Fantasia

Newly released graphic novel

Once upon a time, there was a world where humans, spiritual beings, hybrids, aliens, transdimensionals, and polymorphs lived in peace. That was a sacred, preserved space, at the heart of a hyper-technological empire stretching across thousands of light-years. There, beings of varied origins and lineages were welcomed into an initiation process that could last a few days or many years. Direct, bodily contact with a living planet. The rites, the myths, and the cultural productions that developed on such a world.

This place, which had already traversed collapses over millennia—warlike, industrial cultures capable of poisoning and disrupting the world’s cycles, followed by periods of reconstruction, adaptive mutation, and renewed equilibrium—in this place, there existed an imaginal paradigm grounded in presence, in the body, in communion. Sexual rites had been practiced for millennia, and the residual energy of orgasms was captured and stored, so it could be easily invoked by any life form seeking a psychic boost to accomplish some feat.

The feats: collective rites involving pilgrimages, retreats, intense bodily practices (from flight to orgies), the construction of monuments, the opening of channels between dimensions—events that might seem to us a blend of extreme sport and divine hedonism.

Some time ago, I finished the process of drawing, composing, and editing a book that aims to present something of this world. I position myself as an anthropologist there, recording what I see. For now, I focused my attention on certain rituals that precisely involved orgies and the production of prana/orgone/chi through pleasure. But the process led me to detour through zones of fear and violence, of mystery and strangeness. I understood that world-building, despite being an expectation of the contemporary reader, is something that doesn’t interest me so much. The world I am describing here doesn’t need to be unpacked in the work. It doesn’t even need to exist as a concept for the reader. It can be merely a pretext the author uses so that the work may come into existence, materialized. Afterwards, each reader figures it out for themselves to organize what they see into some form of meaning. I composed the graphic novel as if I were composing music: feeling contrasts, rhymes, rhythms, silences. And I ended up enjoying the process—which didn’t torture me with the need to draw what I had already mentally resolved beforehand, whether through script or narrative planning—and the result, which now you can judge for yourself.

Fantasia has taken the form of a 72-page e-book, whose first chapter you can appreciate on this site:

https://fantasiagraphicnovel.carrd.co/

There you will find the link to purchase the full book, should it interest you.

So that’s it. Visit the site, support the artist by acquiring their most recent work.

I also thank you if you come here to comment on what Fantasia stirred in you. You know, we shamans like to hear accounts of what our spells have been causing out there…

P.S.: I am currently refining the story of Arelei, which I have already presented here in this newsletter in general terms. I increasingly perceive her as a kind of myth, an inspiring goddess figure—something like my personal version of Babalon. I am imbuing myself with her, which generally happens in contact with friend-lovers who carry a vibe similar to hers. Expressions of the Goddess…