Magic as survival mechanism
On escaping childhood, why the left isn't a "family," and "the creatively fecund and Lynchian pre-internet grunge era in Seattle"
Travis Black wears his professional hats of mystic, death worker, astrologer, and filmmaker with a wry kind of sartorial brilliance. Black knows the merits of donning the mask, of walking in another’s skin, as acts of both radical empathy and hilarious fun. You know you’ve been in Black’s presence if your neck tingles and you find yourself able to laugh at the devil. Few people can make a person feel as seen, as accepted, as real, as Black does. Enjoy the interview!
CS: Travis, for months now I've been having dreams about you and that little, sludgy pond behind the DoubleTree in Tukwila! We had walked there to talk about serious stuff--our struggles to get out from under the burden of our own pasts, that itchy feeling of "outsiderness" that we both constantly try to fend off as adults--and it was also hilarious trying to hold court for this conversation standing above a half-submerged shopping cart in toxicity masquerading as water. The shopping cart keeps coming back to me while I sleep! Can you tell me why? What spirit of Tukwila is haunting me? (You should know better than I, maybe, having spent time there as a teenager!)
What was growing up like for you? How do those experiences inform, haunt, or assist your work as an astrologer and magician?
TB: Ha! That's amazing. The shopping cart! I love that you have this image for our time together at NORWAC last year. It was very symbolic of the astro-culture we were feeling some buyers remorse about. It also brought some much needed levity.
Tukwila was a place my Dad worked, and where I would shoplift Playgirl magazines from the mall. The area was still mostly wetland when I was a kid. People think of forests as spooky and full of mystery, but I reserve those distinctions for swamps. They all seem kind of über-haunted: New Orleans, New York, Charleston, etc.
There are certainly actual ghosts that haunt Tukwila. The Green River killer would target female sex workers and dispose of their bodies in the area. That Pluto-in-Scorpio era brought TONS of nightly news stories about all the grim sex murderers, and there were plenty in Seattle in the 80s including Ted Bundy. Maybe next year we should do some Green River magic and honor those brutalized, discarded women and help them move on from their ghostly forms. These women certainly haunt the collective memory of women in the area at that time, as well as the collective unconscious of sex workers everywhere. I think of a Krishnamurti quote from his diaries, “A flower is strong in its beauty as it can be forgotten, set aside or destroyed.”
Mine was a dark, isolated childhood. I wanted out, but not like in a suicide way. I wanted to leave and start my life away from these people. Even as a toddler I was running away.
I came to magic very early in life because I had to—I was in a bad place and it was literally my only option. Granted, I had only known of magic from TV and movies but … I gave it my best shot. I remember closing my eyes so hard to the point that the phosphenes were overwhelmingly psychedelic. I would focus so hard on appearing somewhere, anywhere else upon opening them.
Things started to happen when I would do magic, so I just kept trying. Things didn't really click until Twin Peaks, Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love came along and dropped all kinds of occult and astrological footnotes onto the fanbase. Seattle was heaven in the 90s. The air was thick with creativity, occultism and new age bookstores. It was easy to find and access. Twin Peaks led me to planetary magic while Kurt and Courtney led me to the Rosicrucians, Umberto Eco, and Aleister Crowley. This is where my astrology comes from: the creatively fecund and Lynchian pre-internet grunge era in Seattle.
CS: One of the really lovely things about being in astrological magic class with you is how easily, how readily you are able to draw from personal, political, and artistic concerns as you look at charts. As an example: last spring, we were studying planetary pairs, and in one session in particular, everyone was spinning out over Venus-Mars conjunctions. There was a lot of "woe-is-me" type conversation, a hyper-focus on psychologizing our own charts or that of spurned lovers, lol.
You weren't really satisfied with that, and brought the class' attention to the chart of Hollywood sex worker Heidi Fleiss, who has a Mars-Venus conjunction on her ascendant in Aquarius.You spoke so eloquently as you transformed an hour of depoliticized chatter into a frank and important consideration of individual desire, public struggle. The line between cultural obsession and castigation, and how that lines warbles depending on class, gender, race, beauty. It was magnificent. And you didn't shy away from drawing on personal insight from your own life--what sex work has meant, what Venus and Mars have meant, what life in Hollywood has meant for you.
How do you see your various intersecting identities and interests engaging with your professional occultism? Are you always striving against depoliticization in astrology?
TB:I don’t even remember what I said! But I remember it didn’t seem well-received. No one seems particularly interested in what I have to contribute. So it means a lot that you picked up what I was throwing down.
As a far-leftist and anarchist, I take huge issue with the ‘personal is political.’ That’s exactly what the state wants, for the personal to be political, which makes it easier to commodify us. The personal is private. I certainly understand this is an affront to second [and third] wave feminism, and it is supposed to be. If you are a leftist wanting what the state wants, are you even a leftist? It turns out I do not want what the state wants, but since I see leftism as a failed project in this country, I’m very much in the minority.
What I am trying to do these days is convert our impotent activism into something humanitarian in terms of mutual aid and alleviation of poverty and suffering. On a daily adrenalized survival level, people don’t even think about politics. I search for those people in those spaces. That’s where I can be of most help.
