Join me today, in tombs, in sweaty smoky clubs, LSD soaked recording studios, in a circle of magic that declares, ‘let success be your proof’. That place in the cosmos where Jaz Coleman’s vocals, and keyboards, Kevin “Geordie” Walker’s guitar, Martin “Youth” Glover’s bass and Paul Ferguson’s drums come together in sonic witchcraft that cast a spell on everyone who came after: from Nirvana and Soundgarden, to Metallica and Skinny Puppy, Ministry and Tool, to Nine Inch Nails all claiming Killing Joke as inspiration. Robert Smith of The Cure once described Killing Joke’s early records as “terrifying and beautiful.” Something that he channeled for his own music - and something we as Witches can relate to ourselves. The terrifying beauty that is Witch, that is truth. A beauty that can only be found beneath the shadows.
Join me today to discover the profane and ritual history of Killing Joke.
Listen now, transcript below
Songs Featured:
AND DON'T FORGET TO CHECK OUT THE COURTAULD TALKS:
I’ve been a fan of post-punk prophets, the band Killing Joke, for a long time. Their music feels like the consolidation and coalescence of all our human fears and dreams. Like dark magic, fighting fire with fire in the battle for our immortal souls. But it’s not just the music. Killing Joke were a band for whom music was an occult ceremony, rituals performed backstage before the public rituals of their concerts, brought together by spells and esoteric philosophies that formed the foundation for their music and also their lives. A band who talked their way into a Pharaoh's tomb in a great pyramid to try to harness the spiritual power contained within, and lay it down in their recordings.
Still I hesitated. This is my first ever straight, white men script for Missing Witches, and because of our feminist leanings, trying our best to find the women and people of marginalized genders who have been erased from collective history, I paused. And yes, technically Killing Joke founder and singer Jaz Coleman is half Indian, but still. He’s white passing, pale as the ghosts he conjures. The only marginalization that Killing Joke experienced was kind of self-imposed. That refusal to trade their magical art for chart-topping hits. Classic citations: Crowley. Lovecraft…
So I hesitated. Maybe this isn’t the place for this story.
But then, as we Witches train ourselves to keep our eyes open for messages from the Universe, I got a sign. A dear Covenmate made a post in our members’ space: Punk witchcraft? Does anyone have any information regarding this topic?
Jasmin’s question got a lot of great responses, but for me, it was the permission slip I’d been looking for. As punk as I claim to be, I still like a nod of encouragement from the Universe.
So you’ll forgive me, sweet Coven, for the straight manliness of this episode, because the story of Killing Joke opens the door for us to talk about that intersecting ethos of Punk Rock and Witchcraft. The DIY experience of Magic that doesn’t require virtuosity, technique, education or even talent - just a willingness to try and fail and try again, to take up an instrument and make noise. To have something to say, and to say it, regardless of what the prim, proper and frankly blithe mainstream thinks of us. To tell the truth, even when it hurts. The post-punk notions of expansion, experimentation and noise. It’s all Witchcraft.
And as I swam deeper, I found in Killing Joke a musical coven of Witches whose magic sailed through typical rock n roll Jimmy Page Crowley-ism into an expansive ocean of geomancy, rosiacrucian hermeticism, permaculture, animism, quantum physics, sociology, anthropology, psychology, symbolism, deities, dreams, visions, Pythagoras, religious studies and Qabbalistic numerology.
And beneath it all, another layer to our absorption of Killing Joke into this Missing Witches pantheon that came to me as I listened to their music, read books and articles, immersed myself in their world - their Universe B, and that’s the realization that we can relate to Killing Joke, not just as a beacon of that punk rock ethos, not just a lighthouse for our gnostic studies, but also in our deeper practice of magic and being. Killing Joke is Shadow Work, and their music allows us a glimpse into our own darkest recesses.
