Urban Grimoire: How Tintin Found Me & What I Did To Him When He Found Me (Almost)

I have commented at length on the - to say the least - unusual associations that one develops as a witch. This is more traditionally viewed in the literature of the modern witchcraft movement than I will delineate it here, but surely the kind of experiences I am going to describe here are almost definitive of the ability to 'tell the maze & cross the Lethe'. I don't really think the kind of experiences the older-school writers - Gardner, Valiente, Cochrane - describe are materially different from the scene in Grant Morrison's Invisibles where the Invisibles invoke John Lennon as a god. The permeable, indistinct line between humanity & divinity that we find in witchcraft is merely turned into a screen that can be placed at will in chaos magic.

Thoughts are things, & it has recently been my experience that cartoon characters in addition to pop stars can take on a life of their own. Herge depicted Tintin standing over him with a whip, & he has certainly made a remarkable entry into the lives of me & a friend recently. He must be an incredibly strong egregore, becuase it's not like we really did anything to invoke him, except try to see the Tintin film at the cinema. As it happens we'd missed it. My personal love of Tintin came relatively late, in my teens - much younger Snowy annoyed me by talking. Then when I went to France, the Tintin thing just seemed to fall into place for me. In film terms my preference is for the two non-canonical films made in the 1960s, with Jean-Pierre Talbot as Tintin. He has the particular French accent that I like the best to listen to - also being Belgian I imagine Tintin sounding like that himself. I have since seen the Spielburg film on DVD & am glad I didn't see it then as - what an incredible misjudgement - I am not impressed with Captain Haddock being Scottish. I can only presume Tintin isn't either, & is keen to protect us from this misinterpretation of his friend, because he now just keeps popping up.

The first was the actual day we went to see the film: disappointed, we went to a pub. His manifestation was in the shape of the barman - I'll grant you that Tintin-style hair is in fashion, but it's really unnecessary to wear tan trousers & a light blue jumper. We were frankly incredulous that we were sitting there looking at Tintin, & kept looking for the little white dog.

Then we met another two men in a short space of time who both bore a passing resemblance to Tintin - not as close as he who has become known as the original Tintin, but within spitting distance. One of them was quite attractive strangely - not interested needless to say but it made me realise there's a whole world of Tintin slash fiction hidden down the back of t'internet (tint'internet?), in addition to the endless speculation about Tintin's sexuality & whether he & Haddock are lovers. I feel myself that of course this is to read our post-1960s hyper-sexualised thinking onto an earlier world.

Then it happened. A friend fell in love with someone. After some months of her crush, she didn't find out his real name but found out his nickname. She hasn't even seen his hair, because he happens to wear a hat every time she sees him. I'll bet you anything you like it's ginger & sticks up at the front, but I won't insult my readership by saying what his nickname actually turned out to be...

The upshot is that since she's unwittingly found herself a Tintin, we're going to get a Haddock for me. The strange thing was that after we merely talked about this I went out on the town & actually hooked up with a man who bore a passing resemblance to my ideal Haddock - I'm developing a serious respect for the sheer power of the Tintin egregore. Actually I thought he was straight at first, the only thing wrong with him is he's got a high voice, but twenty years of pipe smoking would make him nice & gruff. As it happens I'm not going to get the chance to prove this & so have found a little incantation to get me a Captain Haddock of my own. Were you wondering when the urban grimoire element of this post was going to appear? Here it is, I would urge all magical people to chant this together at least daily, visualising me with this huge bluff bearded hunk of man:

'Mille millions de mille milliards de mille sabords de tonnerre de Brest.'

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