or, How the Fuck Did That Happen?
It’s now been twenty years since I first wrote Quantum Sorcery. I have written about the evolution of the ideas that became the magical system that I constructed around my take on the quantum paradigm, but I’ve never put a full description of the actual development process in one place before now.
From 1999 through 2002, I was immersing myself in Gnostic material and seeing if I could inject some semblance of faith into my magical practice. Unfortunately, I was not successful. I remember making a joke at the time that after all of my attempts to adhere to a spiritual path had ultimately not given me what I was looking for, that I might as well try practicing Chaos Magic. My initial forays were hopeful. I was working fairly typical Chaos Magic, consisting of sigils, servitors, ad-hoc open-hand spells, and results-based ritual work. I still did, and do, also incorporate elements of Icelandic sorcery that I first encountered during my time in Asatru. Even so, I was looking for something new.
On November 26th, 2004 I attended a metaphysical convention called Ancient Ways in Chicago. I attended talks, met interesting people, and was interviewed for an article in the Chicago Tribune (Unconventional Believers Put Faith in Nature by John Keilman). On Saturday the 27th, I attended a Space/Time Sigil workshop taught by Taylor Ellwood. Later that evening, we found ourselves in the hotel restaurant at the same time and ended up sharing a lively dinner conversation.
Later that night, I was sitting in my hotel room, drinking hard lemonade and eating some brownies. I was reviewing the notes that I had taken from classes throughout the day. I jotted down a question:
What is the mechanism by which magick works? How does will cause change?
I wrote a stream-of-consciousness set of ideas, assertions, and questions pertaining to the possible relationship between quantum mechanics, chaos mathematics, and magick. Prior to the conference, I had been immersing myself in the works of Grant Morrison, Doug Rushkoff, Mark Pesce, James Gleick, Johnjoe McFadden and Rupert Sheldrake, so I had primed myself with a rich body of material.
The next week, I began doing research. Lots of research. I bought books, downloaded academic papers, and generally saturated myself in both esoteric and exoteric subject matter. On January 30th, 2005, I published the essay ‘Quantum Sorcery’ here on SpikeVision. I also began defining and using a set of basic magical techniques that utilized this premise as their basis.
Through some fortuitous series of events which I have never known, my essay came to the attention of an acquisitions editor, who I’ll just refer to as Mike, who worked for a major occult publisher. He asked if I’d be interested in expanding my essay into a book, because his company was looking for material in this vein. I said yes and assembled a requested 10-page precis on what I intended to include in the book. I was green-lit and began writing the book on March 1st, 2005. I spent that entire summer and autumn reading, researching, and writing.
On October 11, 2005, I sent the finished manuscript to Mike. Shortly thereafter, I received a letter back from the publisher that I did not expect. They informed me that Mike was no longer with the company, and that they were not interested in publishing the book. It was a rejection letter for a book that I had been asked to write. Needless to say, I was a bit deflated. I continued working magically with my new paradigm while I considered my options.
I was quite active at the time on an online forum, the Dead Chaoist’s Society, on chaosmagic.com, operated by Dead Jellyfish. Many of the ideas that went into Quantum Sorcery were discussed and debated there. I complained about my plight, and something unexpected happened. It so happened that DJ was in the process of standing up a new publishing house, Konton, based in Tokyo, where he lived. Since I already had a book ready to go, he asked if I’d be interested in signing with him. I agreed, and we did the paperwork. I sent him my manuscript, and he did the editing and layout. The internal illustrations were by Argoth Wraith, and the cover was by Nemo Boko. Since I had been corresponding with Jaq Hawkins for a couple of years, we approached her to write a forward, to which she agreed.
On February 26, 2006, DJ issued a press release on his site, announcing the forthcoming publication. In June of 2006, the book Quantum Sorcery: The Science of Chaos Magic was published. I was told that it did well, but unfortunately, I never saw a single cent of royalties on that edition. By the time that payout was to occur, DJ had fallen off the face of the earth, along with his website, and disappeared with everything owed to his authors. I confirmed this with several of the other Konton authors. We had all been ripped off. Since DJ was in breach of our contract, I immediately reasserted ownership of the manuscript. There may also have been some retributional malifica involved at the time as well.
At the time, I had no contacts at any other publisher, so I intended to self-publish a re-release of Quantum Sorcery. I started working on a new cover and layout. Fortunately, I also complained once more about my circumstances in my Live Journal. Taylor Ellwood saw my post and reached out to me. He had just started doing acquisition work for Immanion Press, Storm Constantine’s publishing house. He asked if I’d be interested in releasing a second, revised edition though their imprint, Megalithica Books. Again, I agreed. The Second Edition of Quantum Sorcery was released on July 7th, 2009, and stayed in print until the Third Edition was published in 2021. That edition came about at Storm’s urging after the release of Voidworking, and greatly expanded the previous releases. Storm unfortunately passed in January of 2021, but Danni at Immanion got the Third Edition across the line.
I had no expectations of how much money I would make off of my efforts. I acknowledge that in terms of appeal, I am a niche writer within a niche community. I have the greatest admiration for anyone who is able to make an actual living off of writing alone. I certainly cannot. My royalty payments usually buy a nice dinner out and a small stack of new books. More would be nice, but as trite as it may sound, it means more to me to be able to hold a book that I’ve written in my hands and know that there are readers who have benefitted from my work, than to make a buck. There are other occasional moments too that make me happy, such as when I saw the following on Amazon:
I also learned this year that when Open AI pulled down the complete contents of libgen and used it to train their LLM, that Quantum Sorcery was one of the books that they used. Thus, their AI has been made just a little bit stranger than it might otherwise have been. This pleases me greatly.
First Edition: 2006, Konton, Tokyo. ISBN 4903462056.
Second Edition: 2009, Megalithica, Stafford. ISBN 1905713355.
Third Edition: 2021, Megalithica, Stafford. ISBN 1912241196.