2018 Autumnal Intentions / Revelations:
† Pragmagick / Video Grimoire updates
† The 1 year anniversary of my psychic sea-change and the conception of Dakota Slim’s ‘Cactus Crown’ – A recently released record about #love and #magick that TAROT recently implored needs to get heard.
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I feel obligated to address the lack of PRAGMAGICK related content these past couple weeks…it’s for many a-reason.
LAST SEASON ON PRAGMAGICK
Pragmagick has been silent since releasing the Alexxcast sharecast: or the auditory document of Alexx Bollen and my burgeoning “bromance blossom” via his podcast, the Alexxcast. You’ll be happy to know that my appearance was also my initiation into what would become a yet-to-be-cleverly-named trifecta of Portland Occult Podcasts, along with Brother/Friar/Duderbro (I forgot his Masonic status) Erik L. Arneson of My Alchemical Bromance (see. Episode 5, “Arnemancy”), all located within a mile radius of one another. Creepy casters of pods and of magicks Unite!
(We are immediately available for Black-mitzvahs, Mazel.)
Please refer to their (Alexx and Erik) most recent collaboration: a 2-part Halloween episode sharecast that is the funniest podcast “event” I’ve heard thus far, no hyperbole. They summon a cartoon-character demon from the show Adventure Time in the middle of a Portland neighborhood and it will bust. you. the. fuck. up.
THE “AUTOMNE SWING“
November: betwixt the haunted holidays of Halloween and The Great Native Ghost Passage (see: Thanksgiving). A unique season caught in this liminal space between the horrorshow hallmark-holidays that celebrate and exploit the Dead.
Weak social commentary aside, this season has always been rife with a unique metaphysical and artistic fervor. This fervor, for me, is at it’s highest during this AUTOMNE SWING: a title inspired by one of my favorite Django Reinhardt standards, “Song D’Automne.”
The song itself signifies the artist’s siren call-to-creep about this psychic season; it perfectly encapsulates that liminality between the last gasp of nature’s detritus and its dissolution into the cold wash of winter. This temporal, fatal unease blossoms into a poised, almost stoic resolve. Dust to dust.
The song’s menacing melodies and their respective instruments become strange-but-dapper ferrymen rowing the listener through an uncanny valley of unknown possibilities; is it nefarious? Does it matter? Here, the unseen things, just barely out-of-view, are revealed to be the earthly delights within all things. It’s absolute here, and we are allowed safe passage through these dark shores of this sepia-toned stale canal. If a resolve that all things achieve an antithetical state is awarded, and acceptance is composed, you might find yourself recipient of the ferrymen’s greatest gift: the somnambulant trance that allows you to dip in between, rise above the earthly things into the pure liminality of all things: what dreams may come.*
*Or… it’s just a dope song that reminds me of Autumn because of, um, that French spelling perverts the already unnerving silent ‘N’ at the end and is made hauntingly peculiar by being capped with a spooky, unnatural ‘E’eeee…
HAPPY NEW YEAR, WITCHES
I know it’s been a couple of weeks since my inaugural tenth episode of #pragmagick and it haunts me. It haunts me not just because I feel a strange duty to provide content continual content (as it is part and parcel to attaining a creative routine) but because Pragmagick has become my Mystery School, my “higher learning” through the “great work.” And although no reports have been assigned, I’ve been busy prepping for the next term.
I get real squeamish on vacations; usually lost to a vortex of existential exhaustion by being afforded too much time for soothseeing. However, this recent “holiday season” was no vacation, and I spent my personal October/November “Christmas and New Years” hard at work. It’s fortuitous, if not wholly fatalist, that my life has ascribed this perennial time as my heaviest season for subconscious spelunking.
There’s quantifiable reasons for my reverence towards this time. Case in point: the one-year anniversary of my true turn, the anniversary of the psychical sea-change that sparked my revelatory Current.
Halloween 2017 sent me down my this current, well, Current: a brilliant, albeit destabilizing, trajectory that I was so aware of I documented through my recent album, “CACTUS CROWN,” under my long-time pseudonym DAKOTA SLIM.
