Reality Deviants Book Club: Algernon Blackwood

Adam and Pooka discuss Algernon Blackwood’s fiction, his occult interests, his fascination with nature, and what his stories can teach Mage: The Ascension Storytellers about the sublime, supernatural uncertainty, spirits, Correspondence, Awakening, and psychological horror.

Show Notes

• Mage 20 SRD
• Blackwood, the Golden Dawn, and psychical research
• Why “The Willows” remains influential weird fiction
• The sublime as a tool for Mage
• Correspondence and “A Victim of Higher Space”
• Magical instruments in “A Psychical Invasion”
• Hermetic magic in “Smith: An Episode in a Lodging House”
• Reincarnation and “Ancient Sorceries”
• Psychic vampirism and “The Transfer”
• Sleepers encountering the supernatural
• Playing Awakening instead of relegating it to backstory
• Using wilderness settings in Mage and “The Wendigo”
• Psychological horror without Nephandi or cosmic monsters
• Mystical isolation, obsession, and chantries
• Using Sphere perceptions to generate story hooks
• Why Blackwood may feel especially appropriate for Mage: The Ascension (Second Edition)

A note on the 1910 wilderness novella

The episode discusses Blackwood’s use of material drawn from Algonquin-speaking Indigenous cultures while distinguishing his Edwardian weird fiction from the living traditions he transformed.