The New Order of St Agatha (also known as La Anticipación de La Resurrección de Kathy Acker) was founded in 2014 in preparation for The Insurrectionary Resurrection. The Agathites describe their central missions as spreading the legacy & writing of voiceless women, violently dismantling patriarchy, &, to quote High Priestess Shania Twain, “going out tonight,” “feeling all right,” & “[letting] it all hang out” in the name of St. Agatha, patron saint of martyrs, nurses, breast cancer survivors, rape victims, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, & fire.
Who was St. Agatha? Born in 231 AD, St. Agatha was brutally tortured & murdered for not giving her body to a Roman prefect named Quintianus. Quintianus, whose name notably contains the word “anus,” was furious with Agatha’s refusal of his advances. He sent her first to a brothel, where she was beaten for her continued refusal of his ugly body, & later to jail, where the beatings escalated in severity. Her abuse in prison culminated in the removal of her breasts with rusty shears. In retribution, St. Agatha conjured an earthquake & fire to kill all of the men who had tortured her & also 2 burn down the Walgreens. Agatha died in prison in 251 AD, but her life & legacy does not end there.
Reflecting on her death, Agatha began to write about the experience of martyrdom as a byproduct of her objectification by both men & God. Agatha’s words have been slowly brought to earth by herself in various reincarnated forms & thru her disciples. As of November 2014, Agatha’s thoughts have been collected in three sacred texts: the song “Like a Boy” by Ciara, the sound of men crying, & this image of Shania Twain
St. Agatha is often depicted carrying her severed breasts atop a platter in commemoration of her great sacrifice. Agathites, believing in a full scale reversal of the way bodies are observed & treated, have sometimes elected to carry around platters with the breasts or asscheeks of men who have done them wrong, though this practice has mostly fallen out of favor due to the unsightly & generally unhygienic nature of these platters. Some women have instead chosen to wear long wigs crafted from hairs plucked from the scalps of formerly “beautiful” men.
The four sacraments of the New Order are as follows: a full reclamation of one’s body & its power, a pledge of reversible destiny, a pledge of militant death, & one performed miracle of resurrection that culminates in priestess initiation. These sacraments will be better detailed in a subsequent post on the habits & ways of the Agathites.
Agathites believe that a wave of otherworldly & graceful violence, similar to that of St. Agatha’s vengeful earthquake, will result in the creation of a better world. This wave will first come in the form of the death of all rapists, which will happen on 1/21/15. All abusers of any kind will be loaded into the back of a maroon 2007 PT Cruiser that will be driven off of a cliff while its inhabitants listen 2 a muffled but still loud cover version of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” done by a local high school band. This day will mark the beginning of a universally enforced intersectional feminism & a period of forceful & heavy-handed objectification of men, which will continue as long as is necessary for the Agathites to dismantle the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Dissenters & disobeyers will also be loaded into the PT Cruiser.
Agathites believe not in a god or a “heaven” but in the steadfast maintenance of an Apocalyptic Utopia that will be created & sustained under the leadership of Kathy Acker once the aforementioned state has been dismantled. When all of the work on this earth is done, Agathites will follow Kathy Acker to the gates of purgatory where they will begin a long-term occupation & beautification of its land (La Ocupación del Purgatorio).
In the time since her death, Agatha has returned to earth in many different female forms, but most notably in the body of famed transgressive novelist Kathy Acker (1947-97). Those who have taken careful watch of Agatha’s returns now know that Agatha will return sometime in 2015 to initiate the Insurrection. Make no mistake about it: in 2015 Agatha will return, again in the form of Kathy Acker, riding atop a flaming cop car with no less than 7 of the religion’s high priestesses & the apocalyptic town crier Mariah Carey in tow. Agatha will come again in glory to judge the living & the dead & to reign over all things.
Many have asked, “Why purgatory?” La Ocupación del Purgatorio in the name of Apocalyptic Utopia presents a solution to the classic Agathian dilemma about the meaning or existence of death. The two principal disciples of St. Agatha, the poets Miyó Vestrini & Madeline Gins, have written some of the most important scripture for the New Order. Agathites believe that Miyó Vestrini & Madeline Gins preside over the gates of hell & heaven, respectively, monitoring the coming & going of women from these two realms &, also, supplying the religion with its two ideological poles.
Vestrinian Agathintes believe in militant death, death as a way of living & the pursuit of death as the central theme of life. Ginsean Agathites reject death altogether, publicly pledging a disavowal of its existence & functionality. These two groups of Agathites coexist thru a mutual investment in the idea of La Ocupación del Purgatorio. All Agathites believe that once Kathy Acker & the Agathites have led a successful Insurrection of the earthly world, the New Order will move to occupy purgatory as a means of defying both life & death, creating an alternative third route of existence. In purgatory, death will feel like life as usual. La Ocupación del Purgatorio is seen as a final act of destroying oppression of all kinds including the oppression of death & the limitations of the human body. At the time of the Insurrectionary Resurrection, Miyó & Madeline will return to earth with their armies of dead-yet-alive women to erase the history of oppression by setting fire 2 necessary artworks & books. These garbage ideologies will not b carried into the new land.
Most important of all to note is that the arrival of Kathy Acker will be announced through Agathite town crier Mariah Carey, who will sing an ultrasonic note, a note so high that it awakens the hounds of hell. These hounds will enter into homes looking for racists, homophobes, & cops who they will then gather up & pack into a beige 1992 Nissan Altima--the choice car of insurrectionary hellhounds--& drive into the fires of the underworld. There, the dumb assholes will be permanently stuck in a simulation of weekday LA traffic at 5:30pm with a poorly researched episode of This American Life about the prison industrial complex forever repeating on their stereos.
As Mariah and her hounds walk through the streets alerting people to Kathy’s arrival, she will sing the ethereal slow trilling of the chorus of “Bliss” to every woman & child of the land. Mariah’s whistle scaling will be universally acknowledged as the Sound of the Insurrection.
-Cassandra Gillig
Cassandra Gillig is a poet archivist who is traveling around the country helping out with big lucks books, boosthouse, tender buttons press, jacket2’s reissues, & an oral history of chicago’s experimental poetry scene. she established the new order of st agatha, a feminist religion, with anne boyer in the earliest part of october 2014 & loves hannah weiner, the poetry project, side-stapled magazines, alice notley, & PDFs.