Rust Blood: The Song of War
Journal notes from September 22, 2023.
After Saturday’s attacks ‘by land, by air, and by sea’ on Israel, I wanted to share some journal notes that are part of the material used to write my upcoming book The Song of the Mystery, the second book in The Song of the Human Heart trilogy.
The journal notes are part of the transmissions I receive in altered states of consciousness. Sometimes they’re ushered by plant medicines. Many times, they come through dreams. Often, I hear things. More and more, these transmissions come through being able to ‘drop into’ expanded awareness. I’ll see the threads between things, see patterns between what seems disconnected, or (as in this case) fall into a flow state where I’m writing what comes through me to later piece together into a storytelling.
Forgive me for the very raw state this is in. May it offer some small alchemy of chaos and confusion into song, in what what will be a very long road ahead in the territory that is Holy Land.
Rust of time.
Rust and red of blood.
Rusted metal. Blood on metal.
Rust Blood.
Rust Blood is the frequency of war.
Rust Blood.
Rust of Time. Rusty Time. Rusted Time. Old Time. Broken Time. Fixed in Time. Stuck in Time. Distorted Time. A tear in time. A scratch in the song. A cracked mirror of time stabbing into the veil that separates this song from any other. This realm. The collective revolving song called reality…
If I could give a name — (I being subjective given this doesn’t feel like it’s coming from ‘me.’) — If I could give this taste in my mouth, the metal of blood, a name…this thing that is alien…
If I had to give this “song” a name, I would call it Rust Blood.
Rust Blood, a pairing of words that gives a sensory density to a word that doesn’t mean anything anymore, a word called war. A word without meaning but which pulls to the surface something very, very old: fear.
What is that feeling…fear? It’s a word that’s too small. It is not pregnant enough with the full breadth of human emotion. “Fear” being another thing that has been distorted from let’s say reverent weariness to fear.
And what is this thing called fear? Dispossession. Dispossession of our connection with the world around us where now anything could be a threat. In other words, to be made unnatural.
IT’S [the Distortion] taken all that IT is and packaged that as the stories we eat to build the diseased culture we live in that hasn’t changed from the dawn of the time when we were hooked onto the sharp hook of a broken piece of mirror, it’s jagged edges caught into the stream of time, as if it broke off from something else, something so far beyond our comprehension that it only makes sense through children’s stories, and babble, and the babble of stories, and the babble of children and the babble of children’s stories
Caught in the hook of time,
And we’re caught on IT.
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Previous Substack Posts
Holy Land: Letting Go of Our Death Grip
After writing my first book, it became clear that the territory Muslims are drawn to is off. The map is blurred.
A Religion That Matters is not a Religion that Matters
From an Islam of beards and robes toward an Islam of light and dark.
The Night is Dark and Full of Terror
Reflections on Islam’s “Night of Power.”
The Heart of Islam is a Woman
Extremists hijacked Islam. This is our invitation to take it back...to something far older, far wiser, and far more primordial.
The Game’s Afoot
Faith as a Mystery Worth Solving
Cord-Cutting from the Ayatollah
A look at the Iran protests through the lens of the sacred feminine. Insights inspired by an encounter with Mystery weeks before the Iran protests.
Published Op-Eds
How the 34-Year-Old Fatwa Against Salman Rushdie Marks the Timelessness of the Islamist War Against the West
A year’s worth of research narrowed into a 1000 word op-ed on the crack in Islam’s origin story.
Reader Reviews
The following is an essay reviewing my book, The Song of the Human Heart: Dawn of the Dark Feminine in Islam.
“The Song of the Human Heart is both a memoir and an exploration of what faith is, has been and could be, through the metaphor, and spiritual and emotive reality, of song. True to this, the book is a multi-sensory and layered experience, interweaving personal history and current events with theological and mythical examination, poetic revelations as part of an unfolding spiritual journey, and, of course, music and natural soundscapes. A core focus of the book is that of illusion—the curse of civilisation, the distortion of ideology—that makes it impossible to see the true wonder of reality.” — Therese Doherty
Published in The Federalist, a critical op-ed by Dr. Brad Patty reviewing The Song of the Human Heart.
“Qudosi brings Islam under the lens of a host of narrative modes of interpretation, from Jungian psychology to magic mushrooms. Yet the basic project is itself a contradiction of this sort: how to find the sacred feminine in Islam, that heroic, epic religion whose most famous advocates have always been males and warriors.” — Brad Patty, Ph.D.