The Magical Art of The Drift
A Sourcebook of Techniques
text assembled by Justin K Prim
“Has it ever been your fortune to rise in the earliest dawning of a summer day, ere yet the radiant beams of the sun have done more than touch with light the domes and spires of the great city? If this has been your lot, have you not observed that magic powers have apparently been at work? The accustomed scene has lost its familiar appearance. The houses which you have passed daily, it may be for many years, as you have issued forth on your avocations or your amusements, now seem as if you beheld them for the first time. They have suffered a mysterious change, into something rich and strange. Though they may have been designed by no extraordinary exertion of the art of architecture, though their materials may be of common brick and stone and piaster, though neither Pentelicus nor Ferrara has assisted in the adornment of these edifices; yet you have been ready to affirm that they now ‘Stand in glory, shine like stars, apparelled in a light serene. They have become magical habitations, supernal dwellings; more desirable to the eye than the fabled pleasure dome of the Eastern potentate, or the bejewelled hall built by the Genie for Aladdin in the Arabian Tale.” — Arthur Machen (1933)
Drift is a way of wandering in a place for its discovery, as a network of experiences and experiences. It is an approach that consists of moving through the different atmospheres of a space (a city, a neighborhood) by being guided by the impressions, by the subjective effects of such places.
Once you have peeled back the dreary concrete mask of the world and uncovered a magical kingdom crawling with spirits, the next stage is to see what you can do within that world, to work out how to speak to those spirits and find out what they might be able to do for you. The technique of the drift does not merely reveal magic, but is a process of engaging with it.
The Drift. As a psychological and magical practice, it’s been written about by the French Situationist Guy Debord, it was featured in article in Jason Louv’s book of occult articles Generation Hex, and most recently, Alan Moore uses it as an occult plot device in The Great When, but the idea of walking yourself into a reality warping trance seems to go back to the fictional work of Welsh mystic and writer Arthur Machen in the 1890s.
As a magical practice, it’s simple enough; get out there and walk. Walking is physical and walking with intention can be powerful. More recent writers have approached the drift from an occult perspective, but when we go back and read Machen, he’s using it as a device connect disparate events and characters together and he does it ALOT. It would be interesting to go into Machen’s autobiographies and see if he participated in this activity himself (note to self: read Machen’s autobiographies!)
The following article is a collection of essays as well as snippets from a selection of Machen’s stories to give us an idea of what this practice looks like and how it works. With Machen, I didn’t want to present entire stories because this collection would become incredibly long so I took snippets of summaries where Machen had his characters walk through London as a device to get access to information, ideas, or to meet characters that they only had heard about. Though Machen doesn’t present this in an occult way, if we don’t look at this as an occult practice in Machens stories, then they don’t make sense at all. Too many coincidences happen to Machen’s characters when they intentionally go out for a walk.
The final and most potent Machen story is N, which is all about pulling back the veil that seperates our world from another world and looking through. In this story, sometimes the characters walk and sometimes it’s through other supernatural means, but N sums up Arthur Machen’s view on the idea of two realities coexisting. 88 years later, Alan Moore takes the plot device from N and uses it in his fictional novel The Great When.
All of the following Arthur Machen summaries come from the Machen essays on the MarzAat website.
The Inmost Light
Arthur Machen, (1894)
Dyson calls himself a “man of science”, and his science (like many a Machen protagonist) is “the great city; the physiology of London; literally and metaphysically the greatest subject that the mind of man can conceive.”
The story opens, as many early Machen stories do, with some random wanderings about London, and Dyson meeting his old friend Salisbury again after five years. Since their last meeting, Dyson fell on hard times as a writer until he inherited some money.
The viewpoint shifts to Salisbury. He’s a stolid sort, and, on the way home from Dyson’s and pondering the “perverse dexterity” of Dyson, he carelessly strays into a strange and rough neighborhood.
Salisbury is a bit like Dyson in taking delight in the sights of London. In his case, he relishes street arguments and the various “amusing phases of drunkenness”.
He sees a drunk man and a crying woman talking. She condemns him as a thief, a freeloader and philanderer. She concludes with “ . . . you can go on your own errands, and I only hope they’ll get you in trouble”. Then she takes a piece of paper out of her dress, crumples it up and tosses it. On impulse, Salisbury picks it up.
In yet another coincidence, Dyson is walking on Gray’s Inn Road one day when he retrieves a man’s hat after it blows off his head and returns it. He is surprised to see it’s Black, though a much shabbier version. Black is bent and feeble, hair graying, shaking limbs, and poorly dressed. Dyson strikes up a conversation with him as Black walks to his “miserable house in a miserable street” and a wretched apartment.
Dyson, who regards himself as the “Wellington of mysteries”, is engaged in his “literary labors” which Machen notes are a mystery to his friends. Walking about London after a four day stint of writing, Dyson finds himself in Soho.
We get a description of the various shops in the area, and Dyson notes a sign for “Handel Street, W.C.” above a store with the proprietor listed as Travers, a name mentioned in Salisbury’s note.
