Open Sorcery is the world of Lazarus Halliwell.

Excellence and batshittery, done on purpose.

I’m Lazarus. I make art, music, poems, plays, and magic for the quiet, brilliant, broken ones. If that is you, welcome home. I adopt your kind.

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More about me here.

Please note that, with rare exceptions, any and all names mentioned in this blog are pseudonyms except our own. We want to be able to speak freely without doxxing anyone.

Blog

  • That feeling when November.

    I fucking hate Christmas.

    -Allēna

  • “un-lotused”

    I’ve never been one to meditate on regrets
    of paths not taken, universes unexplored,
    for my regrets are few –

    when I want something, I show up for it,
    I find a way to it or I make one
    and the primrose path to success builds upon itself

    I would far rather meditate on failures,
    iterations where everything when wrong
    and then I made something beautiful from the
    ashes, lotus petals unraveling, daring to ask if he
    loves me or he loves me or loves me not,
    than the zest of life left unnoticed

    -Allēna 11/2/2025

  • I found this gem from 9/20/2022 in our Google Drive.

    I am longing for longing’s sake
    I’ve struggled to let my heart want
    what it wants for so long that I’m going to
    let whatever haunts it haunt me.
    And fuck, I want so much.Ā 

    there’s a man back east
    mysterious and strange
    fascinated by everything
    I think he may have been thirteen the
    first time I met Death
    I want nothing less than his mind
    but I want nothing more
    and I think I’m fine with that.

    There’s a woman in a hypothetical west
    with slender hands and tapering fingers
    come here? I ask her
    and she walks through rooms older
    than both of us combined
    she walks home, despite the fear
    through the years
    she walks home
    to me

    I want afternoons and gold dust evenings
    I want to let the world enchant me again
    one song at a time
    I want to be enthralled with what I have
    and what I will have
    and what I will lose
    The world is not a dead place.
    It is not made up of stark black and white.
    I may be tired but Death has yet to find me
    again
    Until then, I make my way home
    I will do what the man in the east did
    what the woman in the west will do
    And become fascinated with everything
    again.

    -Castor

  • “paper mind” – written 12 march 2018 by Allēna

    write something
    anything
    there’s cerebral spinal fluid
    where some of my
    brain used to be
    and it’s one of the many
    possible scapegoats
    to blame
    for why i am like this

    humor me for a moment
    picture a house with a single
    flap for receiving letters

    one letter enters

    you don’t want the letter
    you set it on fire

    (but they’re like a hydra)
    (the more letters you burn)
    (the more come pouring in)

    so you get more letters
    and burn them
    until you are suffocating
    in them

    my brain did that a decade ago
    i remember the very first thought
    it found a girl beautiful
    and the panic set in
    the letters poured in
    and i drowned in thoughts like paper

    the mind full of paper has become
    the paper mind
    people and places like wind
    blow through it and blow it open

    write something
    anything
    do not burn this paper mind
    though you can do so quickly

    quickly
    quickly
    Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  still
    -Allēna

    Fediverse reactions
  • “haunted tape” by Eight, 10/10/2021

    you may want me dead
    and sundered into pieces
    smaller than grains of sand
    but you’ll never tell
    and I will never know

    such is the punishment for twenty hours
    of touch that is torture in hindsight
    such is the punishment for
    shattering a fragile peace
    and believe me, if I could destroy
    myself that utterly
    don’t you think I would have
    already?

    surely you also know the hell I’ve
    seen?

    is it strange that I can still
    see her face in nearly perfect detail
    square jaw and blue hazel eyes
    I rewind the tape again
    and again –

    how do you not get what you want
    when it is offered freely
    before you even ask?
    before you even consider
    what it is you want?

    you only wanted security
    and safety
    and the comfort of routine
    I wanted her
    and I wanted you, too, once or twice –
    now I hold in the pain you
    wish you could see.

    someday you might get your
    wish. someday I might
    be broken into
    twenty six billion pieces
    just like I did to my
    dreams

    like you did to my trust
    and faith in a found home

    and I will go my fate
    head unbowed
    still wondering if I
    deserved it

    but still I carry on
    intact on the outside
    I find my strength in
    brokenness

    do I leave a piece of me
    in everything I leave behind?

    -Allēna

    Fediverse reactions
  • Here’s my best performance of “hurricane lazarus” yet šŸ’›

    THIS WAS SO MUCH FUNNNN!!!

    “hurricane lazarus” does in fact appear in fear not the brave pain, which is a part of the fantastic fundraiser bundle my friend mk compiled to help me with survival costs in this hellscape. Please check it out, it’s pay what you can šŸ’›

    -Allēna

  • “answer”

    I could ask my body
    what will I do when it has fallen
    and regardless of which side I try and
    coax, pry, cajole, or beat an answer from –
    the deaf side or the silent one,
    the answer is always the same:

    it already has.

    sixteen percent of my brain died before I was
    a year old, I fought tooth and nail to keep
    my own heart. (I was finally removed from
    the transplant list when I was 12)
    I’ve had to re-learn how to walk twice,
    I spent this past july remembering
    how to talk again
    after nearly dying for the nineteenth
    time. I couldn’t form a coherent sentence for
    a month after a seizure episode approximately
    twenty five minutes long
    I’ve been everything short of shot
    and sometimes I wish I had been
    just to get the dying over with
    because ā€œwhat doesn’t kill you makes you
    strongerā€ is a goddamn myth
    sometimes what doesn’t kill you makes you
    wish you were dead

    the deaf side of my body and the silent side
    are asymmetrical, imperfect mirrors of each other
    an invisible remnant of the stroke in ā€˜98
    I can feel the right side but it doesn’t often
    tell me anything anymore because where it should’ve been able to talk my mother screamed
    over it and told me I was faking my pain
    and my sadness, my fear, that I was just
    looking for attention, and it was beaten into
    listening to her instead (she had a knack for
    going for the face)
    it took 24 years to fully break free and by that time
    my mind had shattered as well

    so, what will I do now that my body has fallen?
    same thing I’ve done since I was a child.
    rest, get up, do the damn thing again
    and try to listen for better whispers

    -Allēna 10/27/2025

  • We did blackout poetry in workshop today. This is what I came up with:

    I got this from an essay on Shakespeare’s King Lear.

    -Allēna

  • “quizĆ”s // unmaking” – 17 April 2023

    maybe I’ll write about the things
    I want nobody else to know about
    in code
    long after I get home –
    or maybe
    time will burn the pages of my diary
    make me ozymandias,
    and sand and hate will clear my name
    from everything and everyone I made

    to make way for birch trees and the wheat
    field behind your house
    and open skies when we drive

    I haven’t decided if I want to remember us
    or if I want the fire that robes these mountains
    or the brandy on your mouth
    to wipe my mind clean and absolve me –

    maybe death is a metaphor here
    either way
    maybe I want you to kill me
    as much or as little as you’d like

    -Allēna