“NIGHT THIEF” from DAKOTA SLIM’s CACTUS CROWN
Introspection, however, might be too warranted this time of year- more so than the overdose I’m already riddled with. Although, the Automne Swing is in full effect and I’m retaining and receiving true communion with myself, for good and for bad, it can be daunting to perform at a reliable caliber within the mundane aspects of life. I find myself punching against the grain by misappropriating my heightened awareness to rather trivial tasks as means to channel the energies. Case in point: The never-ending oppression of technological limitations and the need for financial means to transcend those limitations to fully realize creative projects.
My inclinations to act as Prayteller (nee Public Witch)* as one who shares their ethereal musings within this somatic reality with other seekers is a hard reaction to keep in check when the aforementioned technical roadblocks suck your ability to do so. I learn, I discuss, I practice, I share. This is how I’ve always done it; both practicing and preaching maketh this man. And then I realized something quite remarkable…
*I’m done tip-toeing around what is and what isn’t hackneyed, appropriated and/or mislabeled terminology within the occult community so I’m just gonna keep using my hodgepodged terminology and punny titles willy-nilly
“WHAT’S HE BUILDING IN THERE?“
I’ve been prepping the inaugural VIDEO GRIMOIRE, a video companion to the podcast episodes over these past months. It’s taken long not because of CPU limitations (ol’ Macbook don’t fail me now!) and an overly self-important sense of what it should be and how it shall begin. Would I need to construct an introductory video explaining why I’ve chosen to do this as if I was held hostage by my own ambitions? Which facet would be covered first? Do people really need another guy talking about woo-woo shit on the internet? These were all silly worries, sure, but roadblocks that needed vanquishing if I wanted to heed this call that burns in my belly.
It wasn’t until a few nights ago that I finally cemented what this premiere episode would showcase. I was consulting one of my many custom uses of Tarot to aid in mental “decluttering” and for creative project organization advice, as I have many that need compartmentalization. Obviously, the video aspect of Pragmagick was one of the subjects and Yureka! My almost blue-collar methods I have constructed and continue to use have completely helped turn my life around. Not only through psychological health and management, but practically with responsibilities. But, and most importantly, psychically with a resounding regard for spiritual health. “Duh,” I thought, “Pragmatic Fucking Magick.”
No, I don’t have a PHD, nor would anyone consider me a master of anything but landing on my feet with a supernatural grace, but the my value lies in my retribution. These past few years have been monumentally positive, all due to slowly perfecting what I call the Phoenix Protocols. This seismic shift saved my fucking life, and I ain’t no high-falootin’ doctor nor academic elite to tell you these tools are for everyone , but especially for those in the hole (so to speak).
So, I attempted to film this tentatively titled “Divine Device” segment, performing the ritual in real time, and naturally, too many technical hiccups occurred that kept my ritual from being documented as I had hoped (though troubleshooting was always expected, it’s no less exhausting). Instead of doing this ritual all over again and compromising all of the honest and intense intention that conjured for the first (as it’s a multifaceted ceremony), I kept the cards that were pulled for my list of projects that needed consort. Just as well, as PRAGMAGICK was ascribed the Hierophant, a dead-ringer for the trajectory of this project and its aforementioned educational and self-improvement intentions. A project that denotes the need to prioritize consistent cultivation and to keep amassing experience.
I will share the steps and these results as per my projects in the upcoming video/podcast episode series very, very soon. Though, I wanted to jump on a few time-sensitive elements of that ritual
“LORD OF ESTABLISHED STRENGTH”
When it came to the music portion of my ritual, especially concerning that of my long-term solo venture as the aforementioned DAKOTA SLIM, I drew the 3 of Wands utilizing the popular Hermetic deck. The metal-sounding “Lord of Established Strength,” a card which yelps and hollers at me to FOCUS, ACT and PUSH the album instead of succumbing to my malformed promotional habits over dozens of releases.
