Some Facts and Some Science (Not Too Much of Either

Lots of fertility magic has nothing to do with polarity, or even heterosexuality. Blessing the crops with a corn dolly, for example, is neither polar nor particularly sexy. Further, the idea that polarity equals fertility is contradicted by the idea (often propounded by the same teachers) that polarity is part of every ritual and is present in all male/female partnerships, even asexual ones.

We’ll talk more about all of this in the next chapter.

For millennia, polarity has been described as “natural” and, as science developed, “scientific.” Victorian-era occultists were particularly fascinated by electricity and the way that emerging scientific knowledge could support or explain occult phenomena. In addition, science is one of the fun ways that society in general, sometimes including the occult community, has been oppressive of queer people. So before we go any further, let’s look at a little bit of actual science about polarity and about queerness, and see what it tells us about our occult understanding.

Electricity is energy created by the existence of charged particles: electrons and protons. (Particles without a charge are neutrons.) Protons have a “positive” charge and electrons have a “negative” charge. Let’s pause to note that the positive/negative designation is completely meaningless. Benjamin Franklin coined it based on his subsequently disproven theory of electricity. There’s nothing “positive” about a proton. Charged particles could just as easily be designated “type A” and “type B.”

Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, an eighteenth-century French physicist, stated that like charges repel and unlike charges attract. An electron surrounded by other electrons is repelled by them and will seek to move toward any nearby protons. (Electrons are lighter than protons; therefore they do most of the moving.) Equal amounts of protons and electrons tend to neutralize each other.

Now let’s look at how batteries work. A battery is a closed system that uses the attraction of unlike forces to create and capture electricity for some purpose. In a battery, a chemical reaction causes a buildup of elec-