The Red Hand
Arthur Machen (1895)
The story opens with “The Problem of the Fish-Hooks”. Amateur ethnologist Phillipps is examining primitive fish-hooks. He pronounces them genuine. Dyson tells him he can find primitive men in London if he just looks. Besides, contrary to what Phillipps says, the fishhooks aren’t genuine artifacts and probably forgeries. Baiting him with remarks about representatives of trogolodytes, lake dwellers, and darker races to be found in London, Dyson gets Phillipps to take a walk with him.
As usual in Machen, adventure, coincidence, and mystery follow. Dyson’s intuitive wanderings are the closest thing he has to occult powers.
Selby took to walking about London every evening. Then, one evening, after thinking about Thomas De Quincey and a nickname he had for a London street, Selby had a burst of inspiration and deciphered the tablet.
A Fragment of Life
Arthur Machen (1904)
Edward Darnell is our hero and has a fairly good job in business. He’s been married to Mary for about a year. The novel starts out with him getting the idea of spending ten pounds on refurbishing a spare room in their house. The money is from a 100-pound gift from Mary’s Aunt Nixon. (The couple put the other 90 pounds in savings.) Mary vetoes the idea since it would cost more than 10 pounds. The idea of buying a new stove is floated too.
However, things begin to change when, one night, Edward tells Mary for the first time of the wonderful time when he first came to London and walked its streets and the wonderful and magical things he saw but cannot adequately describe. Edward begins to regain that feeling and transmits it to Mary. It’s a typical Machen theme of everyday commercial life being a form of living death and a call to see the mystery and wonder of life.
The story ends with a wonderful paragraph from Edward’s journal:
“So I awoke from a dream of a London suburb, of daily labour, of weary, useless little things; and as my eyes were opened I saw I was in an ancient wood, where a clear well rose into grey film and vapour beneath a misty, glimmering heat. And a form came towards me from the hidden places of the wood, and my love and I were united by the well.”
The Joy of London
Arthur Machen (1914)
To the imaginative man, I suppose nothing has so great an attraction as that which has some savour of mystery about it. He who is something more than a new automaton, a mechanical performer of certain mechanical tasks, returning day by day, feels instinctively that he is born to voyage in the unknown, to live always in contemplation of a great perhaps. And here, I think we touch on the secret of one of the most powerful of the many attractions of London.
It was, as I say, by the experience of years that I came to learn how small a part of the vast territory of London I had charted and explored. I move about from one quarter to another, gradually drawing near to the centre; from Wandsworth I passed to Turnham Green, from Turnham Green to Holland Park, from Holland Park to Bloomsbury, from Bloomsbury to Soho; and so the infinite varieties of London and its life were, little by little, brought home to me, and the lesson was made plain by RL Stevenson’s New Arabian Nights. From that time forth I thought of the great town as a sailor may think of the ocean or an Arab of the desert; as an object always to be studied and explored, but never to be known fully, as a region of perpetual surprises and discoveries and adventures of the spirit.
In the Eastern tales one reads with a curious and deep satisfaction of the man who, passing an accustomed road by a track which he has trodden, perhaps, every day of his life, espies suddenly a door in the wall which he has never noticed before. The man opens, enters in, and is made a partaker of the great sacrament of wonder, a new and unsurmised world is shown to him. Such an adventure, I repeat, we read of with a keen relish, as I maintain, is due to the fact that the door leading to an unknown territory is a symbol of the adventures for which the human spirit is made, as a hot and dry and dusty throat is made for the brook by the way, for the cold water that wells rejoicing from the heart of the rock.
And so, when I think in the more general terms of the pleasures and advantages of London, I think of this Arabian quality that it possesses in such a supereminent degree. There is a door in the wall, the existence of which one had never noticed or suspected; to surprises and discoveries and inventions in London there is no end. I have trodden the pavements of the Strand now for close on thirty-four years; and a week or two ago I set foot for the first time in a street somewhere near the Little Theatre, an ‘old-fashioned’ street of queer little shops, from which one ascends by a steep flight of steps into the main thoroughfare.
And the sight of the map of London always leaves me with a sense of a kind of lesser infinitude — if the phrase may be allowed. Here are marked streets and alleys and squares and bye-ways, which strike the eye as past numbering. They are all here, in undoubted brick and stone and marble and mortar, and yet one feels that no living man has trodden them all; that to the most energetic and leisured explorer there must ever be myriads of streets that he will never enter. And, extending the notion, how many houses must remain unvisited; secrets throughout all ages to all but a very few?
Thus does London make for us a concrete image of the eternal things of space and time and thought.
