Esoteric Novels and their Children: The Literary Genesis of the Occult

A live, online lecture and discussion group with Occult literature scholar Dr. Thea Wirsching

Module I: Tarot Fiction

This first iteration devoted to The Tarot will be take place over two online sessions.

Date: Sundays May 22 and June 5
Time: 2-4pm EST/New York City time (11am- 1pm PST California time, 7-9pm GMT London time, 8-10pm CET Paris/Amsterdam time)
Admission: $50 Patreon members / $55 general admission

Esotericism and literature have been borrowing from each other for hundreds of years. The first Rosicrucian tracts were almost certainly fictions that inspired real secret societies. Helena Blavatsky mined occult fiction to flesh out the first great work of Theosophy, Isis Unveiled. As religion professor Jeffrey Kripal commented in Authors of the Impossible, “what we now call religion is a lot closer to what we now call fiction than anyone is willing to admit.”

In the “Esoteric Novels and their Children” book club at Morbid Anatomy, we will explore the idea of the occult novel as generative of actual occult movements. Topics will include Tarot, secret societies, Hollow Earth theory, and pre-Adamism, but the offerings might stretch out indefinitely to include other strands of the esoteric tradition that were born of fiction.

In this series, we will look for ways that works of fiction go “off book” and take on extra-literary lives. We will entertain the idea that reading can be an act of initiation into an occult state of being. We will abandon a philosophy of “words on the page,” and instead read freely between the lines.

Our first module, Tarot fiction, will examine how authors Charles Williams and Tim Powers model ways of using Tarot cards magically in their respective novels. Charles Williams’ The Greater Trumps (1932) can claim to be the first novel that incorporates Tarot as a plot device. Characters interact with a living Tarot deck (based seemingly on the haunting Sola-Busca) which allows them to raise powerful elemental forces. In class we will explore Williams’ esoteric affiliations, such as his connection to Golden Dawn magician, A.E. Waite.

Tim Powers, writing sixty years after Williams, used The Greater Trumps as his primary source for how to work magically with the Tarot. Powers’ contemporary novel Last Call (1992) is a metaphorical ode to the goddess Fortuna; set in Las Vegas, it imagines Tarot cards as living archetypes which can be manipulated to transform one’s fate. In class we will question whether the cards themselves are portals to psychological forces or living gods; is Last Call “just fiction,” or does it say something about how real practitioners engage with Tarot cards?

Greater Trumps lecture and discussion will be held on Sunday, May 22nd.

Last Call lecture and discussion will be held on Sunday, June 5th.

Please plan to have read each novel by the lecture date, if you want to avoid spoilers and participate in discussion.

Dr. Thea Wirsching is a scholar and Evolutionary astrologer based in Long Beach, CA. She received her doctorate in American occult literature at UCLA. Much of the research for that project went into her new publication, the American Renaissance Tarot, a literary Tarot that weaves America’s esoteric history together with its political history. Thea’s astrological counseling business, “The Pluto Babe,” is centered in releasing trauma and transforming shame, and her Tarot practice is rooted in the healing power of narrative. You can follow her on Instragram via @the_pluto_babe @americantarot