Harbingers of Hallowed 'Haunts' 10 Years On ∴ WE The HALLOWED
This month marks the 10 year anniversary of the open-source-art-religion and magickal media collective, WE THE HALLOWED.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I’m currently in the midst of a major life transition, so please excuse the bouts of ramble and mum from this Substack for the Summer Season. It’s quite a major Hauntomantikally induced recalibration, actually, and one that deserves further rumination and a multimedia announcement in July!
Us older millennials were generally lucky of that fact, that we were truly the liminal generation, coming to between centuries while midwifed within the confluence of an analog and digital world.
∴ Digital Nostalgiac ∴
I could argue that Google Photos’ “Memories” function is psychologically invasive—especially to this Hauntomancer, who has had to create an entire schema around churning memory and all its gruff into a multidimensional, artistically valuable individuation praxis. Because memories have the inescapable ability to hijack and infect my somatick stasis quite brutally—and Google Photos’ "Memories” function/notification implementation is a fucking anxiety lottery, rife with unexpected reminders spanning over a decade of photographs since the account was created.
Granted, the past decade or so has held more joy than the ones before it, and I am genuinely thankful my dastardly wilderness years were largely spent before social media’s complete omnipresence. Us older millennials were generally lucky of that fact, that we were truly the liminal generation, coming to between centuries while midwifed within the confluence of an analog and digital world.
However, this is not a total screed against the pharmakon of Nostalgia, or a generationally-minded pitter-patter-word-splatter as I am wont to do, no, no, for Supreme Lord Googletron actually provided a revelatory moment this month! So let's bask in its rare benevolence, just this once…
This month I was notified of an odd set of pre-categorized photos titled “10 Year Nostalgia Loop”1:
These photos, from ten years ago, survived my own personal Algol-rhythms with the omnipresent cloud as my personal Facebook account was unceremoniously deleted for no reason (along with years of art pages for Dakota Slim and other projects). Suffice to say, I que-sera-sera’d the loss of digital testimonies from the era in photo form so I was very surprised to see this photo pop up into my stasis of 2025:
As I sat behind a mixing board mid-concert at work, I lost myself studying the picture: This masked Hauntomancer mid-speech atop a soapbox within an art gallery was me, surely, but the neural time-travel implementation of the Google Memories function revealed something else: these photos were from the very day WE THE HALLOWED was announced to the world.
So let me take a moment to share some revelry within one of the few things that has persisted in my life longer than most: the sometime art-religion, sometime art collective, full-time magickal media apparatus that is
WE THE HALLOWED.
Long into despairing desert nights I would scribble philosophies and theological maxims as a means to null the dim hum of failure—that all action was indeed hallowed, that every misstep, missive, mistake was a sanctimonious act. That we were, in a sense, all saints within the cathedral of our messy, creative worlds.
∴ The Spektre of 6.6.15 ∴
I don’t know why I never logged the exact date in my brain, because this “memory” is quite a magnanimous one—one that, ten years later, has finally earned the right to dissolve the warring and jarring synapses of dramatic cinematic flashes into a collated timelapse worthy of celebration. One that echoes the hard-won survival of anarchic creativity across a plethora of mediums ever since—and one that surely, now, can resonate with the solace that something so dogged and pugilist, created and birthed a decade ago, can be trusted to keep throwing haymakers—no matter how mangled its face may feel.
Because 6.6.15 was the day a ramshackle set of miscreant weirdos & witches launched WE THE HALLOWED.
I’ll spare much of the ceremony—and, in continuing the practice of not making things grander than they need to be—attempt this to be a somewhat succinct post. *Prospektre Note: He failed"*
I am, as some readers may know, about to Hauntomantikally full-circle the SPEKTRE (née SPECTRE) WORKING by relocating back to where the first Hauntomancy working first thrust me—not to mention, the birthplace of WE THE HALLOWED itself...so this is all terminally synchronistic and I am arrested with how many circles are being rounded as we speak.