The Green Round
Arthur Machen (1933)
“Has it ever been your fortune to rise in the earliest dawning of a summer day, ere yet the radiant beams of the sun have done more than touch with light the domes and spires of the great city? If this has been your lot, have you not observed that magic powers have apparently been at work? The accustomed scene has lost its familiar appearance. The houses which you have passed daily, it may be for many years, as you have issued forth on your avocations or your amusements, now seem as if you beheld them for the first time. They have suffered a mysterious change, into something rich and strange. Though they may have been designed by no extraordinary exertion of the art of architecture, though their materials may be of common brick and stone and piaster, though neither Pentelicus nor Ferrara has assisted in the adornment of these edifices; yet you have been ready to affirm that they now ‘Stand in glory, shine like stars, apparelled in a light serene. They have become magical habitations, supernal dwellings; more desirable to the eye than the fabled pleasure dome of the Eastern potentate, or the bejewelled hall built by the Genie for Aladdin in the Arabian Tale.”
“But all these are transitory effects that soon disappear. As the sun mounts in the sky, the vision fades into the light of common day; buildings, trees, objects close at hand and distant vistas resume their ordinary aspect; the whole enchanting scene is now a sullen street of common clay. You may, perhaps, reproach yourself with having allowed your senses to be beguiled and your imagination to be overcome by the mere fact that you have gazed on a familiar scene in unusual circumstances. Yet, some have declared that it lies within our own choice to gaze continually upon a world of like beauty, or even greater. It is said by these that all the experiments of the alchemists of the Dark Ages, generally supposed to be ‘dreams at the dawn of philosophy’, the feeble gropings of an ignorant and superstitious time after the truths of philosophical knowledge, are, in fact, related not to the transmutation of metals, but to the transmutation of the entire Universe. The avowed aim of these alchemical philosophers was not always regarded with favour by those high in Church and state; but it is said, I do not know whether on good or bad authority, that their concealed principles and projects would have caused them to incur still greater odium, and indeed, have made them liable to persecution of the most rigorous kind. This seems probable enough, when we are reminded by the history of the famous Friar Bacon that those in authority during the period of the Middle Ages had but little tolerance for unlicensed or unusual theories and experiments.”
“This method, or art, or science, or whatever we choose to call it (supposing that it really exists) is simply concerned to restore the delights of the primal Paradise; to enable men, if they will, to inhabit a world of joy and of splendour. I have no authority either to affirm or to deny that there is such an experiment, and that some have made it. I therefore abandon the matter to the consideration and the enquiry of men of equal and ingenious mind.”
N
Arthur Machen (1936)
This story wanders about the pubs and taverns, churches and apartments of London past and present to an indefinite conclusion. Like “The Great God Pan”, the reader is mostly expected to deduce the relevance of those events though the character Arthur does some of that work.
In his library, he picks up A London Walk: Meditations in the Streets of the Metropolis by Rev. Thomas Hampole. It’s a fictious work, but its descriptions typify Machen’s “psychogeography”, the meditations caused by the urban landscape of London.
When he went to Stoke Newington one night to look for that “singular park”, he encountered a young man who had lost his way, and had lost — as he said — the one who lived in the white house on the hill.
“And I am not going to tell you about her, or her house, or her enchanted gardens. But I am sure that the young man was lost also — and for ever.”
The implication is that Mr. Wilson may have been that young man. Another possibility is that the young man is not even from our world.
Arnold concludes the story with:
“I believe that there is a perichoresis, an interpenetration. It is possible, indeed, that we three are now sitting among desolate rocks, by bitter streams…And with what companions?”
Theory of Drift
Guy-Ernest Debord (1956/1958) {translated from French}
Between the various situationist processes, drift is defined as a technique of hasty passage through varied atmospheres. The concept of drift is inextricably linked to the recognition of effects of a psycho-geographical nature, and to the affirmation of a playful-constructive behavior, which opposes it in all respects to the classic notions of travel and walking.
One or more people in drifting renounce, for a more or less long period of time, the reasons to move and act that they generally know each other, the relationships, work and leisure activities that are specific to them, to indulge in the requests of the field and the corresponding meetings. The share of the random is less decisive here than we think: from the point of view of drift, there is a psychogeographical relief of cities, with constant currents, fixed points, and vortices that make the access or exit of certain areas very uncomfortable.
But the drift, in its unity, includes both this laxity and its necessary contradiction: the domination of psychogeographical variations through the knowledge and calculation of their possibilities. Under this last aspect, the data highlighted by ecology, and as limited as the social space that this science proposes to study is a priori, do not cease to usefully support psychogeographical thought.
The ecological analysis of the absolute or relative nature of the cuts in the urban fabric, the role of microclimates, the elementary units entirely distinct from the administrative districts, and especially the dominant action of the centres of attraction, must be used and completed by the psychogeographical method. The objective passionate terrain where the drift moves must be defined at the same time according to its own determinism and according to its relations with social morphology. Chombart de Lauwe in his study on “Paris and the Parisian agglomeration” (Library of Contemporary Sociology, PUF, 1952) notes that “an urban district is not only determined by geographical and economic factors but by the representation that its inhabitants and those of other neighborhoods have of it”; and presents in the same book — to show “the narrowness of the real Paris in which each individual lives geographically a framework whose radius is extremely small” — the layout of all the routes made in a year by a student from the 16th arrondissement: these routes draw a small triangle, without escapes, the three summits of which are the School of Political Science, the girl’s home and that of her piano teacher.
