Author: Eden Bloom

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Division St. Chicago, 05

He hit me again, and I went down again, counting stars again, amidst the already swirling swaths of red and white holiday spirit, throbbing and debouched.

Stupid fucking bar crawls. 100s of Santas and one of them, someone who I foolishly thought was my closest friend, had just laid me out across the floor of the last bar on the route. My eye was already swelling shut.

They scraped me off the floor as he continued his tirade, puke from earlier in the evening, crust in his beard. I still don’t know what happened. I used to think that certain things I said set him off, but now I think I was just around as a whipping boy. Entertainment.

Never having a brother, I thought this was some endearing sibling kinda stuff, until I looked back on it with time and distance. When we first met he threw me down two flights of stairs in a whiskey filled rage. He violently tackled me frequently, seriously fucking up my back a few times. Completely sunken into the bar floor, I couldn’t believe he did it again.

He started to rally, his aggression rising again, he moved toward me,and she stepped in. His best friend’s girl, my friend’s girl, she took me home telling everyone she had a steak for my eye, which turned out was a lie.

I prefer not to reduce people to stereotypes, but I knew next to nothing about her. She was Puerto Rican. She was an artist. We never talked. She was boisterous as hell when she was drinking and she was drinking whenever I was infrequently around. She was in an on and off again relationship with my friend for quite some time. They were currently on. He’d meet up with us at their place later. Of course there was an after party.

We took a cab and ended up in their kitchen. I was full of sobs of pain and dread. I loved this guy and couldn’t figure out why he did this to me. We’d been drinking all day, my head wasn’t right but she poured more beer as her fingers poked at my face. Listening to my whines of why.

She cleaned off the blood, applied ice and made me a place on the couch to stay the night. The room spun when my eyes closed and with one eye swollen shut the motion was constant. She helped me to the couch and then, without words, consent or otherwise, she climbed onto me and fucked me.

My confusion didn’t fight and though I’ve tried, I can’t remember more. My friend, her man, came home as she finished. I never did. He was too drunk to do more than stumble to their bed, he didn’t turn on the light. After a long moment of silence, laying still on top of me she quietly slid away to join him.

I dreamt he was standing above me. I woke alone on the couch, in pain, body and mind. I left a note saying ‘thank you’ and slid myself quietly out onto Division St. Blinding, unforgiving midday sunlight, guilt and shame and where the hell is my car, I’ve got to get back to Detroit on time.

I had to get back to the woman who, thankfully, is my now ex-wife, the one who made miserable me, to clean this new stench off my body, to figure out what to say. My face throbbing, my soul sucked, I drove away from the sunset, east, fingers clutching at 10 and 2. No music, nothing to say, just processing shame. With one solid punch as my guide. I broke it ALL that day.

© EschatonLife

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Wide-Eyed Sigil Use through the Oughts

(Attributed to V.I.T.R.I.O.L.) The Sigil ov Three Liquids (read: Thee Grey book) was the atomic bomb passed to me through TOPY. As hinted at in prior documentation, I utilized this sigil process from the time I was 16 to 23. I typically performed these sigils within the larger framework of extravagant ritual as I struggled with my notion of external energies (god forms) and the concept that magick was to be ceremonial and dramatic. 

At the age of 23, I experienced a breakthrough (read: breakdown) that caused me to redefine my worldview and bring magickal techniques out of the spiritual realm and into the scientific. During this period I shifted from working with forces outside of myself to working with a more psychologically based internal system. Basically, embracing the random, chaotic nature of the universe AND giving power things outside of myself eventually bit me in the ass as chaos is want to do.

I began to focus upon Spare’s Alphabet of Desire and created a series of sigils that acted like a language. Between the years of 94 and 96 I manifest two or three of these alphabets. These were basically maps of my mind/psychology at the time and I worked with particular sigils to achieve or negate mental states. As I worked in this way I was also heavily reading Jung and his cronies. I bought into the Jungian concept of the “shadow” and began rendering dual meanings within all of my sigils. This work primed me for Grant’s work with the Qliphoth, the backside of the Tree of Life. 

During this period, sigils were charged on a daily basis. I collected all the sigils in my alphabet in a large spiral book and every morning I would charge one upon waking. Moving away from the three liquid sigils of TOPY, I now charged sigils by meditating until I achieved a deep trance/non-thought state (neither/neither state in Spare’s vernacular). I also began to string sigils together to assist in achieving particular effects. Much like using a diet of supplements to produce certain physical/mental results, I would put together a cocktail of sigils in the morning to prepare myself for the day. 

