Papers by Stephen C Wehmeyer
Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies, 2021
The vernacular magical, divinatory, and healing practices associated with the Afro-American Gulf ... more The vernacular magical, divinatory, and healing practices associated with the Afro-American Gulf South, alternately called “Hoodoo” or “Conjure,” offer a window into an intriguing world of “everyday esoterica.” Practitioners envision a world of competing human desires, which move and are moved by an array of malign and benign spiritual forces. They cope with this world with a pharmacopeia of symbolically powerful physical substances, but also through works of bodily discipline, prayer, meditation, and other practices aimed at the cultivation of will, self-awareness, and self-regard. These latter tools and techniques comport closely with Michel Foucault’s concept of technologies of the self. Exploring Hoodoo ritual through Foucault’s lens offers opportunities to re-imagine American Hoodoo as an esoteric system that enables practitioners to manipulate and transform themselves as well as their circumstances. This examination serves to increase our appreciation for the sophistication of...
Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, 2017
They call it quicksilver. You wear it in your shoe, both of them. Nuthin will harm you, nuthin ca... more They call it quicksilver. You wear it in your shoe, both of them. Nuthin will harm you, nuthin can hurt chew by walkin' across anything. (Hyatt informant 241, Wilmington, NC). WHY HYATT? During the 1930s, avocational folklorist Harry Middleton Hyatt began an extensive project collecting supernatural folk beliefs and ritual practices
Western Folklore, 2008
Folkloristic research for the past quarter century argues inexorably that to understand tangible ... more Folkloristic research for the past quarter century argues inexorably that to understand tangible things we must investigate the circumstances that obtained before their existence, the processes by which they came into existence, and the consequences of their existence. . . Following [Robert A.] Georges's view of narrating behavior, we should think in terras of objects not as things in and of themselves but as aspects or manifestations of material behavior, to coin a phrase. Jones 1997:209 In the spring of 2003, Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code was enjoying a substantial run in the upper reaches of the New York Times best-seller list. Part thriller, part mystical treatise, Brown's work re-ignited a longstanding American fascination with secret societies, hidden wisdom encoded in works of art, and lost ancient knowledge possessed by an elect and mysteriously powerful few. Around the same time, a few folklorists living in the Los Angeles area became privy to our own occult art adventure.1 Though far less lurid than Brown's metaphysical potboiler, the story is not without its secrets, mysteries, and surprises. Our encounter with a corpus of newly discovered canvases by a little known mystical artist of the early 20th century raises some intriguing questions about the categorization, analysis, and exhibition of creations which occupy the margins of mainstream art criticism and theory. It soon becomes apparent that a fundamentally folkloristic, behavioral approach, like that advocated by Michael Owen Jones, is the only satisfying way to decode the complex relationships between these creations, their creators and their communities, and to find real value and meaning in their mysteries. Moreover, viewing the work from a behavorial perspective has led us to suggest a new category or genre of art into which we place the work of this artist; we hope this will lead to a better understanding of the processes and products not only of Edith V. Tenbrink but many other formerly misunderstood and mis-categorized artists as well. THE ARTIST Edith Valentine Tenbrink, a prolific but litde known esoteric artist, lived and worked in Los Angeles from the early 1920s to 1963. Her artwork incorporates Judeo-Christian and Islamic elements, as well as Gnostic, Astrological, Alchemical, and Masonic diemes. Through a corpus of over 80 currently known paintings and drawings, Edith Tenbrink, or EVT as she signed herself, communicates a vision of startling beauty and spiritual wholeness. Tenbrink's images are visually striking, with bold colors and textures, although her subject matter at first may seem frustratingly cryptic and opaque. In reality, these works can be understood quite easily in relation to the esoteric landscape of Los Angeles as it existed between 1920-1960, which included the practices of Spiritualism, New Thought, various forms of Eastern Mysticism and the rituals of fraternal mystery schools like the Freemasons