Abyssmass

It's nearly December 6th again!

The best thing about life is you can just make things up and see if they catch on.

In 2022 I made up Abyssmass. It’s on December 6th. It’s the one day in the year when people (who celebrate) consider their personal abysses AND the magick that always lies on the other side.

Last year I and a group of brilliant conspirators staged the Abyssmass Variety Show in Islington. There were readings from Milton about Satan’s tumble by Diane Hutchinson, a remarkable drag act Dirty Dr John Dee from Francesca Way, a brief and learned history of the abyss by Carys, a beautiful ‘Wandering Womb’ act and Cosmic Dancer performance from Sarah Kershaw, hilariousbleak puppetry from Oliver Smart, a fantastic one-act play from Jordana Belaiche, a traditional funereal song from Dan Sumption, a spell composed in old English and played on the harmonium from Sophie Haxworth and an intense magickal musical threshold ritual from Will of Margaret.

As you can see, marking Abyssmass in your own idiom is very much encouraged.

Poster design by Brian Williams, art by Will of Margaret

On December 6th this year, please do consider doing something magickal and strange and tangentially related to traversing the dark spots in life on the way to transformative glory.

I marked the first Abyssmass in 2022 by releasing Changeling, a long poem in the form of a three-act absurdist play. Changeling is about the magicians Crowley and Victor Neuburg journeying into the Algerian desert in 1909 whilst doing Dr John Dee’s Enochian Calls and having lots of sex.

My best guess is that it was on December 6th 1909 that they performed a climactic ritual and met Choronzon, demon of the abyss. There was a battle and who’s to say if they triumphed … but things were never the same again. But things are never the same again anyway, whatever you do.

I don’t have any copies of Changeling to give away at the moment and can’t afford to have new ones reprinted, BUT tomorrow (Abyssmass) I will break my own print-only rule for one day and send anyone wanting to read the exciting abyssy tale … a PDF. Just ask.

Let me know in the comments what you’re doing for Abyssmass? It’s so lovely that this tradition hasn’t been picked up by capitalism yet and so it’s still just between us freaks.

Though of course, it’s only a matter of time before marketeers catch on and we start seeing little dangling void decorations in supermarkets and the novelty songs get released (Last Abyssmass I Gave You What’s Left Of My Ego) and Richard Curtis makes a schmaltzy film about depressed people in London undergoing profound and significant individuation.

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Thank you to everyone who came to my talk in Bethnal Green on the 1st. Someone brought me honey. The questions were mad. Two people left half-way through.

It was an honour to be the inaugural ArtULTRA Presents speaker.

My talk was about the specific kind of intense poetic experiences I’ve been staging for the past seven years now and, as ever, I was a little suprised that no other poets (apart from the ever intrepid and curious Naomi Foyle) or people from the literary / publishing worlds are particularly interested in what I do … BUT, also incredibly grateful and surprised that 100-odd non-literary scene folk signed up to a talk about the consciousness-expanding qualities of difficult language and poetry.

If you like the glamour of poetry and thinking, then invite me into your gothicky life / place of rest / village WI Hall / hedge fund office and I’ll do a turn – yes@thepoetryofitall.com

I once read that Tim Smit – creator of the Eden Project – has a rule to accept every third invitation to speak he ever receives. Well, it’s 2025 and inflation inflation inflation – I accept *every* invitation I get.

If you’d like to see what Tim Smit once said about me … then visit my website.