A re-telling of the saga that is the left-hand chaos magic vulva shrine that my brother Tom, Samantha Riedel, and I found in our basement back when we all lived together some years ago.
Chapter 1 — It smells like a naired skunk in here
So one hot summer night in June, Tom and I noticed a weird smell in our apartment. Our apartment was a ground-floor converted apartment in a New England-style 19th century house, with a side entrance along the driveway and an external slanted basement door, as well as an indoor entrance to the basement on the other side of the apartment from the entrance near the bathroom. We had five people living in this apartment at the time. Tom, Me, Sam, a fourth roommate we’ll call Nat, and Sam’s friend we’ll call Luna who was staying with us temporarily.
The smell was kinda like a skunk, but a bit burnt smelling too. The smell was strongest at the entrance to the apartment, and near the internal basement door. Tom and I suspected that perhaps a skunk had gotten into the basement and died. So we got out our flashlights and descended into the basement looking for a skunk… only to find something far darker and more menacing than we could have possibly imagined…
Chapter 2 — Flashback, one year previous
Before we lived with Nat, we had another roommate in that room, who will call Lea. Lea and Nat’s bedroom was a bit special. In addition to the door into the bedroom off the living room, it also had its own door heading directly out of the apartment into a hallway shared with our upstairs neighbors, who were the landlord’s son and his girlfriend. This is a quirk of this originally being a 3-story victorian that was only later converted into two separate apartments. Lea’s bedroom was clearly some sort of parlor originally.
Because of this quirk, whoever lived in this bedroom could come and go from the apartment without anyone else living there even noticing them get home.
Over the 6 months we lived with Lea, we almost never saw her. Sometimes she would ask to borrow an extension cord, or use the shower, but after the first couple months, we didn’t even see her do that. However, there was still some signs that she was living there. For instance, many of our kitchen supplies were going missing. Mugs, bowls, pots and pans. We had a few different “dirty dish amnesty days” which would recover some stuff from Sam, Tom, and I’s rooms, but there’d always still be something missing.
Most importantly missing, was Sam’s silverware set. A unique identifiable set of forks, spoons, and knives which she had a strong sentimental attachment to, for she had bought them together with her first love when they moved in together. She repeatably expressed sadness and frustration that they had gone missing.
In Mid-May, after living together for five months, Lea confessed to us that she was not actually living in the apartment for some months. For some reason, she had actually been living on the floor of her sibling’s bedroom in some college dorms or sleeping in her car instead. At the end of May, she would stop paying rent, and we would need a new roommate. With only a week or two to find a new roommate, we were frantically on the move. And we needed photos of the room to advertise it.
One issue? The bedroom door was locked. Lea would not respond to our messages about cleaning out her room. With time ticking, and days to spare before we needed to show her room, we got a screwdriver and broke into her room.
What we found was bewildering. There was no bed or any sort of furniture. There was trash strewn about in a layer up to your knees. But not like, chip bags and soda cans. No. There was broken musical instruments. A knee-deep layer of plywood and broken musical instruments. Mixed in were expensive synthesizers, DSLR cameras, a broken futon frame, and many of our missing dishes and other items that had gone missing. We carefully picked through her room, recovering various mugs and other items, and concluded we couldn’t possibly clean this out ourselves. We told Lea she needed to clear out her room ASAP or we were getting the landlord involved. That night, in the middle of the night while we were all sleeping, Lea came by and cleaned out her room. Everything. Without saying a word, we found in the morning that her room was empty and clean and ready to be shown off. Nat moved into the room just fine….
and we never did find Sam’s silverware…. oh… perhaps that would have been for the better… than what we discovered when we did find it…
Chapter 3 — What is that
Tom and I were confused, to say the least. Our flashlights reflected off of something unusual. Right next to the golf club set that belonged to our landlord’s son…. was something… we couldn’t recognize.
With no sign of a skunk, we approached it closer…
and closer…
Are those…. our missing dishes? that disappeared when Lea lived with us?
