The Accelerated Necromancer by Gavin Fox
Gavin Fox sent me this book over a year ago, and it’s taken me that long to understand how to think about it. The intriguing title was a stumbling-block: the term ‘Necromancer’ is fairly straightforward, but I’ve never met one before. If I don’t count an acquaintance who used to like robbing sea-damaged graveyards in the Scottish islands. And my own experience of working with the dead is quite limited - a year as part of a Valgaldr group who explored Northern magic graveyard work, which evolved into my current ancestor practice. So I’ve never come across anyone who articulated it as their main spiritual / magical path. And then there’s the ‘Accelerated’; I’ve only come across this term (in the context of Accelerationist thinking) in largely negative contexts - Nick Land and other hyper-capitalists who want to ignore the environmental costs of unrestrained business growth. (Admittedly, Land had some neat ideas - the neologism ‘hyperstition’, which is a genuinely useful magica...