BECOMING DANGEROUS: A book about ritual and resistance

3 DAYS LEFT: Jones Ritual Short
over 6 years ago – Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 07:46:21 PM

There are only 3 days left to support Becoming Dangerous! The 30 days of a campaign go by quick! I'm working on the BackerKit stuff now so when the campaign ends you can add items on to your pledge liked extra pins or more books or whatever you'd like. Also, by popular demand, I've added an option for the Becoming Dangerous enamel pin: you'll be able to choose between gold or silver. 

Tonight's Ritual Short is from a writer who was published in the last Fiction & Feeling book, SPLIT. She's so intelligent, thoughtful, and is your soon-to-be favourite erotic writer and photographer. Everyone, meet Jones. 

☾☾☾

As a girl I would read fairy tales about women who lived with magic, women who followed ancient tracks through a solid rational world into the misty mountains of their own imaginations. Up there they hang between heaven and earth, mysterious and powerful. 

The most appropriate fairy tale for me would be Sleeping Beauty, because my story is one of a woman who was asleep for a hundred years until a kiss woke her with love. My evocation of love is sweeping, aching, exhilarating and rapturous. Simply loving space and dreams and words will not do; I want love itself, violent and powerful, and for that, you need to meet it. You have to be able to answer the question love asks of everyone: What do you live for? At times, it feels incantatory, as though all the words I speak in love are black spells. But do I believe in magic?

"Magic is what happens when your will changes the world," my love told me. 

I scoffed, "Then you do not need magic, all you need is the will."

My certainty of this was dismayed by a single truth, said to me by the bestower of all love's kisses.

"But my girl, you have rituals." 

And I do. Not conjured attempts at magic, not swords or wands or cups of wine, I do not sit listening for ghosts of my future. Life is a high-wire act of sustained emotional resonance, and the rituals I practice help anchor and sustain me. They help me see and feel and live in the greatness and beauty of the world.  A ritual is not an idle pass of time, a summer romance or a child's word for routine. A ritual is a union of will and hope that demands that you take seriously not only their method, but their premise. When I create space and sit for meditation, when I kneel beside my lover's bed, when I bathe and salute the moon and brush out my hair to untangle my day, I am sinking into ritual, steeping myself in meaning and purpose, breathing in symbolic representations of personal concepts. Rituals are how I channel thoughts and energy, hope and goodness from something I think into real things in the world, leaving me lucid and resilient. They help me answer the question "what do you live for?" with a heart that doesn't waver.  

If you don't believe in rituals maybe you don’t go for that sort of thing. You like good wine from the proper glass and keep your passport in a fireproof box, you donate to the red cross and behave like an adult. A life that is lived is often prosaic, yes there’s love to be made, but there are also bills to be paid and dry cleaning to pick up. The world is a serious place where people suffer and there is business to be done; what audacity do we have to think of magic or love at all?

But why should all the centuries of the world’s pain and production lessen the fact that I can love? Is that not what love is, a seed of creation in the mouth of destruction, nurtured through the rituals of a kiss?  Am I self-centred, solipsistic, detached from reality? Maybe. But I demanded happiness, I demand the external world I move through be as intense and beautiful as the one I feel inside me, and I accept that such demands require work.

Before I had rituals I felt unfeeling, unknowing, my life felt unlived. I knew I was only skating the surface, unable to plunge the depths of myself.  But through the rituals of making space, of emotional and self-observation, I find a love and life that is intense and deep, visceral and guiding. Rituals are times when I can open these things that go mostly unexpressed, undwelled upon—jostled aside by the intruding world and the endless errands of daily life—and see greatness. And there is the power of ritual and love: they take what is yours every day and everywhere, what exists in every heart, and make it mythical as you find yourself waking from a hundred-year slumber.

 Eve Jones is a designer, photographer, and writer from Toronto. She likes tall tales, tall men, 24-hour anything, and wayward girls. She puts cream in her coffee & creates erotic stories and images at eveunleashed.com.

☾☾☾

I'm in the middle of compiling the Becoming Dangerous Mixtape which is going to be very very good. And every backer gets it, because why not? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

❤ Katie

5 DAYS LEFT: Julia Scheele Ritual Short
over 6 years ago – Sun, Oct 15, 2017 at 01:05:56 AM

Hello everyone,

There's only 5 days left to support this Kickstarter. Please continue to share this project with anyone you think may benefit from reading a book about summoning your own power. Personally, I would say that applies to everyone in my life, but by now I think everyone in my life has pledged to this project. :)

As it's a lazy Saturday morning, er, afternoon, let's enjoy a Ritual Short by my friend and one of my most favourite illustrators, Julia Scheele. Julia created the Teen Witches print that is offered as a reward, and here she's created an illustrated Ritual Short about extreme cleaning, a topic I deeply identify with. <3

☾☾☾

Julia Scheele is a freelance illustrator (and graphic scribe with Scriberia) who lives in Glasgow and also draws comics, which she has been doing regularly, passionately, and against all odds since 2008. She illustrated Queer: A Graphic History, written by Dr. Meg-John Barker and published through Icon Books. In her spare time she runs One Beat Zines, a zine collective and distro together with Sarah Broadhurst.

☾☾☾

5 MORE DAYS!

❤Katie

Good news update
over 6 years ago – Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 11:26:13 PM

Hello everyone,

I just got back from New York yesterday and then I slept for an embarrassingly long time. But now I'm awake! And I have so much good news!

