Destroying an Era, Not a Planet
Moving through the Lesson of a Suffering Planet/Spirit
I did not set out to write an environmental activism sci-fi/fantasy novel (trilogy), but the intersections of my passions have made it inevitable.
Join me in the heavy and the exuberant as I take you through the intersections of death magick and Earth wisdom that exist as some of the core pulses of my trilogy… (working title drumroll)
Book I: Blight, Book II: Incarnate, Book III: Mother
of
The Kow Chronicles
^ I think that’s neat. Makes it feel more real.
Table of Offerings
NEW Offer: Personal Tarot Readings!
The Tenants of Mother Kow as Medicine for Mother Earth
Hathor Meditations for Mother Earth
Children of the Awakening ~ Spring Playlist
Who/What is Mother Kow?
I have felt reticent about sharing my story/world through my newsletter. Why would anyone care? But there has been this growing trend(?) of primarily illustrators/designers making YouTube videos of their lore and their designs of worlds. I love these. Others love these. So, bolstered by them, I will move forward with Mother Kow and provide more entries about Kow as an article series, such as species explorations, magick systems, ecological studies, etc. Maybe you will enjoy that too? Will I ever make videos? *audible shrug*
Here are some of my favorites: Eternal Ruins & Monstergarden.
Some of you are wringing your hands with glee, as you are likely a friend or a friendly stranger whom I subjected to a lore dump about my world, my planet: Mother Kow. You expressed excitement for my stories (maybe even play in this world in one of my D&D games) and have been eager for more.
To you, I say thank you; you give me hope.
You may be asking, what on Earth (Kow) are you talking about? I just got here. I knew you from (insert one of the dozens of other things I do), and I didn’t know you also did this, or at least I didn’t know you have been summoning a whole-ass planet?? Also, why are you using so many parentheticals? (I don’t know! It’s just the mood I’m in!)
Some abbreviated context:
Over the past four years, a sentient planet in a far-off galaxy has been projecting images into my mind and telling me her stories. Her name is Mother Kow, and she’s a very hands-on mother. It’s a strange and sometimes anxiety-inducing honor to be a steward for a world—a vessel of translation for a reality rendered as fiction.
I will dive into concepts of parallel realities here at “The Magick Artist,” but not today.
Today, I am at my month-long residency in Tennessee, where I am investing (most) of my energy in writing pillar chapters of my first book so that when I return to my “real life,” it will feel easier to fill in the story.
I have hundreds of pages of lore for Mother Kow’s culture, geology, biology, spirituality, a TTRPG version, on and on, but I only have two chapters written (now three thanks to this residency) of the book itself. I also plan to illustrate a field guide in the book detailing the strange flora, fauna, and beyond. Focusing on this project has been difficult because it means too much to me. I know she (Kow) is key to my future as an author on Earth. With a combination of medication and supportive circumstances, I am finally writing her stories.
BUT MALACHI! WHAT IS THIS?
The Blurb
(As it currently exists)
Mother Kow is a planet where biological diversity is a fluid indulgence, evolution is rapid, and magick is an adaptation. Sapience and sentience is active in many species. Mother Kow links her children within a psychic mycelial network. While not everything knows it is connected, everything feels it is connected. A devout warrior leads the trees in a prophesied hunt. A mourning healer accidentally creates a sex cult while seeking to defy death. A rebellious innovator biohacks a child and starts a war. All the while, a forgotten outcast looks for their dad. These four stories are woven together, bound by the impending global disaster growing in their jungle–a quickly spreading blight that only craves death.
This story is…a weird one. Have you ever watched a sped-up video of a decaying animal—of the roiling life under the skin dancing new paths? That’s how this story feels: bursting at the seams. All of this movement feels purposeful. New life is being forged here. These worms will grow wings.
I rely on two main tools to hone my story: divination and tenants (that are often divination-derived).
The divination is similar to the Tarot readings I do for y’all. It’s a lot more questions. I simply don’t understand how other authors pull from their minds alone. There are too many voices in my head. I need guidance. All of my works collaborate with my familiar: my Enochian deck and others. This will be a deeper discussion because, mercy, THE CARDS ARE TALKING!!!! From a single session, I can go from knowing nothing about a character to having an outline of their whole life.
Follow me:
I am on the back of a giant serpent—no, I am quite small—clinging to the back of a water moccasin, making swirling rhythms on the swamp water’s surface. I’m pointing out all the inlays, divets, and new streams where the water forks, slurps, and bends. The water moccasin tastes the future and takes me down a new path, or the one I knew was true all along. That is my divination.
The tenants are the boulders, the ancient weeping willows, and walls made of braided mangroves. These barriers keep us in the stream of the story. We won’t find ourselves choking on ocean salt or lost in the tall grass.
