Crossett Book Displays: Conjuring: Hexes, Divinations, and Spells

This book is an exploration of contemporary witchery told through photographs and short essays written by Pam Grossman and the subjects themselves. From occultists and Neo-pagans, to herbalists and Wiccan High Priestesses, Denny's portraits capture the face of modern American witchcraft and challenge our assumptions about who and what a witch really is. Each woman photographed for Major Arcana pursues a form of witchcraft, whether aligned with a religion, such as Wicca or Vodou, or a self-defined practice. Many consider themselves pagan and engage in a diversity of traditions, including: mysticism, engagement with the occult, politically-oriented activism, polytheism, ritualized “spell-craft,” and plant-based healing.

Renée Stout's work explores the contours of the African American experience and the existence of an underground system of African-derived folk beliefs as transmitted from slavery to the present. This system, known variously as Hoodoo or conjuring, has its origins in herbal medicine, root work, and a belief in the spiritual attributes of plants and animals. For many years, the artist has used the alter ego Fatima Mayfield, a fictitious herbalist-fortune teller, as a vehicle to role-play and confront such issues as romantic relationships, social ills, or financial woes in a way that is open, creative, and humorous. Fatima Mayfield offers her best advice and works in her roots. Renée Stout is an able guide, but she only leaves a trail. Her role is to awaken us to the unseen forces at work all around us - to heighten our senses.

Spells are poems; poetry is spelling. Spell-poems take us into a realm where words can influence the universe. Spells brings together thirty-six contemporary voices exploring the territory where justice, selfhood and the imagination meet the transformative power of the occult. These poems unmake the world around them, so that it might be remade anew.

Each year, throughout Europe, from Scotland to Bulgaria, from Finland to Italy, from Portugal to Greece via France, Switzerland and Germany, people literally put themselves into costume in masquerades that stretch back centuries. The rituals are centuries old and celebrate and conjure the seasonal cycle, fertility, life, and death. By becoming a bear, a goat, a stag, a wild boar, a man of straw, a devil, or a monster with jaws of steel, these people celebrate the cycle of life and seasons.

Trickster’s Journey reimagines the tarot by exploring its themes through the lens of Eastern mysticism, folklore, and spirituality. By renaming the Fool card to Trickster, a character based on the legendary Monkey King in Journey to the West, this archetype of the sojourner takes on new meaning—and new agency—as a seeker of truth and self-discovery. Created by artist Jia Sung, this fresh take on the classic figures in the Major and Minor Arcana uses symbols from Buddhism and ancient Chinese history to enliven this age-old divination practice once more.

In 'Haunted Bauhaus', art historian Elizabeth Otto liberates Bauhaus history, uncovering a movement that is vastly more diverse and paradoxical than previously assumed. Otto traces the surprising trajectories of the school's engagement with occult spirituality, gender fluidity, queer identities, and radical politics. Otto reveals Bauhaus members' spiritual experimentation, expressed in double-exposed “spirit photographs” and enacted in breathing exercises and nude gymnastics; their explorations of the dark sides of masculinity and emerging female identities and the “queer hauntology” of certain Bauhaus works.

Rainbow Moon Tarot is a fantastical tarot deck that breaks out of the traditional gender binary, instead focusing on inclusivity, whimsy and humor. Although the traditional tarot structure has been used, the images have no gender, which allows the reader to focus on the duality of receptive and outward energy. Created by alternative designer and artist Sam West, the deck offers a unique, hands-on guide to the craft of ritual-making in a secular age. Intended for serious readings, Rainbow Moon Tarot also reminds us it is okay to smile and enjoy the reading. 78 card deck and 144 page book.

A letter from Swan House, published in the student newspaper, The Bennington Weekly, Vol. 2 No. 8, November 2, 1951, explaining that their ritual, re-enacting the ancient Hallowe’en ritual, was in no way intended as blasphemous, and was purely Druidic in nature.

The novel is written in the voice of eighteen-year-old Mary Katherine "Merricat" Blackwood, who lives with her agoraphobic sister and ailing uncle on an estate. Six years before the events of the novel, the Blackwood family experienced a tragedy that left the three survivors isolated from their small village. Merricat practices sympathetic magic that maintains borders around the house in order to keep her family out of harm's way. This Gothic mystery was written by Jackson while she lived in North Bennington.