There is no doubt that such schemes, examples of modern poetry likely to lead to strong affective reactions — in this case the indignation that it is possible to live in this way -, or even the theory, put forward by Burgess about Chicago, of the distribution of social activities into defined concentric zones, should not be used for the progress of drift.
Chance plays a role in drift, all the more important as psychogeographical observation is still little assured. But the action of chance is naturally conservative and tends, in a new framework, to reduce everything to the alternation of a limited number of variants and habit. Progress being never more than the rupture of one of the fields where chance is exercised, through the creation of new conditions more favorable to our designs, we can say that the chances of drift are fundamentally different from those of the walk, but that the first psychogeographical attractions discovered risk fixing the subject or the group drifting around new usual axes, where everything brings them back constantly.
An insufficient distrust of chance, and its always reactionary ideological use, condemned to a smomy failure the famous aimless wandering attempted in 1923 by four surrealists from a city drawn by lot: wandering in the countryside is obviously depressing, and the interventions of chance are poorer than ever. But the irreflection is pushed much further in Medium (May 1954), by a certain Pierre Vendryes who believes he can link to this anecdote — because all this participated in the same anti-deterministic liberation — some probabilistic experiments, for example on the random distribution of frog tadpoles in a circular crystallizer, of which he gives the final word by specifying: “it is necessary, of course, that such a crowd does not undergo any guiding influence from the outside”. In these conditions, the palm actually goes to the tadpoles who have the advantage of being “as devoid as possible of intelligence, sociability and sexuality”, and, consequently, “truly independent of each other”.
At the antipodes of these aberrations, the mainly urban character of the drift, in contact with the centers of possibilities and meanings that are the large cities transformed by industry, would rather respond to Marx’s phrase: “Men cannot see anything around them that is not their face, everything speaks for themselves. Their very landscape is lively.”
We can drift alone, but everything indicates that the most fruitful numerical distribution consists of several small groups of two or three people who have reached the same awareness, the cross-checking of the impressions of these different groups should lead to objective conclusions. It is desirable that the composition of these groups change from one drift to another. Above four or five participants, the character of the drift decreases rapidly, and in any case it is impossible to exceed the ten without the drift fragmenting into several drifts conducted simultaneously. The practice of this last movement is also of great interest, but the difficulties it entails have not so far made it possible to organize it with the desirable scale.
The average duration of a drift is the day, considered as the time interval between two periods of sleep. The starting and finishing points, in time, compared to the solar day, are indifferent, but it should be noted that the last hours of the night are generally unsuitable for drift.
This average duration of the drift has only a statistical value. First, it rarely presents itself in all its purity, those interested avoiding with difficulty, at the beginning or end of this day, distracting an hour or two from it to use them in banal occupations; at the end of the day, fatigue contributes a lot to this abandonment. But above all, the drift often takes place in a few deliberately fixed hours, or even fortuitously for fairly short moments, or on the contrary for several days without interruption. Despite the stops imposed by the need to sleep, some drifts of sufficient intensity have lasted three or four days, or even more. It is true that in the case of a succession of drifts over a fairly long period of time, it is almost impossible to determine with some precision the moment when the state of mind proper to a given drift gives way to another. A succession of drifts was continued without significant interruption until about two months, which is not without bringing new objective conditions of behavior that lead to the disappearance of many of the old ones.
The influence on the drift of climate variations, although real, is only decisive in the case of prolonged rains that almost absolutely prohibit it. But thunderstorms or other types of precipitation are rather conducive to it.
The spatial field of drift is more or less precise or vague depending on whether this activity is rather aimed at the study of a terrain or confusing emotional results. It should not be overlooked that these two aspects of drift have multiple interferences and that it is impossible to isolate one in its pure state. But finally, the use of taxis, for example, can provide a fairly clear dividing line: if in the course of a drift we take a taxi, either for a specific destination or to move twenty minutes to the west, it is because we are mainly committed to personal change of scenery. If we want the direct exploration of a land, we highlight the search for psychogeographical urbanism.
In all cases, the spatial field is first a function of the starting bases constituted, for the isolated subjects, by their homes, and for the groups, by the chosen meeting points. The maximum extent of this spatial field does not exceed the whole of a large city and its suburbs. Its minimum extent can be limited to a small atmosphere unit: a single neighborhood, or even a single block if it is worth it (at the extreme limit the static drift of a day without leaving the Lazare station).
The exploration of a fixed spatial field therefore presupposes the establishment of bases, and the calculation of penetration directions. This is where the study of maps, both common and ecological or psycho-geographical, the rectification and improvement of these maps intervenes. Is it necessary to say that the taste of the neighborhood itself unknown, never traveled does not intervene in any way? In addition to its insignificance, this aspect of the problem is quite subjective, and does not persist for long. This criterion has never been used, if not occasionally, when it comes to finding the psychogeographical outcomes of an area by systematically deviating from all the usual points. We can then get lost in neighborhoods that are already well traveled.
