I’ve been grieving the loss of an old friend. Yesterday I wrote her a eulogy on Facebook, because that’s where I’m most connected with others who also knew her. I’d rather it weren’t lost there though. So I’m sharing it here too.
Carolyn Elliott is gone.
She and I were friends for a while. We haven’t spoken in four years for complicated reasons. Our last exchange included the phrase “I wish you a good life and good bye.”
I found out a few months ago that those reasons maybe didn’t apply anymore.
So I was going to reach out to her “soon”. To feel out whether there might be a door we could open.
And now it’s too late.
Forever.
I have thoughts I might share sometime. It’s ironic for the founder of Existential Kink to have… how do they say it here now? “Unalived” herself.
It’s apparently easy to miss her divine point. It was so ridiculous in 2021 when folk tried to cancel her for saying something inappropriate. Oh no, an emanation of the reconciliation of opposites and exaltation of the supposedly nasty and forbidden... said something forbidden that’s opposed to the mainstream moral narrative. Quick, let’s call her out.
It’s also easy to miss that she was human.
I don’t mean “flawed”. It’s annoying to me that that phrase means “flawed”.
The whole point this Thelemic saint kept underlining is, those so-called “flaws” are part of the utter beauty of why we’re here. Admit it, you LOVE them.
When I say “human”, I mean that she was not just this glorious archetypal image folk love to worship, and to demonize.
She would recluse for days after every workshop to “eat bonbons on the couch” as she put it. Recovering from all that show she had to put on.
She’d get anxious when her little girl would play on a playground slide. I keep having to remind parents that one-year-olds are made of fast-healing rubber and need to explore while consequences are low. But it was so clear that this queen of ecstatically getting off on every sensation... just viscerally needed her baby to be safe.
She was gentle, and soft, and kind.
And incredibly annoying to argue with! She would oscillate between clever twists of metaphorical logic and just completely agreeing in a way that felt quite surface-level and would only occasionally change her behavior later. It could be infuriating.
…which I don’t mean as a complaint. It’s part of the spice of who she was. I wouldn’t change a thing.
Except maybe the pain and doubt that finally got her.
She figured out an archetype to resonate with. Babalon chose Her high priestess for sure.
And there’s something so true there. I’m quite significantly shaped by her touch as a teacher.
But she was also my friend. Many people’s friend.
I’ll also miss her existential parties. Hopefully others remember the song. I think many do. But in her role as a vessel of EK, she could induce such psychedelic clarity and beauty... and FUN. Raunchy, ridiculous, cringe, yet REAL. Often delightful, sometimes horrid, always exciting. Others might carry the Flame, but her particular quirky flavor just won’t be there anymore.
I’d let my attention on EK drift. One strange gift here is that in missing her, in mourning her, I’m reminded that I do know this work. It’s always ready to be alive in me. It’s even applicable here, in this heartbreak. It feels like being in contact with the current she kept laughingly bringing into the world. Reminding me of the Garden she welcomed me and others into.
I think some part of me assumed she and I would get to kick back and enjoy wine and bonbons by a fire sometime. Laughing about the glitchy leadup to aeons stretching before us.
I have a sense that something like that will still happen. Someday the Veil of Death will get pulled back, and we’ll all have a big laugh.
But it will never happen on this side of the Veil.
And that matters.
Farewell, Priestess of Babalon. I know your light will radiate on somehow. I’ll carry it in my heart, as will countless others.
And farewell dear once friend. I’ll miss you.
There are reasons that the world is a meat-grinder for people like this.
Maybe it doesn't have to be? But it definitely is.