My story has different versions of tenants that keep me on track. Some tenants are about change, some are about the laws of physics, and some are the metaphysical messages my story must reverberate.
Some of these reverberations feel so important to me that I want to say them aloud rather than only in a narrative. You could say these are on theme with “Earth Day” energy, but it’s what I think about all the time.
As I’m sure, you also contemplate the death of our planet.
Ok, you finally made it to the meat behind the title of this newsletter.
The Tenants of Mother Kow as Medicine for Mother Earth
Destroying an Era, Not a Planet
Moving through the Lesson of a Suffering Planet/Spirit
These thoughts embrace death, but they are not nihilist. Breathe deep.
Stay with me.
Before sharing, I want to preface that I am not a scientist, so I am not writing from the angle of studies and empirical facts. You can find thousands upon thousands of articles, papers, etc., with factual reasons why climate change/crisis is real and what we should do about it. *cough* end capitalism, corporations, and rapid globalization *cough*
I’m giving you a metaphysical or spiritual perspective (however you prefer) on why our relationship to our planet and the healing of our planet is important RIGHT NOW.tri
In truth, my trilogy is more metaphysical activism than environmental activism, as I see climate change as a metaphysical issue. Here are some examples of that concept, but I will discuss metaphysical activism more in the future.
Through The Kow Chronicles, I want to embody these environmental concepts.
1. On Earth, we are not destroying our planet. We are destroying an era of our planet.
“Kow will renew with or without us,” exhaled her last words before she stepped beyond scent, word, form, reason.
I have heard arguments/sentiments of “Earth will live on; we are only ending human life” for a while and have seen it pulled in different directions.
There is a direction of instant gratification, which fixates on the idea that the planet has gone through many desolate and destructive eras. What difference does it make to send Earth spirally into one now, especially when we (the rich) have/are investing in the technology to protect ourselves from the next global disaster? We’ve seen the dystopic films: the worlds underwater, the desert roads of fury, the bubbles, pods, and far-off space colonies. This direction is escapism, one that only a few can indulge.
Another direction can be a bit more duplicitous, putting Earth’s majestic survival front and center, as seen in the “nature finds a way” or the Jurassic Park flavor, “Life finds a way” attitude. While I stand with the core of this perspective, I find the belief in nature’s ability to “fix” whatever mess humans make eventually as a perspective that promotes either apathy or a similar instant gratification to the above direction. We can do whatever we want to the Earth. I’ll be dead and gone. She will fix it later.
First and foremost, this perspective places humans outside the ecosystem’s realm and separate from “nature,” which is a false dichotomy. Humans are another animal within the Earth’s ecosystem; to think otherwise is a debilitating colonial concept. We have been and can be, again, a balanced point in the oscillating dance of ecological balance.
Where am I directing you? Mmm, slightly around the bend from the last one.
I stand firmly in the survival potential of our planet, even within mass death. However, the idea that Earth will eventually recalibrate with or without us has an undercurrent of patriarchy. The most nurturing force in your life (likely someone with feminine energy or influence and/or a woman) will always be there to patch the wound, feed the hunger, smooth what is agitated, pick up the slack, and more—always more, always unacknowledged. Praising this survivability of Earth is unavoidably connected to the survival narrative of black women, black femmes, and black people, especially those of (past, present, or future) feminine energy. The black woman is strong because she is forced to be. The black divine feminine is forced to nurture and hold the weight of all oppression. We call Earth “mother” for a reason.
Relying on Earth’s adaptability only acknowledges the physical aspects of climate change. Climate change is an emotional, energetic, psychic, and spiritual phenomenon. You feel it. I feel it.
Allow me to expound through my other tenants.
2. We are ALTERING our planet, and in doing so, we are cultivating suffering.
Climate change will not kill all of Mother Earth. However, we are irreparably altering Mother Earth through the harm of our human industries and actions.
These alterations are killing us. Not to mention millions of other species that currently rely on this era of Earth’s formula for balance. What does that level of not just death but traumatic death do to a consciousness of a place?
Have you walked onto the site of a horrific battle or atrocity? Have you returned to an old bedroom where a trauma occurred? Have you gone to your high school reunion?
You know that a place can hold horrors. You know a place has energy and emotion, and it affects you. Take that concept and multiply it by a planet.
The soil of the Tennessee city I’m in is too poisonous to grow food from. The streams are too soiled to swim in or drink from. You cannot smear the clay mud on your skin (as I love to do); you could get sick and die. This was/is a highly industrial town. My fellow residents and I have also noticed that the repurposed factory where we have our lovely art residency is undeniably haunted—a topic for another time. Take my word for it.
This building, neighborhood, city is affected by tangible and emotional/psychic poisons that attract heavy, extractive energies to this place.
So, too, will the planet.
How will the next phase of evolution be affected by growing out of a globe ripe with suffering?
