowed the class to practice the techiques and/or be tested on them.

What I don’t like are writing prompts that take over the content of a writing website or blog because they’re cheap excuses for providing meaninful content. Staff can think of dozens of these prompts with lot less effort than covering writing news, how-to discussions, book reviews, and other valuable content.

current P&W home page

Two sites that do this are the “Poets & Writers” organization’s website and the Indies Unlimited blog. The “Poet’s & Writers” site does present other valuable home page content, so the page isn’t a total loss.  I would prefer discussions there about the magazine itself or books and authors news instead of his cheap alterantive. I used to be a member of Poets and Writers membership program, so I’ve seen the website a lot.

Indies Unlimited is an authors’ blog that displays e-book deals submitted by involved small-press authors, a resource page, a knowledge base, and a flash fiction challenge based on a writing prompt. The website’s FAQ still says that it presents articles and editorials but as far as I can tell, the blog has had few, if any, of these in a long time. I believe IU is all-volunteer and that in recent years it’s gone through some staff changes and a declining number of available writers for other submitting content. However, I miss the other content and find no excitement in reading writing-prompt-based flash fiction. The site is still fun but would be more usefu without the heavy reliance and the flash fiction.

Margarita

Many other writing sites offer writing prompts, including “Writer’s Digest,” purportedly as inspiration and/or a way to combat writer’s block. Do they work? Possibly so. Personally, I’m not going to spend my time away from the work in progress writing about some BS that some staff member thought up while having a large margarita at the local watering hole.

–Malcolm

On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me a partridge in a pear tree

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn happy holidays, writing

Actually, if that happened they (the partridge in a pear tree) would probably end up in the garage where they would never be seen again. That’s fine. I detest pears. The cats would probably eat the partridge or vice versa.

My wife and I got books, candy, calendars, and plush throws for those chilly Georgia nights. These we can use, along with new lamps for the master and guest bedrooms. When we had multiple cats, they played in the pile of used wrapping paper. Last night when we opened gifts, our indoor/outdoor cat was asleep in the bedroom and our 25-year-old calico no longer cares about it (the paper).

Our decorations usually go up late and stay up through Twelfth Night when my wife is supposed to give me twelve drummers drumming. Well, more for the garage. Of course, it’s bad luck to leave the decorations up after Twelfth Night. Personally, I think it shows a lack of taste to throw the Christmas tree out for the trash truck late on December 25th.

I’m fairly traditional about this, following the Christmastide schedule as noted in Wikipedia: “In 567 the Council of Tours proclaimed that the entire period between Christmas and Epiphany should be considered part of the celebration, creating what became known as the twelve days of Christmas, or what the English called Christmastide. On the last of the twelve days, called Twelfth Night, various cultures developed a wide range of additional special festivities. The variation extends even to the issue of how to count the days. If Christmas Day is the first of the twelve days, then Twelfth Night would be on January 5, the eve of Epiphany. If December 26, the day after Christmas, is the first day, then Twelfth Night falls on January 6, the evening of Epiphany itself.”

One of the deathly hallows

This year, I added a new element to the Christmastide festivities called falling off the step ladder while putting up with lighted garland around the front door. That resulted in a headache and now a sore place where my head it the deck. I do not intend for this to become a new tradition.

My wife and I have sinus conditions that make us dizzy at times, so I told my wife not to put up the garland alone because she might fall off the deathly hallow. I guess it figures that I’d be the one calling off the ladder.

For your own safety, do not introduce any step ladders into your Christmas celebrations.

I hope your Christmas is happy, merry, and bright–and safe!

–Malcolm

‘Prophet Song’ by Paul Lynch

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, writing1 Comment

‘From that first knock at the door, Prophet Song forces us out of our complacency as we follow the terrifying plight of a woman seeking to protect her family in an Ireland descending into totalitarianism. We felt unsettled from the start, submerged in – and haunted by – the sustained claustrophobia of Lynch’s powerfully constructed world. He flinches from nothing, depicting the reality of state violence and displacement and offering no easy consolations. Here the sentence is stretched to its limits – Lynch pulls off feats of language that are stunning to witness. He has the heart of a poet, using repetition and recurring motifs to create a visceral reading experience. This is a triumph of emotional storytelling, bracing and brave. With great vividness, Prophet Song captures the social and political anxieties of our current moment. Readers will find it soul-shattering and true, and will not soon forget its warnings.’  – Esi Edugyan, Chair, Booker Prize.

When Kirkus Reviews praises a book by saying, “An exceptionally gifted writer, Lynch brings a compelling lyricism to her fears and despair while he marshals the details marking the collapse of democracy and the norms of daily life. His tonal control, psychological acuity, empathy, and bleakness recall Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). And Eilish, his strong, resourceful, complete heroine, recalls the title character of Lynch’s excellent Irish-famine novel, Grace (2017)” it’s certainly worth a look. Those of us who remember “The Troubles” (1960s-1990s)  will feel an eerie sense of Deja Vu to the violent world of the Irish Republican Army.

From the Publisher

“On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police on her step. They have arrived to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.

“Ireland is falling apart, caught in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny. As the life she knows and the ones she loves disappear before her eyes, Eilish must contend with the dystopian logic of her new, unraveling country. How far will she go to save her family? And what—or who—is she willing to leave behind?

“The winner of the Booker Prize 2023, Prophet Song presents a terrifying and shocking vision of a country sliding into authoritarianism and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.”

From the Guardian

“Lynch’s message is crystal clear: lives the world over are experiencing upheaval, violence, persecution. Prophet Song is a literary manifesto for empathy for those in need and a brilliant, haunting novel that should be placed into the hands of policymakers everywhere.”

Reviewers in general are calling the book believable and plausible as well as a stunning achievement.

—Malcolm

 

Almost Christmas – are you ready?

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

We’re as ready as we can be. Gifts have been mailed off to out-of-town family. My wife and I have gifts for each other; I finished wrapping what I got for Lesa this afternoon.

Those of you who’ve read this blog for a while know that I drive out in the middle of the night to a nearby QuikTip, Exxon,  BP, or other nearby gas station with a mini-mart and stock up on last-minute bargains such as Pork Rinds, Tee shirts with various logos, a case of oil, and other treats that help make opening gifts a festive occasion each year.

While I would prefer opening gifts on Yule, we open them on Christmas Eve. This is a holdover from the days when we celebrated Christmas day with my parents one year and my wife’s parents the next year. Doing that just became a tradition, and we liked having our own gift exchange ourselves beneath the lights of the spruce Christmas Tree.

Neither of us has been well lately, so the indoor and outdoor decorations aren’t as lavish as usual. But they suffice. We used to send out a Christmas (Yule) letter but stopped that several years ago. We still send out a few cards, but now they’re always late if we get around to them.

My parents always had a co-called modern Yule log, i.e. one used on the mantlepiece with candles. Theirs had many years of multi-colored tallow on it before they died and my younger brother inherited the log and began adding more colorful tallow every year. With cats in the house, we avoid using candles, and after one Christmas of broken ornaments switched to the unbreakable kind.

Now that the ornaments won’t break, our cats tend to leave the tree alone. Go figure.

I tend to like the old-fashioned, Victorian-style cards even though they aren’t available in the stores. So I use them on my Facebook page. Wherever you are and whenever you celebrate, I hope you have a wonderful holiday season.

–Malcolm