YUP. Tom and I shout to upstairs “SAM! WE FOUND YOUR SILVERWARE”
She is terrified and comes downstairs. We lift up the shrine and investigate its contents. It is made out of sticks and pool noodles. Sam’s entire sentimental silverware set is piled together in a bowl. The bowls are full of dust and dead bugs, it’s clear they haven’t been touched in a long while. The pot is full of an awful metallic smelling red-brown “tea” with what looks like a star anise pod floating in it. Given that it’s inside of a vulva, we decide it’s best to assume it may contain blood.
Tom concludes that Lea must have been the one to make this, given our history with her. “She seems like the kind of person to do this.”
We text the landlord's son, essentially to apologize for keeping something like this next to his golf clubs for a year. He has no idea what we’re talking about.
Tom and I reflect on how we had built some furniture in the basement a while back and had never noticed this in the basement until now. Assuming it’s some kind of art project, I post about it on Twitter and Tom posts about it on Mastodon. Haha, isn’t Western Mass so quirky. It quickly goes viral on Twitter as the many twitter-famous people who used to live in Western Mass reminisce about this sort of thing being very WeMA. Everyone called it the Bussy (basement pussy) Many many jokes about it being cursed, or something besides an art project…
But… it wasn’t an art project…. as we then learned
Chapter 4 — A left-hand what?
Two completely different people, one on Mastodon and one on Twitter, reply to our posts telling us that it looks like a left-hand chaos magic trigger. I don’t have screenshots of the now deleted tweets/toots. I remember the one on Twitter said that the plates were used because they likely contained spittle from us which could be used to “latch onto [our] essence to perform spells and rituals.”
I start to panic a little bit. My sister Jess decides we should consult her friend Estelle, who is knowledgeable in chaos magic.
I inform Tom and Sam that we have a left-hand chaos magic shrine on our hands. “Left-hand” being the euphemistic term for what’s often called “black magic.”
Tom texts his now-spouse about it, ignoring time zones.
This was right around when they started dating. Adorable that it started like this, and now they are married.
I ask Estelle what we should do about the shrine. The first thing she says is “don’t burn it, that will only give it more power.”
My recommendation would be to dispose of it as unceremoniously as possible and then clean the space through whatever ritual has the most meaning to you. Chaos magic, as I remember it, is largely about channeling ones will through ritual (any ritual, the more original the better) in order to alter reality, so anything like burning it or whatnot would just give it more legitimacy and energy. But this also means whatever that ritual you create the dispel this energy has just as strong and as legitimate an effect. Basically, do whatever will resonated with your group the most.
Simultaneously, and keep in mind it is now about 12:30am, we are getting a bazillion contradictory pieces of advice from 35 different branches of paganism.
We decide to trust Estelle and unceremoniously carry the shrine out of the basement, crush it and stomp it with our feet, and put it in the dumpster. We then start bringing the dishes out of the basement to soak in a bin of diluted bleach. While carrying the pot of red… stuff (“ov”) I trip, scream, and spill the liquid all over Tom’s car and my legs (I was wearing shorts). This wakes up the landlord’s son who comes downstairs and asks what’s going on. We explain it to him (he’s about our age) and he tells us
When Lea was moving all her shit out in the middle of the night, I saw her and asked her “You got everything?” and she looked nervous and said “uh…. yep!”
Sam sprays the liquid away with a hose. I take a shower. I make a tweet joking that I said a shehecheyanu (the jewish blessing for Firsts) for my first time destroying a pagan idol.
We conclude that it’s over and that whether or not magic is real it was really creepy that someone was collecting our things and hiding them in a shrine in the basement to “latch onto our essence” to power spells. We all go to sleep and decide to plan how to cleanse the space in the morning.
Interlude — In Which I Am Bigoted Against Wizards and Demons
So my tweets maybe pissed off neopagan twitter. We had 35 different branches of wizards and magicians arguing in my mentions about how to interpret the va-shrine-a and giving contradictory advice so I had basically told them “Fuck off. I already got pulled into someone else’s religion without my consent I don’t need more of that. Judaism forbids me from taking advice from wizards.”
