A stone, a tree, a river, a mountain, the moon and stars. Humans have from the beginning lived in a natural world populated with objects. We have named them all, as is our penchant. We’ve respected and engaged them and, by turn, ignored or destroyed them. Wave after wave of our ancestors, however, have looked upon these everyday material phenomena not as dully inanimate, but enchanted, inspirited, numinous—having powers in potentia that are beyond analytic understanding.
Numen inest, Ovid wrote in Fasti. Which is to say that the world, to those who observe differently, is a place animated by consciousness outside the human sphere, one that’s full of spirits, daemons, revenants, fairies, gods sinister and benign. For these observers, the world is less a post-Cartesian realm measured in zeroes and ones than one of unabashed enchantment that has nothing to do with sociological primitivism or organized religion. In such a world, “the sacred tree, the sacred stone are not adored as stone or tree,” as Mircea Eliade noted. Instead, they’re venerated as“hierophanies,” entities that are wholly other, the ganz andere.
This fall, Numina: The Enchantment Issue will explore the idea that the material world of which we’re an infinitesimal part is inhabited by consciousness beyond our ken. For example, trees, we are now beginning to realize, communicate with each other through complex mycorrhizal networks. As such, forests can reasonably be understood to be carrying on conversations of their own. Who knows but that they are out there naming us, just as we named them. And what of secular relics like lucky dice, Ouija boards, and rabbits’ feet? What of Sviatoslav Richter’s plastic lobster?
Contributors will include Shane McCrae, Melissa Pritchard, Aimee Bender, Han Ong, Arthur Sze, Julia Alvarez, Laird Hunt, Eliot Weinberger, Kyoko Mori, Amparo Dávila, and many others.
Online
March 13, 2024
Ariadne struck the mast
Enraged. She couldn’t sail, no
One had ever bothered to
Teach her, but the ship wouldn’t
Be still. She had awoken
To find Thesus dead, his crew
Dead, and at first she had felt
Relief.
Enraged. She couldn’t sail, no
One had ever bothered to
Teach her, but the ship wouldn’t
Be still. She had awoken
To find Thesus dead, his crew
Dead, and at first she had felt
Relief.
March 6, 2024
The purged caribou heart. First arctic
meal prepared raw, before fire. Before fires
purpled meat, meat was ulued off to serve
an open mouth. First heart’s crevasses
stretched like caribou cut raw. Protoheart
raw in search of fire, red windburn revealed
meal prepared raw, before fire. Before fires
purpled meat, meat was ulued off to serve
an open mouth. First heart’s crevasses
stretched like caribou cut raw. Protoheart
raw in search of fire, red windburn revealed
February 28, 2024
From Conjunctions 79
For breakfast, lunch, and dinner. On slices of rubbery white bread buttered with margarine so that the marmalade slides under the spreading knife. In the glass jar, the orange jelly with bright shavings of orange peel absorbs light and invites hungry eyes. And so, dreaming of marmalade, the brothers, always in need of sustenance, arrive on a snowy March morning at Heathrow.
February 28, 2024
From Conjunctions 79
I saw it in this very particular slide of swell’s,
the sylphspun silk of the sylph, she sideways,
her garage is paradise in masque, her sweep
is saturn, szturn im sturm & string, install’d
the sylphspun silk of the sylph, she sideways,
her garage is paradise in masque, her sweep
is saturn, szturn im sturm & string, install’d
February 21, 2024
Because in the kitchen, it’s difficult to lie
Because the yearbook photo shows long straight hair parted down the middle, Marcia Brady-
style
Because in my son’s mind, he has only one dziadek & babcia & that blindspot diminishes me
more each day
Because the yearbook photo shows long straight hair parted down the middle, Marcia Brady-
style
Because in my son’s mind, he has only one dziadek & babcia & that blindspot diminishes me
more each day
February 14, 2024
The earliest, from my brother (June 2007) was twelve seconds long: “Hi, it’s me—aww, fucking-A!—Hi, it’s me, call later, I guess.”
Then the first day of August 2007, twenty seconds: “Hi Amanda, this is Ollie, I just saw the news a bridge fell down in Minneapolis—I hope you weren’t on it. I guess that’s why I’m calling. I’ll try you later. Okay, love you, bye.” I was working at the café when I missed the call.
Then the first day of August 2007, twenty seconds: “Hi Amanda, this is Ollie, I just saw the news a bridge fell down in Minneapolis—I hope you weren’t on it. I guess that’s why I’m calling. I’ll try you later. Okay, love you, bye.” I was working at the café when I missed the call.
February 7, 2024
The road where I lived went in a circle.
Inside the road circle was a circle of grass.
Inside the circle of grass was the matter I looked through
And looked at, waiting for whatever moved in from the edges
And came together in the middle of the circle.
Inside the road circle was a circle of grass.
Inside the circle of grass was the matter I looked through
And looked at, waiting for whatever moved in from the edges
And came together in the middle of the circle.
January 31, 2024
heirloom hairline sugar
lips what’s up gas lit
you’re holding the match
dirty mattress book rhythms
lips what’s up gas lit
you’re holding the match
dirty mattress book rhythms
January 24, 2024
No one could remember when the hole appeared. Some thought it had opened overnight—spontaneously, like a weather event or an idea—while everyone was sleeping. Others claimed the hole had always been there, but small and shallow enough that no one noticed it. Only as it widened and deepened over time had it taken shape in the village consciousness. Whatever the case, since the hole emerged at the center of town, where everyone went and everything happened, it became impossible to ignore.
January 17, 2024
Not in a place considered a place. Farther out. On the road nowhere. Where a place had been. There was a smokestack. Not a place on the map. To get there, keep going. Kept going and missed it. Missed it but kept going. There was a water tower not considered a water tower. In a place once considered a place.
January 10, 2024
Truth is asphalt—you, too,
should wait for it to cool,
as slabs of it can and do
get personalityish.
should wait for it to cool,
as slabs of it can and do
get personalityish.
The 2019 Shirley Jackson Award winner reads from his work
Monday, March 25, 2024
4:30 pm – 5:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Campus Center, Weis Cinema