SPIRITUAL ROTPUNK: A MANIFESTO
Or how i made my own mythology when the old gods stopped listening...
We are not selling you hope.
We’re not here to clean anything up.
This is not a revival.
This is a recognition.
That the world is cracked.
That beauty has mold on it.
That spirit survives anyway.
WHAT IS SPIRITUAL ROTPUNK?
Spiritual Rotpunk is a response.
To the sterile.
To the corporate.
To the polished apocalypse.
To the factory wrapped futures and the apps that track your dreams.
“We know it's broken. We’re still here. And that still matters.”
We’re not nihilists.
We’re not utopians.
We’re the people still sweeping ash into patterns.
Still building shrines from scrap.
Still naming the dead.
This isn’t retro-futurism. This isn’t dieselpunk, biopunk, steampunk or cyberpunk…
It’s ROTPUNK!
Because everything's rotting and that’s the only honest place to start.
Spiritual Rotpunk isn’t a genre.
It’s a stance.
A refusal.
A posture in the muck.
A whisper of grace where nothing should grow.
It’s faith without gods, ritual without rule, meaning carved into collapse.
THE CORE PRINCIPLES
1. DECAY IS NOT THE END.
It’s the context, the blank page. We live in the wreckage and we rebuild from it.
2. THE SACRED DOESN’T HAVE TO BE SANITISED.
Holiness can be found in smoke-stained walls, in fungi eating cathedrals, in the rituals we make up just to keep going.
3. BEAUTY BELONGS TO THE BROKEN.
Cracks don’t ruin a thing, they define it. We don't fix it, we frame the fracture.
4. WE REMEMBER.
We remember what the world was, what it could have been. What it still might be buried underneath the rust.
5. WE CREATE.
In spite of the collapse. In celebration of it. In direct opposition to apathy.
We make art, systems, language, sound & story.
And we sure as hell don’t ask permission for it.
WHO IS THIS FOR?
This is for anyone building in the dark. Anyone who still dreams, even while choking on soot. Anyone who’s tired of pretending the future is clean.
It’s for zinemakers, filmmakers, worldbuilders, sculptors, tattooists, dreamers, storytellers, code-writers, choir ghosts and coal priests.
You don’t need a label to be rotpunk. You’ll know if you are.
WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?
Mold on copper.
Candlelight through broken stained glass.
Machinery that prays in its sleep.
Forgotten saints, fossilized in wires.
A folk song played on a radio powered by bones.
Oil. Dust. Gold teeth. Wet stone.
The last working light in the drowned chapel.
This is not a style guide.
This is a vibration.
Tune into it or walk on by.
WHAT DO WE DO NOW?
We create.
We pass the ember.
We leave marks in the dirt.
We praise what still moves.
We reject erasure.
We embrace complexity.
We find meaning in rot, in ritual, in the refusal to shut up and disappear quietly.
We build something beautiful from the offcuts.
And if it doesn’t last?
Let it rot beautifully too.
This is the manifesto. Not a blueprint.
There’s no right way to be rotpunk.But if the mold is growing in your lungs already —
welcome.There’s work to do.
And it’s sacred.
And it’s rotting.
ADDENDUM: THE FIRST FIRES
The Spiritual Rotpunk movement begins here.
Not with merchandise, not with marketing, but with rituals you can play.
I’m building worlds you can bleed into, break open, and believe in.
THE NEXT STEP:
The Kickstarter for Of Coal & Corpses
A full-length, hex-crawling, dungeon-haunting, folk-industrial horror RPG.
It’s a spiritual successor to Once More Unto the Pit — bigger, meaner, more unclean, expanding the vision into a vast, rotting continent of sacred decay.
The campaign launches soon.
You can follow it now to be the first to know when it goes live:
PLAY TODAY:
The Demo “Once More Unto the Pit”
A complete, standalone solo micro-RPG.
A descent into rot, ruin, and remembrance.
Think of it as the first psalm in the Rotpunk Bible.
Available to download for free, right now, here:
Once more unto the Pit on Itch
This is the beginning.
Print the manifesto.
Pass it on.
Light a candle.
Dig a pit.
Make something sacred.
#rotpunk
#spiritualrotpunk
#ofcoalandcorpses
#oncemoreuntothepit
#overlandempire