Howdy haunts,
Today is the big day. And I am making sure to shout out each and every patron for your ongoing support in this new episode and column on Pragmagick / We The Hallowed respectively.
I may or may not do a Patreon stream depending on how long and arduous this production turns out – I’m a bit rusty since taking some time to reconfigure this next chapter, both literally and figuratively. But you will be the first to know if I decide to squeeze in a stream later!
I also wanted to add the new intro for the piece that hopefully paints a finer light on such a magnanimous undertaking. Big thanks to Michelle Embree and Eric J. Millar on their invaluable input! Listen for your names at the end when the episode is released! Again, big thanks, big love, haunt on.
New Intro:
NEITHER EITHER OR: The Poisoned Pharmakeus
I am haunted.
I find myself in a static stasis, reverberating in place. Like the Tower Card, it’s as if I’m always exploding foundations and rebuilding in a constant loop. I often compare myself to the Dharma Bum, a beat-ific idea of anarchic freedom, snickering at the rubble and ash beneath, never tied to what came before. But the thing is, I am haunted. I am haunted by extremes – whether it‘s being an aloof instigator of a creative community, or a dogma-less routine-driven magician. I have never given proper communion to this ghost, this tether to all things pragmatic and artistic, this innate contradiction within all that I do.
I would balk and run from memory, and find myself arrested as to where and how to move forward with nothing truly gained. In hindsight, it’s an old tale about doomed repetition. But I know this ghost simply yearns to be both, or something different altogether. How do I commune with this specter of self? How do I find the third mind of energetic revelation between the opposites I find myself forever wrestling. How do I, as a spontaneous creative, become a stable magician? Is it possible?
The past few months I caught a whiff of being in front of the oncoming Tower. I can see the revolutions of self before me, whether it be behaviors and actions, or environmental interactions. Where will I be next year? Will anything be resolved? Will I continue to churn and burn through habitual sabotage and struggle? Perhaps it is time to finally consort the elements that birthed my contradictory ghost.
My habitual process during these times of existential stress finds myself lamenting on all that I need to rid or exorcise. I find myself hitting black mesas and shallow plateaus looking and looking outward, and I get disgruntled and bungled even more so. But I aim to go about this differently this time: I need to remember and invoke/evoke why I’ve created servitors such as Dakota Slim, Pragmagick, and We The Hallowed. It is time to investigate the inspirations and machinations that have brought me my muse. And it has occurred to me that this same ghost, the one howling underneath, has been both my poison and antidote all along.
Welcome to an ongoing series entitled Haunt Manual that is both an audiocast and column on wethehallowed.org In this fluid, multi-media grimoire I will document my ongoing praxis to commune with my contradictory ghost, to rediscover and reveal the tenets of our anarchic collective We The Hallowed, and discuss all artistic and magickal practices involved. The music beneath is an improvised audiomancy liminalstream I will be conjuring for each installment, you can view it in full at youtube.com/c/pragmagick
I suppose going backward is the only way forward…
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