Spell for the Immaculate Dead

​​When I was 14 years old, I almost died in a house fire on Mischief Night, the rough and tumble night that precedes Halloween. I had moved into the squat house the day before. A wild imagination awakened in me as my brother introduced me to the house full of punk rock junkies and errant street imps. I wandered during the day into the shadows of the rooms that used thick fabrics to block the sunlight. Flooded with thoughts of vampires and underworld chambers, I trembled, but I felt safe because my brother was there.

When the fire took hold at 3am on the first floor of the squat house, we were asleep in an unheated room, on a dirty mattress under a single wool blanket. The gaseous soot took time to find us. We woke to yells, darkness above curled with smoke and warmth. We took the cue from the PSAs we had seen as children, both calling out “Dick Van Dyke” and stopping, dropping and rolling. But I wasn’t sure of the direction to roll; I’d just moved in yesterday, and didn’t know the floor plan.

My brother made it out, and I did not. Realizing I wasn’t following him, he circled back from a neighbor’s rooftop and jumped back in the house.

I inhaled too much smoke, became dizzy, and passed out; blazing fumes poured up the stairs and choked out all air.

When he returned to save me, I had already stopped breathing. He dragged me out the window onto the second-floor rooftop. I had to be resuscitated. One of the junkies threw up a leather jacket with needles in its pockets.

I will never forget my fleeting journey to the Underworld.

Today in Iran, young women become possessed in the streets. They are the shaking, trembling bodies and screaming voices of ghosts—those who endured their lives in quiet desperation with a subterranean raging silence.

The riddles of the present moment beg for resolution—the false weight of gold facing off with the mystery of cryptocurrency, as the liberation of psychedelics counterbalances the scourge of opioid addiction. The laws that enforce disparities in wealth are challenged by growing worldwide rebellion. After thousands of years of being nomads, the Israelis defend their "monkey's paw" homeland against another people robbed of their home. We cannot see a way through these contradictions in daylight. We must ask what is left when we journey into the smoky darkness of the unknown.

Over and over these days, I see the Gorgon Medusa when I close my eyes. A woman straight out of Greek mythology, with snakes for hair and a gaze that turns men to stone.

Screaming, raging, repressed souls unable to speak, tear out of the head like snakes full of poison. She can turn someone instantly to stone, never to move their lips in public again. Immediately becoming a figment of the past, a frozen position in space, never moving forward. She is not a villain; her hair of snakes exposes the pressured poison of a mind ravaged by oppression. I see those serpents, some thin as threads, some thick like dreadlocks, tangling under a covering. A young woman's face twisted in a fever mask by the death of a sister, one blow too far. I see the hijab torn off to reveal coiled snakes, and they strike out in all directions, anyone who confronts this monster instantly turned to stone.

So why does she wake me up at night, screaming of my dying and those who are beyond death? She claws at me from the Underworld—is she their messenger, do they wish for me to speak for them? And how can I? No matter how honest I am, can I allow enough emptiness to fill me with their voice?

Perseus defeats Medusa with gifts from the Gods, his mirrored shield and sword. He advances on her backwards, gazing upon her only through the shield, evading the snakes of her rage and the freezing power of her eyes. In the end, he beheads her.

I do not wish the Gorgon to die. Instead, I want to see her kind, (the monsters of “unique and explicit” powers), rise against our day's entrenched establishments.

Perseus is out of the picture. The Gorgon Medusa is powerful, but I sense her vulnerability. I wish her to keep her head and instead be the living aegis on Athena's shield, putting herself in service to the wise woman of war. From the Lysistrata to the “Me too” movement to the protests in Iran, there is a voice coming to power.

This global initiation is the moment for liberty in the world. On this 38th anniversary of my rebirth, I wish to reach out to these spirits of the Underworld. Reach to the ones that touched me that night and implore them to guide our hands. Let the coming war be one of ideas and coordination, not bloodshed and destruction. We can find this opening while the veils are thin. Make this offering, this prayer, this spell with me. A new phase has begun. So it is.