Introduction
I first became acquainted with Pam Grossman through her well-informed foreword to Aleister Crowley’s Magick: Without Tears. She seemed to know her stuff, so I did the usual bit of Googling and tried to find out a bit about her. She was born in 1981 and has her own podcast, The Witch Wave. I’ve listened to a couple of these where she interviews current witches and occultists, and so far I’ve been impressed. There isn’t any of what I call Walmart Witchery branding in sight, where all the cosplay stuff is on full display. The scented candles. The incense sticks. The A5 notebooks with the black faux-leather covers displaying a pentacle. You know the kind of thing. From first impressions, The Witch Wave strikes a much different chord. It seems genuine.
On her website, Pam Grossman describes herself as a writer, curator, and teacher of magical practice and history. She’s married to a playwright, lives in Brooklyn, New York, and certainly seems very adept at promoting her unique brand of witchery. She puts on art shows and gives interviews to publications like Vulture and The New York Times. I would have liked to have read these, but in each case the links on her website take you straight to a paywall.
Pam doesn’t strike me as a cosplayer, but rather as a very knowledgeable influencer of the occult and magick. Her writing has appeared in the Atlantic and Time. She hosts workshops on spellcraft and occult history, which attract thousands of participants.
Occult Humanities Conference
In 2025, she co-organised the biennial Occult Humanities Conference at NYU. I took a quick gander at the link. The itinerary looked really interesting and included poetry, rituals and talks on such diverse subjects as voodoo and cosmic kinship. There was even live music. I now have two reasons to visit New York: take in an opera at the Met and attend the next Occult Humanities Conference.
In line with the general theme of this series of blogs, I bought her latest book, Magic Maker: The Enchanted Path To Creativity. I couldn’t resist absorbing her unique magickal perspective on the pursuit of creative endeavour. My thoughts follow below.
Title: Magic Maker
Author: Pam Grossman
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Magic Maker is split into four parts. The first part offers an introduction to magic, defining what it is and isn’t. Grossman writes about its relationship with science, religion, and art, touching on why some people fear it. I think here the term occult can concern many, though it shouldn’t. Occult simply means unknown. It’s not a synonym for black magic and Satanism. While I love the old Hammer House horror films, they probably haven’t helped much in this regard.
Creative Endeavour = Magic
Grossman explains that any form of creative pursuit is a form of magic. I agree with her here, and also that everyone has an innate gift of creativity (it’s just a matter of flexing the muscle).
Makers are magicians. My favourite chapter is the one on the Magician tarot card. She goes into fine detail about the one hand up, one hand down stance, and also touches on the Magician’s binary pairs, which include ORDER-CHAOS, LOVE-FEAR. It’s all great dualism; I love he Magician.
This section also discusses various famous occult magicians and philosophers, such as Crowley and Nietzsche. Grossman uses them to build her case that magic is the real deal.
Unfortunately, after a promising Part I, I soon began to lose interest. Part II delves into spiritual preparation. This section deals with casting circles, cleansing, altars and soon. There was nothing new for me here, though the chapter on masks and shapeshifting I found quite interesting.
Part III lists all the various means by which you can apply magic, such as divination, the Tarot, etc. My gripe is that Pam Grossman never achieves more than scratching the surface on any of these topics. She follows this pattern throughout the book, and it’s hard not to feel that much of it’s a little padded. She includes a lot of anecdotes and general information, snippets about how other creatives (using rock musicians for many of her examples) forge their craft, but none of this provides much of a roadmap to enhancing the reader’s creativity. Instead, each chapter offers a bare-bones write-up of each of the primary disciplines in magic. There’s the mandatory chapter on dreams, for example, which Grossman refers to as nocturnal transmissions.
Mental Demons
Part IV discusses various mental demons, all of which are just variations on writer’s block. She follows this with several chapters on issues that can affect creativity, such as time and place, the benefits of making stuff, and devotion to the craft.
Part V touches on the importance of rituals to aid the creative process, with a few rituals provided as a template to build on.
In short, I was a little disappointed with Magic Maker. I would have welcomed much more detail, and I was expecting some expert advice on attuning my creativity with my spiritual side. Unfortunately, all I found was a wealth of generic text on subjects that I was already at least familiar. This book might suit a novice to magic, but offers little for anyone who’s read a little more widely on the subject.
My disappointment won’t stop me checking out more episodes of her The Witch Wave podcast. I’m particularly looking forward to listening to the one with Ron Hutton. She does host some sterling guests from the occult world.