Christina Hole was an award-winning British folklorist and author, who was described as “for many years the leading authority on English folk customs and culture." This 1945 work was illustrated by Mervyn Peake, who also illustrated editions of Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark and Alice in Wonderland, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the Brothers Grimm's Household Tales, and Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

In Tarot, García has collected and compiled advertisements for tarot card reading services around Querétaro and other parts of Mexico. The advertisements are uncanny conglomerations of the occult and capitalism, illuminating the ways in which spirituality is used and sold to people as a remedy for a wide range of issues and ailments. Gold Rain Books, the publisher, is an imprint of Da Substanz, an artist-run space and gallery based in Querétaro, Mexico. 38 p.; 28 x 21.7 cm; Risograph printed; Edition of 60. Signed and numbered.

There are no specific instructions for using this deck. Draw single cards or multiples. Shuffle, cut, throw them against the wall and see what sticks. Have an intention, or don’t. It’s a puzzle to be solved, a tool for igniting intuition, a pair of glasses to help you see, or a window into a mystical space beyond language. Find what you seek. The READINGS deck has 78 cards- 70 photographs, 7 colors, and one blank.

London-based Chinese Malaysian multidisciplinary producer and DJ Flora Yin-Wong presents her first book, Liturgy, a journey into the uncanny realm of the senses. Divided into nine chapters, the book delves deep into histories of healing and intuition. Reflecting the multilayered tonality of Yin-Wong’s music, which often draws on field recordings and dissonant sounds, it interweaves textual and visual collage, divining inspiration from meditation, oracles, curses, divination, hexagrams and superstitions.

Beltane, the Gaelic May Day, honors life and is a celebration of passion and putting your plans into action. Each of the 44 cards in this oracle deck is a seed of spiritual guidance - inspired by ancient Beltane themes - to find answers to your most profound questions. The accompanying guidebook features original poetry from Juliet Diaz that doubles as invocations for magic and ritual. Lorriane Anderson is heavily influenced by her diverse lineage, bringing together healing practices from her ancestors in a practical, updated way. She owns and operates Spirit Element, a soul-based apothecary. Juliet Diaz is an Indigenous Taino Cubana from a long line of curanderos and brujas on both sides of her parents’ lineages and is a bohuiti of her tribe, Higuayagua. Giada Rose is a watercolor illustrator interested in the threads that stretch between nature, femininity, magic, and art.

The late nineteenth century saw a wave of new American boards and table games coinciding with a growing desire for leisure activities. Then, like now, the games that best captured players' imaginations mimicked the culture that produced them. There were many games of divination: Palmistry (1910); Game of Black Cat (1885); The Black Cat Fortune Telling Game (1897); Madame Morrow's Fortune Telling Cards (1886); and The Hand of Fate Fortune Telling Game (1901).

The first major survey of the occult collection of artworks and objects in the Tate Archive. This volume acts as a potent talisman connecting the two worlds of Tate—the seen public collection and the unseen secrets lurking in the archive. The pages of this book explore the hidden artworks and ephemera left behind by artists. Archivist Victoria Jenkins reveals archival material in the Tate and explores the symbiotic relationship between art and the occult and how both can act as a form of resistance to challenging environments.

“The pursuit of one girl divided into two parts under three elements and guided by one heart. Shadow the girls as they journey the cycle, fold into lexical & non-lexical incantations, bewitch the astral. Through the summoning of childhood demons, ghosts in the graveyard, & mystical dance they claim a title of esoteric proportions, a title not ephemeral, but rather eternal. They realize, when they touch and blossom womanhood, energy resides above & below, within & without — all powered by the divine feminine.” Part of The Operating System, a community created by Elæ Moss, ’24 MFA, where tools, information and resources are equitably shared and made easily available.

Artist and graphic novelist Tillie Walden brings her unmistakable style and soulful warmth to the world of tarot. Reproduced from hand-painted illustrations, The Cosmic Slumber Tarot, evokes imagery from subconscious and subliminal states. It's an energetic and vibrant deck with a welcoming familiarity and lust palette.