---
title: "Kazim of Hexen Press: Art, Witchcraft, and the Ritual Body in Contemporary Occult Practice"
url: https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/post/kazim-of-hexen-press-art-witchcraft-and-the-ritual-body-in-contemporary-occult-practice/
date: 2026-04-06
modified: 2026-07-03
lang: en
author: "Perseus Arcane Academy"
description: "Introduction Kazim is a French occult practitioner, artist, and editor, best known as the founder and director of Hexen Press, an independent esoteric publishing house established in the early 2020s..."
categories:
  - "Interviews"
tags:
  - "Magic"
image: https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/ChatGPT-Image-Apr-6-2026-06_02_55-PM-1024x683.png
word_count: 1771
---

# Kazim of Hexen Press: Art, Witchcraft, and the Ritual Body in Contemporary Occult Practice

## Introduction

Kazim is a French occult practitioner, artist, and editor, best known as the founder and director of [Hexen Press](https://www.hexen.fr/), an independent esoteric publishing house established in the early 2020s and based in southern France. Working at the intersection of magical practice and artistic expression, he operates primarily as a curator and editor of limited-edition works focused on contemporary occultism.

Active within European and international esoteric circles, Kazim has been described as a multidisciplinary practitioner with experience spanning ritual performance, visual art, and writing. His work engages with a range of traditions, including forms of witchcraft, grimoire-based practice, and other currents within modern occultism. He has participated in conferences, exhibitions, and ritual contexts, and has contributed to various specialized occult journals.

Through Hexen Press, he has developed a catalogue centered on witchcraft, folklore, and ritual art, often emphasizing the aesthetic and experiential dimensions of magical practice. His role within the press includes editorial direction and the curation of collaborations with artists and authors working within related esoteric fields.

---

## Interview with Kazim - Hexen Press

**PAA: Your practice has been described as a *reification of art*. Is art itself your primary vehicle for sorcery?**

Art and Sorcery, Witchcraft or Magick are undeniably interlinked in my practice and have always stood in a strong relationship. I couldn’t express my magic without being creative and pouring my entire soul into the aesthetics, rhythm and different expressions of ritual. Be they visual, the words spoken, the poetry, the sigils, the paraphernalia, the set-up, all converge toward the one-pointedness, magical will, and intent of the practitioner.

> Magic made a thunderous breakthrough into my life on the day of my 23rd birthday, which, for anyone interested in chaos magic, in the writings of Robert Anton Wilson and the T.O.P.Y. would be a meaningful date.
>
> Kazim

**PAA: With over twenty years of engagement across traditions—from Thelemic Chaos Magick to Quimbanda and Sabbatic Witchcraft was your path shaped more by deliberate initiation or by a series of unavoidable encounters?
**
Magic made a thunderous breakthrough into my life on the day of my 23rd birthday, which, for anyone interested in chaos magic, in the writings of Robert Anton Wilson and the T.O.P.Y. would be a meaningful date. I could say that most of my time from that moment on has been dedicated to the study and practice of magick. Initiations and encounters have marked pivotal moments along the way, but the path itself has remained quite steady since that day. Daily dedication and aspiration have been the most meaningful markers throughout.

**PAA: How has long-term engagement with Poison Path and Vāma Mārga currents altered your understanding of the body as a magical instrument?**

The Poison Path teaches one to navigate the dynamics of alteration, the intrusion of alien substances and forms of sentience into the bio-energetic and magical sphere of the practitioner, opening dynamics where chemistry, toxicity, boundaries, and magical and spirit congress converge. The bodily senses are often the vessels through which such encounters occur, through smoke, touch, ingestion, often combined to more subtle ways of perception. From there, a dialectic occurs in which the alteration of the senses and states of mind may become either destructive or beneficial to the practitioner. It is a perilous path, yet rich in profound lessons for those who engage with the invisible and the broader notions of alterity and otherness. 

The Vāma Mārga finds some parallels as a tantric approach as it seeks, within a properly initiated context, spiritual realization through the transgression of conceptual boundaries, embracing what is traditionally considered impure, forbidden, or dangerous in order to dissolve dualistic projections and reveal a sense of unity and non-dual awareness. The body, together with the full spectrum of its energies and sensations, is no longer regarded as something to be transcended, but as the very field through which realization and integration are accomplished.

Both paths confront the practitioner with risk and transformation, using what is feared or rejected as a catalyst for expansion and insight. In this sense, the Poison Path echoes the Vāma Mārga by turning otherness and the poisonous into tools for transcendence, wisdom and inner alchemy. The Tibetans have profound teachings on the transmutation of spiritual poisons into medicine. In the Puranas, Śhiva is Nīlakaṇṭha, ‘the blue-throated one,’ whose throat turned blue after he consumed the poison that arose during the churning of the Ocean of Milk. Many meaningful parallels may be drawn.

**PAA: How do you decide which works or authors are aligned with Hexen Press, beyond technical quality or market interest?**

Hexen Press strives to present authors who share a deep interest and expertise on the topics they wish to present and combine in their writings the depths and seriousness of academic and scholarly research with a magical persona, a singular sense of connection with the numinous they are able to convey in their writing: to revive the flame of enchantment and magic while presenting pioneering topics in the field of esoteric research.