Towards the end of this period I became enamored with the Northern European Tradition and hijacked the elder futhark (runes) as a sigil language in the process. Rather than study other’s interpretation of the runes I elected to integrate my being into their system. Over the period of six months I worked a rune a week. I internalized each through ritualistically studying their symbolic qualities and allowing them to “speak” to me on their use and attributes. After gaining my impressions of each rune I began to research their traditional meanings and found a great deal of similarity. With the integration complete I used the runes in the same manner I used the sigil alphabets I created earlier, to great effect. 

In 96, I formalized my relationship with the  and began a dangerous series of renegade workings in the Enochian and Vodun systems. My use of personal sigils waned temporarily as the full emersion into these systems dominated my daily practice.

I pulled into the Oughts on a psychedelic steed fueled by the eschatology of the 2012 meme and a paranoia based on a failed millennial apocalypse. I’d reconnected to the universe and had balanced out my internal and external relationships. Theories on time manipulation became the catalyst for new workings and simplicity was the call of the day. Through years of practice I acquired the ability to instantly enter into the neither/neither state, charge sigils, and let them go on the fly. 

My current use of sigils no longer involves images or words, but rather hand gestures and facial expressions.  About 8 years ago, thanks to   and   , I dove into Neuro Linguistic Programming and it changed everything. One of the NLP techniques is centered on developing “triggers” or “anchors” to achieve certain mental states. Basically, one brings on a particular mental state through actively bringing to mind (and body) the auditory, visual and kinesthetic modes related to the particular state. When the state becomes very “real” a hand gesture or body/facial position is struck and linked to the state. I now use a battery of sigilized “anchors” on a daily basis.

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Promethean Night, a curse on angels

I remember watching as the city burned amazed and awaiting ever august Detroit made devil’s night as she did Valliants and Galaxies

Burning Prometheus rising planting apocalyptic dreams in virile minds to seek vengeance and let loose on landscapes

I now watch crass angels in suits move clean machines across the lucid Vulcan dreamscapes of once infinite possibilities broken glass and pavement cracks allow breath, oxygen to burn

I curse sterile attempts to polish and smother and command Prometheus rise again!

*This was written in my cubicle while working at Compuware, ‘Angel’s/Devil’s Night’, October 30, 2003. It was either part of the impetus for, or grew from, my involvement with the Detroit Promethean Society, which is a story for another time. ~ ed. Sept. 2012

©EschatonLife

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I pour blood like wine

January 29th 2000:

I pour blood like wine. Neither reading Durrell or thinking Foucault has saved me anything and I realize this when I lay in my bed mid-afternoons; when the voices kick in. There is one in particular, quite compelling, it says “everything you do is based upon destroying all you could be.”

When I am clear I know I live like a bee making honey. Of course, clarity has been slacking of late. There is a scene, a picture, so far back in the mind; the sun as it might be. Its brightness made me blind and so I moved through the world, as a would-be Oedipus, till I found distractions. False sight and a sense of being. God bless them, they were good friends.

The other possibilities are stained glass windows, filled with gold, and fulfilling all that is red in reality. The blood flows like wine, not like it would in a Bob Seager-4×4 reality. Frankly, fast-food is killing me and the realization of that fact might keep me around only slightly longer than Rimbaud. Why can’t I get over the mesmerism of a 99 cent value meal? It has so much more to do with religion that you would think. The hermit, the fool, the magus…. all coming into line at a drive-thru window where the cost is your flat-plastic delineation.

God, how I wish we were the cards I have drawn from the deck. My blood flows like wine because it is wine… and this is the answer I give to the voice that speaks most clearly: “I do it because it makes you go away,” that is what I say. But in doing this I trust nothing these damnable days. Do you know what loneliness is? I haven’t really, until now. Try this on for size: all the people you care about are all at least five hours away, the only romantic love you feel is for a woman that goes to bed with another man every night, and the only hope you have is destroying all that you touch, slowly, in a kind of numbing manner.

Like a silent virus, or would it be like the sea rolling up onto the shore? It is a slow death nonetheless. Yes, it is getting to the point where I talk back to the voices. What else can I do? Listen to them? Exactly. That is what I am trying to do now, listen to them. It might not be a Bob Seager-4×4 snuff film, but it will break something. Fuck “Like a Rock,” my blood flows like wine. “I do it because it makes you go away,” I say again, I say it again, over and over.

©EschatonLife

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Harry Crosby, Prophet of the Sun

A collection of poems by Harry Crosby. Limited to 100 copies.

In 1991, when traveling through Austin, an associate of mine gave me a tattered sheet that held 3 nearly unreadable Crosby poems. They transfixed me. I traveled the country copying poems from libraries and rare bookstores and eventually moved to Carbondale, IL. to gain access to the Caresse Crosby papers at Southern Illinois University.