Good news item No. 1: The £27,000 Stretch Goal was unlocked while I was away and I am about to put up the new rewards! These rewards include consultations with Sam Maggs to ritualise your skincare routine (limited to five); makeup consultations with merritt k (limited to five); 30-minute call sessions with Sophie Saint Thomas to discuss sex and dating advice (limited to five); and a Becoming Dangerous mixtape download featuring new music from Meredith Yayanos and Kim Boekbinder, along with special guests! Also, every single person who pledges will get the Becoming Dangerous Spell Booklet—rituals created by our contributors who are practicing witches to help you summon your power!

Good news item No. 2: Everyone who pledges at the £15 physical book reward and up will get an exclusive bookplate created by Lights! We blew past the £28,000 Stretch Goal so fast I didn't even notice it happened. But I saw Lights when I was in New York as she was touring her new album and she was so excited by this project. She's so sweet. Here's her bookplate: 

Good news item No. 3: As we also passed the £29,000 stretch goal mark, an audio version of Becoming Dangerous will be made! This makes me happy because I want this book to be accessible to as many people as possible and having an audio version will help in this endeavour. 

Good news item No. 4: We also passed the £30,000 stretch goal, which means the paperback is getting an upgrade! The first edition paperback copy of Becoming Dangerous will now come with french flaps and have gold or silver foil on the front. Speaking of which, what do you think would look best: gold or silver? Let me know!

Good news item No. 5: We are SO CLOSE to reaching our last stretch goal: adding three new authors to Becoming Dangerous. I can tell you right now that one of those additional authors is the incredible and hilarious Avery Edison. 

And here's what she'll be writing about: "Before I was a woman, I was a witch." A brief history of discovering witchcraft while still a closeted trans woman suffering daily torment in an all-male high school. The folly of trying to work spells in public, at my desk. The secret confidence gained from meditating and working with crystals in private. The rejection of all spirituality, followed by a secret return to it, couched in layers of irony and knowing sincerity. Where I am today: making and using sigils that I don't quite believe in, but which still work because they're sigils and there's a reason they've stuck around.

Good news item No. 6: Today is Friday the 13th. Go make a little mayhem, loves. 

❤Katie

REWARD UNLOCKED: Limited Edition Illustrated Hardcover
over 6 years ago – Fri, Oct 06, 2017 at 12:47:27 AM

I know some of you have been waiting very patiently for this reward, and I hope it's worth the wait. 

Let me tell you about the hardcover edition of Becoming Dangerous. Imagine this: you have some friends over to watch The Craft and share some spells, when one of them spies a strange black box on your bookshelf. 

They step closer and realise it's a slipcase for a book. They pull it down off the shelf and hold its weight in their hands. The slipcase has black foil of a mysterious symbol: two hands with knives growing out of the palms. 

They ask you what it is. You simply tell them, "It's a way to become dangerous." 

Intrigued, their eyes trace the letters in black foil on the spine, they murmur, "Becoming Dangerous, hm?" as they slide the book out of the slipcase. It's soft and velvety, wait, it is literally velvet. This book is bound in black velvet. They laugh because it's so delightful and now everyone is interested in this object in your friend's hands. 

Your friends crowd around, trying to get a look at the cover. The cover has the words BECOMING DANGEROUS in black foil, and underneath is a photograph, placed into a stamped frame. The photograph is beautiful and lush; several women appear to be in a sort of occult shop, looking powerful and utterly themselves. The colours of the photograph are deep and subtle, like looking at a vintage photograph that's been painted in a dream. 

Your friends are urging the book be opened, so it is. And inside they find twenty essays about rituals and resistance, which makes them excited, but they find more than that. They find 13 full-colour, full-page illustrations inspired by those essays. Works of art that encapsulate the power of ritual, the power of the self. Your friends flip through the book, running their hands over the illustrations, across the velvet, wrapping the black satin ribbon bookmark around their fingers. 

One asks you, "Where did you get this?" 

And you say, "I supported the Becoming Dangerous Kickstarter and bought the last one." 

Your friends are heartbroken, they really really wanted a copy of this book, this art object, this magical pathway to summoning power. 

There are only 100 copies of this book available. You better make sure you get a copy so this entire scenario can play out sometime in the near future. 

The book is printed at a spectacular printing co-op in London where I will oversee the entire process. All participating artists come from diverse backgrounds, some are established artists, and some are emerging talents. Most were found in the twitter hashtags #VisibleWomen and #drawingwhileblack. All have been fairly paid and I'm so proud to showcase their work in this book. The cover photograph is shot by Ellen Rogers, one of my favourite photographers of all time; I'm so happy I got to work with her on this project.

You can update your pledge amount to this reward level if you'd like. It's going to be utterly gorgeous and I can't wait to hold it in my hands and then send it off to you.

❤Katie

100% funded! 1000 backers!
over 6 years ago – Wed, Oct 04, 2017 at 01:19:29 AM

Somehow this project was 100% funded with 1000 backers. How is that possible? Magic! And how do I feel about it?

Over 1000 people want this book. This book about ritual and resistance. That blows my mind. This wouldn't be happening if it wasn't for each and every one of you and I am eternally grateful you believe in this weird little book. I hope you feel as happy as I do! THANK YOU SO SO SO SO MUCH!!

❤Katie

p.s. Sorry this is going out so late! I had written the entire thing and then accidentally went back in my browser and lost it all. And then I had to go and buy cookies to make myself feel better. 

p.p.s. Okay, I made Jamie go and buy me cookies to make me feel better.