I’ve appreciated the chance to walk these old death roads with you. It has given me the opportunity to process some of my family experiences from back in Dorset, and to think deeply, with gravitas, about what has been lost, and what might still be resurrected. A lot of people enjoy wearing and buying the paraphernalia of death and darkness, but it is rarer to see people ready to sacrifice their ego to a dying mystery. To me the Work of interacting with the dead is about the sense of inoculation, it is about leaning with greater grace into the space of death, when it comes for you, or perhaps worst still, some of your loved ones. It is about being able to pass for one of the dead. Folk necromancy encourages a world where the boundaries between the living and the dead are more permeable. As such I think it important to bring some of these customs back into our lives. May the blackening bless you, may an uncomfortable but productive, belly-deep, putrefaction purify you.
OPENING IMAGE BY MILDRED PAYNE