In his book (or as he calls it, a Lubrium) frontman Jaz Coleman wrote, “[...] by removing the negative implications attributed to sorrow, it helps one grasp the idea that suffering is an emotional energy which is used to open up cavities in the human consciousness, as well as inter-dimensionally." (10)
They have been described as apocalyptic, unlistenable, the sound of the Earth vomiting, one critic said of their first studio album, “if you’re ever thinking of going insane, this is the album that will help your decent into madness’... but for us and for the mighty Joke, an acknowledgment must be made that nothing changes if no one complains. That change comes from recognizing what’s wrong, shining a light into the dank basement corners of our minds and our societies. That Utopia is just around the corner, but first we have to make that turn away from toxic positivity and see the truth that hides beneath a candy coating.
Shadow Work begins when we stop running from ourselves. When we turn toward the dark corners of the psyche - the shame, the anger, the fear - and ask, softly, what do you need me to know? It is not about exorcising the shadow (though if that’s your bag, Killing Joke has a song called Exorcism that might fit your purpose), but integrating it, remembering that we are whole only when we claim the parts we’ve cast out.
The shadow is not evil. It is a mirror. It is the archive of everything we’ve been told to hide, our grief, our rage, our power. When we deny it, it leaks out sideways: in projection, in judgment, in exhaustion. But when we meet it with compassion, when we sit in the cave of ourselves and light a small candle, we begin to transform.
Shadow Work, like the work of Killing Joke, is alchemy of the soul. It asks us to witness our own darkness without flinching, to sift through the ashes of our conditioning and find the ember still glowing underneath. Journaling, dreamwork, meditation, therapy, ritual - these are the tools, but the true work happens in the willingness to stay present, and feel the distorted riffs and rhythms vibrate in our intestines to dance our way through apocalypse. Not an ending, but a revelation This is the Requiem for the past.
Not self-improvement. Self-reclamation. The Witch knows that to stand in her power, she must also stand in her shadow. The moon waxes and wanes, but she is always whole. And on our faces we feel the warmth and glow from flames that engulf and tumble the Tarot’s Tower.
Shadow Work is the practice of remembering that you, too, contain multitudes, that even your darkness and discomfort is sacred, and your light, the light of possible futures, is born from its depths.
Join me today, in tombs, in sweaty smoky clubs, LSD soaked recording studios, in a circle of magic that declares, ‘let success be your proof’. That place in the cosmos where Jaz Coleman’s vocals, and keyboards, Kevin “Geordie” Walker’s guitar, Martin “Youth” Glover’s bass and Paul Ferguson’s drums come together in sonic witchcraft that cast a spell on everyone who came after: from Nirvana and Soundgarden, to Metallica and Skinny Puppy, Ministry and Tool, to Nine Inch Nails all claiming Killing Joke as inspiration. Robert Smith of The Cure once described Killing Joke’s early records as “terrifying and beautiful.” Something that he channeled for his own music - and something we as Witches can relate to ourselves. The terrifying beauty that is Witch, that is truth. A beauty that can only be found beneath the shadows.
Join me today to discover the profane and ritual history of Killing Joke.
Jaz said: One cannot bypass initiation. Thus, the work of killing joke becomes considerably more coherent when seen in terms of a generator musically suggesting such a process [of initiation]. The effect is akin to that of a vortex, fascinating and ultimately all encompassing. (CT)
If it’s safe to do so (if you’re driving right now, please keep your eyes open and stay present with the road) Close your eyes and enter the noise.
Killing Joke taught us that sound is not entertainment, it’s invocation and initiating. Each chord a hammer striking the veil. Each drumbeat a summons to awaken what sleeps beneath. Use Killing Joke’s music to conjure a vortex, conjure in your throat an anti-authoritarian cry, a call to action. Conjure in your foot the tapping of primal, ancestral rhythm.
Breathe in the distortion. Feel it vibrating through your bones, shaking loose the old ghosts. These are your shadows, the parts of you that have been exiled, censored, colonized. Let them rise. Let them roar.
Jaz once said that apocalypse means revelation - not destruction, but unveiling. This is the apocalypse of the self: you facing the mirror, stripped of illusions. The riffs grow heavier. The bass grinds. You meet your fear and recognize it as power misnamed. You meet your rage and feel the pulse of life running hot and true.
