This talk was recorded earlier this year as - professional tarot reader - Julia Gordon Bramer was coming up to the release date of her book "The Occult Sylvia Plath: The Hidden Spiritual Life of the Visionary Poet" - and then the file got all kinds of messed up on a certain recording platform but with some time (too much time) and patience, presto: restored!
Here's some information about the book:
Sharing her more than 15 years of compelling research—including analysis of Sylvia Plath’s unpublished calendars, notebooks, scrapbooks, book annotations and underlinings, as well as published memoirs, biographies, letters, journals, and interviews with Plath and her husband, friends, and family—Plath scholar Julia Gordon-Bramer reveals Sylvia Plath’s enduring interest and active practice in mysticism and the occult from childhood until her tragic death in 1963.
However, as much as Plath is a contender for head space when I'm going down these roads, I'm far more interested in Ted Hughes and his relationship - personal and work wise -with Plath. I find it fascinating that two great poets of a generation that existed not so long ago, would sit around in their evenings and fire up the Ouija board.
I'd love the poetry world to be like this again - they never told us these things at school, instead, they left us to decide for ourselves that it was boring because we didn't understand a damn thing about what was really going on.
I hope you enjoy this one - it was great fun and illuminating too. If just one person picks up a book by either poet, maybe my work here is done.
https://www.juliagordonbramer.com
Here's a documentary about Sylvia which touches on the occult side a grand total of zero times - but will give you a decent background into her:
If you're in the dark about the end to this story, on February 11, 1963, Plath got up at around seven a.m. and tended to her children. She left them milk, bread, and butter so that they’d have something to eat when they woke up, put extra blankets in their room, and carefully taped the edges of their door.
Then, Plath went into the kitchen, turned on the gas, and lay down on the floor (though some reports will conflictingly say she placed her head in the oven). Carbon monoxide filled the room. Before long, Sylvia Plath had died. She was only 30 years old.
Her family, ashamed of her suicide, reported that she’d died of “virus pneumonia.”
Ted Hughes himself was devastated - they had been separated for six months, due to his affair with Assia Wevill - who for the record, also died by suicide on 23 March 1969 after murdering her four-year-old Shura in their London home.
I mention this only because I like Ted Hughes a lot as a writer, but when you start digging, sometimes you can wish you had left the shovel where you found it.
You can buy a copy of Julia's book here.
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