From Contagion Press

by Areïon

Given the failure and inadequacy of secular attempts to bring about revolution, Warlike, Howling, Pure offers an insurrectionary and devotional approach to anarchy that expands the uprising into spiritual and religious dimensions. This book of four essays delves into the animism of revolution, suggesting its manifestation through relationship with the numinous – a divine intervention, rather than a product of crass historical determinism.

Drawing on a diverse range of historical, mythic, and arcane sources – from Chinese millenarian movements to the Dionysian cults of ancient Greece, from Ursula K. Le Guin to James Baldwin – Areïon widens the scope far beyond the Abrahamic religions that dominate the discourse around religious insurgency. Through examination of rebellions and ecstatic rites, Areïon offers a cosmology of revolt, at once both animistic and alchemical. More, we find new constellations in our anarchist galaxy: vibrant, howling, and at moments, intimately present in our lives.

In his foreword to the book, Idris Robinson calls it: “a struggle against poverty. A poverty, however, that is just as much spiritual as it is material: an affliction of the body as well as the soul. Against the reduction of survival to a few crumbs of bread without roses, these pages are engaged in a fight to instead achieve a fulfilled and redeemed existence… nothing short of a life or death struggle, over what it is to live and what it is to die.”

The book can be found on the Contagion Press webstore. The rest of the Contagion Press catalog remains available from select bookstores – see the locations page for the closest one to you – and online at Left Bank, Firestorm, and Burning Books.

Email: info@contagionpress.com

Comments

anon (not verified) Wed, 07/17/2024 - 06:47

The cougar, wildcat or any kind of wild cat would be better options. The bigger species can beat up wolves easily, are elegant, cunning and lofty creatures that are also loving, generous and playful with their siblings, like other notorious predators. More individualistic, not herd-dependent.

Wolves are also being seldom used by fascists, like that Turkish national-fascist mob and to some extent the former Nazi Party.

Also the open use of the purity theme kinda fucked. Not only it looks pretentious as fuck but also a theme widely used jihadists and other religious fanatics. How about *amor fati* instead?

alex (not verified) Wed, 07/17/2024 - 08:59

In reply to by anon (not verified)

this resonates with me deeply as someone who has always favored wolf iconography. i refuse to surrender that terrain to fascists but i was also once pissed on by a literal tiger so no doubt you have a point

alex (not verified) Wed, 07/17/2024 - 10:14

In reply to by anon (not verified)

ok buddy first of all "actual tiger" could still encompass a fierce insurrectionary becoming-animal as a tiger and/or a sex thing, which is why i didn't say that, but i begrudgingly admit you are also correct and i should have said "literally a tiger." thank you

AnEditor (not verified) Wed, 07/17/2024 - 10:59

In reply to by alex (not verified)

Alex:

A. i refuse to surrender that terrain to fascists but i was also once pissed on by a literal tiger so no doubt you have a point
B. i refuse to surrender that terrain to fascists but i was also once pissed on by literally a tiger so no doubt you have a point
C. i refuse to surrender that terrain to fascists but i was also once pissed on by an actual tiger so no doubt you have a point
D. i refuse to surrender that terrain to fascists but i was also once literally pissed on by a tiger so no doubt you have a point
E. i refuse to surrender that terrain to fascists but i was also once pissed on by a tiger so no doubt you have a point

A and B are incorrect. C and D are both fine. E is most correct but lacks the affect of your quirky parlance.

Good day.

alex (not verified) Wed, 07/17/2024 - 11:04

In reply to by AnEditor (not verified)

oh! my heart, and all this on an "anarchist" website--i wish the tiger had eaten me

anon (not verified) Wed, 07/17/2024 - 11:15

In reply to by alex (not verified)

Happy to help. We keep us smart. I'm glad the tiger didn't eat you. I would never have learned about the insurrectionary and devotional approach to anarchy that expands the uprising into spiritual and religious dimensions!!!

