Cityscapes

The street where Gen and Cosey live is unremittingly grim: 1850s artisan housing--dirty brick facades, gaping wounds stretch the length of the street, broken only by a low railway, almost mathematically. Exactly the kind of street you can imagine Victorian murders of the cruelest, meanest kind committed, and no one ever knowing...Cobbles, grey sky...The terrace opposite stops short in the grey air, thick with moisture, revealing vistas of factories, tower blocks, endless tightly patterned semis...hills in the distance. Sometimes the factories work at night--the noise can be heard in the house, filtering through dreams, dull, percussive, hypnotic...
--from The Industrial Culture Handbook

The old texts, while wonderful, don't provide much context for adapting to a modern lifestyle full of technology and city energy. One of the first books I ever picked up was the Frosts' Magic Power of Witchcraft, which started with something to the effect of, "if you don't live in a place with a lot of woods and country, then move." To which I LAUGHED. Think about it: the growth rate of the world's population. It shows no sign of slowing down, and the disparity between low wages and rising rents mean a lot of us are going to get stuck in cheap city apartments. All of a sudden deciding to move to the country just isn't an option. Not to mention there are a lot of people who are already quietly adapting their magick to urban environments -- downtown botanicas are the living proof.

There are undercurrents here to be played with. I think moving the Craft into the cities is uncovering layers of ability that have barely been explored -- industrial technology has only been around a century and a half or so, compared to thousands of years of magickal practices coming before; it's only been in the last five decades or so that TV sets became a staple of almost every household. We're still getting used to having all this white noise around us -- the next great occult texts haven't been written yet.

Now, for those of you aghast at the idea of practicing what is essentially a nature-based magick in pollution and dirt, well, you're right. This isn't a glorification of the disposable society, nor its hopelessness. I think nature magicks mean even more to some of us city-dwellers because the only trees we get are in the parks, few and far between. We REALLY have to take care of the little we have.

Vacant lots, rooftops, waterfronts, playgrounds, fountains, gardens all have potential. How many times have you turned into a maze of streets to find an incredible mural on the side of a building, or walked into a park that featured a lot of pagan sculpture? Everything you need is there, if you know where to look...