Saying the word “Occult” sounds scarier than “Mysticism,” doesn’t it? That’s partly why I reference Mysticism often when referring to Sylvia Plath’s interests. The occult and mysticism are essentially the same thing, although mysticism, by definition, is becoming one with a higher power through occult means. Occult in fact, means nothing more than “hidden.” You’ve probably heard of occult phases of the moon, for example. In mysticism, occult subjects and secrets are hidden from the masses. But just because it’s not featured on TMZ (and really, is anything intelligent featured on TMZ?) doesn’t mean you can’t know about it. It just takes a little bit of digging.
A practitioner of mysticism does not have to believe in God as a man on a throne in the sky. A practitioner doesn’t have to believe in a God at all to respect spiritual energy. There are many Buddhists and Jews, for example, who consider themselves atheists but still keep a spiritual practice, thinking of spirit more as personal growth and self-actualization, as well as to gain some mental tools for managing a chaotic world. Plath called herself an atheist, and yet we know that she had a real fascination about religion and things of the spirit. In her youth, Plath and her family were members of the Unitarian Universalist Church, and Plath said this church was important to her until the end of her days. Practitioners of mysticism, which Plath and her husband Ted Hughes were, believe in a life energy or life force that connects all life. It’s a very Buddhist concept.
There is overwhelming evidence that Sylvia Plath and her husband Ted Hughes had an active, varied interest in the occult. In Plath’s letters, poems and journals, she wrote of tarot, Ouija board sessions, astrology, crystal ball gazing, tea leaves, chanting, bibliomancy, hypnosis, breathing techniques, premonitions, developing psychic abilities, and toward the end of her marriage, she even threw in a bit of voodoo and collected her husband’s fingernail clippings and dandruff for a witchy bonfire. Plath’s art projects often included aspects of mythology and alchemy. Plath’s personal library contained books describing Kabbalah, alchemy, and other occult practices in great detail, as well as many books on religion including Buddhism and Mormonism. Finally, the poets and writers she revered the most were the literary mystics: Shakespeare, Joyce, Yeats, Chaucer and others. It’s virtually impossible that her years of spiritual study would not embed these thoughts into her work. Think Plath had no spiritual life? Oh ye of little faith! You don’t have to believe anything at all to see it for yourself in the Decoding Sylvia Plath series, Magi Press.