greetings travelers…
i bring to you new project. an ahistorical? document cobbled together thru divination. this project has expanded what fiction can be for me. it doesn’t have to be perfect or finished. it is just what was pulled from the ruffage of Time. inspired by the fragmented and forgotten. documents, fables, poems, vignettes all channeled by various unseen characters. i dont care about spelling or grammar. think framing structures along the lines of: confessions of the fox by jordy rosenberg and autobiography of red by anne carson.
My invitation to you :
i want conflicting views on the same things. new lore. a sentence that unlocks some necessary or unecessary knowledge. maps. descriptions of outfits. fucked up art. gossip and hearsay. you can be anonymous, you can be yourself, you can be a character. it doesnt even have to be divination in its own right. you can just attribute it as such. although this author believes all writing is a form of divination. my dream is to compile these findings into an ongoing zine series.
right now i’m part of this pseudo-medieval arthurian situation. my goal is to keep adding to this world. but in the future i’d like to go to other realms and times. The current scope though, is from the “arthurian” to present time. characters r from da arthurian past, the acolytes from the 20th century revival, and the present day historians and diviners. there’s a lot of room for exploration. go inbetween or outside that time period, why not! somehow it will all connect even if it doesnt make sense.
if you are interested in this project and want to collaborate, email me at found.ilfw@gmail.com with the subject as “title of your piece” and “author/artist” whether or not its You or a character or Anonymous or what-have-you.
in the meantime, i’ll post my "findings” to this medium.
i’ll be traveling for the next few months and this is going to be [or hopefully going to be] a stabilizing force. if i don’t respond right away, especially before June, its cuz i have limited internet or data. funny time to ask for collaboration, but whateva. its my timing!!!
-ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ- A VERY LONG TIME AGO - ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ-
back when bread gave birth to dragons, there lived (laughed, loved) a knight named Pen, and what a sturdy young fellow he was! legends whisper he was not born but conjured up by the great magician Parsley Meriwhether Quicksilver. such rumors did not bring Pen popularity, and he was forced to roam the countryside as a rogue: a knight without a king or queen. oh but dear reader, he was not aimless: the surviving stories tell of a man-like creature who fine tuned his intuition and worshiped the senses like a living god1.
thru this channeled text we at the Institute for the Lost and Found Word2 will communicate with Pen and his devotees - the infamous Knights of the Untamed Angle - as well as his alleged creator. a smattering of our tried and true research methods include: bibliomancy, tarot, automatic writing, and astrological consultation. we invite our readers to join us on this journey and send any information you may find thru your own divination3. consider this a living and shared historical document, as we believe they all ought to be.
-ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ- ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS4
As a child, the soon-great magician Parsley abruptly ended their shit-shoveling salad days along the Merry Way once they discovered a glittering tablet loose in the stoolyard. it was said that the good donkey Germaine Aloysius pushed the object out of her anal canal early in the morning twilight. a dunk or two in the River Senn revealed the following text:
CAST THIS STONE UPON YOUR BROW
TO WAKE AND UNFOLD THE KNOWING-NOW
Parsley waited until the Overseer’s snores overtook his afternoon nap and sauntered to the neighboring wood to examine the arcane, dense object. they traced their fingers along the shining symbols resembling letters. perhaps there is a foal captured inside, they thought. it fell down the wrong pipe and it grew a shell to protect itself. Parsley laid down under a tree and held the stone above to catch it flickering in a sunbeam. a few moments later they lost their grip - and a swift thunk to the head catapulted them into mossy slumber.
gussied up in silk finery, Germaine Aloysius licked Parsley awake. her floppy hat fell like a feather to the earth -and the stone glowed magenta.
won’t you be a dear and fetch my chapeau? twas my mother’s mother’s mother’s, she spake. Parsley placed it upon her head.
the occult is now revealed! she galloped backwards on her hind legs back to the farm. this won’t be the last you hear from me, Prince Parsley!
the stone tablet lifted into the air with sixty wings and swandove into the rippling pond of Parsley’s face.
the spicy scent of yarrow set them alight to the waking realm. Parsley found themself on a cot in a makeshift library - hundreds of tomes stacked along the perimeter. maroon fabric draped along the walls. dried herbs hung from the ceiling on ladder racks. is this another false awakening? they felt a heaviness to their chest - around their neck was the stone wrapped in wire as a necklace. the tactile sensation of the wire grooves provoked a sense of ease. The sun set in fractals thru a glass stained window.
Parsley tiptoed to the doorway - ajar with light. a bespectacled and bloodspeckled person muttered something incoherent while they sliced the throat of a cadaver on a colossal cedar stump. they flicked drops of blood off the cleaver and onto a scroll. the juices hissed on the paper. the surgeon then lit a purple-flamed candle and counted backwards from ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two - on one, the stump shook as the cadaver drew a long gust of breath and extinguished the candle. Parsley fell breathless thru the doorway and onto the floor.
Knights of the Untamed Angle trans. L. Morrow; Magician’s Kin: The Story of Pen trans. Rufus Quell; The Wandering Knight trans. Kelia Stronghold.
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email us at found.ilfw@gmail.com to submit your findings.
passage uncovered by S.J. Missus, co-founder of the ILFW, thru automatic writing.