Pages from mini zines about Jewish folklore (the series includes zines on golems, dybbuk, malachim and sheydim) by illustrator / zinester, Ezra Rose. Buy them here and pay what you like.
figure i oughta reblog this now that i’m back on the site. the number of notes on this is a little overwhelming, honestly - thanks for all the interest! & thank you @fanzines for the spotlight.
just a note for folks in the tags insisting that it’s somehow “forbidden” to write out the word “sheyd” or “sheydim” (in English transliteration, no less!) & cautioning non-Jews to avoid writing or speaking it: please don’t spread nonsense around my work, which is intended to be educational & available to everyone. i’m not sure where this idea came from (a misunderstanding of the fact that we often don’t write out divine names?), but i’ve been studying Jewish demonology via the writings of many respected rabbis & scholars for years & this has absolutely never come up. so much of our historical information on customs & beliefs about sheydim comes from the many explicit references to them in the Talmud, not to mention all the text on the Jewish Babylonian Aramaic incantation bowls! we write the word out all the time, in Hebrew, in Aramaic, English, etc. it’s fine.
Text: after half a year of work, my academic zine on the history of antisemitism & appropriation in western occult movements is done 🖤 a 22-page PDF full of citations, illustrated with historic & public domain images, pay-what-you-want (or FREE!): https://ezrarose.itch.io/fyma-a-lesser-key
a short zine illustrating a chapter of the Hechalot Rabbati, an ancient Jewish mystical text which describes—in gory detail—the dangers of listening to the angels singing around the merkavah (holy chariot). it features detailed pen & ink artwork drawing from both Jewish symbolic tradition (including panel borders inspired by antique Ashkenazi gravestone carvings) and a modern macabre visionary style.
incredible to look back at this one 5 years later! my first Jewish zine. folks’ response to this really changed my whole creative practice & it helped me find my voice after almost a decade of artistic burnout.
still available as a free/pay-what-you-want digital download at itch.io, physical copies occasionally in my Etsy shop
earlier this year i was honored to be asked to do the cover for issue #1 of Golem Zine, a series showcasing voices from lesser-known Jewish communities around the world. this first issue celebrated Jewish life & culture in Glasgow, and creating this cover involved a deep dive into the history of Glaswegian Jewish art & architecture.
a collection of trans affirmations (text provided by friends & strangers online) made into sigils. this zine is always free & can be downloaded, printed & freely shared here. the pins are occasionally available through my Etsy shop.
this little zine has traveled much farther & gotten more love than i could have ever anticipated in the 5 years it’s been circulating. i have a folder on my computer of photos that folks have sent me after they got one or more of these images tattooed (i’ve given standing permission for anyone to use them that way) - one person even has the whole set all down their spine.
some thoughts on sigils below the cut
i’ve been making sigils for years - for me that means images that amplify intent, whose encryption of text into abstract symbols almost paradoxically allows you to hold the words closer to you. the process i use is partially derived from the work of Austin Osman Spare, a 19th-20th century artist & occultist who was himself obviously influenced by earlier western esoteric traditions that violently appropriated (mainly) Jewish written magic (you can read my whole zine on this history here), so as a Jewish artist i try to be intentional about acknowledging that lineage - you can find a bunch of tutorials on “how to make sigils” that will give you the Spare method without any context or connection to anything that came before it - & also being clear that i approach them from my own conceptual frameworks. i believe images only have the power we give them, that the power in these sigils is community care & self-affirmation, that they don’t need to be “supernatural” to be “magic” (in the way that art & connections between people are magic).
i’ve also done a number of personal sigil commissions by donation to causes that are important to me - in 2020 i used sigil-making to raise over 1K for bail funds to free protesters & support mutual aid for communities impacted by police violence. that’s the kind of magic they are to me - they help us do what we need to do.
of course everyone can engage with them on their own terms, but that’s where i’m coming from as the creator!
