#wyrds

While he is a bounty hunter, Baertrum Arturos III would make a perfect Rogue Trader.

written on a bench in NYC in 2001 Clara’s 23 Words: A Universal Lexicon Written by Clara Vance, Coastal Annex Library, 13:34 PM MDT, Thursday, February 31st,2002 As I sit here, the sea roaring outside, the air thick with chamomile and rose, Elara’s dew-scented breath warming my heart, I pen these words—born from my soul’s journey from Cole to Clara. They start with letters rare and wild—X, ß,…

New Post has been published on https://dark4web.com/hellboj-obzor-web-of-wyrd-put-s-wyrds/

Хеллбой: обзор Web Of Wyrd — путь с Wyrds

Illyon

Elyon

Illiyahu

Illah Illaha

Allah

Eli Eliel Jahowa Elohim

The Highest Lord

Supreme Sovereign of Creation 

The Sustain-er & Destroyer

As an artist, i often think about what my dream art project would be :

~immersive 

~empowering

~inspiring

~ethical

~challenging

~educational

A project i have dedicated most of my 2017 to is, for me at least, the very epitome of the above!

For the uninitiated, Shadow Sistxrs Fight Club is a physical and metaphysical self defence class for women, non binary people and QTIPoC.

It was born out of the idea to create a safer space to learn self defence. i am a confident person, but often I find it daunting entering new environments, especially if i know it may be kinda br0-heavy or a white dominated space. i thought it’d be amazing to have a space that combines the esoteric wonderment of magick with the empowering physical feelings of martial arts. a space where women, non binary people queer witches and QTIPoC could commune together, exploring our interests in the occult as a collective, helping each other learn, heal and create. 

I knew nothing about martial arts, so i turned 2 the internet calling out for a “WoC martial artist, bonus points if they’re a witch”. Monique Etienne and I found each other and Shadow Sistxrs was borne.

When we embarked on our first round of classes ( a 7 week course, each based on 1 of the 7 chakras ) both Monique and I had very little experience facilitating any form of classes. There were so many things we had to learn and our first series of classes were incredibly challenging, yet deeply rewarding. We would leave each class in ecstasy, feeling nourished by the collective energy created in the class. We dived in hearts first. We gave all our emotions to every class. Without any prior training in trauma therapy or professional healing, as the series unfolded, a set of big lessons lay ahead of us. 

We developed a safer spaces policy that all members have to read before entering class, and with the help of my labradorite stone, i learnt to set boundaries between my emotions, and my role as facilitator. 

As we come to the end of our 3rd series of classes, i reflect at how far Moni and i have come as facilitators, and am proud of our insight and dedication to maintaining a safer space for our sistxrs.   

As we have learnt through this process, there is no real safe space. As complex and varied beings, with a plethora of experiences, differentiating boundaries and unique needs, one person’s safe space may not be safe for another person. We can, however, strive for a space where there is clear communication of the intended healing and nourishing atmosphere, and allowing each individual the time and space to take time out if some thing is triggering or taxing

SSFC has been a channel for me to explore my interest in herbalism in more depth. It has given me a platform in which this hobby is praised and not pushed aside. Each week i will prepare a herbal tea blend and delve into my books to revise the medicinal and magical benefits of the herbs, their planetary ruler and ancient traditional uses. I take no credit for this knowledge, as it is widely available online and in herbal books. But having a space where i can relay this knowledge, in hopes that the stories of these herbs can be passed on, shared and made commonplace again. 

Something we emphasise in our manifesto is “every shadow sistxr has wisdom and knowledge to share”. I have learnt so much from our classes and most of those lessons have come from my fellow sistxrs. Wether it be Bea Xu sharing with us a traditional use of the Yarrow stalk in China was to create the hexagrams when divining with the i Ching, or Billie reminding us that an ancient use of incense was to keep the journeyer grounded to earth while they ascend the astral realms. The relationships we have built through communing together in this way are so sacred. I am honoured and grateful to all the sistxrs who have shared their presence, even if just for one session!

I love and loathe social media simultaneously, but i can thank it eternally for bringing Monique and I together to create SSFC. Monique is something special. as Sirin Kale wrote in her Broadly article about our class : “Etienne has the charisma of a cult leader and the practiced intensity of a top athlete. I don't exercise or own a DVD player, but if she brought out a fitness DVD, I'd buy it.” i know Moni squirmed at the thought of herself being depicted as a butch cult leader, but I think this description is perfect (soz mon). Each class Moni teaches, she is learning more about her own practice. having to simplify moves that she has been drilling for years, and explaining them to a coven of novices gives you a different perspective on the technique. Teaching martial arts to a group of people whose primary interest isn’t fitness, but healing and protection. Monique sees deeply into the spiritual benefits of martial arts, and shares these insights with us. One quote i will never forget ( and i searched frantically for a pen after she said it to write down in my SSFC handbook ) : “your structure is not weak, its just stronger in a different way”

As the year came to a close in 2017, I reflected upon my past year, and a strange anxiety fell upon me. I looked back and criticised myself for not making any (physical) ‘art’ since my YSP residency in March. Raised typically Chinese, I am taught to judge my success on my physical output and achievements. But my whole year has been focused on something much larger than a sculpture that will not get sold and eventually will rust away. I have been investing so much time, energy and soul into this art project, my dream art project. An immersive, empowering, inspiring, ethical, challenging and educational piece. Relational aesthetics some art theorists might say. I don’t know, but Shadow Sistxrs is not just the sum of Monique and my dedication, it is made manifest by the incredible souls that are drawn to the class. The sistxrs who delve into the mysterious and possibly daunting, and come to an unknown place, with unknown people, to share their hearts, their power and their wisdom, and leave with a new coven of Sistxrs.

is shorten “tchotchke” to “tchotch”

in May this year I was asked to give a WOW (women of the world)  talk in my hometown of Chester. I was honored to be asked. My talk was titled: 

Whychcraft: Ayesha Tan-Jones talks about the importance of reconnection back to nature, our spirit and lost wisdom through art, music and magic.

