by Villainus

I want to talk about one understanding of sorcery to address our world’s situation. When I say sorcery, I mean it as early science, so as not to be confused with mysticism. For example, alchemy is not just turning lead to gold (though we are now very close to that), it also was involved with water purification — more chemistry than mysticism. Or pharmacia, which again was once considered sorcery but was just the science of medicines and herbs.

For this article, we are going to focus on the idea of necromancy, that is manipulation of the dead. Though it would be crazy ill, I’m not talking about zombies or skeleton soldiers but instead how we more practically and realistically use the dead.

Our society, our civilization is built from the rotting plant and animal corpses that we mine out of the bowels of our mother earth. We process these into many products that maintain our infrastructure. We place them throughout the buildings that we construct. We use them to encase our foods. They hold our water and beverages, as if we were drinking out of a sterile skull. Everyday, industries spray petroleum-laced pesticides all over the foods we consume. We still pump the leftover remains into fuel tanks across the globe.

This may sound like a sci-fi horror story. That is because it is a horror story, one of a very western making. Unfortunately for us, it’s anything but fiction. It really only gets grimmer from here.

All across the nation there are blood banks, where they usher in the poor of this supposedly great society and mine their blood streams for plasma, which will be made in to solidified potion for medicinal purposes, the best of which will be saved for the very wealthy, rest being distributed quality to each according to their class. All that is given in exchange for this plasma mining is enough cotton (dollars are made from cotton) for a day’s rations. All this while burning more corpses for energy, transmuting it into a gasses of death — miasma if you will.

All this consequently, and not so slowly, melts our ice caps and creates a climate that is quickly becoming inhospitable.

These are among the many ways we manifest and manipulate death, but the way we view and obtain this is based off coercion and war, creating cultures and empires that sustains themselves off death.

The chickens always will come home to roost. When you play with death long enough, he will want you to go with him.

I know this may all sound like allegory, but in all honestly it’s just one way to see things that is nonetheless factual. It’s all terrifyingly but true.

I just wanted to give one more honest way to see this crisis — one with hope.

To truly change something, we must change philosophy from a culture of death to one of life. Living in more sustainable ways as a species. To do this, we must have new eyes and priorities, throwing away the expectation of this industrialize world and find a respect for life.

A space where we see the value of life, leaving behind the fear of our mortality and embracing the abundance of our lives. The smiles, the laughs, the stories.

Communing with other life human and nonhuman life alike. Instead of seeing the world like we are an apex predator, everything here for our consumption, no matter the tactic or cost, what if we see this planet as our home and life as our family, whether it is our food or our peers.

Yes, this includes divesting from fossil fuels. Without a doubt. But not just that but divesting from extractive industry as a whole. It includes seeing other humans and other animals as creatures deserving of respect and care.

If we choose to see things through a more spiritual (not religious) outlook, we might be able to better empathize with living beings. We may live in a place that we find fulfillment and love instead of death and desolation.

We may even remember what it is to live life, not just struggle to survive the future we are creating collectively. Leaving the age of the necromancer in the soon to be past, and finding a future where we  eat from the fruit of life.

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