Ani.Mystic
Encounters with a Living Cosmos
by Gordon White
Gordon White’s sequel to his acclaimed Star.Ships is a book of adventure and encounter, of optimism and healing. Ani.Mystic: Encounters with a Living Cosmos is, explicitly, a magician’s book, a dreaming book, one which aims to fundamentally shift the discourse within the western magical tradition. Gordon explains, ‘the sole preoccupation of this book is exploring and uncovering animism as a dangerous category of European thought…’
Gordon begins by giving the standard definition of animism as ‘the belief that the world is made up of persons, only some of whom are humans,’ before taking us with him ‘to its farthest epistemological hinterlands.’ In dialogue with teachers of Indigenous knowledge, spirits, angels, star people, saints, plants, and beast masters and mothers, Gordon weaves a new story of trans-species collaboration and custodianship.
To get to that point, he interrogates and dismantles a series of constructs: materialist-naturalism, the notion of invasive species, the nature-culture divide and the binaries of domestic vs wild and forest vs garden, and the concept of ‘animism’ itself. We are then shown what it means to think with Deep Time, with Country and in Ceremony. Solutions and best practice are drawn from dialogue with the cultures he partakes in and the disciplines of magic and permaculture.
Our journey begins in an airport hotel bar in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, and the story unfolds through encounters with forest spirits, shark gods and cities of the dead. From stone altars in Micronesia, ancestral Māori pâ, and Aboriginal songlines to lecturing on UFOs at the Guggenheim in New York and avenging angels in London, the journey gathers momentum. We experience songlines, fire storms and rain dragons in Tasmania, and are finally brought into ceremony with Ayahuasca in Peru.
Gordon is transformed through his encounters with a living cosmos, and in the Telling. In walking in the magician’s footsteps, the candour of his heartbreaks and triumphs, we are invited to come into right relation ourselves, toward the cosmic aim of mutual flourishing.
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION:
Island of my Grandfather
1 The Altar in the Middle of the Ocean
2 Whetu Ariki
3 UFOs under New York, Angels over London
4 Sky Country
5 The Incident with the Dragon
6 The Farm at the End of the World
7 Everything Standing Up Alive
Book People
INDEX
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Standard Hardcover Edition - Limited to 900 copies
280 pages. Bound in shimmering emerald cloth, hummingbird glyph stamped in holographic foil on front, rose endpapers, purple silk ribbon. Printed on 150 gsm paper; printed dust jacket.
Paperback Edition
280 pages. Sewn paperback printed on 120gsm paper, with blue card covers with silver foil.
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Press, reviews, endorsements
“…a beautiful and profoundly inspiring work… In a series of piquant vignettes – pitching indigenous discourses from across Australasia against modernity’s positivist techno-narratives (dubbed “materialist-naturalism”) we are provided with a poignant reminder of how much we have lost in terms of our understanding of, and relationship with the very notion of a living cosmos. On a more positive note, these cameos are also empowering; they highlight just how much each person stands to gain from re-aligning their worldview to encompass the lived realisation that we – along with every natural element of our sentient, self-aware environment – share and participate in the co-creation of this cosmos… Ani.Mystic is a beautiful and informative work. But to read it is to embark upon a densely woven encounter. The sheer variety of voices that contribute to its fabric do not obfuscate, in any way, its message. Rather, they serve to pitch a distinctly perspectival challenge to the reader, to ingrained habits of thinking and being, as we attempt to straddle the linear logic of the book’s arguments and the vertical dives and ascents occasioned by encountering worlds and worldviews beyond the consensual dream of our daily reality… I cannot recommend this work highly enough.”
Peter Mark Adams for Paralibrum - read the full review here
Author talk by Gordon White at Watkins Books - watch on YouTube here
Interview with Gordon White on the RE/AL/IGN channel - watch on YouTube here
Interview with Gordon White on the Higherside Chats podcast - watch on YouTube here
Interview with Gordon White on the What Magic Is This? podcast - listen here
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About the Author
Gordon White is a chaos magician, shamanic practitioner and permaculture farmer based in Tasmania. His website and podcast, Rune Soup, is one of the most popular digital watering holes in the world of modern magic. He is one of the most exciting teachers and writers in contemporary occultism.
A success in many spheres, Gordon has worked for some of the world’s largest digital and social media companies. In a life that few experience, he has partied with princes, dined in castles, been mentored by a former director of a private spy agency and had a billionaire knight buy him a bottle of champagne; he brings the same chameleon skills to his magical work. Gordon has dived in search of sharks and lost cities, sat in ceremony under desert stars, travelled extensively and researched voraciously. Gordon speaks and teaches on the topics of magic, animism and psi around the world.