The share of exploration on the contrary is minimal, compared to that of confusing behavior, in the “possible appointment”. The subject is asked to go alone at a specified time in a place that is fixed for him. He is free from the painful obligations of the ordinary appointment, since he has no one to wait for. However, this “possible appointment” having led him unexpectedly to a place that he may know or ignore, he observes the surroundings. At the same time, we were able to give at the same place an “other possible appointment” to someone whose identity he cannot foresee. He may even have never seen it, which encourages conversation with various passers-by. He may not meet anyone, or even meet by chance the one who set the “possible appointment”. In any case, and especially if the place and time have been well chosen, the subject’s schedule will take an unexpected turn. He can even ask by phone for another “possible appointment” from someone who does not know where the first one took him. We can see the almost infinite resources of this hobby.
Thus, some jokes of a so-called dubious taste, which I have always greatly appreciated in my entourage, such as entering the floors of houses under demolition at night, constantly touring Paris in a hitchhis during a transport strike, under the pretext of aggravating the confusion by being led anywhere, wandering in those of the underground of the catacombs that are forbidden to the public, would be a more general feeling that would be nothing other than the feeling of drift.
The lessons of drift make it possible to establish the first surveys of the psychogeographical articulations of a modern city. Beyond the recognition of atmosphere units, their main components and their spatial location, we perceive the main axes of passage, their exits and their defenses. We come to the central hypothesis of the existence of psychogeographical hubs. We measure the distances that actually separate two regions of a city, and which are incomparable to what an approximate view of a plan could lead us to believe. With the help of old maps, aerial photographic views and experimental drifts, it is possible to draw up an influential mapping that was missing until now, and whose current uncertainty, inevitable before an immense job is accomplished, is no worse than that of the first Portulans, with the difference that it is no longer a question of precisely delimiting durable continents, but of changing architecture and urban planning. The different atmosphere and housing units, today, are not exactly defined, but surrounded by more or less extensive border margins. The most general change that the drift leads to propose is the constant reduction of these border margins, until their complete abolition.
In architecture itself, the taste of drift leads to advocate all kinds of new forms of the labyrinth, which modern construction possibilities favor. Thus the press reported in March 1955 the construction in New York of a building where we can see the first signs of an opportunity to drift inside an apartment: “The dwellings of the helical house will have the shape of a slice of cake. They can be enlarged or decreased at will by moving movable partitions. The gradation by half-floor avoids limiting the number of rooms, the tenant may request to use the next tranche overhanging or below. This system makes it possible to transform three four-room apartments into an apartment with twelve or more rooms in six hours.”
The feeling of drift is naturally linked to a more general way of taking life, which it would be awkward to deduce mechanically. I will not expand on the precursors of the drift, which can be recognized precisely, or abusively diverted, in the literature of the past, or on the particular passionate aspects that this drift entails. The difficulties of drift are those of freedom. Everything suggests that the future will precipitate the irreversible change in the behavior and scenery of today’s society. One day, we will build cities to drift. We can use, with relatively light touch-ups, certain areas that already exist. We can use some people who already exist.
The Invisibles
Grant Morrison (1994)
Beneath the Pavement, the Beast
Stephen Grasso, from Generation Hex (2006)
Magic is not located in textbooks available on the high street, it does not exist within codified and rehearsed ritual and you can’t buy it on your credit card. Magic is a ferocious and mysterious beast, and its secrets and powers must be earned through blood, sweat and tears. It is something that you live, not something that you read about and study. Magic is everywhere and within everything, and the work of a magician is to perceive it and to interact with it. There is magic in the sea at night, in a flight of ravens, in the motion of traffic, in dark alleys, filthy sewers and bright shop doorways. There is magic in abandoned subway stations, riverbanks and public parks. The world is alive with magic. Are you brave enough to step outside and into it?
The term derive, or “drift,” was first coined by the Situationist International, who would go for long aimless walks around their towns and cities, reimagining the concrete tower blocks, cenotaphs and public fountains as castles of wisdom, wishing spikes and ponds of eternal youth. The purpose of the drift was to see beauty in the urban landscape and to conquer the tyranny of grim, oppressive town planning through the transformative power of the imagination. Through the technique of the drift, the Situationists could radically change their experience of the city and turn drab stretches of urban decay into a magical landscape of limitless wonder and enchantment. Yet they perhaps stopped short of taking the exercise to its logical conclusion.
Once you have peeled back the dreary concrete mask of the world and uncovered a magical kingdom crawling with spirits, the next stage is to see what you can do within that world, to work out how to speak to those spirits and find out what they might be able to do for you. The technique of the drift does not merely reveal magic, but is a process of engaging with it. It has many different applications and can be used in a variety of contexts. It can be used as a direct method of communication with the spirit or genus loci of a particular location or geographical area, or indeed as a means of dialogue with any entity you are working with. It can be used as a method of collecting potent ingredients and materials for sorcery workings, or to seek answers to divinatory questions. The practical applications of the drift are numerous, and the imaginative magician will undoubtedly unlock many more. It can be performed in virtually any location and at a moment’s notice; hence it is ideally suited for those situations when you are caught unprepared and need to work some powerful magic on the fly.