**PAA: Many Hexen publications are artisanal, limited, and deliberately demanding. Is exclusivity a form of magical filtration? In a time of instant digital consumption, why does the physical occult book still matter?**

It is indeed a magical act, for both reader and publisher, to defend the book as a talismanic, artisanal, and limited object in a world where computer-generated art and mass production are becoming the norm.

**PAA: Some Hexen Press books are hardcover, others artisanal, and some are visually dense anthologies. How do binding, paperweight, typography, and layout contribute to the ritual potential of a book? **

I believe this is one of the singularities of our publishing house: each book is approached as a unique entity, and it is my bidding to attune to its spirit in order to determine the most meaningful form through which it may manifest. Binding, paper weight, typography, and layout are not considered as secondary aesthetic choices, but as integral components of the book’s spirit, shaping how it is handled, perceived, and engaged with. As such, there is no predefined formula. Each project differs from the last and carries its own particular signature, both in form and in content.

**PAA: [On Lycanthropy](https://www.hexen.fr/publications/on-lycanthropy-transformation-ecstasy-of-sorcerers) (Transformation & Ecstasy of Sorcerers), a medieval pamphlet that reframes witches’ flights and ointments, bridges folklore, theology, and early proto-occult phenomenology. What drew you to this work, and how do you see its relevance to modern sorcerous practice? **

On Lycanthropy is a very interesting and unique little book, in that it marked a significant shift in the understanding of lycanthropy and its association with witchcraft. While its author attempted to analyse the phenomenon from a more materialistic perspective, the pamphlet preserves a great deal of folklore and popular conceptions concerning witches: the ecstatic flight to the sabbat, the nature of the soul, its capacity to temporarily leave the body, and its ability to act within the physical world from beyond it. It is also among the earliest and most comprehensive texts to examine in detail the physiological properties of the substances that composed the various witches’ ointments. As such, it is a very worthy text to study for contemporary practitioners.

**PAA: [Alraune: The Poisoners Guild](https://www.hexen.fr/books-prints/alraune-the-poisoners-guild#/29-edition-hardcover) has become one of your signature journals on the Poison Path. How do you see poison lore intersecting with broader currents in the Via Nocturna? What makes poison a fertile subject for magical exploration? **

The Poison lore, the pharmacopoeia is so deeply connected and interlinked with the history of magic that it would be difficult to overlook the subject. What makes the Poison Path a fertile subject for magical exploration is the communication it proposes to engage with potentially toxic substances and plant spirits, and how these can be approached to empower the practitioner and become a witch’s allies. It is a metaphoric narrative of the witch entering the wilderness to undergo initiation, touched by supernatural and nocturnal forces, and emerging changed and empowered.

> Our interconnection with the plant kingdom, and the common fate we share as living beings, should be acknowledged in our practices.
>
> Kazim

**PAA: Titles like [Flowers of Blood](https://www.hexen.fr/books-prints/flowers-of-blood-sara-bonadea-george-paperback) foreground plant lore and folk cosmologies. In contrast to more theoretical or symbolic works, what place do nature and herbal wisdom occupy in Hexen Press’s conception of sorcery?**

I believe that a genuine animistic, sorcerous connection that a practitioner maintains with the green kingdom is a vital and meaningful act of resistance against the systemic, soulless exploitation of nature and resources in a global capitalist environment. Our interconnection with the plant kingdom, and the common fate we share as living beings, should be acknowledged in our practices. Plants could certainly live without us; the opposite is far less certain. The tree, as axis mundi, is central to many traditions. In the Jurema tradition in which I am initiated, a shamanic cult from the Nordeste of Brazil, the path toward the divinisation of the soul is linked to the spirit of the Jurema tree and to the connection, or symbiosis, through which an evergreen state of enchantment is maintained. What this deeply means becomes increasingly significant to me in the world we live in.

**PAA: [Aradia’s Hidden Hand](https://www.hexen.fr/books-prints/aradia-s-hidden-hand-ad-manns) reconstructs the overlooked life of Roma Lister, a figure implicated in the early stages of the writing of *The Gospel of the Witches*. How does resurrecting marginal occult histories like this reshape popular narratives about roots of modern witchcraft?**

Aradia’s Hidden Hand participates in the same intention as Muses No More: to acknowledge the prominent role women have played in the development of modern witchcraft and Western esoteric traditions. While often overshadowed by male-dominated narratives, it is necessary to reconsider how we approach history, moving toward more integrative and respectful perspectives that take into account the stories and roles women have held, and continue to hold, as understood from their own viewpoints and accounts.

**PAA: What genres or traditions do you want to explore next in Hexen Press: grimoire material, visionary manifestos, regional witchcraft, or something unknown?**

I would definitely love to publish works of contemporary sorcerous praxis written by genuinely inspired practitioners; to explore contemporary approaches to the Greek Mysteries and modern interpretations of goetia, in the sense expressed by Jake Stratton-Kent. We have an upcoming book in French on the topic, which may offer a valuable discovery for the French scene. I am interested in new topics and perspectives, any work that ignites the flame of inspiration and magic in the soul of our readership.

**PAA: Finally, if Hexen Press were to disappear tomorrow, what trace or contagion would you hope it left behind?**

The Serpent’s gift of Inspiration! :)

**Thank you!**

**PAA: Many thanks for taking part in this interview and sharing your journey. **

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