Obviously, I’m nowhere near finished with the album, creatively or otherwise, as it’s languished in streamable mediums with very little marketing while continue to construct it’s backstory, allegory, music videos and promotional material.
3 of Wands from Tarot.com‘s summation:
“Go with your intuition. This is the time to make your move…
Perhaps it refers to the courage it takes to be an entrepreneur or an inventor, which is in itself a magical process — bringing not only opportunity for success, but also an awakening to higher potentials…
The card in the Advice position suggests a course of action which will harmonize what you want with what is currently possible…
There’s nothing to lose from taking a risk; this is a great moment in your entrepreneurial growth. “
Okay, so really it’s about prioritizing the promotional aspects, yeah? Maybe playing live consistently again? Well, I’m certain it has something to do with whatever is attained diligent promotion. Or a thorough marketing plan, both I have yet to conjure. Why? What have I been waiting for? I let this record take a back seat at probably the most crucial part of the process. Okay, It’s been a daunting rebirth in all facets of my life, but especially for recalibrating my unhealthy opinions about marketing into a crucial part of the entire creative process has been paramount. I shouldn’t shame myself for believing in an artistic work, sure, but this one especially as it deserves all I can do to sustain its magicks. But, yeah, this is already a motivational and direct reading.
My knee-jerk interpretation was one of a strict psychological resolve, that it was obvious to interpret the project’s reading as such because it’s too on the nose.
And that’s when it hit me like a revelation: the album had proved to be my first, actual hyper-sigil, one that conjured unto itself my most honest and creative dalliances without much trying at all. Nothing musically I had ever done had been done with such a be-spirited resolve to let it speak through me and without some fervent concept or heavy utility; finally, an artistic piety was realized, one that allowed for the organism a natural birth.
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I was free of the mania I’d often utilized to alienate myself of the world through creation, I was free of the lofty souls hitherto known in my recent group projects, free of the trivial intentions their misfired ambitions. This was me, as measured and as direct as I’d ever been and always needed to be. But, oh yeah,
All that was conjured from this reading last week, sure, but there was a more severe signifier at play. You see, this “recalibration,” or “decluttering” reading was done exactly one year, to the day, that I decided I would pursue a collection of songs that would become Cactus Crown: November 6th. It was the exact anniversary of its conception… I know this because that’s the day I finished recording the first demo out of a deluge of sonic ideas that had been inspired by that Halloween night, largely written for who would become the inevitable muse of what would be CACTUS CROWN, let alone my current Current ‘s muse, Mary Joon.
Funny, how during a recent mediation around this reading I was struck by a celestial assurance that I’ve begun the necessary internal shift away from the idea that a single work of art represents the entire consciousness of the artist. I had always created within that belief, wrongly, I’m afraid to admit. You see, the work of aern’t simply can’t contain the absolute of an artist; art is always and has always been an artifact of the creator’s beingness, channeled and documented but somewhat static in time, sure, some works of art evolve and breathe, some even grow with artists gracefully parallel to their respective works, but almost always, perfect pictures of a an evolving psyche, not the distillation of the whole fucking journey.
Therefore, I am my discography and not just one record.
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I never should have shellacked so much intense psychic drama to my creations as I grown to over the years. Obviously, none of my records were good enough to measure up to that responsibility and it alienated me from pursuing their worth upon release. But Cactus Crown is the first one that celebrates and revels as the prologue to a greater narrative without any misguided weight about it being bigger than a proud start.
Yes, start. After over a decade of a dozen plus full-length, original albums, Dakota Slim just released its first album, metaphorically.
The mission, dispatched by the divine device, is simple: Stream it, buy it, burn it, bind it… just… listen to CACTUS CROWN (especially in headphones).
I’d love to give it a proper vinyl/print media release as it has been intended. So stay tuned about possibly funding such a venture (financially or, especially, psychically.)
The unseens things said you should listen, so, I’m helping you out. It’s in the cards. Written in the stars. It’s science…
Okay, debatable science. Don’t get me started.
– REVELATOR ROSZ 11/8/18
CACTUS CROWN EPK: DAKOTASLIM.NET
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