Mglw’nafh fhthagn-ngah cf’ayak ‘vulgtmm vugtlag’n! Y’hah uaaah!

anon (not verified) Wed, 07/17/2024 - 20:17

In reply to by anon (not verified)

Ride the tiger
You can see his stripes, but you know he's clean
Oh, don't you see what I mean?

Jump, jump, jump on the tiger
You can feel his heart, but you know he's mean
Some light can never be seen, yeah

anon (not verified) Thu, 07/18/2024 - 08:19

In reply to by anon (not verified)

Moderator boomer humour. This cringe comment would have been deleted otherwise. Like the AmeriKKKan legal system, there are laws for me and laws for thee.

#Notanarchist #RIPDIO

anon (not verified) Sun, 07/21/2024 - 19:12

In reply to by anon (not verified)

ever heard of "humor"? Ask your Boomer gandpa about it, I'm sure he's got a few "problematic" sex-themed cracks to push you as example.

anon (not verified) Wed, 07/17/2024 - 09:38

while i can respect the passion of martyrs (fuck crimethinc's bullshit send off of bushnell, while we're on the topic) i for one cannot be down with idealizing it as a principle.

anon (not verified) Sun, 07/21/2024 - 11:34

In reply to by anon (not verified)

Fuck martyrdom. Contemporary anarchy, to say nothing of the broader "left," unfortunately seems to be rife with that logic - the Bushnell case being just one sorry example. So many actions that are designed to get yourself arrested (or worse) while at best causing minor inconvenience to the system, when the goal should be to do real damage and live to do more another day.

anon (not verified) Sun, 07/21/2024 - 12:45

In reply to by anon (not verified)

"the goal should be to do real damage and live to do more another day."

Don't tell me what to do, hippie. My anarch goal is to damage nothing and become undead today!

anonymous (not verified) Sun, 07/21/2024 - 18:42

In reply to by anon (not verified)

no.

let people kill themselves in the name of something they care about. like bushnell presumably did.

let's neither shy away from people's passion, nor decide for them what the best course of action is, nor over value a life that could be terrible, nor look blindly toward the future and some hopeful outcome to live for.

none of those things.

lumpy (not verified) Mon, 07/22/2024 - 07:56

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

i appreciate the thoughtfulness but by "let people kill themselves in the name of something they care about", do you mean free from critique? i don't think martyrdom should be free from that. people are clearly free to do it and can't be bothered by the critique afterward so ...

"look blindly toward the future" is a bit of a strange distortion too. the illusion of "hopeful outcomes to live for" isn't part of my critique of martyrdom, for example

anon (not verified) Mon, 07/22/2024 - 08:26

Me and the rest of commenters deserve a more informed look at the book beyond its presentation. The only way print-only anarchist publications are worthy is for bookfairs and for pushing your local infoshop to order them, as this ain't Goodreads here and anarchists are exposing themselves to the FBI when mail-ordering.

When writers refuse to publish online for free, that ain't just a "fuck you, internet", but also a "fuck you, internet readers". So something something with throwing the baby with bath water... The point being that the internet allows for a reading, thinking and discussing of ideas, in a way that's more accessible than books.

And no, PDF ain't as insecure as mail orders and even live discussions with groups containing a few glowies...

anon (not verified) Mon, 07/22/2024 - 08:34

In reply to by anon (not verified)

Speak for yourself, pdfsnitch. We other commenters like to purchase physical books from anarchist presses using appropriated money and untraceable drop addresses. We just loathe this stupid religiousness trend that Contagion has been pushing and have no interest in it.

anon (not verified) Mon, 07/22/2024 - 09:04

In reply to by anon (not verified)

...tho when you post anything on this site like stupid careless comments it IS accessible to the world (or most of it). Yeaaaa, well-cum to the Internet.

