‘Spell Book’ is a dramatic song cycle. Listen to the whole cycle on the album Spell Book.
In the spring of 2019, I read WITCH by Rebecca Tamás. Tamás’ witch is full of desire and power: she doesn’t think about the same things that other people are thinking about, but she is neither bad nor good - she exists outside that framework. I was captivated by the world outlook in these poems. While reading it, I started to have strange and witchy dreams and felt a strong impulse to engage creatively with what I found.
Amongst other longer poems, WITCH contains several spells. In the book Spells: 21st Century Occult Poetry of which Tamás is co-editor, she writes that ‘Spell-poems take us into a realm where words can influence the universe’.
A spell asks to be performed out loud in a ritual setting. It seemed fitting and almost natural to bring these incantations into the ritualistic setting of the concert hall. In each spell I’ve looked for the moment or method of transformation. Sometimes this is a specific moment of change within the song, sometimes it’s a sense of accumulation, and sometimes a shift of perspective. These songs are a sung Spell-book.
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SPELL BOOK VOLUME 1
The set opens with the spell for Lilith. In Jewish folklore, Lilith is the first woman, created at the same time, and from the same clay as Adam. She refused to be subservient to both Adam and God, and left the Garden of Eden. She was given the option to return or to become a demon, and she chose to become a demon. The singer summons the image of Lilith, luring her into the space with flirtation and flattery, until the moment of transformation lets us glimpse into Lilith’s own world, unruly and joyous, and still out there somewhere.
The spell for sex starts with a tight focus on an object, an ingredient, and an action. It is a set of instructions to follow. The last line takes us out from the domestic setting and into the vast, dark openness of the night.
While spell for Lilith is in the first person, creating an immediate and intimate connection between the speaker and Lilith, spell for logic is in the second person, addressing you, the audience. Spell for logic brings togethers layers of logic, from the shallow, binding logic we use to try and organise and control our time, to the deeper logic of the earth and sea and its inevitable tides. And it is you, the listener, who is receiving these directions, and it is for you to consider ‘what you wanted from this’.
SPELL BOOK VOLUME 2
At the opening of spell for women’s books a viola line coils around a list of 3 ‘vellums’. Each suggests a story that a reader might become trapped in, but as the spell continues, subversive lines take us on paths that might lead us to escape these fates.
spell for joy is a pure conjuring. Each sentence gives action, movement, and imagery, creating a profusion of ‘yesses’ that add up to a total and reckless joy.
SPELL BOOK VOLUME 3
Imagery in spell for change is that of geothermal, deep tectonic change. The earth cracks open and the singer asks us, ‘are you scared yet?’
spell for reality speaks to the quiet domestic rituals of life, and their ability to conjure larger meaning and vivid images, as well as a quietly intensifying connection to the earth’s seasonal rhythms.
spell for the witch’s hammer refers to the Malleus Maleficarum, translated as the Hammer of Witches, a demonology treatise first published in 1486 which became a best seller, second only to the bible for nearly 200 years. It focuses on how to identify and punish a Witch and was hugely influential in making witchcraft be seen as heresy, and therefore punishable by death, as well as solidifying the idea of the word ‘witch’ as being inherently linked to women. At a time when the printing press was changing the way information was spread, it was published with an inauthentic Papal Bull to claim legitimacy, and the ideas caught on like wildfire across Europe. This spell conjures accusations and tropes from the treatise, inverting them, taking ownership over them, and then destroying them by devouring them.