Jesse Hathaway Diaz is a folklorist, artist and performer living in New York City who is constantly exploring the world-as-magic through herbalism, religious ritual expressions and modalities both through study and involvement. He is an initiated priest in the Lucumí Orisha tradition, hosts an occult themed podcast called 'Radio Free Golgotha', and edits the 'Folk Necromancy in Transmission' imprint through Revelore Press. For the better part of two decades, he has been involved with Theatre Group Dzieci, a New York based experimental theatre ensemble which explores theatre and ritual as a way, blending service with self-exploration and performance.

Areas of concentration/study:

Orality, Ritual Studies, Postcolonialism, Semiotics of Reading, Syncretization and Hybridization in Language/Religous Thought/Culture, Performance of the Everyday, Occult Philosophy and Practice

Study Abroad Site:

University of Basque Country, Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain

Publications:

‘Passersby’ in Nicholaj de Mattos Frisvold (ed.), Serpent Songs (Scarlet Imprint, 2013)
‘Um Clarao nas Matas: Working with Plant Spirits in Brazilian Quimbanda’ in Catamara Rosarium & Jenn Zahrt (eds), Verdant Gnosis, Volume One (Revelore, 2017)
‘Man-Dragon, Man-Root and the Witch: Mandragora and Ginseng as Plant Allies’ in Marcus McCoy, Catamara Rosarium & Jenn Zahrt (eds), Verdant Gnosis, Volume Two (Revelore, 2017)
‘Afterword' in Alexander Cummins, Jesse Hathaway Diaz, Jennifer Zahrt (eds) Cypriana: Old World (Rubedo Press, 2017)
‘Ìrókò gbà mi o: Irokó, the World Tree deified’ in Marcus McCoy, Catamara Rosarium & Jenn Zahrt (eds), Verdant Gnosis, Volume Four (Revelore, 2018)

Papers/Conferences:

‘Fire in the Head: Energetics in Indigenous Mexican Herbalism and Curanderismo’ at the Viridis Genii Symposium, Damascus, Oregon, 2015

‘Book-as-Initiator: Exegesis and the Transmission of Thought and Lineage through the Printed Word’ at The Esoteric Book Conference, Seattle, Washington, 2015

‘Hallowed Bones, Restless Dead: Saint Necromancy in Iberia and the New World’ at Raising the Dead, New York, 2015

‘Saint as Poppet, Rosary as Noose: Cursing in Colonial Mexico’ at the Musuem of Witchcraft Conference on Cursing, Boscastle, United Kingdom, 2016

‘Diviner and Divined: The Mechanics, Manipulation and Mutability of Fate” at the Psychoanalysis, Art, and the Occult Conference, London, United Kingdom, 2016

‘Man-Dragon, Man-Root and the Witch: Mandragora and Ginseng as Plant Allies’ at the Viridis Genii Symposium, Damascus, Oregon, 2016

‘Quimbandorium Verum: Brazilian Quimbanda and the Grimoires’ at the Musuem of Witchcraft Conference on Ritual Magic, Boscastle, United Kingdom, 2017


‘Ko sí Ewé, Ko sí Òrìsà: Without plants, there are no gods’ at the Viridis Genii Symposium, Damascus, Oregon, 2017


‘Ìrókò gbà mi o: Irokó, the World Tree deified’ at the Viridis Genii Symposium, Pack Forest, Washington, 2018

‘Apocalypti(c)orazon: The End of Days Cosmovision that Makes Death Our Mother” at the Re-writing the Future: 100 Years of Esoteric

Modernism and Psychoanalysis, Merano, Italy, 2019

‘The Corpse between the Covers: Summoning the Dead through Ink and Breath (But Not In The Way You Think…)’ in A Night of Folk Necromancy, hosted by Morbid Anatomy, New York, 2019

Why PS @ NYU?

      I want to explore notions of transmission, authenticity and inspiration and how they might play into the performer/reader/speaker and how they affect the material through the voice, through the body, through reified belief navigating the twin pillars of orality and textual transmission. I believe Performance Studies an ideal place to explore this, to find new vocabularies and refining abrasions that will further discussion and conversation. I am less concerned with proving a point rather than finding the space between that is triangulated by the geometry of study. From what I can see, it is *only* Performance Studies that allows me to explore this in this manner, building upon my specific background and strengths.