Inhale the chaos. Exhale the control. Let the storm move through you. You are not breaking down, you are being tuned. Aligned. Initiated. iN Black Moon Jaz sings: ‘Here is the endless cycle, break it if you can [...] The fear that cancels out the love that’s in our hearts.’
Break it if you can.
When the noise subsides, sit in the ringing silence. This is the afterglow, the clear frequency of truth. The shadow is integrated. The spell is complete.
Now open your eyes. Yes, the world is still burning, but so are you, and your fire is holy. Sacred, and punk as fuck.
Jaz Coleman was largely the mouthpiece of Killing Joke, so you’ll hear me quoting him the most, but each member brought their own key pieces, their own key ingredients tossed into the band’s cauldron. The Pharaoh’s tomb, for example, was Youth’s idea. He had taken DMT and seen or imagined lines that connected across the globe, tossing him into a rabbit hole of ley lines, stone circles, electromagnetic fields, sacred sites and geomantic discovery. Every member has said that the music came from the special chemistry of the four, like earth, air, fire and water formed a universe.
When Jaz met Paul, they were shocked to find in each other mirrored philosophies, musical goals, occult curiosities and a very rare for Brits, hatred of football. Jaz said of meeting Paul, it was “refreshing to find someone else who saw the entirety of creative function as something other than a pleasure principle. In actual fact, we utterly rejected the common artist's objective of creating a more desirable aesthetic effect. Do you follow? We firmly believe that by employing a reversal of this process, true progress could commence.”
Mysticism. Shadow work. Purification by ordeal. Magick. That side of things.
Paul and Jaz met through a mutual friend in 1978 London and decided to become roomates. As the story goes, the ceiling of the flat fell in the day they moved in together. As if facades naturally crumbled around them.
In his book Killing Joke: Are You Receiving? Jyrki Hamalainen wrote:
“Both Jaz and Paul were into magic and the occult and the story goes that they used magic to attract the other two members of the group. On the 26th February 1979 they performed a ritual of dedication in order to reach the other two members they were looking for.
They drew a circle on the floor, drew a pentagram inside it and performed the ritual, which led to a fire starting in the flat. This was later said to have been caused by getting the compass points wrong as they weren't fully rehearsed in the magic they were performing.
They put an ad in British music paper Melody Maker.”
After Jaz and Paul placed that classified ad in Melody Maker seeking musicians “who believe that the coming apocalypse can be danced to,” a 17-year-old Youth answered. He’d been playing bass in various punk bands around Ladbroke Grove and hanging around squats where punk, dub, and mysticism intertwined. When he met Coleman and Ferguson, there was instant chemistry - an understanding that what they were building wasn’t just a band, but a sonic weapon.
Youth’s dub-infused bass style became the heartbeat of Killing Joke’s early sound - deep, hypnotic, ritualistic. His background in reggae and sound-system culture gave the group its trance-like pulse, while Jaz and Geordie sculpted apocalyptic texture around it. Together they built something that transcended punk’s anger and moved into the realm of invocation.
Youth said he joined because “it felt like we were conjuring something - not just playing music, but opening a space.”
Next to join was guitarist Georide Walker - both were well-read and bonded over politics, philosophy and spirituality. “I’d had a considerable occult library since I was seven,” Jaz explains to the Guardian. “Geordie was a master Kabbalist” – a believer in esoteric Jewish mysticism. “We shared an interest in all that side of things.”
Early gigs featured a long haired madman named Wizard who spit fire and chalked seven pointed stars on the stage. When Youth ended up in a mental hospital after a particularly harrowing acid trip, Wizard came to visit him, gave him a crystal and some sage advice. Tell the truth. Tell the doctors it’s just bad LSD. The advice worked, or maybe the crystal, and Youth was released to go out on tour with Killing Joke.
Of their next album Laugh? I Nearly Bought One! The UK chart press wrote: Best enjoyed when heavily immersed in occultism.
