2025
The paths books take can sometimes surprise their own authors. When Ediciones Akal published the Spanish translation of my second book, The Art of Darkness, in 2023, I hadn’t expected my first book, The Art of the Occult, would follow. Yet late in 2024, The Art of the Occult became available to Spanish readers. This unexpected sequence – the second book paving the way for the first – makes the arrival of The Art of the Occult in Spanish feel particularly special.
For both books, I had the pleasure of responding to thoughtful questions from journalist Esther Peñas, whose email interviews were arranged through my publisher. In our wide-ranging exchange, we explored the deep connections between art and magic, the role of the unconscious in occult practices, and how contemporary artists engage with these ancient traditions. Peñas’s thoughtful questions touched on everything from the nature of ritual to the evolution of magical thinking in our modern world, allowing us to delve into the heart of what makes the occult such an enduring source of artistic inspiration.
Read the interview in its entirety here: “The similarities between the artist and the magician are profound.”
I was particularly moved by Peñas’s question about what qualities one needs to engage with the occult, as it allowed me to articulate something I feel deeply about the accessibility of wonder:
“…It requires receptivity to possibilities, a willingness to be surprised, to be wrong, to be utterly transformed by what you discover. It asks us to remain vulnerable to mystery, to allow ourselves to be moved, changed, and even open to wonder. These are not esoteric qualities reserved for a select few. They are natural to all of us, even if they are sometimes buried under layers of skepticism or fear. To delve into the occult is really to delve into our own capacity for wonder, our own capacity to stand breathless and humbled by the vast mysteries around us, to feel our hearts open with the realization that there is so much more to existence than there is; that we could ever imagine, and that this infinite unknown is not something to be feared, but something that makes life itself magnificent and heartbreakingly beautiful.”
Here’s to hoping the magic continues and The Art of Fantasy completes this enchanted trilogy in Spanish!
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