Reading Devin Johnston’s Precipitations: Contemporary American Poetry as Occult Practice

“the very liberation H.D. identifies with occultic thought radiates disaster triumphant.”

"In her sessions with Freud, H.D. was concerned with rescuing her vision as central to a vatic sense of poetic identity."

“Wistfulness, exaltation,
a pure core of burning celebration,

Jottings on a margin,
indecipherable palimpsest scribbled over

with too many contradictory emotions,
search for finite definition

of the infinite, stumbling toward
vague cosmic expression” (Walls Do Not Fall, 42)

He seems to be saying that the most mystical, spiritual times only come in the times of absolute devastation, maybe they come then only because they have to, one needs them to survive it – so for those chasing spirituality, they sometimes seek out devastation in order to attain mystical experiences. I don't know that H.D. actually did this, but maybe after the first vision at Corfu, which seems to me a very organic, and healing experience, and appropriate to the time, her later weird experiences with channeling RAF guys, were an attempt to regain that lost experience, which was very unifying for her. But they seem to be less organic, and more forced, sometimes the visionary only happens at one time in one's life, it is a way of moving past the devastation, but one shouldn't become attached to it. If you are not having visions, maybe your life is going ok. I also feel a sense that at the vision at Corfu, maybe there was an acceptance of the misery of life, and that sortof made her unified. But the later desperation perhaps did not come from a place of acceptance, and so it all became sortof weird.

Maybe my life is not going OK, right now, I have had two vision-esque experiences recently at the yoga studio. Have been feeling very unhappy, and realizing I have to let go of dreaming, thinking I do need to, but not sure I quite can. How to deal with reality as it is, the misery of it? One vision was of a gargoyle shadow on the ceiling, felt scared and thought what a horrible sign! But then I woke up in the middle of the night a few nights later, with a weird epiphany thought, that it was not a gargoyle, but a good spirit protecting me, an owl perhaps. Owls and gargoyles have very similar shadows!

Then yesterday, Thanksgiving, I had another vision; the walls (which do not fall) at the yoga studio have strange markings on them, like abstract cave art, so I was looking at the wall upside down in standing fold reverse namaste pose and I saw a cow in the markings. I was so mesmerized by her I didn't follow along with the class for a bit, she seemed very gentle, and peaceful, and filled with grace, a thanksgiving blessing! Cows are very connected with Hinduism, so that is a nice symbol to get from yoga class... a sense of hope, but that may only be because I am feeling so bad! There is nowhere to go but up. But a feeling also that this time is a hinge, a meeting point between when the bad times turn toward good. I am a hopeless optimist.



I am Mary, she said, Of Magdala,
I am Mary, a great tower;

through my will and my power,
Mary shall be myrrh;

I am Mary -- O, there are Marys a-plenty,
(though I am Mara, bitter) I shall be Mary-myrrh" (Trilogy FOTR 135)