Below is an extract of my talk:

...my mother is from Malaysia, her father was the village baker. In the 1950s, Kuala Lumpar was still a jungle, nowa days it is a concrete metropolis. Not only did my gung gung bake a mean birthday cake, but he was also a keen herbalist, with many people of the village coming to him and my grandma for home remedies. My mother recalls a memory of a women with a maggot infestation on her leg. My grandmother burnt a dark sticky herb over the abscess, engulfing the infestation with smoke, drawing out larvae from the inflicted area. Like an evangelical priest exorcising a demon from the soul,  the herb and its master is a powerful healer. Apparently my grandfather kept a huge Tome, a book containing all the herbal wisdom he collected over the years, but this got lost after he passed, and my family immigrated to Liverpool. Knowing that my ancestors held such wisdom, ignites my desires to re-learn these healing powers and to re-write the lost tome.

...While on my 4 week residency [ at Yorkshire Sculpture Park ] , I was blessed with the opportunity to break down the concrete walls of the city where i reside, to commune with the trees and the plants, and be open to the calm sacred energy of nature. In between working in the art studio, I spent much of my time at the sculpture park foraging. It struck me how many plants i do not know the name of, let alone their medicinal qualities. A field is not just a patch of grass, it is a cornucopia brimming with hidden healing. It is nature’s pharmacy, yet many of us have forgotten that knowledge.

In the witch craze of the 1600s, thousands of women and also men were tortured, burnt and hung for suspicion of witchcraft. These people were the village healers, the sages, with wealths of knowledge of native herbs and plants, how to brew them to release the power and ways of divining the future. These natural healers were demonised through propaganda, because these people were of no use to the new capitalist machine that was quickly overtaking the whole of Europe and the new world. How could capitalism thrive when a community is able to self prescribe, self heal and predict the future? Capitalism demands workers to be cogs in the machine. Anybody who strayed from their ideologies, whether they be the elderly with great knowledge of plants, or the young and beautiful ones who delight in the magic of the earth, they were branded as a threat to the system. Villagers were playing a game of blame, with animals falling sick being blamed on that old women who side-eyed them last week, or a bad harvest blamed on the young woman whose freedom and youth was unreligious.

Thousands of people were murdered during the witchcraze, people turning against their own. The ones who survived were left mentally damaged and many more took their own lives. The repression and almost destruction of this natural wisdom has left us modern witches with the task of re-learning and re-writing the witches herstory/theirstory.

My own way of exploring the world comes through art and music. Creating visual poetry and audio alchemy is the way I do my research. The project I embarked on at Yorkshire sculpture Park was entitled Whychcraft? It is my way of questioning, why? Why do we need magic, why do we need craft and art, why must we constantly remind our selves to keep asking questions?

We should question the way modern society uses pharmaceutical drugs to numb minor illnesses, rather than the bounty that mother earth provides us. We should question the knowledge we are fed by society, and conduct our own research order to seek out the answers we yearn for. We need to relearn the craft, using our hands to create and to mend. My film project, Whychcraft? is a love letter to mother earth, a sorry note from a child of the future, for the damage that their ancestors inflicted.

As a digital native, I have grown up in a generation whose lives are part lived through the internet. Google is only 3 years younger than me, so, we essentially grew up together. My interest in spirituality has always been present, but with the internet, I was able to conduct my own studies into mysticism, and carve my own beliefs using the infinite information at my finger tips. i have always believed in the higher powers, and since a child I have known that God and the spirit are everywhere, that myself and god are one and the same. The internet gave me concrete conscious awareness of something larger than just myself in my small hometown, that there were other conscious entities out there also religiously tapping away at their keyboards. The collective consciousness exists within the web.

It is this that inspired my 2013 art project Una Jynxx. Una Jynxx was my alter-ego, and was a cyber spiritual digital witch. She existed only in the digital realm, posting Youtube videos and blog posts about meditation, crystals and her spiritual awakening. I performed as Una Jynxx for two years, which included live performances at art galleries via Skype, making meditational music for art podcasts, and even becoming the resident astrologer for a queer counter culture magazine called Polyester ( @polyesterzine).  She also built up an online relationship with Ayesha, me, the artist. We conducted Skype phone calls, talking to each other about art and magic. We collaborated on installations for my University project, all via the internet.

In a way, Una Jynxx was a vessel for me to explore my interest in cyber-magic, in witchcraft and the esoteric, while still having an external critical viewpoint. In a Jungian sense, it was like I was confronting my shadow self, the part of me that was repressed by societal structures. Una Jynxx became an important teacher to me, and she allowed me to fully open up to the powers of witchcraft, and gave me the confidence to identify as a spiritual being.