The record opens with Dance dub beats and a pervasive fear of nuclear annihilation. My favourite song on the album is Requiem. “Man watches video. The bomb keeps on ticking” But there’s something hopeful about the chord progression that lets us know, the Requiem we are singing is for the death of something that no longer serves us. And Wardance, “this is music to march to. It’s a war dance.”
Laugh also includes Love Like Blood.
We must play our lives like soldiers in the field
The life is short
I'm running faster all the time
Strength and beauty destined to decay
So cut the rose in full bloom
'Til the fearless come and the act is done
A love like blood
A love like blood
'Til the fearless come and the act is done
A love like blood
A love like blood
Everyday through all frustration and despair
Love and hate fight with burning hearts
'Til legends live and man is god again
And self-preservation rules the day no more
We must dream of promised lands and fields
That's never fade in season
As we move towards no end
We learn to die
Red tears are shed on gray
'Til the fearless come and the act is done
In 1982, fresh from touring and teetering between revelation and collapse, Jaz and Youth were invited to speak at London’s Courtauld Institute of Art. What began as a lecture became legendary, sometimes thought of as a spoken word album. Definitely not just a talk, it’s a kind of performance art of music and words - half manifesto, half mystical download. Music is a force that can transform consciousness and tear down empires. You can listen to the whole thing on Youtube so I’ll stick it in the shownotes. It’s well worth the hour run time.
THE COURTAULD TALKS Opens with the soft ringing of bells, the rustling of paper, and the clomp of heeled boots across the stage.
Jaz Speaks:
I've worked from the fundamental assumption that for the artist, [00:03:00] dreams and visions are a more authentic source of information than fact or reason. Now, this hypothesis has steadily evolved to the extent that it is no longer merely a conviction, but my perception of truth itself.
Consequently, all activity derived from such foundations cannot co-exist with any form of rationalist orientated thought.
The primary objective is to set everything in motion in the required direction for, for example, existing concepts of time. Our only real. If we accept and succumb to the boundaries and divisions laid down,
I'm simply pointing out that we do, of course, [00:04:00] have the option to ritually smash the clock up along with its corresponding restrictions and transform, extend, increase, or decrease such boundaries enabling us to achieve a greater freedom by changing our perspective of truth and reason. We may conclude that if truth as we see it to be, can be rearranged to benefits us in any way, then this flexible truth is justified.
The same would apply in the eradication of supposed historic fact. Now in accepting the endless possibilities of the irrational domain, we can evoke a chosen picture of the past to influence the present and future.
The [00:05:00] rejection or alteration of conventional perception of measurement, fact, time and reason can shatter restrictive barriers and open up frightening possibilities. To illustrate a point, an elementary annihilation of the assumption that Columbus was the first navigator across the Atlantic changes the entire Western concept of civilization.
Again, should we choose a certain axiom as a starting point? We do so regardless of so-called fact or reason,
however.
Today at the Cortel Institute, we shall be focusing our attention on those forces visible behind the changes in modern society and how we may view this criteria with true objectivity. From within the medium [00:06:00] of music, JIRA,
there are many strange phenomena where objective points are reached through working the metaphysical. Now, the dowsers or water diviners employed by the water boards to to locate underground streams are a good example of this, and yet the individual accomplishing them is generally not aware that he's doing so by the aid of a force.
He discovers he has a power but does not know what that power is. He only knows the results. That's all he can see. Had the atheist scientist of the rational world, given his careful study to forces as he did to elements constantly working back and back following one force to another. Eventually, he might have [00:07:00] some understanding of the origin of movement.
At this moment in time, our scientific rationale tells us that the blood in our body is pumped around by our heart, but what makes it tick he doesn't know.
Similarly, if we look at the rapidly transforming world of atomic power and super technology on its exterior. We begin to wonder about the nature of force from which the ripples of momentum originated. And I think we can all agree that there is something decidedly unhealthy about our current mode of existence,
but as I'm just a mad artist, I shall view the changes [00:08:00] perceived from that role.
Reality is what we make it. And maybe that’s the key to our Witch Punk Ethos, that we feel compelled to DIY our own realities.