The mechanics of the drift are simple. You are attempting to walk between worlds and bring something useful back with you. It is essentially a shamanic journey that takes place physically in real time, as opposed to an internal journey such as the drum-led trances of indigenous tribes like the Jivaro. The drift forces you out of your comfortable centrally heated temple space and puts you on the spot like few other occult practices. It gets your magic out into the world, in a very real and very physical sense.
A drift can begin in several different ways, depending on the situation and the intent. Sometimes drifts can be spontaneous. If you have sufficiently internalized the practice, it’s not uncommon to find yourself kicked into a full-on shamanic drift at virtually any moment. Going out to buy a pint of milk, walking home from the pub or visiting the shops can often be transformed into heavy magic without a minute’s notice. The spontaneous drift can sharpen up your sensitivity and adaptability to a very high degree, but to get the best from it, you need to be able to receive and filter “information” in an effective manner. The drift is a high-risk occult practice as far as your sanity goes, as it encourages a scary level of openness to spirit communication. Before you know it, you’re the mad guy speaking with invisible beings on the high street and going through the bins looking for occult secrets. That kind of thing is pretty much par for the course with this sort of work, so to begin with, it’s useful to learn a method of switching it on and off.
It’s important to remember that what you are doing is attempting to “walk between worlds”- with an emphasis on the word “between.” It’s relatively easy to go off into the deep end with this practice and become a paranoid lunatic remarkably quickly, but that’s not the point of the exercise. It’s your skill as a magician that allows you to safely navigate the wilder areas of consciousness and bring back something useful. To become accomplished at the drift, you have to develop sufficient skill at mediating between your normal day-to-day existence and the hyper-real shamanic experience.
In order to begin the drift, you should look for an appropriate starting place-a physical access point that will allow you to enter into shamanic reality and return again when your business is done. The most immediate and accessible crossover point into shamanic reality is, of course, the crossroads. Every inhabited location will have a crossroads of one form or another within walking distance, and the crossroads is the supreme symbol of intercession between the worlds. However, any work involving the crossroads falls firmly within the territory of the various Gods, Goddesses, Saints, Spirits and Mysteries associated with it. You need to ask their permission before you can go through the gate. This is easier to accomplish if you already have a working relationship with one or more of these entities. The general modus operandi would be to make appropriate offerings to them at their spot and ask if they will open the doorway for you, allowing you to go through and accomplish the intent of your drift. You should seek their blessing for your journey and ask them to ensure your safe return.
The mysteries of the crossroads are essential to the operation of this work. Although it’s possible to begin a shamanic drift in a more freeform style, utilizing a physical crossover point such as a gateway, railway arch, narrow alleyway or similar symbolic route, these structures still fall under the domain of the crossroads at an esoteric level. Therefore if the entire operation is performed under the specific auspices of a crossroads entity, with both their permission and their involvement, you are likely to get far more effective results. Once offerings have been made and permission has been granted, you can begin the drift. Depart from your access point, either walking through the gateway/ arch or leaving the crossroads in a different direction to which you arrived. You are now entering shamanic reality.
In the early stages of the drift you should begin tuning into your environment. Pay close attention to what’s going on around you and try to read the language of the city, or wherever you may be. Look out for any strange graffiti, headlines on discarded newspaper, unusual words or phrases that leap out at you from otherwise innocuous sources, and so on. Pay attention to snatches of overheard conversation, the lyrics of songs echoing from car radios, or announcements from train stations and the like. You are looking for a sign or signal that can be readily interpreted in relation to your intent. Don’t try to force it or just make something up to fit. Relax into the drift and wait for something to come through of its own accord. The process of the drift is a two-way dialogue with the spirits. You might have to be patient, but you will know when you’re on the right track.
The first piece of information that comes through will either answer your question right off the bat, or else it will lead you on to the next stage in your journey. Sometimes drifts can be resolved very quickly-for example, within minutes of leaving the access point, you see a random piece of street art that answers your question in no uncertain terms. If this happens, then simply return to the crossroads, thank the spirits and ask them to close the door for you. Sometimes it’s that simple. Frequently, however, the first signal that you receive will point you somewhere else, or only give you part of the story, leading you further down the road to look for more clues.
You should eventually start to get a sense that you are following a symbolic thread through the city. Each sign you receive brings you a little further towards your eventual destination and the realization of your intent. Sometimes you might lose the plot completely and find yourself clueless as to where you ought to go. If this happens, just relax and tune back in. Try to pick up the thread again and get back on the right track. Occasionally the spirits might throw you a curveball. For example, you might pick up a fragment of map that strongly suggests you need to get on a bus to the other side of town in order to complete the quest. Or you could find yourself going on an elaborate and exhausting journey across the city, only to find what you were looking for outside your own front door. Anything can happen on a drift. You’re stepping into a zone of increased potential and should be prepared for any eventual outcome.