This resulted in all of neopagan twitter QRT-ing me and shit-talking me. I had someone who identified as demonkin call me a bigot again demons for saying I was going to do a Jewish exorcism. Various self-identified wizards called me bigoted against magicians.
A “celtic mage” tells me “I don’t know if that shrine was actually trying to curse but I am.” Several other “mages” also tell me that they are casting actual curses upon me.
Fucking insane. I’m neopagan twitter’s main character. I get called a “talmudist” many times and accused of being an apologist for the “genocide of Canaanite pagans” as describe in the “old testament” which is definitely a historical document of real things that happened to pagans with actual direct lineage to white self-identified wizards on Twitter.
Anyway
Chapter 5 — You Are Invited To An Emergency Shabbos Dinner Potluck
We throw out the pot, since it might have had blood in it. A coworker points out that all of the liquid should have evaporated if it was just water and had been more than a year. So we’re just not fucking touching that. The remaining dishes soak in a bin of diluted bleach.
After doing research and consulting various experts, we decide on what a Jewish exorcism looks like to clean the basement of bad vibes. Someone in Jess's discord server who was raised Hasidic gives me some ideas. I invite everyone I know in Western Massachusetts to an “Emergency Shabbos.”
You are invited to an emergency shabbos dinner potluck this Friday evening. Our former roommate put an extremely cursed left-hand chaos magic vulva shrine in our basement and has been using our biomatter to harness our essence for spells. We have destroyed the shrine but we need a minyan to cleanse the space, and also a part of the ritual is having a potluck dinner. Please join us for this.
So some friends come over for dinner. We make shabbat, say blessings over candles, eat challah, etc.
Then… we proceed into the basement.
We carry the shabbos candles down into the basement and place them where the shrine had been. We then light another, smokier candle. Together, we shout a bunch of psalms at our own paces independently, in Hebrew, Orthodox Style. Then, we sing Ana Bekhoach a few times. We carefully carry the shabbos candles back upstairs and let the smoky candle burn out.
the vibes have been cleansed. Sam says “I’m not Jewish but you know, I really do feel better now. That made me feel safer for some reason.”
The next morning, Tom and I empty the bleach bin into the gutter and remove the dishes. We then drive out to the Mill River to kasher the dishes by giving them a mikveh. Like, I’m fucking converting the dishes to Judaism or something.
It’s a beautiful day and I sit by the river and dunk each item individually in the water three times while saying a blessing. When we get home, we run everything through the dishwasher on power wash. After that point, we feel pretty safe using them again.
Epilogue — OK BUT WHAT WAS THE SMELL?!?!
It turns out Sam’s friend who we are calling Luna was smoking outside on the driveway (the burnt smell) and got sprayed by a skunk (the skunk smell). They left their boots by the door (smell by the entrance) then walked straight to the bathroom to shower (smell by the basement door…. which was by the bathroom door). Thus, the smell was strongest by the bathroom and entrance, but not in the basement.
Anyway, that was the summer when I was preparing to move to another city. I had a big tag sale and a bunch of people who came to the tag sale recognized me and said “Wait…. is this from the house with the vulva shrine?” and then either decided not to buy a cursed object or to definitely buy a souvenir from the vulva shrine saga that had gone viral online. When I arrived in the city I moved to, the very first night I was there, 8 people who I had just met that day heard my name was Shel and asked “Were you the one who had a vulva shrine in your basement?”
To this day, years later, I still regularly have people recognize me for the vulva shrine saga, or remind me or it, or say they saw pictures of it reposted again somewhere. Perhaps that one wizard was right…. we’ve given it infinite power…. who knows how many things that have gone wrong in the past 3 years are due to the vulva shrine’s curse.
The End…. (or is it?)
All photos in this post were taken by my brother Tom.