In the spring and summer of 1982, after delivering the Courtauld Talks and releasing their third album Revelations, Jaz became convinced that an imminent global apocalypse was approaching. Interpreting both world events and his own mystical experiences as signs, he decided to leave London and flee to Iceland, believing it to be a “safe zone” both geographically and spiritually from which to begin the next phase of humanity.
He was later joined there by Geordie and the two planned to rebuild Killing Joke from the ground up in this “new world,” while Youth and Paul stayed behind in the UK.
This Icelandic exile marks one of many mythic and mysterious chapters in Killing Joke’s story.
RH wrote “In Iceland Jaz underwent the process of individuation (principium individuationis). It is a process of transformation whereby the personal and collective unconscious are brought into consciousness through dreams and active imagination as well as free association.
These are to be assimilated into the whole personality. It is a completely natural process necessary for the integration of the psyche. It was also during this period Jaz that made contact with what he calls the Universe B, an alternative universe, which was then referenced in Killing Joke's music and lends its name to the B-side of the 'Hosannas from the Basement of Hell' single in 2006. During that time Jaz also heard melodies while going through the process. One of these melodies he heard can be heard in 'Pandys Are Coming' on Revelations.”
“Universe B” is Jaz’s term for a parallel or alternate dimension, a psychic or spiritual state accessed through music, ritual, or apocalypse. It’s not a fairy tale so much as a framework for consciousness, a way to describe the feeling of stepping outside consensus reality into revelation.
He’s spoken about the idea since the 1980s: that our world (“Universe A”) is collapsing under materialism, and that through initiation (whether art, magick with a K, or creative destruction) one might transition to Universe B, a realm of higher frequency and alignment.
In interviews, Jaz has described “Universe B” as “the next stage of evolution - not physical, but spiritual.”
So when Jaz fled to Iceland, convinced that apocalypse was imminent, he wasn’t just escaping; he was preparing an experiment in frequency, an attempt to burn a hole through consensus reality, and maybe save the world. Transport us all to Universe B.
Across albums, What’s THIS For…!, Pandemonium, Hosannas from the Basements of Hell, Pylon… across time and space…Killing Joke returned to the same idea: that collapse is also creation, that chaos is the doorway. “Universe B” is the world that waits. Not the end of things, but the crossing.
In this place, music is not entertainment. It is alchemy. Sound is spell. Noise is prayer.
Jaz is currently on an island of New Zealand, creating that Utopia that he dreamed of, obsessed with rescuing endangered moths, and creating a sacred space, agonizingly planned and perfected circles, gardens and altars.
He wrote, “The hermetic principle of 'as above, so below applies to the geomantic constructions, as we are in principle creating a planetary and stellar imprint upon the landscape which mirror the heavens in order to harmonise certain human activity with the forces of nature.
Central to this philosophy is the assumption that Mother Earth or Gaia-Sophia is a living, breathing, conscious being who will either nourish and sustain us or, like Kali, destroy us utterly, depending on whether human activity ceases to become parasitic and achieves harmonisation. To quote the alchemist Basilius Valentinus, " the earth is not a dead body but is inhabited by a spirit that is its life and soul'.
[...]My geomantic experiments are driven by notions of eternity [...] So regardless whether the entire project might be destroyed by a mile and a half high tidal wave, I continue with my endeavours. The act of doing it everything, for it defines who I am and I remain convinced by the very purpose of my incarnation which is to inspire others. It is, when all is said and done, just a work of art and let’s face it, nothing is permanent. In the end, it is all for a single cry of ecstasy, occurring within a millionth of a second, but it reverberates forever.” (LFC 21-22)
“The advice of philosopher William James is emphasized in the undertaking of a colossal task in which the supreme aim is a complete change of mode in order to find greater meaning and purpose in our lives.
To change one’s life:
- Start immediately.
- Do it flamboyantly.
- No exceptions.” (211)
One Killing Joke show poster declares: from oblivion to utopia and back again - and I think this might be the crux of Killing Joke’s magic. That we can move between worlds - from oblivion to utopia, from sorrow to ecstacy, that nothing is permanent, and everything changes. But we are soldiers in a war for our own souls. Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly. No exceptions. This is a War Dance. Music to dance to, music to march to.
