Idolatry Restor’d: Witchcraft and the Imaging of Power

DescriptionDaniel Schulke’s Idolatry Restor’d: Witchcraft and the Imaging of Power was first published in the British folklore quarterly The Cauldron in 2009. Drawing upon the experiential arenas of magical practice and Image. This artistry which came to inform Schulke’s book Lux Haeresis – Xoanon, 2011.The translation of magical power to image is a matter well understood in archaic forms of sorcery. The resulting artifact being a mutual embodiment of Representation and the Represented. The Fetish, for example arises at the nexus of a reciprocal process between Object and Creator. This begins long before adzes and chisels are set to wood… thus participating in its own reification. Many of these eldritch forms of magical image-making were concerned with accessing power. It was only later in the context of religious devotion that their forms densified into ‘mere’ idols. Yet witchcraft, with its stance as ‘outlaw’ to both religion and lawful magic, has never deemed such magic heresy. Instead through its ‘promiscuity’ of syncretic magical currents. It has continued to acknowledge the image-fetish as both holy and possessed of supreme numen imbued by its maker.Witchcraft because of its syncretic nature, partakes in multiple infusions of traditional image-making lore. This includes not only sorcery and religious iconography, but also science, craftsmanship, and the fine arts. However, because much of its images are used privately, and created for a limited set of observers. They participate in a concentrated alembic of exposure wherein all who experience them do so in the context of magical practice and devotion. This intensity of private magical interaction provides a locus which enables the image to transcend its medium. And indeed that fetish known as ‘icon’— and generates living numen.Three Hands Press ✢ Limited Softcover