One of the biggest obstacles to successful drifting is your own self-consciousness. The message of the drift might clearly dictate that you do something a part of you balks at. You might be required to steal something conspicuous from a public place, or behave in a highly unusual manner at an extremely inappropriate location. Often all that can be done in these circumstances is to go beyond whatever ingrained social conditioning your actions have disturbed and take a leap of faith in the name of magic. It’s actually surprising what you can get away with in public without anyone batting an eyelid, particularly in a major city.
The drift can sometimes be hard work, and if you don’t come up against the occasional “what the fuck am I doing” moment, then you’re not fully engaging with the process. A useful psychological trick for getting beyond any embarrassment or self-consciousness is to put aside the intent of the drift for a moment and just consider the whole thing as an abstract exercise in deconditioning.
If you find yourself hesitating over some fairly inoffensive but extremely peculiar action, for example picking up an old shoe in broad daylight and swapping it with your own, or acquiring an oddly resonant object from the center of a busy roundabout, then you’ve inadvertently uncovered something very interesting about yourself. You’ve discovered one of the walls of your personality — something that sets limits on what you personally consider to be acceptable public behavior. What is it doing there? What purpose is it serving? Look closely at the range of emotional responses you’ve tapped into and see what you can discover about yourself The process of trying to move beyond one of these tiny barriers in order to acquire a power object could well be considered a powerful shamanic act in its own right.
One of the most difficult and complex aspects of this work is knowing how to strike the right balance between moving with the flow of events and tailoring what happens towards your ultimate goal. It’s just as easy to be distracted by tangential phenomena, and forget why you were drifting in the first place, as it is to be so completely focused on your intent that important material is overlooked. Getting the right balance only really comes from experience and practice-so don’t be too hard on yourself to begin with. Go where the drift takes you, but always keep in mind your reasons for embarking on the journey. If you feel yourself straying too far from the path, don’t be afraid to gently guide yourself back on course. If any odd or tangential material comes through that seems unconnected to your goal, just make a note of it for further investigation at a later date — another separate drift may be required to uncover its mysteries.
To put some of this into context, here are a few practical examples of situations in which the drift can be utilized. The method is ideally suited to divinatory workings, particularly if you need to get a quick answer to an important question but don’t have access to paraphernalia such as tarot cards or rune stones. A short divinatory drift can be employed during a lunch break, on the journey home from work, or in any situation where you need to gather information at short notice via non-ordinary means. It requires little in the way of planning or preparation. Simply visit the crossroads, make your offerings, ask the question and see what comes through.
A related information-gathering drift practice is the underworld divination, which can be employed in any city that has an underground tube or metro system. Begin the drift near the subway entrance and literally envision your descent onto the tube system as a shamanic journey to the underworld for hidden knowledge. You are descending to an alien landscape of white-tiled walls, harsh fluorescent lights and metal worms that burrow through the earth carrying semiconscious human cargo. Ride the tube lines until you get the answer you’re looking for. Converse with its denizens, read its walls, listen to its voices and try to understand its language. You might want to leave a coin with an underground busker or beggar as payment for any information you receive.
A drift can also be utilized if you need to work some spontaneous sorcery and don’t have access to whatever tools or temple space you might normally employ. You would begin the drift in the usual manner and ask to be guided towards ingredients for a gris-gris bag or similar fetish item, which at a push could be constructed from a sheet of paper or small carrier bag tied up with an elastic band or piece of string. You walk the streets until you find a specific number of items for the bag, all of which should at some level correlate to your intent. The ingredients could be anything from curious plants growing between paving stones, to sigils derived from graffiti seen on walls, to just about anything that feels right or manifests itself to you in an odd way. The more often you work with the drift, the better you tend to become at recognizing and acquiring what you need.
After a while you may even find yourself developing a “language” of ingredients to use in work of this nature. As always, resist the temptation to just arbitrarily make up a list of aesthetically pleasing correspondences. Hoodoo ingredients should be revealed to you through the living shamanic process of working the drift. If you want to cobble together a symbol system one afternoon over a cup of tea and some biscuits, then that’s fine, but you’re only shortchanging yourself and not fully engaging with what you might call shamanic reality. Hoodoo correspondences can’t be invented after the fact. They must be revealed to you directly by the spirits, during the drift and in the heat of the moment. That’s what invests them with power and meaning. If you skip that section and just casually decide that, say, cigarette ends represent the shell of a human soul, then you’re distilling all the magic out of the process. Magic takes place in the wild and unpredictable territories outside of the individual ego, and you can’t get anywhere near those areas unless you relax the controls and let the material emerge of its own accord.
Once you’ve drifted for the ingredients to go in your makeshift sorcery bag, you might then look for an appropriate power spot to construct and charge it. If you’re not yet familiar with the psychogeography of an area, let the drift itself guide you to an appropriate place. You could make offerings to the spirits associated with that specific area, or to whatever Gods or Goddesses you may regularly work with, and ask them if they will empower the bag for you. This could involve leaving it concealed at a particular spot, and returning after a set period of time to pick it up. Or it could mean walking counterclockwise around a statue or building seven or nine times with the bag in your hand, or any number of possible formulae. Speak to the spirits, listen to what they have to say, and don’t make any deals that you’re unwilling to follow through on.