That muggy Pacific Northwest summer day—June 6th, 2015—was chosen and toiled into being thanks to the pragmatist majesties of the event space’s encouraging gallery host and artists within the (now defunct) performance space, Lightbox KulturHaus in PORTLAND, OR. The day held no overarching astrological parallels known to the fledgling group, nor any soft occultnik tethers toward anything that comes to mind. Rather, the date’s ambiguity and otherwise unremarkable connection to anyone within our small sect of Haunts (WtH Members) was exactly why it was chosen: the advent of the new, the strange, and the seemingly random was quite the democratic approach for a crew of wildly disparate artists and exciters with a hardnosed interest in the novel—not the nostalgic.
The pragmatist shuffle of needing schedules and other non-sexy preambles surely helped; all was in service to the seemingly random, though intentionally chosen for the date’s pure and unsoiled reasons.
Somehow, amidst my (then) new lease on life (and a pinch of survivor’s narcissism that allowed for a smiling recklessness, truth be told), I had the confidence to enact an idea I had conjured amidst the sorrows of a much different path just a few years prior.
Long into despairing desert nights I would scribble philosophies and theological maxims as a means to null the dim hum of failure—that all action was indeed hallowed, that every misstep, missive, mistake was a sanctimonious act. That we were, in a sense, all saints within the cathedral of our creative worlds. I thought of the Coyote, the trickster, how his hubris and ramshackle shuffle accidentally created the world. I thought of the coyote as a liminal animal, one that is both a hermit and a soldier, one that yaps within a crowd of other disparate hermits when the will is good. One that creates and deconstructs by the whim of will, for good or for ill. How is the Coyote not a Saint? How would we be anywhere without them? Perhaps, within our disparate constructs of life through the magickal means of expression, we are Hallowed?
Years after my southwestern death trip, and a few more spent re-establishing my then-second attempt at a Portland oeuvre, enough charm and guile and dynamism and passion refilled my void. I found myself magnanimously proactive in the local artistic and music scenes. And this haunting idea I had for a self-styled art religion bubbled into an opportunistic track.
I realize now that WE THE HALLOWED, birthed across notebooks in dazed moments of solitude during darker times, would finally find its service within a (then) present presence to haunt on—acting almost as the first true Hauntomancy working of artistic self-sample culture made manifest…
Lots to unpack in those regards, but let’s keep moving…
Long story (hopefully not too much longer): after hushed deliberation with the gallery owner and a few other miscreants, we hatched the idea to announce WE THE HALLOWED in a busk-like soapbox performance piece.
Soon, I found myself masked atop a custom-built literal soapbox as an undead Revelator in a makeshift owl mask—quivering from the raucous poisons I was then shedding, and racked with the heavy purpose of strange eyes being on me while reading the “TETHERS” or scripture for this proposed art-religion from a 20ft scroll scribbled and taped together.
It was there that the "open-source art religion"—birthed by a handful of radiant, disparate artists masked in anthropomorphic robed movements (and some unrobed, see below!)—would announce its plans for a magickally-minded media outfit to a gaggle of wide-eyed and desperately confused art-mongers.
It seems too hard, stupid and impractical—as art “collectives” find ease and footing to continue to churn out digital “content” and binary detritus within social media domains, our micropress and somatick pushes for in-person and live-room broadcasting and handkrafted construktion seem somewhat unnecessary if not wholly uneconomical. Fuck it.
10 years since that ramshackle performance began a whole tirade of artists celebrating their own unique and anarchic processes and discoveries. The same year the kernel of what would become PRAGMAGICK was filmed at that same venue, then titled WAYWARD WORSHIP (I cringe, I cringe, but the name will haunt on in 2026…):
Funny enough, the WE THE HALLOWED youtube channel still haunts with echoes of then within its unchanged description that will, funny enough, soon become unnecessary to change at all:
”WE THE HALLOWED is an "open-source-art-religion" started out of a dingy basement by outside artists of all calibers in Portland, Oregon. It is run by myriad of pragmatic and PRAGMAGICK® ARTISTS across various mediums to create a community of disparate artists and thinkers that aide one another in actualizing individual visions and personal masterworks within a collective, SPIRITUAL FRAMEWORK.
