Urban Magick: origins

and why yeeting the problematic wholesale is also a problem.

I got a recent inquiry: is Urban Magick my invention?

stock photo of a city skyline

Absolutely not. Urban Magick, in my opinion, came about during the Urban Revolution, when human agrarian settlements had an “oh f- nature’s going to kill us, with water or human invaders!” epiphany. (Nature and physics eventually kill everyone, it’s just a matter of time and method.)

Those initial cities often anchored on the name of the land spirit/deity of the time. Most organized purposefully by building a temple near a water source at the edge of the city. The animism came right with these early people into the cities they founded behind protective walls.

Urban magick in the 20th century seems to have emerged in early Usenet groups, as people began discussing city spirits. Most did not connect such origins to ancient Sumer or the practices of Ancient Rome. I did, but it took a while to get out of the agrarian, Puritanical perspective and into a far more holistic view.

What I did—and am doing—isn’t unique. My perspective is one of layered callbacks and a magical perspective that isn’t new.

• Work with what’s around you.

• Animism and allyship over dominionism and paternalistic stewardship

• Recognize and appreciate the occult skills that go into urban design, urban planning, architecture, infrastructure/roads, and land architecture

• Recognize that the above can and does solve or cause social issues

• Separate as much as possible from the toxicity of purity culture, because that’s what causes people to promote various isms, pound their chests about the purity of nature while also burning massive amounts of fossil fuels and trashing campsites in direct opposition to their words

• Realize you aren’t helpless in the human social and political movements around you, nor are you helpless in the more toxic conditions that arise from toxic hierarchies.

None of these aspects of urban magick is unique. I just happened to bring them altogether in a way that connects urban magick with the concept of the city.

Here’s the meeting wholesale issue:

I came up as a 90s witch. We didn’t have social media back then, so the political and personal habits of the authors we followed and admired didn’t surface as easily as they do now. One of my main inspirations for Urban Magick was and is Urban Primitive. While I am not of the heavily tattooed and ear-gauged types, I still see these individuals as community members rather than frightening oddities. Raven Kaldera and Tannin Schwartzstein, whom I’ve never met, were (or are?)the first to write a book in my niche that used the word urban that was actually about city life, and not about having an office job or technology exposure.

Kaldera (I know little to nothing about Schwartzstein) has lost its reputation in the past few decades. I will leave that up to my no frith with fascist friends to detail. That his views now support the objectively evil doesn’t remove the value of what he and his co-author put forth in Urban Primitive. I might yeet the man, but because there is still so little out there on incorporating city/community of not just the like you into spiritual practice, I can’t just toss the book.