Visual Spells & Literary Spellcraft: Book Club Week Three
Welcome to the Book Club. Throughout the month of August, the Literary Coven is reading V. E. Schwab’s Bury Her Bones in the Midnight Soil, an enchanting, sapphic novel about three women and a hunger uniting them across distant timelines.
If you’re new to August’s Book Club, start with week 1’s betwitching prompts, Hunger is a Garden, then head over to our conversation from week 2, Bibliomancy: Divination with Fiction.
To celebrate our third week of August’s Book Club, we’re casting spells.
In a recent conversation, “What is a Spell?”, we mentioned that the witch's spell comes from the Germanic spel, defined by “talk, storytelling, gossip, and sermons. Spel is also a derivative of gospel, which translates to 'good tale.'”
But a spell can also be a story, says Pointy Hat Press co-founder Kristin Lisenby, a story that takes on new viewpoints, new voices, and new meanings as we journey across the pages of our craft.
In his 16th-century poem, “The Faerie Queen,” Edmund Spenser describes a spell as a special kind of verse or charm, which some might call the Gospel, or the Word.
Joseph Campbell says magic (specifically, the spell called dance) might look like “Poem-fragments, dance-fragments, scenery-fragments, music-fragments, charged with a continuous hypnotic spell, phosphoresce in a sleep landscape, where mysteriously motivated personages come and go.”
A spell can be a story, a fragmented landscape, or a mirror, reflecting what we want, how we see ourselves, and the echoes we send out into the world. Word Witch Danielle Dulsky says words can enchant and believes that every spell is a prayer.
Book Club Week 1
If you're a writer, use the following prompts as writing warm-ups or as inspiration for your next channeled writing session. If you're a painter or artist, ritualize these prompts through intuitive artmaking. Use them as guided meditations, cast them as dream spells, or include them in your magical or creative practice however you see fit.
Welcome to the Book Club!
During the month of August, the Literary Coven will be reading V. E. Schwab’s Bury Her Bones in the Midnight Soil, an enchanting, sapphic novel about three women and a hunger that unites them across distant timelines.