Climate change is, above all things, a profound method of fostering suffering.
Yes, some people may survive, but none will escape the suffering climate change will cause, and we cultivate that suffering with every act of imbalanced extraction from Earth.
“Oi vey Malachi! This is some bleak stuff!!!” A scrunched-faced reader grimaces at their screen. They switch to Instagram.
Honey, I don’t blame you! But I do implore you.
Stay with me.
If you have been reading this newsletter, you will have encountered my perspectives on “lessons.” My last letter, “My Astrology Hot Take,” provides some skeletal outlines.
To summarize, we—the big ole WE of all existence—are one collective energy moving through many experiences and realities that we have/are manifesting for ourselves. That is what’s called “creation of reality.” In these realities, we are moving through lessons of various scopes. Why? We must learn and experience it all, which is “experiential evolution.” Some people place enlightenment, heaven, enjoinment, and more as the end goal of experiential evolution. But can anything ever be so linear?
The suffering cultivated by the climate crisis is a collective lesson for ALL of Earth.
As mentioned in my Astrology letter, people love to use concepts of creation of reality and experiential evolution for reasons why things like oppression SHOULD exist. It’s fucked. Citing that if you are experiencing oppression, it must be what it was meant to be/what you unconsciously wanted. This is a myopic and power-hungry bastardization of these concepts. People in privileged positions usually uphold this version. If any one of us suffers, we all suffer.
So ask me:
Why is contextualizing climate change as a lesson of cultivated suffering important?
It is crucial because a lesson is something you learn and move through. Moving through in this context means the lesson did not overtake you or destroy you; you learned from it and grew. It does not rule you anymore.
Trials have shaped you into a more whole version of yourself. Your navigation of lessons is a microcosm of our planetary, galactic, intergalactic, and interdimensional experiences.
You moved through it.
So, too, can the Earth.
By thinking of climate change, and specifically our annihilation via climate crisis, as a lesson, we stop treating climate change as an absolute and a finality.
This is not about denying climate change. It’s happening.
It’s about accepting it’s happening so deeply within the core of your being that you feel all things moving through this lesson with you. So deep that it shatters your apathy and metabolizes your nihilism into energy for transformation.
Acceptance can look like saying:
“Climate change, I see you. I accept that you are here and manifesting in my reality. I apologize for my contribution to suffering. I forgive myself for my contribution to suffering. I thank you for holding this lesson. I will support us in moving through this lesson.”
And then DO IT!
Forgiveness is important because living in the shame or guilt of climate crisis centers your pain and does not allow you to see beyond it to others/everything. Shame immobilizes.
Here is the direction I am moving us in. This is why acknowledging Earth’s survival ability and doing nothing will never be enough to move through this lesson:
3. To work against the planet is to fracture a relationship and a consciousness.
Our relationship with our planet is perhaps the most profound relationship there is.
Without Earth, you would not be alive. You would not exist. You would not be the you who is you reading this screen today. Take away every person and every comfort in your life, and you will still live because Earth provides.
When Earth is considered capital, resource, or material, it is easy to take and take.
We are not in a transaction with Earth. We are in a relationship with Earth.
When you think of Earth as a living being you are collaborating with, you reflect on how your actions affect her. When you think of how Earth feels, you start to think, yes, I am proud of your ability to survive, but do I want you to have to repair yourself from global disaster? Why would I want someone I love to go through horrific trauma and disaster?
Working against the planet takes a toll on a person. It changes the way they relate to everything. It erodes us whether our impact is intentional or not. It’s evident in the corrupting greed of capitalists—in the hollowing of their eyes and inability to be satiated, but it’s also in the exhaustion of the most impacted by poverty and oppression. This exhaustion leads to more trash and more waste without energy or the ability to process it—the poison piles.
It is a vicious cycle of people being violated and then taking it out on the Earth because she is more than willing to receive our anger and violence until she starts to burst with all of our emotions, causing destruction (bigger hurricanes, fires, floods, heatwaves, etc.) likely first to the places where those most harmed and vulnerable and angry live. When she becomes so full of us, so full of emotion, she cannot balance herself, and the reckonings are no longer in harmony with a shifting global pattern (the organic balance of tides, storms, tectonic plates, etc.). She is only fury. Furious for us and our pain, but she cannot divert the fury away from us because she is a contained system. All that energy must stay here. We are bound to each other.
Environmentalism is often relegated as some separate topic from all of the human rights movements and issues—another false dichotomy. Colonization is a direct attack on harmonious relationships with Earth.
Colonization’s division and hierarchy above nature begets fear and a desire for control from all involved. It makes adversaries of everyone and everything. It fosters the idea of “conquering.” In a natural system, conquering cannot exist; the ecosystem will always be balanced. Empire cannot exist in a true relationship with Earth. Empire would decay or starve before achieving such expansive extraction. If the fox eats all the rabbits, the fox will starve. Taking too much in an ecosystem will always have consequences.
