New Books for 2023
Announcing two new books for 2023 – Queering Occultures and Acts of Magical Resistance.
Queerying Occultures is my new collection of essays examining the potentials, tensions, and intersections between queer as a mode of living and occultures. Divided thematically into three sections: Queerying Paganisms; Queerying Tantras; and Queerying Histories; the essays range in subject from autobiography, humour, to questioning aspects of Queer Pagan practice and thought. With a foreword from Patricia MacCormack, a memoir of Queer Pagan Camp by Lou Hart and a cover painting – “snails in love” by Maria Strutz, Queerying Occultures is a book I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Although many of the essays can be found here on enfolding, I’ve included some new essays written especially for the collection and some old pieces that haven’t been published before.
Queerying Occultures is available directly from Original Falcon Publications or from Amazon.
“Most of modern occultism often tries to define, overcategorize, and force everything into nice tidy boxes of binary ideologies. In this brilliant new book, Phil Hine questions and challenges these notions through examining queerness and its place in occultism throughout ancient and modern times. This inclusive and expertly researched inquiry crafts a manifesto full of anecdotes, musings, and perspectives embracing the queer as an agent of Dionysian-like divine chaos, whose power and liberation cannot nor should be restrained within the limitations of heteronormative cisgender models. Queerying Occulture is thought-provoking, articulate, and delightfully transgressive in a manner that no one other than Mr. Hine could manage, and it belongs on all queer bookshelves.”
Mat Auryn, bestselling author of Psychic Witch and Mastering Magick
As is Hine’s way, Queerying Occultures invites occultists, Pagans and esotericists of all stripes into a radical inquiry of practice. Using queer theory as the starting place and traversing terrains as varied as Paganism, Tantra, polari, and masked balls, Hine destabilizes boundaries and disrupts the categories and essentialisms that many modern occultists take for granted. Hine shares touching moments of queer desire, dives between moments of cultural belonging and alienation, and reasserts the fundamentals of transgression in a subculture that is strangely normative. This collection strives to take the reader far beyond discussions of gender and sexuality, ultimately resisting the fiction that we exist as singular, bounded, categorizable entities.
Amy Hale, Author of Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully
Phil Hine’s Queerying Occultures is a brilliant dive into the tributaries of thought and history that flow into a contemporary understanding of what constitutes queer magic, paganism and religion. Essays covering historical topics as diverse as the Western association of gender-variance with devil worship, through to the nature of ergi within the Norse tradition, via Aleister Crowley’s nights in the gay bars of Berlin and the multiplicitous beings of tantra – this anthology spans essays from some 30 years of Hine’s writings and is both a brilliant follow up to Hine’s Varieties, and a stand-alone collection.
Lou Hart, Co-founder Queer Pagan Camp
Acts of Magical Resistance
Magic is a radical act against reality. Magic always has an agenda – whether it’s a desire to ensure the welfare of those we love, to protect our communities or achieve transformation despite seemingly impossible circumstances. However, all this magic does not happen divorced from the constant political context of our lives. In a time when wearing a T-shirt can get you arrested in London, appearing in drag is illegal in Tennessee and fascism is knocking at the door in hundred new ways, the art of magical resistance has never been more important.
Addressing not only the often occulted history of the subject, but also the practicalities of magical activism and ritual routes to resistance, Phil Hine has delivered a timely and powerful guide on a key area of occulture. Drawing from intimate personal involvement of himself and others in magical resistance across four decades, Hine explores a diverse range of techniques and approaches to resist oppression and achieve change.
Acts of Magical Resistance is a celebration of the subversive power of enchantment. An inspiring call to action, it offers vital insights into Mass Rituals, the psychology of effectively countering institutions and the liberation that comes from carving space for wonder.
Acts of Magical Resistance is available from Amazon in print or digital editions.
