zenKOAL

I already know what's wrong with you. 

You're unhappy. You're isolated.

You think you're the cause of this unhappiness and are unworthy of affection, so you've few friends.

Recently you lost something you think is very important. 

Your lover. Your faith. Your family. Or all three. 

You blame yourself for this, so it makes you neurotic, and you don't sleep or eat anything (nothing healthy anyway).

You used to take care of your appearance, but you've lost interest in that. So you avoid mirrors. 

Sunlight bothers you, so you avoid that too. 

About which, you feel guilty because you think it's unhealthy- immoral even- not to like the sun.

You're not a woman of convention, or you wouldn't be here, but you pretend you are, so people don’t notice you.

But sometimes you do like to be seen and can dress to draw the eye.

Then you think the men who look at you are fools, or worse, to be taken in by such an obvious outward show.

So instead, you're drawn to dark, complicated men, assuring your unhappiness and isolation because, after all-you're happiest alone.

But you're not even content then because you can't stop thinking about what you've lost- again, for which you blame yourself.

So the cycle goes on.

The snake eating its own tail. 

"Terrorist" is what the big army calls the little army.

"Superstitious" is what the big occultist calls the little occultist.

[kat-uh-klit-iz-uh mmm]: noun. 1. a distinctive path of practice, artistic movement and philosophical beliefs based on the female anatomy and orgasm, feminine pleasure principle, and the sensuous and willful stimulation of female sex organs for the purposes of creating a desired metamorphic event or sudden upheaval.

2. a hypothetical Bloomsday event.

3. the worship of the clitoris or female genitalia, female empowerment and sexual liberation, and/or revolutionary female sex magicians.

4. diabolical or nymphomaniacal disposition, behavior, or activity that incites great transformation as the result of female empowerment, pleasure, or orgasm causing a sudden release of energy that creates powerful psychic or seismic waves in the shared atmosphere and environment.

(zenKOAL)

This track featuring my poem, "Phantoms of Pyre", about the female sexual impulse and liberated woman, was made for the Seattle Erotic Art Festival's "Audio Erotic", where they feature the author's recordings of pieces selected to be published in this year's SEAF literary anthology. 

This divine feminine essence is the force otherwise known as Babalon, the Sacred Whore, Mother of Abominations and Bride of Chaos. Babalon is the Gateway to the City of the Pyramids, the Scarlet Woman, the Great Mother, and the Woman Girt with Sword who rides astride the Beast.

zenKOAL: Lyrics, vocals and sampling. Suchre: Instrumentals and mastering. Together we are "Brujentropy".

Image, "LUST- In Nominae Babalon" from the Tabula Mundi Tarot.

(zenKOAL)

"Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right." -- Ani DiFranco

Any discussion about magic ("the art and science of creating change in conformity with Will," as Crowley defined it) is a discussion about power and the ways we wield it -- a discussion that cannot be separated from the social, political, cultural, and economic realities people inhabit.

The popular conception of "white magic," guided by the ethic "do what tho wilt, an' it harm none" feeds and is fed by the illusions of privilege that obscure the fact that that the lives we live are lived at others' expense. In a society where the messier aspects of securing survival are shunted off to armed forces that do their work out of sight and far away, rougher edged magics are not as relevant in the lives of those who have social and economic capital as they are to those who live at the edges and in the shadows. But magic has long been a means by which people have done what they need to do to feed, heal, clothe, house, and protect themselves and their communities. The magic that has historically been the magic of the poor and the oppressed is labeled "black magic" by those who do not need it to survive and would rather not face the realities it entails.

Victor Anderson famously said: "White magic is poetry, black magic is whatever works."

White magic is reverent and celebratory.  It is the right hand magic that gives thanks for the blessing and abundance that rains down from the universe.

Black magic is done with urgency, when children are starving and need food,  when someone is coming to harm your family, when someone is halfway through death's door and a witch needs to tear through the veil to pull her back into this world. It is the left handed magic that takes what is needed and does not apologize for that need.

But ultimately, there is no white magic or black magic, there is only magic, wild and transgressive and resisting description. To heal and to hex, to bless and to curse, are not just  identical powers that flow from the same source, they are the same action seen from different points of view.

Magic is neutral.  It’s application is not. It’s our right and responsibility to wield it with precision and intention, knowing and choosing the blessings and the curses we enact as we do.    

~Sean Donahue

R: "I had a thought, and then I realized it was a waste of time to think." 

Me: "No, it's not. what were you thinking?"