The Witching-Other: Explorations & Meditations on the Existential Witch by Peter Hamilton-Giles (Atramentous Press, 2017) Limited Edition Hardcover

Peter Hamilton-Giles. The Witching-Other: Explorations & Meditations on the Existential Witch. Atramentous Press, 2017. Cloth hardcover with dust jacket. Standard hardcover edition. 156 pages. Limited to 891 hand-numbered copies (#287/891).

Condition: Fine in a Very Good dust jacket. Minor shelf wear on dust jacket.

Description from the publisher:

 Standard Edition: 160 pages, Evergreen colorset dust jacket, two colour foil block, red and gold, foil block to front case, head and tail bands, Napura endpapers bordering 100 gram munken cream paper, ribbon. Ltd to 891 copies.

To propose there is something ‘other’ to the witch might seem counter-intuitive, especially so since conjugating the witch into witching suggests particular agentive actions and decisions have already been made about the topic. One where the action of witching is then further hyphenated with the other must then result in increasing this level of obfuscation to new heights. Yet in Peter Hamilton-Giles’ most explorative book to date he suggests by explicating the Witching-Other a wholly new and more profound way for understanding the witch is revealed, one which opens up the possibility for establishing an altogether more intimate and innovative relationship. This has the potential to liberate the witch icon from the shackles of history and practitioner narratives, and because of this Hamilton-Giles has preferred to concentrate on metaphysical absences than physical presences. Why this is an important re-directive proposition is that it allows individuals to move towards creating an identity which does not necessarily rely on historical location or accounts alone, but rather looks to the person’s ability to unfix or unsettle the taken for granted so as to discover progressive ways for developing a new rationale about the witch.

The Witching-Other concentrates on how witchcraft, and in particular the archetypal Witch, are used as conduits for understanding that which remains remote to us. Historical records and the workings of practitioners are inordinately connected to what is available. This book contends that what we read, see, experience only takes us so far when trying to comprehend the witch, and that there is something else dwelling beyond the veil, a daemonic intelligence compelling us to approach the witch with an already pre-scribed fascination. Accordingly, the Witching-Other appears as the absence of what is considered to be present. This sense of absence resonates with the associated silences contained within narratives, or the lack in descriptive quality, but once realised the witch becomes something more than the category to which she or he has been assigned.

Empowering the attributes of witchcraft, this explorative journey takes the reader down a path of reflection which leads to endorsing the contingency of the metaphysical and it is through this process that The Witching-Other becomes the quintessential emanation of Otherness. How we then relate the witch to ourselves is one where the grounds for engagement are exposed to scrutiny. From this position Hamilton-Giles proposes that any undertaking to know more must involve the candidate grasping the extent of division between being in the world and that of the Other. As a metaphysical emanation the Witching-Other encapsulates all that cannot be contained or limited by definition. In this way, the witch becomes more than a witch, while witching or similar agentive practices become more than a conjuration. Instead by acknowledging the Witching-Other the practitioner and researcher alike are confronted by unfathomable opportunities for expanding the way they come to know abo