What was Sylvia Plath’s fascination with the occult?
Like for many artists and writers, the relationship between Sylvia Plath and her husband Ted Hughes was a very strange one. From the very beginning, Hughes believed that their union had been “telepathic”, as if the stars had aligned just for them.
This was because the first time they met, their introduction was lit by a violent and electric fuse. Plath had bitten Hughes’ cheek because she thought he had stolen her earrings. From here on out, the relationship got increasingly bizarre.
Hughes was fascinated with black magic, horoscopes and ghosts and he introduced these to the much more pragmatic and realist Plath. Initially, she wasn’t so keen but her husband managed to lure her in soon enough. At home, they began to play with a homemade Ouija board, which became more and more a dictator of their lives, choices and inspirations. The board played a role in monumental moments of their lives together, like the naming of their child and predictions of milestones in their careers.
A full-on relationship between the couple and their beloved Pan, the spirit behind their Ouja board, emerged. Pan would tell the poets what his favourite poem of each was, spelling them out letter by letter. But how much of this was real magic and not just a fabrication of their fantasy?
Plath became increasingly curious about this kind of magic and started referencing it in her poetry. She wrote a poem called ‘Ouija’ and delved into the world of tarot reading, crystal balls, and astrology that her husband had gotten her into. She found it to be “magnificent fun … more fun than a movie.”
The obsession with the occult became so intense that Plath used it as a way to get through to her dead father. This is evident in her journals, where Plath ponders the Ouija board’s messages to her, wondering whether any of them were communications with her father. The pinnacle was with the production of her poetry collection ‘The Colossus,’ where she explored these questions before her death in 1963. The dark, twistedness of this story doesn’t end here. It seemed like Hughes lured her into magic in order to manipulate her, too. For example, he hypnotised Plath during the birth of their first child. Many believe that Hughes did this to have control of her.
Just six years into their marriage, Hughes left Plath for another woman, a friend named Assia Wevill, who was also married and had come to stay with the couple. This led Plath into a state of hysteria, which resulted in her taking her own life just a year later. Before her death, Plath took notes, manuscripts, fingernail clippings, and any form of debris left by Hughes and burned them in a fire. She claimed that upon doing this, a paper note with “Assia” written on it, exploded out of the flames and landed on her.
What seemed to be a passionate and inseparable pair of talented writers quickly became a toxic and twisted affair where Plath became collateral damage. No matter how much Hughes loved her, many argue that his obsession with magic became the reason for her tragic death.
