Episode 89: On Ishmael Reed's 'Mumbo Jumbo,' or, Why We Need More Magical Thinking

Jan 6, 2021

A romp through Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo as musical fiction and cultural spellwork. They trace Jes Grew's spread via 1970s rhythms, radio, and stride piano. Conversations map Afrocentric loas, Atenist opposition, and conspiratorial riffs. The hosts debate hyperstition, participatory art, and how careful magical thinking differs from dangerous superstition.

01:20:09

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insights

INSIGHT

Novel As Magical Working

Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo functions as a magical working that creates a new world rather than merely describing one.
The novel operates musically and hyperstitionally, inviting readers to participate in the spirit it conjures.

insights

INSIGHT

Hyperstition: Belief Makes It Real

The book deliberately creates a new loa or spirit (Jess Grew) and asks readers to feed and honor it to make it real.
That act of participation is hyperstition: belief helps bring the thing into existence.

insights

INSIGHT

Fabulation Over Literalism

Reed fabulates connections among disparate historical facts without claiming literal truth.
This playful fabulation reveals new possibilities by treating symbolic meaning as generative.

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Mumbo Jumbo as musical fiction

01:39 • 4min

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Jess Grew and 1970s music connections

06:01 • 1min

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Why Mumbo Jumbo matters

07:20 • 53sec

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First impressions and magic

08:13 • 4min

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The prestige: book's secret history

11:57 • 2min

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Loas, Osiris, and Atenism

13:50 • 3min

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Jes Grew's vectors and new Loas

16:40 • 4min

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Plot overview and characters

20:12 • 3min

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Von Vampton and the Wallflower Order

23:11 • 2min

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Conspiracy fiction vs conspiracy theory

25:11 • 4min

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Learning to think hyperstitiously

29:30 • 4min

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Magic as sympathy and resonance

33:40 • 4min

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Magical thinking vs sloppy superstition

37:16 • 2min

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Keeping planes separate in magic

39:30 • 3min

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Left-hand and right-hand paths

42:13 • 3min

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Templars, Book of Thoth, and distortion

45:31 • 7min

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Left hand in music and stride piano

52:20 • 2min

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Aesthetic reality and pareidolia

54:41 • 6min

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Moses' failed concert and degraded power

01:00:16 • 4min

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Participatory art versus Atenist passivity

01:03:52 • 3min

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Mumbo Jumbo as hyperstition

01:06:46 • 2min

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Minor literature and de-territorialized language

01:08:48 • 5min

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Writing to create a people

01:13:31 • 3min

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Denouement and utopian epilogue

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The western canon

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In 'The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages', Harold Bloom defends the concept of the Western literary canon by discussing 26 writers whom he considers central to it. Bloom argues against what he terms the 'school of resentment', which includes feminist, Marxist, and post-structuralist literary criticisms that he believes threaten the aesthetic values of literature. He emphasizes the importance of originality and the 'anxiety of influence' in literary works, with a particular focus on the impact of Shakespeare on subsequent literature. The book is divided into sections that trace the development of the Western canon through different ages, from the Theocratic Age to the Chaotic Age of the 20th century.

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Gnostic Religion the Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity

Ishmael Reed's 1972 novel Mumbo Jumbo is a conspiracy thriller, a postmodern experiment, a revolutionary tract, a celebration, and a magical working. It is a novel that, over and above prophetically describing the world we live in, creates a whole new world and invites us to move in. For Phil and JF, Mumbo Jumbo exemplifies art's creative power to generate new possibilities for life. It is also the perfect occasion for pinpointing the difference between the kind of magical thinking that fuels virulent conspiricism, and the more profound magical thinking which alone can save us from it.

**Image: **Albrecht Dürer, Two Pairs of Hands with Book

REFERENCES

Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo

Harold Bloom, The Western Canon
For more on Colin Wilson's concept of lunar religion, see The Occult
Weird Studies, episode 36: "On Hyperstition"
William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
Carl Van Vechten, American writer
Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, Illuminatus!
MC5, "Kick Out the Jams"
Karl Pfeiffer (dir.), Hellier, webseries
Jasun Horsley, 16 Maps of Hell
Ramsey Dukes (Lionel Snell), SSOTBME
Anonymous, Meditations on the Tarot
Fats Waller, American jazz musician
Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry
Weird Studies, episode 57 - "Box of Gods: On Raiders of the Lost Ark"
Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature

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