<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong> In the days when we were occultists In the days when we were occultists Those days long ago when it seemed Those strange gnarled folk who held <\/p>\n <\/p>\n John Short<\/strong> was born in Liverpool and studied comparative religion at Leeds University before spending some years in southern Europe. His poems and stories have appeared in a number of magazines such as Frogmore Papers, Orbis, Obsessed with Pipework <\/em>and Barcelona Ink.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 When We Were Occultists In the days when we were occultists we were dazzled by symbolism, numerology and arcane language. We\u2019d spend an afternoon sniffing ether because that was what Crowley did and you could buy it over the counter in the chemist shops of Gascony. In the days when we were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12350"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13066,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12350\/revisions\/13066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWhen We Were Occultists<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nwe were dazzled by symbolism,
\nnumerology and arcane language.
\nWe\u2019d spend an afternoon sniffing ether
\nbecause that was what Crowley did
\nand you could buy it over the counter
\nin the chemist shops of Gascony.<\/p>\n
\nwe\u2019d draw magic circles in chalk
\non the floorboards of the dining room
\nunder the massive fireplace,
\nhunt around for daggers and candlesticks
\nor produce our own robes, though
\nwe were not seamstresses.<\/p>\n
\nas if everyone was an occultist
\nwe\u2019d sit under that rustic fireplace
\ncarving wands of hazel and sycamore;
\nbranches cut from a tree at dawn
\nand the wizards of Gascony
\nwould pass by and approve.<\/p>\n
\nmeetings in the forest, the nights
\nwhen we were all occultists
\ntracing pentagrams in the air
\ntaking every cat or raven seriously
\nand purging our auras with blasts
\nof liquid astral fire.<\/p>\n