I mention this because the past is Hauntomantikally the future, self-sampled, recalibrated, ruined, anew as next year WE THE HALLOWED plans to bring back the in-person SALONS and live variety-show/performance shows that birthed everything that came since:
Both the confluence of the SPEKTRE WORKING thrusting me back into Portland’s oeuvre too early before a true re-communion, and WE THE HALLOWED’s ten year anniversary culminating in the WAYWARD WANDER back-but-changed into the elementals of what We The Hallowed proposed to be, was and will be is all too poetic.
10 years ago, WE THE HALLOWED seemed possible—to band together and make a mess here in the shared somatick, and we did it.
Now, it seems harder, dire and distant—crazy even to attempt to realign those first-principles after mutating far from due to multi-relocations and medium experimentations. It seems too hard, stupid and impractical—as art “collectives” find ease and footing to continue to churn out digital “content” and binary detritus within social media domains, our micropress and somatick pushes for in-person and live-room broadcasting and handkrafted construktion seem somewhat unnecessary if not wholly uneconomical. Fuck it. That tells me it is absolutely even more necessary than when it was possible. WE THE HALLOWED suffered through global pains as well as the individuation processes of its ever churning membership, and will continue to do so, against all odds.
10 years of heavy writings, live performance salons that birthed the PRAGMAGICK broadkast arm, full-length ALBUMS, collaborative Audio & Video Sigils, and now a new @outletpress and @revelrosz led MICROPRESS initiative—all through the hallowed halls of WE THE HALLOWED:
Speaking of Micro-press, WE THE HALLOWED just wide-released it’s first HEXKASSETTE outside of Patreon subscribers: REVELATOR ROSZ’s lost debut album, “ROSZ AL GHUL”:
And August’s SOMATICK PARCEL for Patreon Subscribers is a VERY special one:
August brings a Vermin Class membership kit to the mailboxes of our micro press subscribers. Inside you'll find a copy of PEST CONTROL, Eric J. Millar’s newest chapbook manifesto, along with a membership card, button badge, and a surprise gift from the now defunct Outlet Press.
So, 10 years from now?
We will haunt on, one way or blasted ‘nother.
STAY TUNED FOR SOME BIG ETERNAL RETURNS AND PRODIGAL PERSONS REVELATIONS...
Subscribe to patreon.com/pragmagick for our bevvy of new magickal art ephemera, including this season’s issue of the print-only fold journal, THE HOLLERS, full cassette episodes and respective improvises audiomancy scores from @hauntomancer, @revelrosz's secret debut casted only in talismanik tape form, @transplutonicdrums and @pragmagick_cast's doom mauve desert audiosigils and writings, and so so so so much more.
10 years and haunting...
I WANT TO GIVE A MAJOR THANKS AND APPRECIATION TO HAUNTS NEW AND OLD, SOURED AND BRIGHT-EYED, UNDEAD AND UNDEAD. YOU HAUNT ON, especially Eric J. Millar for his invaluable partnership in weathering the proud tides of human error within this golden era of WE THE HALLOWED and Joel Hatmaker for the long patronship and support of WE THE HALLOWED. ORG among other things. Major thanks, in no particular order, to Temple of Babalon Choronzon (Bobby, Leah, Stashia & Groucho), Frater Perseus, Kenned Doll, MetemPsychotic, Saroth The Mage, Lya & Azure Edwards, JJ Reine De Blanc, Jenny Rocky, Elena SorcerersHomie, Alex Leadbetter, Lynz Pinzer, Bibi, Brittany Brown, CW Chanter, Jonicide, Jilly Beans, Corrie Anne, Spooky, Vanessa Sinclair, Carl Abrahamsson, Tony Davis, Arnemancy and you, dear ghost, for your ongoing support.
ALL LINKS: http://pragmagick.com
WE THE HALLOWED (Multi-Media Collective): https://wethehallowed.org
PAYPAL (One Time Donations): http://www.paypal.me/keatsross
SUPPORT VIA PATREON: http://patreon.com/pragmagick
How it knew to use an idiosyncratic term I’ve employed—directly culled from CW Chanter—gives me existential dread to no end…