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 magical term to model how belief becomes reality. And there’s the HPL-derived edgelord-glamour of alien monsters who aren’t taking over, they’re actually ideas of what we’ll become as we go into some post-human stage… If you believe in that sort of stuff.) 

As far as I can tell, the author could have used ‘modern’ or ‘chaos’ in place of ‘accelerated’; he identifies as a chaos magician. Either of those terms would have made the book clearer for me. But Mr Fox is cunning enough to have earned his edgelord adjective: he has branded what he is doing. And what he is presenting here is a deeply integrated scheme of magic, the practice of which can reach way beyond his own personal style. 

The book is in three parts. Book 1 starts with theory, with some ethical and practical guidelines and considerations for doing the work. I disagree with a number of Gavin’s opinions in this part; much of this is very personal in nature. Book 2 lays out some rituals, meditations and recipes for ritual powders. Book 3 tells us more about the life of the necromancer. 

I wish he’d written the book the other way round; a few guidelines at the start, then into practice. I was most at home with Books 2 and 3; I’m a Practice then Theory guy myself. Theories can really put me off someone’s magic before I’ve got to know it in the real world. Practice hardly ever does: I like craft, I love the exercise of skill. I love seeing those things in other people. So Book 1 did put me off a bit, then I got into the stuff I liked. And there’s a wealth of riches in this book; for just a few examples: Dead City Mapping, a dark dérive; the Dumb Supper, a bizarre funerary feast; the practice of familiarizing oneself with the stages of physical decomposition. 

And the most vivid section of all is right in the back, in the Appendices: Gavin’s account of his dark experiences of his hometown, London. This in itself is worth the book. 

Gavin’s formulas for powders and so forth are a revelation. They come across as derived not by cultural appropriation, but by deep consideration of the various cultural inputs available to us when we need, say, a powder for casting a strong boundary to the spirits. He gave me a tube of just that powder, his Foxfire. I look forward to using it. 

The book is also much enhanced by Gavin’s artwork; he is a skilled and inspired maker of images. 

Who would I recommend this book to? Not the average magical dilettante, the all-too-common shallow InstaWitch, but rather any magician, Chaos-themed or not, with some practical experience and deep curiosity.