I created this online edition to commemorate the 2011 anniversary of Harry Crosby’s death. The project gave me a chance to look at Crosby with fresh eyes. I’ve always cringed at Harry’s contradictions and train-wreck levels of drama.

His misanthropy, worship/objectification of women and perception of non-Europeans as savage are considerable blocks to the potential of his inspired ‘life as art/politic’ rebellion against the wealthy Boston Brahmins and his creative quest for spiritual liberation.

https://issuu.com/detroitevolution/docs/prophet_of_the_sun

©EschatonLife

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Eden Bloom – The Death of Bloom

Remastered versions of these songs are being released in 2021 through Eschaton Life.

Save the cover of Current 93’s ‘Ballad of the Pale Christ’, I originally wrote and played these songs with different iterations of ‘Bloom’ while traveling from Detroit to Arizona, California, Illinois and back throughout the 90s.

These versions were recorded July 4 & 5, 1997 at Goldsound Studios Chicago, Illinois

Titled “The Death of Bloom’ this session was intended to end the project though it didn’t. Great thanks to all who assisted me in bringing this chapter to a close.

These were digitized without much EQ from cassette October 10th, 2012.

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Where do I go when I’m not with you?

He rented out a little room on the other side of town, a small room with one window in the north. The floors were wooden, scraped and scarred from years of use and zero maintenance. The room came furnished, but the landlord removed the bed and dresser upon his request. Remaining was a chair, table and bookcase that were quickly put to use in his first hours there. Unloading a box of old books, a few pads of paper and his pipe he had completely moved into his shelter.

Being the man that he was he knew that he had a struggle ahead of him, to protect his shelter at all costs, especially to protect it from himself. The time had long passed since he felt accustomed to being alone. Now, with this new space, he was determined to keep it to himself. A space not for friends, nor lovers, but a place of solitude.

He found himself there when he could be. When other aspects of life were not anticipating him. He slid out of their world and into his own. His time in the room was filled with nothingness, with every antithesis of what was to be. He wrote nothings, he drew nothings, and thought nothings. His papers were never to be seen and his poems were never to be read. They were not especially good, and certainly lacked most aspects that would make them readable to others, but they were solitary musings and served to give him greater purpose.

But the term solitary musings does not fit the nature of these writings entirely, for there were, due to the nature of language, traces of past writings, and music, and sights. In this manner the room of nothingness was in fact filled with ghosts, shadows, and shades. It was not long until there exploded the realization that, against every precaution, he had failed to protect his solitude.

In the frenzied time surrounding this realization he had begun to loose sleep and to show the early signs of madness. Even in their world the voices walked with him and the images were scribbled out before his eyes. He walked to the tune of ghostly music and the food he ate was tainted with the lack of the modern world. His associates in their world were beginning to notice something was not right with him.

His visits to the room were now struggles, barren attempts to think a new thought, to write the solitary line of verse, to put a tune in his mind that did not base itself upon the past. He then stopped…

©EschatonLife

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Temporary Temple J-Card

J-Card design for the demon Instagon‘s cassette release of it’s June 23, 1995 manifestation. The performance happened at a house party in the Huntington Beach space we were all living in. In addition to the design I wrote the ‘liner notes’.

“Five times at the door knocks the initiate. Through the door a cross dimensional shift to all space, all time, no space, no time, neither neither. We have walked here often with little knowledge, each telephone connection, each picture gazed upon and each thought of those far away can reach across this time and that space. With knowledge comes power. When all parties have the knowledge the results can be staggering. Not a shot in the dark, but a flare in the night sky. The walls of the temple manifest within our hearts and minds and are made external through action, ritual, music, art. Ritualmusicart create the tangible space around those involved. Across time and space, between time and space the pieces of the temple connect. Our flesh the mortar, our movements those of the mason. Within these walls we step outside the walls and celebrate our divinity. Temporary we are Temple.”

From The Instagon Foundation page:

06-23-95 — INSTAGON HOUSE, HUNTINGTON BCH,CA…..FRI (086)
1: Wish You Were Here Temporarily>Temporary Temple
2: Wish You Were Here Temporarily (pt 2), Knock 5 Times
{Lob, Opus, Chris tm., Gregg Newsom, Tom Sunstroke}
This show was a performance in conjuction with T.O.P.Y. The show was billed as “TEMPORARY TEMPLE ’95” and was played in the mind frame of the “Temporary Temple” was simultaneously conjured this night by T.O.P.Y Magicians in the world wide Nettwerk ov TOPY and AIN. The show began at 23:00 on the 23rd ov June into the 24th, which is the anniversary of the founding of the Masonic Temple or Freemasonry….