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Authors: Drew Daniel
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that by 1980 he had an [artwork] by Spare. The occult aspect was always something that was around in the background, though much less so with TG than with Coil. There was an occult sensibility.
Drew: I was wondering about “spell of semen,” if it was a reference to sexual magic?
Sleazy: Yes, I’m sure it is. The ideas and the practice of sexual magic and all of the things that became more developed in the first two Psychic TV albums were already beginning tobe present and were beginning to interest us. But TG was so anchored in the banal aspect of popular culture that at that time those things still seemed very exotic and obscure. Not totally on message as it were. This is the first time that strand really became apparent.
Drew: I notice that in “Still Walking” there is a line, “share of thee water,” with the “thee” spelling. That’s something that you’d been using throughout the Coum era; it predates TG.
Gen: And before. I started using “Thee” and “E” (for I) in 1966 for a book that I wrote called
Mrs. Askwith
. And one of the characters was talking in that way, with that spelling. To immerse myself in the character I began using it all the time, so that I could find out what the character was like, what her opinions were. It’s very much like method acting. There are characters that I meet at other levels of consciousness and I try to give them a voice.
Drew: What about the “spell of semen” reference?
Gen: It’s obviously from me, and it’s a reference to what became the rituals of T.O.P.Y. I began experimenting with it in 1961. I was first told that I was mediumistic in 1960 by my grandmother, who had also been a medium, a professional medium. And that is when I began to focus more consciously on magical practice. I intuitively always included sexual magic in that practice.
Let’s get our hands dirty. The phrase “spell of semen” could designate a number of related practices. The most obvious is the use of semen as an ingredient in the creation of amulets and the working of sexual charms in sympathetic magic. In a number of related but distinct crosscultural folk forms found variously in medieval and early modern European occult practices,African magic and in the hoodoo practiced in the American South at the beginning of the last century, a woman who seeks domination or mastery over a man must capture a man’s seed and either work upon it herself or take it to a conjurer, root worker or wise woman. The semen should be stained onto fabric and stored in a “mojo hand,” “root bag,” “toby” or “conjure bag,” a small, usually red, flannel bag that protects it from exposure to air and is worn close to the body, either around the neck or at the waist (Yronwode, passim). This old folkloric practice bobs to the surface in Robert Johnson’s reference to a “nation sack” in his classic blues recording “Come into My Kitchen”: “Oh ah, she’s gone I know she won’t come back / I’ve taken the last nickel out of her nation sack.” In the specific context of Genesis’s interest in the occult, the phrase “spell of semen” clearly anticipates the “sigils” that were at the heart of the social and magical network T.O.P.Y. (Temple of Psychic Youth), a global organization that radiated outward as a kind of hypertrophied fan club for Psychic TV, the band that Genesis and Sleazy created shortly after the demise of Throbbing Gristle. Taking Gen’s interest in the transformative potential of mail art much further than his initial Orton-esque experiments with shock imagery might suggest, sigils were conceived as means of linking together the community of the Temple in an ongoing, committed practice of focusing the will and effecting personal change through art, prayer and ritual. In order to join or remain an official member of the Temple, each month one had to meditate upon one’s true desire, and then after giving the matter careful thought, create a visual
Drew: I was wondering about “spell of semen,” if it was a reference to sexual magic?
Sleazy: Yes, I’m sure it is. The ideas and the practice of sexual magic and all of the things that became more developed in the first two Psychic TV albums were already beginning tobe present and were beginning to interest us. But TG was so anchored in the banal aspect of popular culture that at that time those things still seemed very exotic and obscure. Not totally on message as it were. This is the first time that strand really became apparent.
Drew: I notice that in “Still Walking” there is a line, “share of thee water,” with the “thee” spelling. That’s something that you’d been using throughout the Coum era; it predates TG.
Gen: And before. I started using “Thee” and “E” (for I) in 1966 for a book that I wrote called
Mrs. Askwith
. And one of the characters was talking in that way, with that spelling. To immerse myself in the character I began using it all the time, so that I could find out what the character was like, what her opinions were. It’s very much like method acting. There are characters that I meet at other levels of consciousness and I try to give them a voice.
Drew: What about the “spell of semen” reference?
Gen: It’s obviously from me, and it’s a reference to what became the rituals of T.O.P.Y. I began experimenting with it in 1961. I was first told that I was mediumistic in 1960 by my grandmother, who had also been a medium, a professional medium. And that is when I began to focus more consciously on magical practice. I intuitively always included sexual magic in that practice.
Let’s get our hands dirty. The phrase “spell of semen” could designate a number of related practices. The most obvious is the use of semen as an ingredient in the creation of amulets and the working of sexual charms in sympathetic magic. In a number of related but distinct crosscultural folk forms found variously in medieval and early modern European occult practices,African magic and in the hoodoo practiced in the American South at the beginning of the last century, a woman who seeks domination or mastery over a man must capture a man’s seed and either work upon it herself or take it to a conjurer, root worker or wise woman. The semen should be stained onto fabric and stored in a “mojo hand,” “root bag,” “toby” or “conjure bag,” a small, usually red, flannel bag that protects it from exposure to air and is worn close to the body, either around the neck or at the waist (Yronwode, passim). This old folkloric practice bobs to the surface in Robert Johnson’s reference to a “nation sack” in his classic blues recording “Come into My Kitchen”: “Oh ah, she’s gone I know she won’t come back / I’ve taken the last nickel out of her nation sack.” In the specific context of Genesis’s interest in the occult, the phrase “spell of semen” clearly anticipates the “sigils” that were at the heart of the social and magical network T.O.P.Y. (Temple of Psychic Youth), a global organization that radiated outward as a kind of hypertrophied fan club for Psychic TV, the band that Genesis and Sleazy created shortly after the demise of Throbbing Gristle. Taking Gen’s interest in the transformative potential of mail art much further than his initial Orton-esque experiments with shock imagery might suggest, sigils were conceived as means of linking together the community of the Temple in an ongoing, committed practice of focusing the will and effecting personal change through art, prayer and ritual. In order to join or remain an official member of the Temple, each month one had to meditate upon one’s true desire, and then after giving the matter careful thought, create a visual
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