and the Rosicrucians. From the art on the dollar bill to the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles2, the aesthetics of fraternal orders have marked the American cultural landscape, and Tenbrink drew on this lineage in her own spiritual life and in her art. A considerable number of esoteric fraternal orders, secret societies, and other modern mystery schools originated and/or flourished in Southern California from the 1920s onward. Blending Spiritualist practice with Eastern religions, Western occultism, and mystical Christianity, they offered their members "the secret teachings of all ages":3 the spiritual mysteries that were believed to underlie the religions and philosophies of disparate cultures. These organizations and their teachings influenced the work of numerous metaphysical artists, both well-known and obscure, such as Aleister Crowley, Frieda Harris, J. Augustus Knapp, Rosaleen Norton, and Austin O. Spare. Edith Tenbrink is very much a part of this same artistic stream, although her unique vision and style deserve individual attention. …
Magic, Ritual And Witchcraft, 2017
The esoteric pharmacopeia of Hoodoo or Conjure is replete with aesthetic elements intended to int... more The esoteric pharmacopeia of Hoodoo or Conjure is replete with aesthetic elements intended to introduce shining, glittering, or reflective surfaces into ritual performance. Polished silver dimes, tinfoil cigarette papers, liquid mercury, and the silver shavings from the backs of mirrors (the latter three examples known colloquially as "quicksilver" in the vocabulary of Conjure) are all employed toward a wide array of pragmatic ends, from cursing an enemy, to winning at gambling, detecting hostile sorcery to keeping the law away from a bootlegging business. Through analysis of key examples drawn primarily from Harry M. Hyatt's _Hoodoo, Conjuration, Witchcraft, and Rootwork_, this article explores these aesthetic inclinations as they manifest in vernacular belief and ritual practice.
In Extremis: Death and Life in 21st Century Haitian Art
Much of the scholarship on the Indian tribes addresses the perceived oppositional relationship to... more Much of the scholarship on the Indian tribes addresses the perceived oppositional relationship to Official' carnival processions, or treats the tribes' function as moral exemplars, as foci for community cohesion, as retainers of cultural memory.\n.. If, as Michel de Certeau (1988) has opined, "Haunted places are the only ones people can live in" (108), then the collective rites that awaken the dead and bring them to the streets or take them to the virtual highways of the internet - the symbols by which the city spaces are re-invested with spirits, real or imagined - are all essential parts of the city's ongoing renewal.
Social Identities, Jan 1, 2010
This essay explores intersections between the ritual veneration of stereotypified Native American... more This essay explores intersections between the ritual veneration of stereotypified Native American spirit figures by American Spiritualists and the performative traditions of 'Masking Indian' practised by urban African Americans in New Orleans' Mardi Gras processions. The author examines the ways in which communities in New Orleans, of both sacred and secular identity, employ images of Native Americans as icons of spiritual power and presence. This essay suggests some ways in which this process constitutes an instance of co-narration, in which clergy and congregants of Spiritualist/Spiritual churches - whose narratives of the Indian spirits find expression through interlacing oral and ritual performances - have helped to establish a sacred dimension for Indian processions in New Orleans, adding an overtly spiritual note to otherwise secular 'rites of territory repossessed'. Through an examination of the community response to the death of Big Chief Allison 'Tootie' Montana, and the first post-Katrina Mardi Gras in 2006, the article explores the ways in which Indian icons and imagery still stand for many New Orleanians as powerful signs of something in the soul that, to paraphrase a popular Mardi Gras Indian song, won't kneel and won't bow down.
Western folklore, Jan 1, 2008
Western folklore, Jan 1, 2007
African Arts, Jan 1, 2001
Response to Bettelheim. by Stephen C. Wehmeyer Judith Bettelheim raises some interesting question... more Response to Bettelheim. by Stephen C. Wehmeyer Judith Bettelheim raises some interesting questions in response to my article on the Indian altars of the Spiritual Church. The purpose of the initial article was to fill a significant lacuna in the.
African arts, Jan 1, 2000
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Papers by Stephen C Wehmeyer
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