So in some more control-centralized countries there's no such thing as "untraceable drop out adresses". And the customs won't agree to deliver to any such addresses in the first place. And have fun going through all the pains and gas to get to a border just to smuggle... zines, lol.

Which makes your publications pretty much nationally-restricted, save at least a few exceptions like France and a few other countries, maybe, where the state's postal service ain't as demanding, traceability-wise. Ignoramus.

But cross-border camps? Now that'd be cool... tho still way way less secure than a damn PDF (or EPUB if you prefer).

anon (not verified) Mon, 07/22/2024 - 10:51

In reply to by anon (not verified)

Not many dumpster poutine opportunities in Sasquatchewan. Neither relatable infoshops... :-(

Should I be burning over a gazillion dollars to Oil God just for a book I could just fucking read online? OooooOoooooooooooh! I bet ya you didn't think of that, Allah.

anon (not verified) Mon, 07/22/2024 - 11:46

In reply to by anon (not verified)

Oh I see you are sO concerned with burning oil. How much oil do you think online uses?!?? I betcha it's WAY MORE than driving your Civic to the nearest infoshop. OooooOoooooooooooh! I bet ya you didn't think of that, hoser.

lumpy (not verified) Mon, 07/22/2024 - 17:13

In reply to by anon (not verified)

the troll is likely referring to the plastics that your electronic devices are made of?

also, i'll bet you were born in a HOSPITAL that had PLASTIC in it too, you fukin hypocrit!

checkMATE green antifa!

anon (not verified) Mon, 07/22/2024 - 17:20

In reply to by lumpy (not verified)

Oh you ignorant, doe-eyed smoothbrains. The "troll" is ALSO talking about the fucking electricity used to run the fucking internet, server farms, chip manufacturing, global shipping, etc. etc. etc. Do you think it runs on solar, wind, and Al Gore's farts? You idiot fucking civ-cucks. Do you even know where you electricity comes from? FUCK.

anon (not verified) Wed, 08/07/2024 - 08:50

Religiosity, self-sacrificial martyrdom, and agenda-infused opportunistic historical re-readings (what they would call historical revisionism), that’ll get us to freedom!

First they reconstituted their revolutionary goals as insurrectionary, but most still believed in the authoritarian project of revolution and of transforming society to their vision of a better world. Then they played lip-service to criticisms by rebranding to combative anarchy and suckered a new generation of wide-eyed pseudo-rebels and glorified activists to take to the streets to fight. And now, as darkness envelopes, millennial-driven millenarian anarchism and the embracing of a religious warrior epic battle for glory is the new vision. Yeah! Nothing has changed, except for the depth of depression, degrees of delusion, level of rhetoric, grandeur in scope, and piles of bullshit. But this is a new low, and very non-anarchist, despite some vague window-dressing.

Sure, their is an absolute and pervasive spiritual emptiness abound. Of course. But filling it with a millenarian religiosity of perpetual attack (mostly in self-aggrandizing rhetorical fronting) and martyrdom is just plain stupid.

If this were just one random wing-nut, or even a cute little cult, I could find some amusement out of it all. Hell Charlie Manson gave me some chuckles from time to time. But this is a long-term anarchist who is part of a larger development. A Holy war is about as far from my reality as I can imagine. My spirituality is unique and grounded in organic relations, not myopic thrusts of jiz. My shared spirituality is intimate and penetrating, not rhetorical and opportunistic.

To try to convince others is pathetic enough, but to suck people’s lives into a personal vision that is nothing more than another religious meat-grinder is atrocious. Sure, let’s spend the precious little time we have being alive on the delusion of some alienated nerds who watched too many movies, played too many video games, or read too many books rather than remembering how to live.

No, I’m gonna carve out as much autonomy as I can in this messed up reality, on my own terms, with the people I love, anarchistically. I’ll defend myself, my place, my people to my last drop of blood, but I will never be apart of any righteous epic battle over good and evil, however its rationalized.

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