Namely death.
Which brings me to my last tenant.
4. Embrace Death as a transition. Death is Change. Death is Magick.
Our fear of death inspires hoarding and obsession with material gain, and our fear of change stagnates us. If we saw death as a transition and transmutation, we would think of ourselves as extending infinitely in all directions no matter what. Embracing death and our place in the natural cycle will heal our fractured relationship with our planet, our home, by releasing our need for control and conquering and instead embracing ECOSYSTEM BALANCE, which includes death.
If you are wondering if I have ever lost anyone, I can tell you with certainty I have. I am currently grieving.
My deathwork is not “despite” my grief. The loss adds to the “because” of why I do this.
On Mother Kow, the characters who fear death reap suffering and self-inflicted consequences. It’s not simply that they want to survive. The pulse of nature is an exploration through survival. You can have the will to survive and not fear or hate death. Surviving is about cultivating what you want out of life and who you are in life, not just avoiding death.
Instead of succumbing to the despair of climate change, accept that yes, we will die, so what can I do with my life and for the one who loves and holds my life, for the planet I love in this time?
I want to renew with the Earth, renew with our Mother. If Earth as we know her dies, humanity will be lost for a long time without her. For generations, we have evolved and died at the pace of change aligned with our planet. With each day, we distance ourselves from that alignment. When I accept my death, I lay the groundwork for a new relationship with Earth when I die. Both the relationship of my atoms as they will become soil, fungus, insect, worm, fire, ash, smoke, and many more forms I could take, and the relationship of my consciousness. My relationship with Earth does not end when I die.
Can you imagine what we would become if our acceptance of death meant an excitement to continue a relationship with Earth, and so we took care of the forever home of our atoms here and now in our waking lives? I seek to make these “alien” concepts accessible.
In Mother Kow, I am proposing world views that center death without judgment, fear, demonization, or reward while decentering the human experience in favor of ecological connection or interdimensional messages. AKA, I want to uplift what humans fear the most and not cater to the human ego, which is a mainstream, unappealing prospect indeed.
But I am committed.
A Small Offering
to provide a tangible option for processing all that I have said here.
I did not make this offering. These are sound transmutations by Tom Kenyon.
As I often say, I am no longer a faith-based person. I say that because I have witnessed the tangible effects of Tom Kenyon’s sound summoning and transmutations. I have had experiences with the Hathors, who give Tom Kenyon these soundscapes for transformations. (Yes, I believe in “aliens,” obviously.)
If you are feeling lost about how to support Mother Earth (besides supporting the complete upheaval and decomposition of capitalism, colonization, and white supremacy in all forms), here are two meditations that provide direct, energetic shaping for the planet. Again, I have seen and felt their impact.
Take the time to read through and follow the instructions.
A Song of Gratitude to the Earth
A Sound Meditation for the Children of Earth
NEW OFFER: Personal Tarot Readings
YES, I give you all big Tarot readings almost every month.
YES, once I hit 10 paid subscribers, I will do custom group Tarot readings.
AND YES! I now provide one-on-one Tarot readings!
Sliding scale for both free and paid subscribers, BUT:
Free subscribers get a maximum of 30-minute readings.
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Sliding scale $40-140 for the readings
To book your appointment, fill out Calendly.
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The rest of the fee will be pay-what-you-wish at the end.
Here’s a lovely review from Temi about the reading I did for them:
(Temi is also an incredible writer, designer, and artist! Buy their zine Glorious Blasphemy!)
Malachi’s tarot reading was welcoming, nurturing, and exactly what I needed to hear! They provided a calming and easeful space to deliver my messages, having sought permission from the spirits to pursue the reading. The reading affirmed me and helped me feel more intricately connected with my path. It even provided me with direct affirmations from my spirit guides and ancestors, which was so endlessly helpful!! I would highly recommend Malachi’s readings!
Treats!
You deserve it after slogging through the murk with me.
I have prepared a spring playlist for you!
Threaded through this playlist are sounds of rain, flutes, swooning sopranos, and birdsong.
Ah, the sounds of spring across many genres, including trip-hop, lofi, dreamy techno, high fantasy dance-pop, RNB (classic and alt), indie, a little funk, a little classical, and much ’60s and ’70s folk, and the grandchildren of that folk era, because my word those harmonies sound like spring!
We end the playlist with Nina Simone calling in the sun of summer.
As always, please listen in order at least once. Then do what you will. It is yours.
May you embrace what is so that it can become what it should be. May you live the love of our Mother.
there is so. much. here. we thank YOU!
“Can you imagine what we would become if our acceptance of death meant an excitement to continue a relationship with Earth, and so we took care of the forever home of our atoms here and now in our waking lives?”
can. will.