A People’s History Of Magic and Mysticism

Liberating Black Magic: A Vocational Commitment

As a Black trans scholar of history, my core vocational commitments are centered in collective liberation. I try to practice a pedagogy that transgresses white heteronormative paradigms and, instead, privileges Black cultural  storytelling, and self-understanding. "A People's History of Magic and Mysticism uses decolonial counter-narratives created with student scholars in a classroom setting to illuminate the less explored corners of Black theological and religious history.  Specifically my work centers on Black esoteric thought of the Americas.

My interest in Black religious, spiritual, and mystical experiences pushes beyond the “approved” religious history of Black Christian, Black Islamic, or Black Jewish traditions. My work goes to the edge of these traditions and deals specifically with “Black magic.” I’m concerned that both the academic study of black religiosity, and those studying it are subject to systems of supremacy that marginalize the lived experience of diasporic born traditions of African traditional religion and its more mystical or esoteric practices and stories, and troubles any project attempting to create distinct boundaries between the two.

Black esoterica is ignored for being too embodied, too "rooted", or too queer for white Protestant heteronormative frameworks that dominate the study of religious history in the academy. Instead, I begin with the possibility that how Black peoples have traditionally reached for the Divine is esoteric in nature.   

In my work, I am committed to the act of reaching across time to shift conditions on the ground for our ancestors ontologically by redefining our perception of them in the present. The act of seeing historic black practitioners of magic as revolutionary comrades engaged in a struggle across time and space is, in and of itself, redemptive.  Here, I’m following Walter Benjamin's reading of history when he says: “There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak Messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim. That claim cannot be settled cheaply” Benjamin asserts that we, in our present time, have a “weak messianic power” as we bring the experience of our ancestors to bear on our time.  This is how I understand my work both theologically and vocationally. 

My work aims to uncover the full ontological and esoteric resistance of Black ancestors to white supremacy. In my research, I use figures like Paschal Beverley Randolph as a radical emic who is acting against white supremacy within his ontological understanding. Randolph’s world is an ontological world.  Randolph was a world traveled occult practitioner, Black, queer, founder of the Rosecrucian order in America,  advisor to, and secret agent of  President Lincoln. An influential participant in Spiritualism, seerism, and the debates of its time and the “father” of sex magic. But his esoteric ideas are often read as marginal.  Instead, I assert that Randolph is a rough sketch of the average Black practitioner of esoterica in the Americas. In this way, I can illuminate holy and wholly mystical practices of defiance that fall outside the well worn lines of Black religious history. 

My hope is that by starting to untangle the points of intersection between Black esoteric practices and other traditions, practices, and forms of worship, I can help push beyond the pedagogical frameworks of the formation of faith leaders and theological educators. In doing so, I join other scholars in uncovering cultural heritage, social utilities, and “ancestral technologies”for wider uses.  When I was a theology student in pastoral training, it was incredibly helpful to me to  illuminate the actions of Jesus in light of the esoteric practices of his time or discover the esoteric underpinnings of the Christian liturgy . Even more impactful was to begin to study the origins of the diasporic folk magic practices I learned from my great aunt. Like the teleological warping practices of ancestral veneration, I aim to recenter Black magic within the broader theological traditions based on the unique experience of Black and brown peoples in the Americas. 

But further, I’m interested in the religiosity of those outside of theological and academic circles.  I hope to continue to write books and papers like this  for the general public in order to offer a shared language for a generation of black and brown people to continue to “come out” of the shadows and practice black magic in a more liberated way. Through imbuing our ancestors with robust reframings, retellings, and counternarratives, I hope to spend a lifetime re-discovering “Black Magic,”and sharing a lifetime of practices with my community.