On February 11th, 2017 Krewe What Thou Wilt paraded through the streets of New Orleans. Krewedelusion, our Mother Krewe, proclaimed this year’s theme “Rise up,” and adding an element of political provocation, dissolved the usual Krewe Monarchy. Krewe What Thou Wilt ushered in the 2017 Mardi Gras parade season with a magical and environmental theme playing off of ‘The Witches Sabbath.’ Taking a cue from Francisco Goya, the Krewe placed the androgynous Goat of old, Baphomet, at the center of this revolutionary spell. Amidst the turmoil and division this season has brought, Krewe What Thou Wilt found our voice in affirming the importance of what must not perish but rather must flourish with increasing fecundity. From this we stood to defend the natural world, a world inarguably diminishing in biodiversity and increasing in toxicity with every passing year. Our float was then guided by the bright torch of the Lord of the Gates of Matter, enchanted by the witch broth of those gracious and fearsome priestesses of the Wooded Wind, and sanctified by all the living creatures of the earth. In particular, endangered species were modeled and placed in the dance of the Sabbath with the hopes that we as a community might be mindful of the rarity and preciousness of all living things great and small as well as the great responsibility we have as a species among species. Here we might imagine that old Devil rising up as if to proclaim with Liber A’ash, “All things are sacred to me; no thing is sacred from me. For there is no holiness where I am not. Fear not when I fall in the fury of the storm; for mine acorns are blown afar by the wind; and verily I shall rise again, and my children about me, so that we shall uplift our forest in Eternity.”- Joshua Sharp