If you plan on working regularly with the drift method, you should gradually start to get a feel for the occult landscape of the city where you live. Try to find out as much as you can about the local history, look at old maps of the area, spend lots of time drifting and get to know the landscape, the environment and its ecosystems inside out. There might be an old crossroads, standing stone, ancient patch of woodland, beautiful river, creepy hospital, wishing well, haunted castle or potent nightclub in your town. Pay attention to what happens in these places. Visit them often, speak to the spirits that dwell there and seek to make allies of them.
Accept responsibility for the patch where you live and operate. Step into the role of local magician in your area. Make friends with the powers that are already there and try to broker mutually beneficial relationships with them. Listen to what they want from you and always keep your end of the bargain. There is always sacrifice, and you get nothing for nothing. If you prove you are willing to address the concerns of your town, it will be more likely to cooperate with you. Discover what arrangements the ghosts and spirits of your city are prepared to make with you and what gifts they may be willing to bestow.
There is no rulebook or step-by-step guide to how this kind of work will play out, as it is all about personal relationships and direct interaction. All that can be given are hints and pointers based on experience. This guide has been written primarily from the perspective of the urban magician, but its principles can just as easily be applied to a rural setting or to whatever environment you find yourself living in. If you live outside of the city, you may find that information emerges via phenomena such as the flight of birds, arrangement of twigs on the earth, cloud formations, shapes made by driftwood on the beach or any number of environmental factors. Try experimenting in different settings and locations to see what comes through.
You could speculate that the series of peculiar omens, superstitions and old wives’ tales that have been handed down to us by successive generations are the remnants of codified information derived via methods such as the drift. So by engaging with this process yourself, you are building a direct relationship with both the land you live on, and the environment in which you operate as a magician. You’re developing a living shamanism that has nothing to do with the various re-constructionist neo-pagan traditions that flood the occult scene, but grows out of the same methods that shamans have always worked with. Going out into the wilderness, speaking with spirits, and returning with knowledge and power.
The Great When
Alan Moore (2024)
In Alan Moore’s latest novel, he uses the Arthur Machen technique of wandering through London to allow his characters to pass between the physical London that we know and the archetypal London that lies as a fire behind the world of smoke that we inhabit. Moore directly uses Machen’s short story “N” and the novel that’s mentioned in “N,” A London Walk: Meditations in the Streets of the Metropolis by Rev. Thomas Hampole. A London Walk ends up being a sort of key in The Great When that allows the characters to travel between and experience the interpenetration and perichoresis of the two Londons and how they feed off each other. I won’t cite every time it happens in the book, but the first time we witness it, it’s memorable:
Why on Earth had he come here? It was the worst possible idea he could have had, returning by night to a crime scene, where there were by now roaring killers at his heels and Dennis couldn’t see where he was going. All his visual impressions were a squall of underexposed photos, upside down, or overlapping, as they flickered by the rough edged brick work of a terrace end-house. Metal street signs made unreadable by soot. Four or five startled onlookers who shrank back into doorways, anxious not to get involved.
With gangster hoofbeats gaining, he propelled himself across the road and swerved into Ingrestre Court or Street or Place, he couldn’t read it. Then a left turn, then a right. His dangling carrier swung out horizontally by centrifugal force as he took corners. Was the slab and rubber thunder of his faceless chasers louder at his back nearer? Brewer street, possibly Bourchier street, then names he didn’t recognize. Carious alley mouths that might lead to a literal dead end, all with his thumping heartbeat indistinguishable from the thudding boots of the men after him.
He didn’t have the faintest notion where he was, nor any destination, except out of this unbearable dilemma. So between the ale and the adrenaline, he was in an unprecedented state of being lost, both physically and psychologically. Tilting facades with unlit windows smeared past his peripheries and every breath was scalding in his gullot. Panting down a narrow entry, he could see what looked like a yard’s wooden gate, either ajar or off its hinges, leaning open only a few steps in front of him.
If he could just nip in there before they saw him do it, they might run straight past, the way it worked in chases he’d seen at the pictures. Wild with panic, he pulled the gate open and was part way through it when he realized… wait… this wasn’t right. He wasn’t seeing this correctly. He was making some mistake. The… it was wooden pallets propped against the passage wall and not a gate at all. But then… how had he opened it? Unable to arrest his tumbling momentum, he plunged forward and then…
He is on his knees and puking… {our hero has entered the other London for the first time}
About the Author
Justin K Prim is an American gemcutter and author living and working in Lyon, France. He has travelled all over the world, studying various types of meditation techniques, psycho-spiritual healing therapies, as well as his trade skills of audio engineering and gemcutting. He is in the process of publishing two books, the first is about a spiritual quest through the UK to find the hidden heart of Merlin the wizard, and the second is a book about the worldwide history of gemstone faceting. He has explored careers in spiritual counseling and energy healing, but now works as a gemcutting teacher in Lyon and Brooklyn, as well as writing articles, producing videos, and giving talks about gemcutting history.