Astrology can be of great help RIGHT NOW. Astrology and magic helped me survive being a teenage hooker living on the streets of Seattle, against all odds. It works, and I only want to share what works. Astrology has passed a 30-year test against my skepticism and shifting identities. (I do, however, remain extremely skeptical of medical astrology).
It would be my hope that the astrology community would get better at addressing real-world problems and suffering, and not just quibble endlessly and solipsistically over the technicalities of a chart!
“This is where my astrology comes from: the creatively fecund and Lynchian pre-internet grunge era in Seattle.”
CS: We've talked some our dissatisfaction with contemporary approaches to feminism, how a feminism that is only pushing for Hillary Clinton ascendance, on the one hand, really fucking hurts the movement, while a militant feminism that leaves out discussions of masculinity and men, on the other, also fails in this appalling way as gun violence, suicide, and deaths of despair skyrocket in the U.S. How do you navigate conversations about gender, class, and feminism in your work with astrology, magic, and shamanism? In your personal life as someone who, like me, is trying to forge connections and build "family" beyond the bounds of family?
TB: Conner Habib says, and I’m paraphrasing, “identity politics are a place you pass through, not a place you stay.” I like that. But I don’t have conversations about this, because when I do, I get canceled of course.
I’m not alone among men in this way. People who get stuck in identity politics, generally in my experience, do not want to address men’s issues. We are literally told by others on the left to sit down and let others speak now. Then men get blasted for adhering to idiots like Rogan or Tate or Jordan Peterson. But they are the only people talking to men. The men and boys are not alright. We are told that it's our turn to have “the problems” now. But social justice nevertheless permeates my work.
In my personal life, the only people who are truly my friends and family—and who understand me—are other sex workers. There’s always a scarlet letter on you when people find out what you do. Even if they are woke or whatever. The left is distinctly anti-pleasure and anti-sex. Ask most liberals about sex and you’ll hear a right-winger respond.
When I was living on my own for the first time as a teenager in Olympia, I got raked over the coals by the riot grrrls, et al. I was doing sex work (capitols are always great for business) and I remember musician/singer Lois Maffeo (and Carrie Brownstein’s girlfriend at the time Sleater-Kinney’s Dig Me Out was released) telling me that “you being a sex worker is contributing to the enslavement and entrapment of women in sex work.” I lived with the girls who ran the Riot Grrrl Press and that kind of identity politics was used to endlessly torture me. I fully internalized it all and it really fucked me up for a long time.
It wasn't until Lydia Lunch came to town and defended me against the masses that I really saw what I was being subjected to. Ms. Lunch was doing a book tour of sorts for Paradoxia, and ended up doing a reading at someone’s house. In the Q&A, I was parroting Lois’ words as my own, “as a male sex worker I’m aware that I am contributing to the enslavement and yadda yadda …” Lydia interrupted me and lashed out at everyone in Olympia for “brainwashing” me and went on a huge rant against identity politics. I was floored, nay, SHOOK. Even a little enlightened. Needless to say it ruffled a lot of feathers, and the feminist townies blamed me for ruining the event. I moved to New York City a few months later to attend film school.
This is why I don’t wade into these waters and why I don’t trust leftists immediately as ‘family.’ They are generally not there for support, they’re there for surveillance and to enforce a narrative they don’t want disrupted. I have my midheaven conjunct Uranus in Scorpio so …
CS: Why the name "bathhouse mystic?" What's your favorite part of a spiritually informed life?
TB: I used to set up at gay bathhouses and read tarot for free for years. When I was living in Far West Texas in Marfa, I would travel to Houston to work once a month and end up at the gay bathhouse a lot. I’d open up Grindr, say something like “free tarot readings in room x,” and they’d just show up! I’d often have a line down the hall sometimes. Club Houston is the one who coined Bathhouse Mystic. It just stuck.
I love bringing spiritual things into sexual spaces, and sexual things into spiritual spaces. Part of it is a trick to get men to pay attention to spiritual development stuff, part of it is to keep sex interesting for me. At the end of the day, they are one and the same. So I guess that's my favorite part of a spiritually informed life, that I can let the erotic be part of my practice, and I get to see how that transforms men's lives in real time. Men who were otherwise a danger to themselves, their spouses, children … society. Sex workers save more marriages, families, and social structures than we ruin.
CS: Biggest tip for making it through Mercury retrogrades? And speaking of Mercury, what book are you reading right now?
TB: A news & social media fast! Categorize all your QuickBooks transactions! Copy edit your website! Revise your marketing plan! Source better quality materials for whatever it is you’re working on!
I’m currently reading, like you, Abu Mashar’s work on Solar Returns for school. Otherwise for fun I’m reading Dreaming Ahead of Time by Gary Lachman. It's all about his experiences with (and philosophy of) precognitive dreams, synchronicity and coincidence. But in a more occult way and less Jung-y.
This is crazy stuff Cameron. Your parents are so terrible for sending you to private high school then W & L. You’re such a victim. Stop poisoning others with your selfish naive perspective