“Euphoria”
“All creation lives, all creation dies All creation’s made again.”
“Dark Forces”
“You’ll need holy water and a little bit of knowledge.”
“The Death and Resurrection Show”
Mark out the points, build the pyre.
“In Cythera”
“When the world’s too much to bear
I’ll take to dreaming of a time
When peace and love were everywhere.”
We must dream of promised lands
War Dance
“This is music to march to
Do a war dance”
Killing Joke was never just a dystopian bummer. In almost every song there is a volta, a turn where the band reminds us that we can get to another reality, that Universe B awaits us with loving arms.
Hope, in the world of Killing Joke, is never pastel or polite. It’s the light that seeps through the cracks after the detonation. Their gospel is apocalypse as alchemy, the faith that every collapse clears the ground for something true to grow. “Love like blood,” they sang, as though devotion itself were a form of rebellion. “All creation dies, all creation’s made again.” Utopia isn’t elsewhere, it’s inside the act of becoming, inside the rhythm that refuses despair. It isn’t escapism. It’s the moment after the storm, the vision glimpsed through smoke when the drums fall silent and breath returns. Killing Joke’s hope is hard-won, ecstatic, electric. It asks us to meet the end of the world not with fear, but with rhythm, with courage, with creation. Because to survive is to transmute. And to transmute is to believe in the possibility of another world, humming just beneath this one. Catharisis is how we are made. Killing Joke sings our hymns and offers REAL hope. Hope that isn’t coloured by the rose-tinted glasses of toxic positivity and denial. Theirs is a hope that is action oriented, that relies on magical activism and the hermit’;s lantern to guide us through.
Let’s return to Jasmine’s post that asks about Witchcraft and Punk.
Claire replied: Witchcraft (as opposed to hierarchical high ceremonial magic) is classically DIY, use what you have/can find, anti-establishment, and probably a bit dirty around the edges. And ethically, witchcraft tends to emphasize genuine justice or personal intuitive morality rather than following rules or laws. There’s a thumbing of the nose at mainstream expectations and a way or turning nonsensical norms on their heads. We’re kind of ok with some people thinking we’re a little scary, and not giving a fuck if they like our aesthetic or tastes or lifestyle. We welcome outcasts and weirdos and take care of our own. And, there’s usually a political consciousness willing to think outside the prescribed options and limits.All of that sounds extremely punk.
Jenna wrote: I went to an all ages show in an alley over labour day weekend! I hadn’t been to a punk show in over a decade and it was mega nostalgic. The witch and the scholar in me couldn’t help thinking about it as a spiritual space, and an intergenerational subculture full of rituals (singing, dancing, ways of relating to one another).
So while we might debase punk as confrontation, rebellion without a cause, for us Witches it represents so much more. A space where outsiders can come together and become insiders. A place where hope is rooted in reality, and anarchy isn’t mere destruction, but a space where we can make new rules, new ways of governance.
Killing Joke have always reminded us that apocalypse isn’t the end - it’s the veil tearing. It’s revelation. Like witches in a factory age, Killing Joke gathered in the ruins and made rhythm their spell. They took punk’s fury and aimed it at the soul, asking not just what we want to destroy, but what we dare to dream into being next.We must dream of promised lands
“All creation lives, all creation dies, all creation’s made again.”
In those words lives the punk witch’s ethos: transformation as defiance, creation as survival. To dance when the world ends is to believe another world can rise.
They sang, “I can feel the universe expanding, I can see your spirit rising.” The heart of it: punk as prophecy, witchcraft as resistance, art as invocation. Killing Joke taught us that hope isn’t soft. It’s a practice. It’s a spell we cast together, again and again, through chaos and through noise, until the veil thins and the future hums, grinds and pulses beneath our feet.
This is our exorcism. Our resurrection show. Our invocation for what comes next.
Make every dance a War Dance. Dream of promised lands.
Now go listen to Killing Joke.
